There are many reasons why you should consider focusing on seasonal marketing to promote your products, including,  but not limited to these below:

1. People tend to buy more products during seasonal celebrations than the rest of the year.
2. People are determined to purchase products, so it is easier to persuade them to purchase a product you offer (assuming of course you are doing it the right way).
3. Most purchases concern gifts to others, therefore quality is what matters while price is less significant.
4. The time of celebration is limited and specific. Therefore people cannot leave for tomorrow what they need to buy for the celebration. They must act in a timely manner. This urgency is a huge advantage to marketers trying to sell products.
5. Another motivating factor for buyers is that seasonal products tend to be limited and something they want may not be available in the stores at a different time.
6. People connect seasonal celebrations with their childhood. That makes them more emotional and as I’m sure you already know, emotion is the key factor that makes people buy a product.
7. It is not always necessary to offer a holiday related product to increase your sales. Even an internet product like software or e-books (Kindle maybe) can be a valued gift.

Marketers do not have to invent new or never before used methods to create interest in seasonal products. The traditional marketing campaigns and techniques are still effective and can still be applied. People want to buy because of the season’s “celebration.” Many people may not see their purchase as just spending money, but as an act of making someone (including themselves)  happy and actually enjoy shopping for others.

Naturally, different seasons may require you use different strategies to promote your products. Instead of offering just a normal “everyday” price discount why not try something different like:

• Offer a portion of the price of your product to charities and make people feel they are doing something good and  contributing to a charity.
• Try a special offer like “purchase one product and get the other at half price” or “purchase one product and get another free to offer as a gift.”
• Or maybe a discounted or free gift card for an equal amount, or whatever dollar amount you choose and create follow-up sales.

Offers like these can very easily increase your sales volume and of course profits if done wisely. Be creative and try different approaches or campaigns. Discover what works and doesn’t work. And remember, there’s more than one season, more than one holiday or celebration, so cater your seasonal marketing to match.

“a text messaging service component of phone, web, or mobile communication systems, using standardized communications protocols that allow the exchange of short text messages between fixed line or mobile phone devices. SMS text messaging is the most widely used data application in the world, with 2.4 billion active users, or 74% of all mobile phone subscribers. The term SMS is used as a synonym for all types of short text messaging as well as the user activity itself in many parts of the world…”

Since 1996, and the emergence of SMS or text messaging, it has not only become  a cultural phenomenon but a mass market  communication and messaging tool utilized by many businesses for managing customer relationships (CRM) and marketing.

The use of SMS will continue to grow as companies turn the service into a critical business asset. Text messaging and its ability to immediately reach a customer and its low cost allows you to efficiently reach customers (internal and external) with a personally targeted message that is delivered in real time, no matter where they are.

Used properly SMS marketing can be a really effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool,  as it goes a long way to giving information, knowledge and empowering customers that also implies that “you are really looking out for them.” As an example; an insurance broker can send out local emergency numbers for hospitals and community services.  Or, an internet provider or service could send out maintenance updates. Banks can alert customers of charges to their credit or debit card.

SMS is not just about ring tones, teens texting teens, flash mobs or voting for the next American Idol. There are many different uses for SMS including notifications, emergency advisories and alerts, scheduling, news and information, and staff collaboration and networking.  The possibilities are endless for all types of businesses, people and endeavors.  Commercial or not.  All immediately, in real time.

SMS can generate very high levels of response, but a campaign must leverage the medium’s strengths and minimize its weaknesses. The key element of a successful campaign is value and entertainment. To market to someone effectively you must provide them with value and/or entertainment in each SMS message.

It is also important that your campaign targets recipients who have expressly given their consent to receive messages from you or subscribed. You must also provide them with a simple and free method of opting out from any further messaging.

For SMS Marketing to be successful it must; send the right message, say the right thing, to the right person, and at the right time. Otherwise it will be easily disregarded and quickly deleted. Doing it wrong can cost you in more ways than one. Don’t jeopardize your business with useless or meaningless messages.

