3 Services I Would Buy If I Had to Start Over Marketing Online
May 11, 2010 by Travis Campbell · View Comments
Last week’s post talked about services you can use to market online that don’t cost anything. If you missed the post it is here. We live in an age of great opportunity online. However, a business (hopefully) reaches a point where they need to invest in paid for tools. Actually, any serious business needs to invest in tools, the reason for that is that it holds them accountable. Free is great, but if one of the content sharing blog sites goes down, as a consumer other than leveraging social networks to commiserate with other free users, you don’t have many options. Paid services are on the hook. If customers aren’t happy the can pick up the phone and talk with someone who can help. Read more
Recommendations
by Travis Campbell · Comments Off
When investing in tools, products, services, or continuing education, it is important to choose products that add value, and have reputable people behind them. Below is a list of products that we find meet that criteria. Be sure to read the MarketingProfessor.com newsletter for up to date recommendations and time sensitive tips.
Hosting
HostGator Website Hosting- Hosting is necessary to put the actual files on the internet for your web visitors to see. This is the company you rent physical server space from. HostGator is one of the most well known services out there, and a great place to start.
Email Marketing
Aweber- Building a list of subscribers is essential to a successful online business. Aweber is one of the oldest and most reliable email marketing services available. They make it easy to build webforms, newsletters, and broadcast when new content is on your blog.
InfusionSoft – For integrated CRM. Their email functionality is second to none, and referred to as Email Marketing 2.0.
Blogging
BlogTalkMonitor – Free software to see who talking about what is going on in your niche and a whole lot more. “Best monitoring software on the web.”
BlogSuccess – is one of the best A to Z sites for those who want to blog for a living. Full time incomes can be generated from blogging. Jack Humphrey has a great reputation for helping professionals do just that.
Membership Software for WordPress
Digital Access Pass – Offers a $0.01 trial. The creator of this software has been very responsive when developing new feature requests (see comments in the digital access pass review here).
Domain Registration
GoDaddy – This is often a starting point for many, you have to buy the website name before you can do much else. GoDaddy has mastered the upsell when customers buy (you’ll see what I mean after adding a domain to the cart), but they have great search tools, and a very flexible interface.
Website Creation Software
XSitePro 2 - Is a very robust, and easy to use software for those who want to get a site up quickly with some optin forms, and don’t want to master HTML or PHP (or any othe acronym!). Their sales page covers in detail why this software is unique.
eCommerce
1ShoppingCart – (Alex Mandossian’s version – sound will follow) Is a great starting point if you have products you want to sell on line. This works particularly well for information products, but also allows for a list of products as well.
InfusionSoft – About the same learning curve as 1ShoppingCart, significantly more powerful. Referred to Email Marketing 2.0.
Affiliate Tools
Clickbank allows you to sell products from their marketplace for a commission, or even sell your own product by offering commission to their affiliates.
PayDotCom is a service similar to Clickbank, created by Mike Filsaime.
Merchant Services
PowerPay – If you need to take payments online beyond Paypal, this can be one of the most frustrating experiences. The folks at PowerPay have been outstanding, I have been using them for years.
Pay Per Click
Perry Marshall – is one of the most respected resources when it comes to Pay Per Click strategy and coaching. His 5 Days to Success with Google AdWords and “One Page ‘Cheatsheet’ has helped many online marketers get started, and save a ton advertising online.
PPC Bully – A top tool for competitive analysis, and creating profitable campaigns fast.
SEO
SEO Book – Aaron Wall. Get to know him, he is a wealth of knowledge.
Video
YouTube Secret Weapon – Best converting traffic for MarketingProfessor.com comes from YouTube. Strategies learned in this course.
Social Marketing
Authority Black Book – Great resource to help you generate a strategy for social marketing, traffic, buzz, and higher rankings. It is free, and a solid resource.
Useful Email Marketing Posts from Around the Web
Today I searched the web for content pertaining to Email Marketing, I’m always up for fresh ideas. I found a few posts I thought were useful and wanted to share them with you here. Find them below, and not in any particular order.
21 Ways I Use Infusionsoft for Follow Up Marketing
With economic challenges as they are, many online and small business marketers are taking necessary steps to increase profits, and reduce costs. The fastest and easiest way to get more done is to automate follow up (not only email marketing which is used by a lot of small business marketing pros). This should be a part of any small businesses web marketing strategy. One of the best tools out there, Infusionsoft just became more appealing to cost conscious business owners. In this post, you’ll learn 21 ways that I use Infusionsoft, as well as their new pricing model announced this week. Read more
5 Reasons to Outsource Your Email or Autoresponder Service
Making email marketing pay is 100% about execution. 
