WHAT YOU WILL
LEARN
MARKETING METHODS
The most common
Internet marketing methods, particularly useful in promoting the SFI affiliate
program are these:
1) Doorway Pages and Search Engine Registration
2) Banner or Textual Ad Placement (Exchange Programs)
3) Banner or Textual Ad Placement (Online Classifieds)
4) Banner or Textual Ad Placement (Affiliate and Paid Placement)
5) Building Your Own Content-Rich Website
6) Utilizing an Opt-In Program
7) Hosting FFA Pages
8) Using Safelists, Announcement Lists, and Viral marketing
9) Press Releases, Relationship Building, and Offline Promotion
10) The Latest New Technique
Many of these methods
overlap or have much in common. Depending on what you read, there are various
ways to describe each of these methods and various names with which to identify
them. There is no particular importance to the order in which we have listed them
here. The only reason to enumerate them into the list above is for ease of learning.
We will take the first five in turn and give you a brief introduction in this
lesson. The next lesson will give you a brief introduction to the last five. Subsequent
lessons will cover each of these methods in great detail (although not necessarily
in order). Let's get right to it.
DOORWAY
PAGES AND SEARCH ENGINE REGISTRATION
A "doorway page"
is a Web page that is used to lead people to the target interactive site. The
doorway page contains a link to your target page. The target page is where you
hope the user will take some action, such as purchasing an affiliate product or
opting in to your program. The target page sells. The doorway page gets their
attention and leads them to the target page. Doorway pages serve two main purposes:
they are used to optimize search engine placement and they allow you to target
your initial approach to different demographics.
When you join SFI, you
are given links to different target pages that you can use to sell SFI products
or recruit affiliates. Because these pages contain what is called a "CGI
variable" to identify you as the seller or recruiter, they can not be individually
registered in the Search Engines. That is, because there is a "?" in
the URL (Website address), search engines will not accept them or will truncate
off the most important part—your ID number.
To work around this problem
with the search engines, affiliates use doorway pages. Savvy SFI affiliates design
and host a Web page on another server with a different name so that the URL does
not contain a question mark. This doorway page then links to one of the SFI target
pages, and the link, of course, contains the CGI variable identifying the affiliates
ID number to ensure proper credit. Really enterprising affiliates create several
different doorway pages, each appealing to different types of people.
Even
when there is no need to work around a cgi variable in the URL, Internet marketers
use doorway pages to target different demographics. Different things get different
people's attention. Many of the affiliates that come into SFI do so because they
are very serious about creating a successful home-based business. They find SFI
while searching for information pertaining to home-based businesses or network
marketing. They understand network marketing terminology and are seeking a comparison
of this program with the ones already familiar to them.
Other affiliates
come to SFI because they want an Internet business. They may have had little experience
with home-based businesses or network marketing. These people understand Internet
terminology and are looking for a great affiliate program. Obviously, you have
to approach these different types of people differently to attract them to the
SFI program.
Thus, it is best to have one doorway page for those seeking
a home-based, multi-level business and another doorway page for those seeking
a lucrative affiliate program. SFI well serves the needs of both, but they need
to be drawn to that realization in different ways. You may also want to have different
doorway pages for younger prospects and older prospects; one for the highly educated
and one for those with little formal education; one for those who are already
financially successful but want an Internet income and one for those who are still
struggling daily with bills and creditors. There are many different demographic
groups that you can target with different doorway pages.
The best doorway
pages are pages that attract the targeted demographic by providing useful information
or entertainment, while remaining easy to navigate. Stay tuned to future lessons
to learn how even the technically challenged can easily create useful content
for their Websites.
(Note: In SFI, doorway pages that you design yourself
must be approved by the SFI administration if they do more than just contain an
approved link or textual ad. That is, if you provide information or opinions about
SFI above and beyond insertion of an approved ad, you must seek prior approval.)
When
you have your doorway pages in place, you need to register them with the search
engines. There are many factors involved in doing this properly. You need to prepare
your pages properly with metatags, keywords, descriptions, keyword balancing,
content indications, as well as incoming and outgoing link considerations. You
then need to know the right submission procedure and schedule your submissions
properly for each major search engine or directory. There is much to say on these
subjects and each will be the topic of a future lesson in this course.
BANNER OR TEXTUAL AD PLACEMENT (EXCHANGE PROGRAMS)
To
gain traffic for your Website, you need to prepare effective banners and textual
ads. In SFI, this is already done for you. Having banners and textual ads prepared,
you need to find places on the Internet to place these banners and textual ads.