Here are some great examples of how you can use SMS to benefit your business:

• Customer Service issues, payment reminders, new products, product updates, up coming sales and promotions, special coupon offers, reviews, web site updates, voting polls, prize awards, new contests, timed vouchers… etc. etc. etc.  You are only limited by your imagination!
• Staff and/or client collaboration and networking for projects and updates. Coordinating schedules and plans.

I’m sure by now you get the idea, and realize that SMS or text messaging can be a very effective tool to use in any business or marketing campaign. These days everyone has a cell or smart phone.  Always provide proper respect and courtesy in all your messages and above all, always be mindful of the recipient’s privacy.

To get the maximum exposure there are a few things you’re going to need to do. For one thing you’ll want to make sure that your article is optimized with keywords. And not just any keywords either, you have to focus only on those keywords that have fairly high monthly searches and low competition.  It’s definitely a balancing act. If you target keywords that have a lot of searches they will most likely have too much competition and will be virtually impossible for you to get a good ranking for.

If you focus on keywords that don’t have enough searches it won’t get you very much traffic for your efforts. Everyone has their own opinion of what a ‘good number of searches’ and ‘low competition’ really means. I’ve always used the guide line of at least 1,500 searches a month and less than 20,000 in competition and it’s worked very well.

Find your own guide lines and determine what works best for your business niche.

Now that you’ve got a list of 10-20 keywords for your niche, it’s time to write several articles for each keyword. If you have 10 keywords you can write 3-5 articles for each keyword. This will give you a lot of great exposure online. Make sure each article is slightly unique from the last.

Now, you will submit those articles to article directories online so they can be published. Don’t worry about the ‘published’ part. As long as your article is written in accordance with their rules it will be published.

One thing to remember, most article directories won’t let you do any direct ‘selling’ in your article. You will need to provide useful information, but the selling needs to be done in the resource box at the end of the article.  This is where you can put a link to your website that people can click on and be taken to your site.

The resource box is your place to shine. Make sure you make it something interesting. Pique your readers curiosity and interest. The more compelling you make it the more likely they are to click on the link and check out your site… which is exactly what you want to happen!

This method can work very well for most any type of business. The internet is an amazing resource for business owners and it would be just plain silly to not take full advantage of all it has to offer. Even if you can’t stand the idea of writing you can take full advantage of small business articles. You can always hire someone to do your writing for you. You can find many good writers online who would be willing to write your articles for you for only a few dollars each.

Small business articles can go a long way to increasing exposure and profits. Ignoring this simple and easy to implement tactic in your marketing will only hurt your profit potential.  Start branding yourself and generate business exposure with small business articles. It’s been proven over and over again to work!

One of the biggest differences between B2B internet marketing and marketing to consumers (also called B2C marketing) is that you’re no longer trying to sell to a single person. That sounds obvious, but business purchasing isn’t just a group of people looking at your product or service at the same time and then making a decision. The question of whether to buy or not goes from one person to another, sometimes in a very long chain of command, and can take a lot of time (and convincing).

When you’re selling something to a consumer, you’re dealing with one set of eyes and one person to convince. An important key in marketing to consumers is repetition—most won’t buy the first time, but once your items have been put in front of them multiple times in an appealing way, they’re more likely to buy. With B2B internet marketing the same principle applies, but this favorable impression must last down a long line of people who must make the decision. Getting the item or service in front of them many times is crucial with businesses, too.

Email marketing is one great way of keeping your products or services in front of them, but when B2B internet marketing with emails you have to be even more careful than when marketing to consumers. Many people who receive an email, particularly one they’ve agreed to receive, are going to be more concerned with the product or service offered, the discount, and what the item can do for them, than how professional and well-done the email is. This is less likely with a business.

Because the business may have its own B2B internet marketing plan, they’re going to expect a certain level of professionalism in any emails or correspondence you send them. Misspellings, strange line breaks, broken images and anything else that screams “amateur” or “careless” is likely to ensure that your message goes no farther down the line—the kiss of death for anything you’re trying to sell them. Take extra care with your email marketing plan. Don’t just make them correct and tidy, make them dazzling and attractive. Your emails and correspondence need to look as good as anything coming from that company if you really want to impress.

If you sell to businesses, you already know your target market very well. Be sure that all of your B2B internet marketing efforts are professional and focus not on you, but how you can fill their companies’ needs, and you’ll get your products noticed.

