Then you are not alone. Let’s face it, with the ever changing internet and information overload, it’s almost impossible to decide what works and what doesn’t. When it comes down to internet marketing. I personally believe in KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).

My method or simplified idea is based on 3 sub ideas.

1. Attracting Traffic, leads and clients.

2. Building Relationship with your prospects.

3. Selling to your prospects and make them keep coming to you.

No matter what techniques you use, they’ll come under the above 3 points. Now what I highly recommend you to pick a simple technique that you can follow (for each steps). You should focus on ONE technique and master it.

For example, If I am good with using blogs to build, attract traffic, then I should spend as much time as possible with blogs. When I’ve master one technique, I’ll move on to learn new ways to generate traffic.

This is how you should attempt to learn internet marketing. Otherwise, you’ll end up with plethoras of techniques and won’t have any idea what to do with them. In last 6 years, though I know tons of techniques, but I’ve mastered 5–6 different ways to do it. 

Selling is all about building relationship with your prospect. If they don’t know you or about your product/service. They’ll never buy from you. In any case, if they do buy, chances are they’ll shop somewhere else for next time.

That’s why my 2^nd step is about Building relationship. And that’s before we start selling to them.

3^rd step you have to worry about is selling them and make them keep coming to you again and again. If you are able to follow the 2^nd step, then you won’t have problem with selling.

Again, the idea of using one technique work wonder in this step. I can write powerful emails and sell my products. It took me about 6–8 months of experimenting before I succeeded in using emails as tool to sell.

So, Of course there is a learning curve as you can see. But it’s worth every second.

So what you can do now?

Simplify your marketing plan and implement it. No need to find out 100 different techniques to build traffic or sneaky little tricks to sell your products. Be Authentic, Be Yourself.

If you need any help with any of the steps above, you can always ask. I can help you with marketing strategies or may be guide you in building relationships or write your sales copy.

One of the crazy thing you’ll find in internet marketing is a set of people I call “SEO pretenders”. I call them because that’s what they are.

Though I don’t claim to be SEO expert or pretend to act like that in forums, I’ve been doing SEO for last 6 years. I have seen ups and down and have a foot in the SEO market. When people see how much SEO people are charging, they also put up their shop.

Before I talk about some things that are used by SEO pretenders blatantly, I say “SEO is expensive, no doubt about that”. That’s why Shop around and look for people who know what they are doing.

1. Crazy Hosting prices – SEO pretenders literally murders your bank account by charging exorbitant prices. For most small business, you won’t have to worry about too much traffic. Often these pretenders talk about services(and functions) they provide with the hosting and charge HIGH prices.

It completely depends on your website material, if you are going to need expensive servers or not. In most cases spending 100 dollars a month for server is way too much.

2. Mind boggling Web design charges – Mind you, we haven’t even started talking about SEO and you have already emptied your pockets by now. Again small business does not need any complicated design.

Most pretenders use “Personalized website” as slogan and charge Super high prices. When you can easily put up a template and get a personalized template for around $1000 (or you can spend less than $100 to get a general template and get it personalized).

Again the problem is all about knowing the right information, right people. Of course most business owners rather spend money than doing the research (that’s why I recommended right people).

3. SEO practices – White hat, black hat or Grey hat – Which color do you wear?

If you are asking about SEO plan, then do ask for what kind of Hat your SEO expert wears. Almost all of SEO guys are pretty much in Grey category and are very good with black hat too. Those who claim they are White hat are just liars.

For those who doesn’t understand about hats –
White hat SEO – Good practices accoridng to google, yahoo.
Black Hat SEO – Bad practices frowned by google, yahoo.
Grey Hat SEO – middle path, very fine line to walk.

If you talk about techniques, it’s better to ask for 2^nd opinion about hats. I normally say, most good SEO spend their time with Grey hat walking a very fine line. But they often tone down their skills and dabble in white hat for the sake of their client’s website.

This is part where people charge for arm and leg. That’s why I am highly recommending you to ask for second opinion. If you need second opinion, You can ask for my help for SEO. Someone who has been doing SEO for last 6 years can give you far better 2^nd opinion.

