Proven Marketing Tactics & Tools You Need

Ambition, determination and commitment are the three strong pillars of successful online marketing. On those pillars you build your business with marketing tactics that attract visitors and drive sales. You will fail, you will make misjudgments, you will loose money – I would say that 10 out of 10 business projects fail. But those who try the 11′th time are those who succeed – you will need all your ambition, determination and commitment.

The good news is that there have been many people who have tried, failed, tried again, failed again, and finally succeeded in identifying the most effective marketing tactics for an online business. Learning from the mistakes and also the successes of other marketers are necessary if you want to have a future in online marketing.

Wikipedia: The concept of revenue sharing predates affiliate marketing and the Internet. The translation of the revenue share principles to mainstream e-commerce happened almost four years after the origination of the World Wide Web in 1994.

What you need, except ambition and determination, are adequate marketing tools and a basic business plan. It doesn’t need to be something fancy and extremely complicated – avoid complicated things that are hard to understand. The simple outline could for example look something like this:

1. Take action
2. Establish goals
3. Define your business
4. Basic marketing tactics

There is absolutely nothing new or sensational about this information, but it will give you the basic structure you need for your future work with your online marketing business.

In this article we will briefly go through some proven affiliate marketing tactics used by the most successful marketers on the net – and in the end of the article Cashrevelations presents some highly useful marketing tools that you can use already today.

Take Action And Establish Goals

One of the first rules of online marketing is to take action. Internet is a dynamic, growing medium where businesses are created every moment. If you just sit and think about what you are going to do and never take action, you will never ever get where you want to go. Marketing tactics are totally useless unless you take action and execute them.

This takes you to the next critical stage of online marketing. You must truly know and understand where you want to go before you begin your journey. Without a really clear understanding of where you want to go, how to know what you need to do? How do you create tactics and take action? Would you build a house without using a blueprint?

You need to establish goals. Goals lead to strategies and then to tactics – plant your goals firmly in your mind and envision yourself succeeding with your online business.

Define Your Business

Starting your online business means understanding what your business is all about. What do you need to do to reach your goals? What marketing tactics will help you succeed? As you can see, there is a lot of questions you have to ask yourself.

Success is dependent on your ability to dissect and understand your business. You must be somewhat authoritative in your own niche and you must carefully evaluate what your future customers want. Once you identify what they want and need, it is very essential to determine how you can deliver those results for your potential customers.

Basic Marketing Tactics

Now that you have your business outlined and clarified, deploying basic marketing tactics is next on the list. And that starts with knowing how to market what you have to offer.

Basic marketing tactics include:

1. Creating a ‘brand’ or identity around your product
2. Creating a simple marketing message
3. Establishing a credible website
4. Creating a presence as an expert in a niche
5. Defining the benefits or value of what you have to offer
6. Developing your site content to drive traffic
7. Deploying SEO (search engine optimization techniques) to drive traffic

Build your business step-by-step and do your homework to evaluate the most effective marketing tactics. Learn from other marketers (read their blogs) and save weeks, months, and years of effort by taking advantage of proven techniques whenever possible.

A word about SEO. For many years ago, as an Internet newbie, I tried just about every SEO trick there is. I was reading the words of those big SEO gurus like a sacred text – I really tried hard to be a hit on Google. Of course it didn’t work. Finally I decided, “Google gives a shit about me, and I give a shit about Google”. I stopped using any type of SEO (I’m still very minimalistic in my SEO efforts). Since then, my relation to Google search engine has improved dramatically – and now it feels like we have a good working relation.

My point is, use all the SEO you are capable of, perhaps it works for you, but don’t get fixated and spend all your time on SEO tricks. There is no SEO trick that can replace good site content. If you want web traffic, you need good content. And if you must choose, spend your time on developing your content before spending it on SEO.

Marketing Tools You Might Need

Apart from things like landing page templates, blog platform and other necessary tools, there is a few more handy tools that might make your online marketing a lot easier.

Business Planning

Here are some examples of business planning tools you can find on Internet. There is more planning tools you can use for free, but if you are really dedicated you could, or maybe should, choose to invest in a more flexible premium service (but test a few free services first – do not invest in anything before you are sure that marketing is for you).