1. Meta Keywords: Lord help us! I thought I was done discussing the ole meta keywords tag in 1999, but today in 2011 I encounter people with websites who still think this is an important SEO tactic. My guess is it’s easier to fill out a keyword meta tag than to do the SEO procedures that do matter. Suffice it to say, the meta keyword tag is completely and utterly useless for SEO purposes when it comes to all the major search engines – and it always will be.

2. XML Site Maps or Submitting to Search Engines: If your site architecture stinks and important optimized pages are buried too deeply to be easily spidered, an XML site map submitted via Webmaster Tools isn’t going to make them show up in the search results for their targeted keywords. At best it will make Google aware that those pages exist. But if they have no internal or external link popularity to speak of, their existence in the universe is about as important as the existence of the tooth fairy (and she won’t help your pages to rank better in Google either!).

3. Link Title Attributes: Think that you can simply add descriptive text to your “click here” link’s title attribute? (For example: <a href=”page1.html” title=”Spammy KeywordsHere” >Click Here</a>.) Think again. Back in the 1990s I too thought these were the bee’s knees. Turns out they are completely ignored by all major search engines. If you use them to make your site more accessible, then that’s great, but just know that they have nothing to do with Google.

4. Header Tags Like H1 or H2: This is another area people spend lots of time on, as if these fields were created specifically for SEOs to put keywords into. They weren’t, and they aren’t. They’re simply one way to mark up your website code with headlines. While it’s always a good idea to have great headlines on a site that may or may not use a keyword phrase, whether it’s wrapped in H-whatever tags is of no consequence to your rankings.

5. Keyworded Alt Text on Non-clickable Images: Thought you were clever to stuff keywords into the alt tag of the image of your pet dog? Think again, Sparky! In most cases, non-clickable image alt tag text isn’t going to provide a boost to your rankings. And it’s especially not going to be helpful if that’s the only place you have those words. (Clickable images are a different story, and the alt text you use for them is in fact a very important way to describe the page that the image is pointing to.)

6. Keyword-stuffed Content: While it hasn’t ever been a smart SEO strategy, keyword-stuffed content is even stupider in today’s competitive marketplace. In the 21st century, less is often more when it comes to keywords in your content. In fact, if you’re having trouble ranking for certain phrases that you’ve used a ton of times on the page, rather than adding it just one more time, try removing some instances of it. You may be pleasantly surprised at the results.

7. Optimizing for General or Peripheral Keywords: You’re not gonna rank for a one-word keyword. You’re just not. You are likely not even going to rank for a 2-word keyword. So stop wasting your time optimizing for them, and find the phrases that answer the searcher’s question. For example, most people seeking legal help aren’t putting the one word “lawyer” into Google. They have a very specific need for a certain type of lawyer as well as a specific location in which they hope to find said lawyer. So rather than throwing the word “lawyer” all over your site, ask yourself this: There are people out there who want what you’re providing. What are they typing into Google? Now focus on those words instead. And don’t even get me started on people who put words on their pages that are barely related to what they do “just in case” someone who types that into Google might be interested in what they provide. You won’t rank for those phrases anyway, but even if you magically did, they won’t make you any sales.

8. Targeting the Same Keywords on Every Page: The keyword universe for any product or service is ginormous. (It really is.) Even if there are one or two phrases that bring you the most traffic, why the heck would you want to miss out on the gazillions of others as well? Stop focusing every page on the same handful of phrases and start targeting each page to its own specific set that most relate to what you’re offering there.

9. Focusing on Ads as Links: Banner ads, Google AdWords links and most other forms of online advertising do not create links that count toward your link popularity. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use this form of marketing – just don’t be deluded into thinking that it will have a direct effect on your organic search engine rankings and traffic.

10. Mad-lib Doorway Pages: While you may provide lots of products or services that are extremely similar to one another with just one minor change, it’s not a good idea to create separate pages for each of them and making only minor keyword changes to each of them. While this may be okay for paid search landing pages, it’s a duplicate content spammy nightmare for organic SEO purposes. (In fairness, do sometimes still see this technique work, but it’s still not advisable to do it.)

