Technologies are an evolving force changing the way messages about products and brands are delivered and received. Marketers are looking to enhance their customer relationships by using new web solutions which provide online collaboration, networking, and user-created content. Emerging 3.0 Internet technologies and channels like video email, mobile marketing, automated mailing cards just to name a few offer new challenges and opportunities for effective relationship marketing.

My father asks me the hardest question one morning while he’s reading his newspapers beside his coffee table: What do you think are the needs of your customers in case you’ll become a businessman?

My mind digs for answers but I can’t blurt a theory I’ve learned from my strategic internet marketing workshop way back in college. My father will call me a loser if I can’t provide any answers to his question so I’ve simply answered:

“That depends on how I am going to hear out and serve their needs.”

I am nonsense to my father’s eyes. He doesn’t like any of my marketing ideas in the past. Every time I said something, he quickly interrupts and tells me his You-Should-Do-This point of views.

But today, I received an affirmation nod from him and that’s the first time he acted that way. From this moment on, I realized how it feels to receive a positive feedback from the superior man of the house.

And here I am now, fulfilling my dreams as a marketing consultant. My marketing campaign has only one goal: To teach the people the proper marketing strategies on how to preserve their staying power as an entrepreneur with only a laptop with a speed internet connection right in front of them.

Niche Marketing

If you are going to ask me, the first commandment to becoming an online entrepreneur is, know what your niche is. Your niche must be something of your interest and when you love your chosen niche, you can easily evaluate its strengths and weaknesses.

After understanding what your niche is, try to research for some popular keywords associated to your niche using Google Adwords or Wordtracker. For example, if you niche is about marketing automation, perhaps the well-known keywords are automation softwares, marketing automation techniques so on and so forth.

It will be also nice if you use the power of strategic alliance in your campaign. Here, two parties are in collaborative agreement to achieve an objective. Mick Smiciklas, an expert Ezine author residing in Vancouver wrote, “Strategic alliances offer an opportunity to pool and share resources.”

That‘s rights folks! There is always strength in every union you will build. By working together on improving each weakness to maximize the mode of planning, you can ensure smooth sailing benefits later on.

My suggestion: Never be afraid allying with those people smarter than you are. Relationship marketing is one of the easiest ways to sharpen your maturity level.

Article Marketing

You have a niche to develop, what’s next?

Of course, you need to write articles about it. I’m aware that writing can be exhausting but if you love your niche with all your heart and soul, your mind runs with ideas and you can’t wait to write these ideas into your wordpad.

Sometimes, there are times that you feel your mind is oozing with interesting ideas but you don’t know where to start. I’m not a great writer but my unsolicited advice to you: You should write the main keywords and begin telling a story.

Articles are not written to tell the basic W and H, these are also made to give your readers a sense of entertainment. When you tell them a story, there’s a sudden urge of excitement whirling inside their mind asking for more.

Articles can be converted into several versions and it’s up to you how you are going to spread these words online. You can even create an instructional video about it, right?

Marketing Analytics

Strategic planning is a big requirement in Internet Marketing. Knowing what’s inside your competitor’s head can help you advance to the next level. Every marketer has his own space of gap in their marketing plan and once you figure this out, you can have the ability to fill those gaps with your own creative strategies.

Like what Sanjaya Antony wrote in his article entitled Strategic Internet Marketing Explained, “Your analysis of the competition will include their indexes. By checking a public index, you will have some idea of how and where they are ranked. To do this, simply find out how many pages are ranked on a search engine. This will give you some idea of what meta tags and other information is being given on a web site.”

But most importantly, never forget the secret ingredient to successful strategic internet marketing, that is, hearing out and serve what your customer’s needs all the time.

Since the inception of Internet, smart entrepreneurs worldwide are thinking of various ways on how they can use the power of marketing online.

My wife and I were financially broke for almost two years but when our friend, who works as a marketing consultant in an outsourcing establishment, decided to teach us the step-by-step procedures to successful Internet Marketing, a big miracle occurred to us.

My friend once told us that that most important marketing strategy in Internet marketing is your niche. Niche marketing is defined as the field of expertise you want to promote online. If your niche is something you are not familiar of, having a business online will not be your cup of coffee.