When you think of a blog as just a part of website, you are missing out most of it’s power. Think of a blog as a relationship development platform.

1. Attract More Traffic

Before you decide to build relationship, you need a way to attract audience to your blog. The way blog are structured, they are automatically optimized to produce results in search engines like google. A Good blog not only generates traffic from online but also acts as a mediator and gives platform to build relationships.

2. Build Trust and Familiarity

Do you know, according to human behavior results, we need at least 7 contacts before customer buys the product/service? When you think about this behavior, you have to find a way where you can breed trust and familiarity with your audience. A blog provides a face or platform to communicate with your prospective customers and clients.

When you provide information and resources by encouraging repeat communication, you built familiarity, trust and start bonding with your clients. The more you build trust, the better expert you’ll be known in your circle.

3. Branding and getting in touch

A blog gives a personal touch to a website. This makes your customer feel that they can are communicating with a person rather than a huge company. People talk, communicate with people not with machines or codes. This platform gives them a way to communicate with you. With a blog, they can see your history and create an experience where it feels like they have know you forever.

Words of mouth, positive attention and other value based long term experience not only creates trust but also build your brand.

4. Building a community

Web 2.0 is the name given for next generation web development, where community as a whole builds the internet and give way to networking. Through interaction, discussion and comments on blog, you start creating a community. You can lead this community in the direction you want. Why? because they are your faithful listeners. To them you are the expert.

5. Interact Inform and Learn

As more people are turning to internet to get information, you can focus on becoming “The Go-to” Resource in your field. With articles, resources, audio, video, information flows freely. This will give them a chance to learn, get educated about your company, brand and your website. You can also use this platform as a surveys, polls to gather market research and provide better service/results to your customers.

6. Motivate your audience

When you have a loyal audience, they can be motivated to take specific actions. If you want to take survey, polls or gather some marketing research, you can just lead them into it by warming up with a story or incentive.

7. Recruit new contacts, help or employees.

Your blog can also become as a networking tool, where you can easily ask them to work with you or may be create brand evangelists. Your blog audience is most likely to respond as they already understand you and are part of your business in one way or another. You’d be surprised how helpful your blog readers can be.

8. Create more sales.

A happy customers buy more and frequently. As you are creating trust, bond and familiarity with your clients, you’ll be perceived as a foremost expert of your topic in your field. All of this leads to more sales.

Ask me anything about blog marketing.

Today I am going to show you very simple technique that’ll help you generate more leads.

One of the fastest way to attract more audience is by using simple advertorial format of advertising in space ads (newspaper, classifieds etc). In marketing lingo, we call these leads generators a 2 step method.

The goal of the lead generator is to generate as many leads as possible. The 2 step are -
1. Write ad that gets people to contact you (or call your office).
2. Get them to book an appointment.

1. Write better ads to Attract more audience.

Now this might be one of biggest hick-ups you might face. If you don’t know how to write, then you need some help fast. But here are few tips that’ll help you write better.

1. Use basic design without showing off any graphic skills. An ad needs to attract attention of the visitor.
2. Write a better headline. When in confusion, write directly to your customer “Attention : Interior designers –” will surely attract interior designers.
3. Do not try to sell your services/product in the ad. Your goal is to get your prospective clients to call you and book an appointment.
4. Better Ad-Prospect Match – Make sure you are targeting an intended audience. If you are an interior designer, it’s foolish to promote your ad in sports section/magazine.

Remember this is lead generator. You only have to get them to call you. That’s your goal for writing an ad. Do not stray from your goal.

2. Book an appointment.

When you start recieving calls, its not time to start selling your service or product. You are far better if you sell an appointment. Now that might sound a little odd, but the truth is, there’s no connection between you and prospect. The chances of them buying on phone is very low.

The moment you talk to them face to face in an appointment, you can increase the chances of turning query into sales. Never lead the phone call with sale in mind. Think appointment.

So the 2 step method is as follows

Get leads -> Book an appointment -> sell your products or service face to face.