11. Linking to Google or Other Popular Websites: It’s the links pointing to your pages from other sites that help you with SEO, not the pages you’re linking out to. ‘Nuff said.

12. Redirecting a Keyworded Domain to Your Real One: So you have your business name as your domain (as you should), but you have noticed the unfortunate fact that Google seems to really like domains that have keywords in them. Buying one (or more) and redirecting it to your actual website can’t provide you with any advantage because a redirected website (and its domain name) isn’t ever seen by the search engines. And besides, even if there was something magical about doing this, again, you’re only talking about one keyword phrase.

13. Republishing Only Others’ Stuff: While it’s fine to republish an article that someone else published first, if that’s all your blog consists of, it’s not going to help your search engine rankings. Instead of republishing entire articles, discuss them in your posts and provide your thoughts and opinions on what’s good / bad / ugly about what the others are saying. It’s all about adding value.

14. Making Minor Changes to Freshen Content: This is not going to help a thing. If any old articles or posts need to be updated, then update them. But just changing a date or a few words will not have any effect on your search engine rankings or traffic.

15. Nofollowing Internal Links: Perhaps you’re not looking for your privacy policy page to be followed by the search engines, so you add a nofollow attribute to it. That’s all well and good, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that this will somehow control your PageRank flow and get you better rankings. It won’t.

16. Main Navigation That Links to Every Page: If linking to pages in your main navigation gives them more internal link popularity and therefore more possible weighting with the search engines, then surely linking to every single page of the site in your main navigation should be a good idea, right? Wrong! It isn’t. All it does is spread your internal link popularity too thin and confuse the heck out of your site visitors. Don’t do it. Choose to link only to top-level categories and perhaps subcategories (if you have a reasonable number of them) in your main navigation. This allows users to drill down further when they’re in the category sections themselves.

Did I miss any? I’m quite sure I’ve just touched the surface on waste-of-time SEO tactics. How about you? Do you agree with the above? Disagree?

About The Author
Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, a SEO Consulting company in the Boston, MA area since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen

IF you have an offline business it just doesn’t make sense to advertise to people half way across the country, that would be a waste of time and money.  But that doesn’t mean you have to miss out on all the great opportunities for marketing your business online for free or very low cost. You can pinpoint the exact geographic location you want to focus on when you set up your online marketing efforts. Not only can you pinpoint a location in your marketing, you can pinpoint various demographic features as well depending on the needs of your business.

You can link your website with all the online social sites as well, and you can target it locally as well. Sites like Facebook, LinkdIn, Twitter, etc. You can create links for each of these social networking sites back to your company website to attract more visitors to your website, and hopefully, your offline store. More visitors can result in more sales.

When targeting for the local audience you can take the keywords you’ve chosen for your site and add your location. So for example, if you’re advertising as a dog trainer, you could put Detroit Area Dog Trainer.  Something that will focus the searchers on to your location.

Whether you’re trying to target only local customers or you are targeting the whole planet, the basic techniques you use will be the same. You can rely on many methods of getting traffic to your website: article marketing, SEO, PPC, etc. Once they’re at your site you should use an autoresponder to get them to sign up to your mailing list so you can have more than one opportunity to connect with them.

I know it sounds like Mumbo Jumbo but learning what each method is all about is vital to the success of your online marketing tactics. Here is a brief overview:

1. Pay Per Click (PPC) is simply a way of placing an ad on a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing, etc. When someone clicks on your ad you will pay.  The amount you pay will vary greatly depending on the popularity of the keywords you’ve chosen as well as how well your ad does. If it seems complicated, don’t worry, it is. You may want to find someone who is knowledgeable and can help you navigate through this process.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) this involves placing certain keywords in some of the code of your website. This may seem complicated too, but it’s not really that hard. Have someone explain it to you in more detail and even if you’re not very techie you can do it yourself.

3. Autoresponder. This is an automated method for gathering the email addresses of your website visitors. You will need to sign up for an autoresponder service such as Aweber or MailChimp so the whole process is automated but the bottom line is that when someone visits your site they can agree to receive emails from you (when they do this it’s called ‘opting in’ ) that way you can email them and not worry about spamming. This is a great way to keep contact with them and it’s totally automatic, you just set up the autoresponder (which is easy to do) and let it go.