For instance, if you decided that your niche will focus on “Direct Marketing Through SEO” then you have no enough knowledge on what is SEO, how can you write any articles or create videos about market SEO? Yes, you can anytime consult an expert to solve your problem but the question here is, is this the field you really want to pursue?

Article Marketing

At first, my wife suggests to me that she wants to focus our niche on weight loss. That was a good idea, I thought. I have plenty of online friends in MySpace and Facebook who regularly ask me for advises on how to lose weight. When they ask me, I only say search for weight loss articles online.

For this, my wife started to research for any free tutorial courses about weight loss and I, who love writing since five years old, decided to write a 1000-word “How-To” article I can post to our blog. Writing articles has never been easy. To those people who say writing eight articles each day can be possible, it’s completely a joke. It’s possible in some ways but let’s see, if the above-average substance and quality is there.

Although I have a passion for writing, I still have problems on how I am going to integrate the ideas I have in my mind. But no matter what my writing problems are, are you aware that article marketing is still the best optimization technique anyone can use to earn money online?

That’s right, folks, articles play a significant role in viral marketing. With the birth of Web 2.0 sites these days, you can easily spread your marketing campaign into the public eye.

Like what I did, I only write a 1000-word article about weight loss but you know what, I can spin this article into five different versions. If I can have five subheadings, that means I can extract each subheadings and create a new article.

For example, if the title of my article is “Effective Weight Loss Programs for your Everyday Life,” my subheadings can be “Atkin’s diet,” “Hypnosis as Weight Loss” etc. and each of this subheading can be expounded into a unique article.

Now, here’s nicer news for all of you: when you have at least twenty unique articles, you can now compile these articles in one e-book and make this e-book as your freebie in exchange for a sign-up to your opt-in list.

Brand Marketing

E-book is a great product you can sell online. For now, my goal is to have an e-book I can give to my loyal readers and if I have no e-book to create and sell, there are plenty of affiliate program directories online. In ClickBank, there’s a massive collection of e-books you can rebrand and resell it with your name on it. This marketing technique is known as PLR or Public Label Right.

With your brand product at hand, one selling technique you can use is market segmentation. You are using this technique when you’re focusing on the subset of prospects that you think will buy your product.

Having Connections

If my niche is about weight loss, it’s also a good decision to affiliate with advertising companies who are also into weight loss.

In this case, these companies can also promote their campaign into your blog and imagine if there are at least five famous companies posting an advertisement in your blog?

As a marketer, you should never underestimate the value of having marketing relationship with other people who’s more successful than you are.

Who knows, these other marketers are going to teach you the techniques in brand positioning and help skyrocket your sales.

Final Say

Marketing online can really be fun if you have a niche you can tell the world. This life can be more exciting when you love what you are doing, right?

Have you ever attended an Internet Marketing Conference?

The life of an online entrepreneur can really be lonely. You’re working alone with the aid of your computer and an Internet connection.

Like what Thomas Edison said: “Success is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” Quite frankly, this is probably the bottomline of Internet marketing. Whether you like it or not, you need people.

Apart from the thorough marketing research you regularly do, reading marketing articles, browsing blogs every day and every night, downloading ebooks, making affiliates to various social community sites, you still feel something is lacking; and the only way to fill in this emptiness is through an event management gathering.

Some people may ask. Why there is still a need for internet marketers to attend marketing conferences?

Someone told me that internet marketing is a not really a world of what you know but who you know. No matter how book smart you are and you have memorized the principles of marketing 101, making connections is still the best.

When I say connections, it refers to a type of relationship marketing where you interact, mingle, chat, make friends and build joint ventures with various people of having same interests as you are. Truth is, it is a healthier type of lifestyle if you are going to attend a marketing event once in a year.

Yes, by staying at home- you can conduct weekly webinars using Skype or Yahoo Messenger for your loyal subscribers but you can’t simply ignore those other people who wants to meet you in person.

From what I’ve learned, conference marketing has three fundamental components: before, during and after you the event.

Before

A week before the marketing conference, you must make sure you have already gathered the basic details about the event.

The seminar is all about what? If the seminar is about making money online, who will be the speakers, gurus and experts? Why these gurus conduct this type of event? The said event will take place where? Do I have the budget if I’m going to attend the seminar? If I am going to attend the event, do I need to reserve a seat?