That means getting your email delivered, opened, read, and the consumer moved to action. Drop the ball on any step in the direct email marketing process and chances are you dropped you conversion to 0% on that email. Read more
7 Strategies to Engage Subscribers with Your Email Marketing
You have worked hard to build or find a great direct email marketing list. You are sure it is targeted, filled with opportunity, and you definitely know you have what they need. You have loaded up and engaged the top autoresponder service ready to automate your email marketing campaign. But, will they engage? Can you activate this list into buyers? I am about to reveal a proven 7 point strategy to maximize even the toughest email list.
Small business marketing needs to yield a lot with a little. So, getting the most out of every email, maximizing email conversion has to be the prime objective. These 7 email marketing tips with get you there.
1. From Someone Important or at Least Friendly
If you aren’t a household name or you can’t get that star endorsement at least make your direct email marketing seem friendly and personable. Read more
Syndication Meets Your Email List With This Service Provider
Most super bloggers will tell you that 60% of their readers still consume their content via email. If you do not syndicate your blog via email to your social network, you are reducing your potential for success. AWeber, one of the top email marketing platforms, has come to your social marketing rescue with blog broadcast feature.
Blogs have become one of the most powerful content management systems and Web architectures on the Internet. It is the centerpiece of any social marketing strategy. However, nothing tops the impact of email to move consumers to action.
This is certainly why AWeber cleverly put these two powerhouses together into an even more powerful social syndication platform.
Why Email Blog Posts
The average American is in their email inbox multiple times per day–corresponding with friends, interacting with business colleagues, and getting the latest news and information targeted at their interests.
Smart marketers have realized that asking customers to use even one more technology to either browse to your website or open an RSS feed reader is unreasonable. Simply placing another barrier between you and your customer is not wise. If your reader finds it more convenient to read you blog in their email–give it to them.
The other subtle secret in emailing your blog posts to readers is that it is a click away from being forwarded to all their friends, family, and business associates. One more round of syndication–a trusted referral of your message, and very powerful.
Why AWeber?
When you are looking for a strategy to get those blog posts into your subscribers’ email box, you should be going to the best. Handing your RSS feed to an RSS syndication service is not as wise as you might think. They optimize RSS, not email. Trust your blog posts syndication to email experts.
AWeber has more than 10 year of experience navigating the challenges of email delivery and building a reputation for integrity in an often spam-riddled space. AWeber upholds the highest standards in email and CAN-SPAM compliance, keeping you out of trouble.
In addition to excelling at the fundamental mechanics of email distribution AWeber can help you transform this existing content into a professional email newsletter–a newsletter that could very simply be used and applied to a variety of opt-in email subscription lists.
Most importantly, all of this comes to your social marketing strategy in a completely automated way. Wah-la, effortless reuse of content–scaling your social marketing efforts.
AWeber also brings powerful optimization and analytics to your blog syndication. Allowing you to maximize delivery and track every interaction from opens to clicks.
How to Creative Syndicate RSS
Whether you have a blog or just an RSS feed that you want to send to your email list AWeber can broadcast. After creating your list, follow these simple steps:
1. Goto Messages-Blog Broadcast-Create Blog Broadcast
2. Enter your blog or other content RSS feed URL
3. Select a template (be sure to hit “Load Template”)
4. Customize your subject and message as desired
5. Schedule your broadcast
That’s it. AWeber makes it that easy. You can even schedule using the number of posts, times, dates, or even recurring days of the week or month.
You don’t even need to stop with just your own blog. If you have an existing email list you might mix it up a bit by adding interesting content from other RSS feeds or add multimedia with a special podcast or video RSS broadcast.
Email syndication of your blog or other RSS content is convenient for your consumers, enriches your content options, and brings you access to the core of their online attention–their email inbox. Learn more about the Aweber trial here.
Profitable Email Marketing: 3 ‘Must Have’ Strategic Considerations
Email marketing, seems pretty simple, at first. Afterall, who can’t click ‘send’ on an email, right? However, profitable email marketing is quite another story. There can be a lot to consider both before, and after the send.
1.) Make it part of your strategy
When it comes to being an online marketer, as difficult as it may be to get emails delivered at times, you still need to be building a list. The foundation of success (as a mentor friend of mine likes to say) is “traffic and conversion”. Rarely is the case that a marriage proposal is extended in an introduction, nor is that the case when selling online. You have to ask for the first date. The first date is the opt-in.
You probably see one on this page somewhere. A chance to become a subscriber, and get access to information that non-subscribers don’t get. The courting happens after they have become a subscriber…relationship building. Oftentimes much of this can be automated.
In order for email marketing to be successful, it has to be integrated as part of your strategy. Read more
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Hi, my name is Travis Campbell, I operate this site. I'm here to share what I can from my lessons marketing online. With sizeable investments in continuing education, various software products and services, I have had some winners, and some losers. One way I can extend what I've learned is by writing about it, here... and helping you along the way.
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