Even if you are just looking for more customers for your brick and mortar business, don’t think that you have to miss out on the amazing opportunities offered by the internet. You can use  local internet marketing to get more customers in the door and more money in your pocket.

First of all, when it comes to selling your product or service, you must give your customers the benefits, not just the features and price in your sales copy. Your customers don’t want to immediately know the ins and outs of your products, they want to know how it will benefit them! Save the product details for a secondary linked page that’s NOT part of your home page. You can give some major selling points, but keep the product details off the home page and just list the benefits of buying.

For example, let’s say you’ve got a strategy or program to get your clients out of debt. Don’t tell them step-by-step how it works on the home page, be “vague” and just summarize, leave the small print and product details for another page. Instead you may want to tell them to imagine how they can live a stress free life with a big bank account and be debt free! Those are benefits, not product or service features. Lead them into the complete details on the linked product and purchasing page. Lead them deeper into your site, if you have related or more than one product or service, show them other options on the details page. Or link to a catalog.

Next, be sure to maintain communication with your potential buyers or clients. Many times it has been said by marketing experts that it takes at least seven views of your products or offer to get an interested consumer to buy them. They are obviously interested if they’ve gone to your site and requested information. Take advantage of that and keep them informed with news and updates to the site and services. You just may have a future customer, keep them interested and engaged. Ask them to act, ask questions, send an email, fill out a poll or form, or just leave comments!

Always make an effort to engage your visitors and connect with them. If you appear inaccessible some people may think you’re unapproachable or that they are wasting their time asking you a question. Extend yourself by offering easy ways to contact you and/or a support area where they will feel comfortable sending questions and contact information.

If you see the same question coming up over and over again, it would benefit both you and the client to create a “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQ) page. People today usually want immediate answers to their questions and it saves you the tedious task of sending the same responses over and over again.

It’s also a good practice to use a “bookmark this page” and “tell a friend about this page” or social bookmarking tool so that you can get potential visitors and/or customers for the future. Even if they’re not immediately buying it doesn’t mean they won’t come back!

ALWAYS, I repeat, always, try to make the buying experience a pleasant and easy process. Never ask for information that you don’t need. Instead, ask only for the minimum information necessary from the customer to complete the action or purchase quickly.  At all times they must feel that they are making a safe and secure transaction!

Afterward, you can send them a quick thank you note or follow up to see how they liked your website or product. Don’t make your customer jump through hoops to buy your products or even contact you. They’ll only get frustrated and put it off for later and later may never come! Usually, once they have backed out of a transaction or action and have left your site, they will not return, but go elsewhere where the process is “easier”.

Communication and building relationships is the key to business and marketing success. By keeping the lines of communication open with your visitors and potential customers, you will reap more credibility along with their trust  and in turn, brand yourself, your product and create more sales! And that of course, will increase your bottom line!

You just need to know your customer and what he or she wants!

I come across a statement like that at least once a day on a forum post or in email. You start your internet business because of the freedom of being your own boss and working on your own schedule and then promptly sit on your hind-end for 12 hours/day EVERY DAY. No wonder you feel burnt out. And no wonder family and friends are feeling neglected when all you can think and talk about is your business.

Freedom sounds pretty miserable to me if it means freedom from fun and the ones that I love.

So, how do you break free?

Start by taking a good look at your business and getting your goals and priorities straight. Don’t worry, it’s not nearly as complicated as it sounds. I’ll walk you through it right now. Ready?

Grab a pen and a piece of paper or open your favorite word processor. Divide your page into four columns.

Now you’re ready to brainstorm. Write everything down as it comes to mind. Don’t overthink this. Just start writing.

First, figure out what is working. Whatever it is. It may be one of your websites, your ecourses, a joint venture, a certain marketing method. Where is the bulk of your money coming from, currently? (If none yet, where do you believe will be the place where the largest profits will come from?) Write those items in column #1 under: “Do More”.

Second, figure out what is not bringing in money. Is it hanging out on forums or posting classified ads to freebie sites? Is it endlessly checking your stats, or email? What are your daily time-suckers? Write those under column #2: “Do less”.

