Marketing with Matt

This Internet Marketing Strategy is about staying focused and what traffic generation methods to focus on.

One of the most important attributes of a successful internet marketer is the ability to stay focused. But, this may be harder to do now with internet marketing, than at any time before.

Why?

Really, I think this is because there are just so many more options around today, and more noise about those options than ever before. This means that staying focused can be harder. Psychological tests have shown that more choices often lead to greater confusion and action paralysis.  In relation to internet marketing it often leads to people jumping around from one opportunity to the next, or one marketing method to another, without fully mastering anything.

Back when making money online was new, there were fewer choices, and traffic generation methods and niches were not over-saturated, people could focus more on mastering one or two activities successfully with less distraction.

Lets just look at one part of the internet marketing process: Traffic

image courtesy of: FindYourSearch

Back when Internet Marketing was in it’s infancy there were fewer traffic sources. Although you could argue that more traffic sources is a good thing (and in many ways it is), in terms of focus it may not be. When a lot of the big names who have become successful making money online got started, traffic sources were limited, as was the level of competition. This meant that they had the opportunity to master that traffic source, learn it inside and out, and use it for all it’s worth. They did not have 1000′s of other marketers competing against them and 100′s more distracting them with news of new traffic sources and traffic generation methods.

Back in the day, the big traffic source for making money online was Google Adwords (or so I have heard from many big name marketers). When it was a new advertising platform, it had few restrictions and ad costs were lower. You could buy clicks and send traffic directly to affiliate offers for a lot less than you would pay now. And many people made a lot of money with less struggle. Yet over that past few years competition has raised advertising costs and Google has tightened the restrictions on what can be promoted and what types of site can be promoted.

Choice.

Now we have a whole range of traffic sources both free and paid to choose from. Just some of these include:

Facebook ads, Social Media Marketing, media buys, list swaps, SEO, PPC, PPV, article marketing, video.

Last year there was a lot of noise made about PPV, media buying and Facebook ads. This year the buzz seems to be about Facebook fan-pages and Mobile marketing. And SEO always seems to be something that is talked about for generating traffic, but with new tactics!

The effectiveness of these traffic generation methods also changes, often very quickly. You may have heard that article marketing is dead or that Adwords PPC is too costly and difficult for the affiliate marketing beginner. However you may have heard that Facebook advertising is the best traffic source around, or video marketing is very effective. Then you may hear that there is a way to generate traffic effectively again from article marketing, and so on.

One of the selling points of Facebook ads mentioned by people last year was that it was “affiliate marketing” friendly (fewer restrictions on what sites you could promote i.e. straight to an affiliate offer). But how long will this last? is it starting to change already?

The unfocused marketer.

The unfocused marketer will be running around doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and will end up mastering nothing. They may start with article marketing but hear that video is the best way to go, but then hear that article marketing is not dead and go back to that. Then they realize that they may have to learn SEO in greater depth, and so on and so on until they believe nothing works and give up. I know this because this is almost what happened to me when I was starting, and I know that I am not the only one.

The other problem we face is the higher levels of competition. The window of opportunity for generating traffic in large volumes, relatively easily using a single tactic shortens as more people find out about it and start using it. This makes staying focused and mastering an effective traffic strategy even more important. Back in the early days, internet marketers had several years to establish themselves due to the lower number of people competing with them.

It can be difficult focusing on one source when you are starting out. You get lots of messages about the latest, greatest source of traffic and you are not sure who to listen to.

What are the solutions?

If you are building websites, then focusing on SEO is essential. Getting a good understanding of SEO is of great benefit, even if you plan to outsource this activity.

Although SEO can be pretty tough if you want to battle it out for hard to rank, but highly profitable keywords. There are many opportunities for developing your SEO skills on keywords that are easier to rank for, and build up sites that could challenge for the tougher keywords in the niche you choose.

There are also a lot of software products and tools released for getting backlinks, and getting ranked in the search engines through automation. Although these services appeal to people who want to cut corners and take short-cuts with SEO, not all of these products are bad and if used correctly can be very effective. But getting the basics of SEO down first will help in assessing these products and how you could use them effectively.

The other option I think is worth serious exploration is Social Media Marketing.

Is it possible that marketing with social media will replace search engine marketing and paid marketing?

Is Facebook about to overshadow Google?

Image courtesy of: FindYourSearch

It may be. Many people are making the shift to marketing primarily through Facebook, and Google keeps trying to break into social media and claims to be giving more weight to social media activity surrounding a website, in relation to webpage rank. However social media it is not going to replace the necessity for search engine optimization if you have a website, but the two are going to merge together more.

Image courtesy of toprankonlinemarketing

As these two forms of of marketing start to come together and merge more and more, it could be a good idea to develop a good basic understanding of both and then specialize in the one which appeals to you the most, and which you think you have the greatest chance of succeeding with.

The other benefit of focusing on marketing with social media is that it can help level the playing field for you against other marketers. Although more established marketers and entrepreneurs can leverage their experience and authority with social media, less well established marketers and entrepreneurs can use their authenticity and the fact that they care

This is my strategy I aim to follow from now on, in the past I have focused on search engine marketing to a great extent but now plan to put more emphasis on implementing more social media marketing.

Resources.

I have found a couple of good resources that have impressed me recently, and could help you develop your understanding of SEO and social media marketing.

The first is some free training for a good understanding of basic SEO by InlineSEO (not an affiliate link), also check out their SEO blog. There is also a corse available on the site for deeper learning of SEO.

The second is a great resource for developing your Social Media Marketing by the The Social Networking Academy, (Note: this is an affiliate link, but there is a 10 day trial for only $1). The people behind this program really seem to understand the connections between Social Media and SEO, and there is a lot covered in the membership.

Ok, that was one long post but I had to get this off my chest and I hope you have found it useful. Thank you for reading.

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing Strategy, SEO, social media, Social media marketing, traffic generation