Ganttic – Resource Management & Planning
Ganttic is an online project management software for scheduling business resources and projects. The handy online scheduling software provides user friendly graphical interface and interactive Gantt chart for real time collaboration.

Business Calculators – Bplans
Bplans, a site with a large collection of free sample business plans, offers a set of online business tools you can use to quickly and easily evaluate different aspects of your new online business. These calculators can also be added to your own business website.

NEBS Business Plan Tool
This is a handy interactive tool you can use to write your very own business plan in a comfortable and easy step-by-step fashion. Just read the instructions and suggestions accompanying each section and then answer the questions posed.

DoubleClick Ad Planner – Google
This is a free online media planning tool by Google that can help you identify websites your target customers are likely to visit – you can easily build media plans for yourself or your clients. Access unique users data for millions of websites from over 40 countries.

Plan Cruncher – Easily Create A Small Business Plan Online
Plan Cruncher creates a standard one-page summary of a business plan for a start-up company. You do this by choosing icons that represent some of the standard answers that a business plan must provide.

Tracking & Executing

Tracking the result of your marketing efforts is important – especially if you for example spend money on advertising. VendorSeek has a nice article, Tips for Online Marketing Analysis, where they explain the importance of tracking you marketing actions. Below you have some online marketing tools that are all free of charge (at least on basic level).

Marketing Return on investment (ROI) Calculator
This user friendly online tool lets you find out if Twitter, Facebook, or other campaigns are making you money. Calculate if you are really making or even losing money on your online marketing – and discover how much you need to spend to earn every $1.

Tout – Track & Organize Your Repetitive Emails
Tout is an online service that lets you create custom marketing email templates that you can track, organize and schedule. You can send a maximum of 7 emails per day with the free account – with a premium account you get features like tracking and scheduling.

SampleWords – Free Business Forms & Templates & Planners
Browse and download printable documents including premium and free business forms, accounting forms, personnel documents, communication documents, sales organizers, letter templates, planners, basic organizers, calendars and much more.

BitNami – Open Source Simplified
Bitnami offers open source installers or software packages for web applications as well as Virtual appliances. You can for example easily install WordPress on your PC to test new functions (landing page templates etc.) of your marketing blog before going online.

Google Analytics – Web Analytics
There is a lot of analytics services you can use, but Google Analytics is free, effective, flexible, easy to use and reliable. Track sales and conversions and measure your site engagement goals against threshold levels that you define for your affiliate marketing.

Clicky – Web Analytics In Real Time
Clicky is a real time web analytics service. This means that when you login and view your stats, you are seeing up to the minute data on the traffic to your web site. There is a free version and premium versions – you can see a demo of the service HERE.

Your Personal Online Presence

Creating a strong online personal presence is essential if you want to be successful in Internet marketing. Luckily there is a lot of really useful (and even free) tools you can use. Here we present just three good and effective alternatives.

AboutMe – Online Personal Profile
This stylish and free online tool allows you to quickly build a personal and dynamic splash page that points visitors to your content from around the web. Statistics over how many persons see your profile – but slow downloading of the profiles is a problem.

SocialURL – Showcase Your Web Profiles
This very easy to use and free online tool allows you to organize all of your social network profiles in one link that can be accessed in one click or link – very suitable for email and forum signatures. You can also keep track of people visiting your SocialURL page.

Retaggr – The Definitive Online Profile
This easy to use online tool lets you aggregate all your online social profiles and contact details into a portable interactive profile – rich with content. You can have a look at the different solutions they offer HERE.

Final Words & Warnings

Online affiliate marketing is very much a question of trial and error. Your first try will probably fail, but you shouldn’t be discouraged by that – just try again. But don’t spend money on extensive advertising campaigns, eBooks with affiliate marketing tips, expensive memberships in different guru jippos, or whatever – remember that you can find almost everything free on Internet. There is no reason for you as a marketing newbie to spend a lot of money. And, most of all, watch up for people who promise you incredible wealth and economic independence – statistically those wonderful guru proposals almost never work. In many cases, a “marketing guru” is a shark on a hunt for a marketing newbie just like you, and your meeting will leave you with a thin wallet and disillusioned mind.

That ends our brief roundup of proven affiliate marketing tactics and useful marketing tools. Good luck with your online affiliate marketing and be prosperous.

First Image: Gabriella Fabbri