Third, figure out what could work better. Do you have upsells in place? Are your websites designed to bring you cash from every visitor? Make a list of ideas in column #3: “Improvements”. (If you don’t know yet, don’t worry. There are plenty of ways to improve your business as you learn and grow.)

Fourth, figure out what can be automated. Which tasks are repetitive and boring, albeit necessary? Many of those types of tasks can be automated with simple tools. For instance, if you’re submitting articles to directories by hand, there are tools and services to do that for you. Add these to column #4: “Automation”.

Now that you’re armed with your list, it’s time to get to work.

Look at your list in Column #1: “Do More”. Those are the tasks that you should focus your energies on. It’s a good idea to tackle one or two of the tasks on that list first thing in the morning – every morning. Believe me, it’s much more productive than checking out your favorite blogs or logging into twitter. And you’ll be amazed at how much you can get done quickly when your mind is fresh.

Look at your list in Column #2: “Do Less”. These activities should be forbidden until after you get your #1 list done, if you do them at all. For instance, hanging out on Twitter is fun, but do not do it until everything in column #1 is finished for the day.

Now, go back to Column #1, 3, and 4. Your “Do More”, “Improvements”, and “Automation” lists.

Look at all of the items that are on those three lists. Now, circle each task that you …

• Can’t Do
• Don’t Have Time to Do
• Don’t Want To Do

Those are the tasks that you’ll outsource.

Freedom means a lot of things. It means freedom to do the things that you want to do. However, it also means freedom to NOT do things that you really dislike doing.

For me, it’s graphics. I have outsourced all of my graphics since 2001. I don’t have the time, patience or inclination to learn how to make my own graphics. I have more important things to do, like write this article and then go on a bike ride with my son. Perhaps when I get back from my bike ride, my graphics will be waiting for me in my inbox.

Now, that’s freedom to me.

Want to outsource but don’t know where to start? Nicole Dean and Jimmy D. Brown invite you to http://www.OutsourceWeekly.com where you’ll learn how you can get free time (and earn more money) while others run your business for you.

Which ever method you choose when it comes to having someone manage your campaign, the steps needed to establish an effective campaign will be the same.  Here is a list of some of the things you need to consider when putting together your email marketing campaign:

1.  First, what do you hope to accomplish with this campaign? What outcomes do you need to achieve in order to consider the campaign a success?  This may sound like a dumb question but if you don’t have a clear idea of your ultimate goal than you don’t know the best way to structure your campaign.

For example, is your goal to get more customers into your store or to your website?  Or is your goal to provide your existing customers with some sort of customer appreciation perk?  Identify the goal of your campaign so that you can structure your email messages accordingly.

2.  Carefully consider what you are going to put in the ‘subject’ line.  This is a very important element and a good subject line can be the difference between your email being read or being sent to the spam folder.  Your subject should be short and to the point but also intriguing and pique your readers curiosity.

When you create your email make sure that the opening is personal. Use the name of the individual you are sending the email to, this can easily be done with certain automated methods.

3.  Remember that most people receive dozens of emails a day and don’t have time to read them all.  If they open your email that is a big step.  In order to get them to read the whole message make sure to keep your email short and sweet.  Focus your message on your customer and their needs and wants not on you or your company.  In most cases people will only skim the email message so only put in the important points. Don’t make your message too long or your customer will lose interest and stop reading.

4. Don’t get too fancy with font styles and graphics.  Remember, there are a lot of different types of computers and all ages of monitors out there and if you get too high tech some of your customers may not be able to read it.  Different font styles can also be difficult to read sometimes.  Just keep your message short, professional yet friendly, and to the point.

5. And of course, if you have the budget and / or you just don’t have time to do it yourself, you could always hire a professional to organize your email campaigns for you.  In many cases this will be the best option since they are experienced and can make sure your messages are written in an effective way to maximize not only your open rate but your desired results as well.

When it comes to setting up an effective email marketing campaign, just remember that there are a few simple things to keep in mind.  If you are able to hire a professional  email campaign manager than by all means, so do. If not, don’t let that keep you from setting up your own campaign so you can benefit from the enormous potential of email marketing.