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Internet marketing

Website? Check. Target market? Umm

December 3, 2008 · 2 comments

There are 2 ways to figure out who the ideal target market for your particular brand of widgets is likely to be.

The first method is the one I learnt about in marketing school and involves lots of inaccurate census figures and speculation. This method is also likely to lead you to consider suicide. We’ll call this method ‘Academic Target Marketing’ for lack of a better phrase. I suggest you forget about Academic Target Marketing immediately.

The second, fun method of target marketing is what I like to call ‘Micro targeting‘ (I just made that up. Eat your heart out Maslow! This method is for those of you who run a home business and don’t have time to spend a week in the local library.

Micro Targeting answers basic questions about your target market. It doesn’t tell you what color underwear they’ve got on, but it does show you where to look for new business.

Allow me to illustrate

My sister runs a curtain making and cleaning business. She’s really good at what she does and she’s growing a pretty good client base. You’d think that homeowners would be her target market, right? Wrong. She targets her marketing to:

  • Interior decorators who decorate high-end homes and offices
  • Hotel groups who clean and/or replace their curtains frequently
  • Architects, who design homes and corporate buildings, and who work with end users and interior decorators all the time
  • Property developers, who build large numbers of homes, usually for high-income owners
  • Furniture-makers who not only deal with homeowners and interior designers, but who also make furniture that needs upholstery and cleaning

My sister knows that homeowners are likely to buy once, maybe twice. But people in the business of building and decorating homes will buy, or recommend her, every time they start work on a new project.

With only 5 niche markets to target she doesn’t need to waste time on prospects that aren’t going to grow her business in the long term. That’s pretty smart.

Moral of the story: You need to know who you’re building your micro business for. And you need to know a lot about them. You should be able to craft a voodoo doll of your perfect client and know exactly where to stick the pins.

Still haven’t subscribed yet? Loads of other people have. Now they officially know more about micro business marketing than you do.

Over 1100 backlink opportunities for website owners

August 25, 2008 · 1 comment

I keep thinking to myself “there must be a better way of getting a Google #1 ranking than building hundreds of backlinks for ‘website maintenance services’ to thinkdave.com”. But there isn’t a better way. You either add great content and build good links, or you flounder on page 100 of Google’s results. Building links is boring, but it works.

And with that in mind, here are a few resources to help you build your own mind-numbingly boring backlinks:

  1. The D-List: The D-List is a list of blogs that provide Dofollow links (backlinks that search engines recognise) back to your website every time you comment on any of the blogs. I found the D-list on Courtney Tuttle’s excellent Internet Marketing blog, and I’ve built a few good links using it. In fact, Courtney’s blog is probably one of the places you should visit regularly if you’re at all interested in Internet Marketing.
  2. AddURL: SEOFusion’s AddURL is a list of free online directories. Currently there are 880 directories listed, and the list is updated regularly. If you’re feeling rich you can buy a submission to the entire list for around £150.
  3. UltraReview’s 100 Dofollow forums: If you want to make friends or business contacts online, forums are a great place to start. And thanks to this great list of 100 forums that provide Dofollow links, you can improve your search engine rankings at the same time.

If you use every one of the link resources provided in the 3 lists above, you could build over 1100 links to your website, which would definitely improve your search engine rankings. That’s assuming you don’t die of boredom first.

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