One of the earliest methods devised on the Internet was banner exchanges. You
agree with other Website owners to place their ad on your page in exchange for
placing your ad on their page. This process has been facilitated by the emergence
of several banner exchange programs. You register with the exchange program, upload
your banner, and your banner will automatically appear on other registered Web
pages throughout the world. In exchange, they provide code for you to put on your
Web page, which hosts rotating banners from other sites. These are not particularly
effective, mainly because placement in context on a page is rarely achieved. Context
placement is crucial to an ad or banner being effective in drawing traffic.
Banner
exchanges are very useful for one purpose, however. Most of the exchange programs
allow you to target the types of pages on which your banners will be placed. If
you happen to have a high-traffic Website which appeals to one demographic, but
your target in a particular affiliate program is another demographic, you can
"exchange" your traffic through use of an exchange program. Say your
site draws high traffic from retired people who love to garden and travel. With
a banner exchange, you can have your banner targeted to sites which appeal to
home-based entrepreneurs. In return, you host banners on your site which target
the group which frequents your site (advertising, for example, gardening tools
or motor homes). Since effective context placement is much more likely to be achieved
in this situation, it usually works fairly well for all parties involved.
BANNER OR TEXTUAL AD PLACEMENT (ONLINE CLASSIFIEDS)
One
of the easiest ways to get your banners and ads on a high-traffic Website is to
place them on some online classified ad pages. Several major sites allow you to
place classified ads for free. There are others, such as Yahoo!, that charge fees
for placement of classifieds. These can be effective depending upon the volume
of ads being submitted at any given time. If it is a high traffic site, your ad
will only appear for a matter of hours before it is pushed too far down by new
submissions to be useful. Daily attention and resubmission is crucial to an effective
classified ad campaign on the free sites.
There are links to the many online
classified sites that have been effective for SFI affiliates on the SFI Team Resource
Center (http://www.sfiteam.com/).
Starting with classified ads is a good way to get your feet wet in Internet marketing.
BANNER OR TEXTUAL AD PLACEMENT (AFFILIATE AND
PAID PLACEMENT)
You can also pay to have your banner or ad placed
on other Websites. This is a broad category that
covers many different possible
arrangements. You can pay for placement for a period of time. You can pay only
for clicks actually received through your ad on a site. You can pay only for sales
or sign-ups that come through a particular site. Affiliate programs encompass
the latter of these options. There are services where you can register an affiliate
program and people who go to these services can sign up to host your ads. When
they sign up, they download your banner or ad to their site. The service independently
tracks and verifies the clicks, sales, or sign-ups, that originate from particular
affiliate sites and facilitates the payments that are due.
covers many different possible
arrangements. You can pay for placement for a period of time. You can pay only
for clicks actually received through your ad on a site. You can pay only for sales
or sign-ups that come through a particular site. Affiliate programs encompass
the latter of these options. There are services where you can register an affiliate
program and people who go to these services can sign up to host your ads. When
they sign up, they download your banner or ad to their site. The service independently
tracks and verifies the clicks, sales, or sign-ups, that originate from particular
affiliate sites and facilitates the payments that are due.
Also included
in this category are ezine ads. Ezines are e-mail newsletters that people have
opted-in to receive. They are full of interesting content so that people actually
read them when they show up in their inboxes. You can pay the ezine publisher
to include your ad and a link to your site in an ezine edition. Ideally, your
ad will fit into the context of the information in that particular ezine edition.
"Pay-pers"—services
which pay people to receive and read e-mail or host software which displays ads
on their screen—also fall under this category. You can pay to have your e-mail
ad sent to people who have agreed to receive the e-mail for a small fee per e-mail.
This is not spam because the people who receive the e-mail have opted to receive
it in exchange for a small payment per e-mail received and read. These programs
are very effective because the e-mails are actually read and the links clicked.
BUILDING YOUR OWN
CONTENT RICH WEBSITE
As explained in our first lesson on Spam,
except for safelists and paid ads purchased from opt-in programs, you cannot rely
on e-mail for Internet marketing. You must use Websites and opt-in programs instead.
We discussed the doorway site concept at the beginning of this lesson. Whether
a doorway page or an independent target site, the most effective Internet marketing
method available is to have a site with rich substantive content and entertaining
attention grabbers. There are hundreds of thousands of Websites on the Internet
now that consist of nothing more than banner ads thrown on a page. They are all
worthless! There is no point in creating a Website if it does not have content.
Your Website must have both value and ease of use to be effective in drawing and
keeping traffic. (As stated above, do not be dismayed if you feel incapable at
this time of creating such a site. Just relax and keep reading your SFI materials.)
CONCLUSION
Remember that this
lesson is just a brief introduction to many different concepts. Do not be concerned
if you are still a little confused. Things will become clearer as we address each
method in more detail. If you are itching to get started with your Internet marketing
campaign, you can start with posting classified ads.
You can move onto the other methods as we discuss them in more detail in future
lessons.
https://www.sfimg.com/Training/Lessons/4
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