These questions must be answered before the seminar. In fact, reading the latest developments on the Internet or news tabloids is really a big help. You should also be ready with what items of food you should be eating, what important marketing research documents you should be bringing and most importantly, be ready with your business cards.

Make your business cards a stand-out. A business card is like your small resume. This is the only way to make an impression to new affiliates. Fact is, there are five important elements every business cards must have:

Your Real Name + Your Picture – It must be printed in bold letters and it should stand out from the rest.

Your Address- Of course, below your name is your address. The people wants to know where do you live and what type of lifestyle you have.

Contact Numbers- Be sure include all your landline (home, office, school), mobile and fax numbers.

Online contacts- In this space, you will state your email address, skype address, yahoo messenger address and the URL of your blog, websites, social communities. If want to include your co-affiliates contacts, the better.

Brief Description- If you are an accomplished sales person who has a good amount of experience in direct marketing, write a brief statement about your niche.

One important reminder: If you think attending the seminar will not help you in finding those key people you need to meet, look for another one.

Also, if you are interested to attend a marketing seminar, you can also search these big events in Google.

During

It is very important to stay awake and energetic while the seminar is on. Never be shy in socializing with various people. Offer them a handshake, ask for their names and give them your business card. The simple rule is: Just be consistently friendly.

Another rule you should remember while the seminar rolls on: Making impression with big names or marketing consultants is not a crime but this is a good strategy to know who really the person you’re talking to.

Who knows… one of the main speakers of the marketing conference is the future CEO of YouTube or Google.

It’s a great strategy if you are going to take pictures with them.

After

To avoid confusion and forgetfulness, try reviewing all the information you have jotted as soon as you reached home. Read thoroughly all the business cards you have collected and never forget to email or text them a “nice to meet you” message.

The most important aspect here:

You determine the contacts who you can be your business partners, future prospects and immediate buyers. Never throw a business card, keep it for future browsing.

Wrapping all these up,

Let me remind you that attending an Internet Marketing Conference is a silent magic to your online success. This is the start of your affiliate adventure!

Online marketing is a lonely business. You find contacts and register to various online communities but you can’t deny the fact you are still in front of the computer and you can’t handshake your customers. For this reason, attending affiliate marketing seminars should also be your priority.

Why Attend Seminars?

If you have time, try to participate in affiliate marketing seminars near you. Apart from sharpening the things you already know, attending seminars is an opportunity to meet other people who aspire to the same interests and goals as you.

Attending seminars sounds like an old school technique. Some people might question why attend seminars if you can now interact with your affiliates through Yahoo Messenger, Skype or Google Talk?

These people seem correct on that note.

Yet, have you thought affiliate marketers are still humans and they still need social interaction to become great marketers? Even in this Internet Age, does it look so good if you can still talk face-to-face with other people and build partnerships with them?

If you are disagreeing with me, that’s not how a smart affiliate marketer should think.

Believe it or not, the core of attending affiliate marketing seminars is to improve your social skills and making an identity in the competitive world of business.

The life of an affiliate marketer is not limited to Skype or Yahoo! Messenger. Once you become an affiliate marketer, your marketing strategy should be focus into creating smooth and flowing business interaction with various marketing consultants either online or in the real world.

No man is an island, folks! Even those computer geeks who spend a huge amount of their time playing Ragnarok still need someone to comfort them.

Conducting Seminars

Starting small can result to bigger opportunities. If you believe in this statement, why not organize a seminar of your own. Inviting someone to come on your seminar than attending a seminar requires a hefty budget on your part yet this is a great marketing strategy to embrace a wider scope of prospects, investors and sponsors.

Unlike in attending seminars where you will simply listen to several mentors as they talk and talk, you are the BOSS once you conduct your own affiliate marketing seminar.

How about if you begin with a small gathering? Just you and other twenty members of your niche then two to three speakers during the seminar. Twenty to thirty guests are enough. The most important thing here is you create an impression to guests who will attend the seminar and who knows, you can turn them into loyal buyers later on.

Final Words

Trust and loyalty. These two elements can be achieved through online chatting or online letters. However, attending/conducting affiliate marketing seminars is still one of those powerful mediums to enhance your relationship with other marketers.