In this day and age, it is safe to surmise that most businesses have already jumped on the dot-com bandwagon and established some sort of online presence. However, presence alone means very little in the virtual world of the Internet, without the requisite number of visitor hits. A lesser known, web-based business site with little or no traffic would be tantamount to the second last lemonade stand set up along a neighborhood street lined with nine others just like it. In other words, merely filling in space.
As the strategists will have us know, marketing trends are constantly evolving, especially within the context of an environment as fast-paced and as prolific as the World Wide Web. With buzzwords such as viral marketing and ambient marketing being bandied about, one cannot fault business owners for being a wee bit confused. Into this mix, is thrown yet another-article marketing.
Upon examination, article marketing seems to bear much resemblance to the oft-mentioned guerilla marketing. It can almost be said to be a subspecies of the latter, sharing similar benefits. Primarily, this sort of marketing is conducted in a covert manner, that is, the audience would not be under the immediate impression that they are sales targets. Given the borderline abhorrence that most of us feel when we are on the receiving end of an open sales pitch, this sort of marketing-on-the-sly works well.
Guerrilla marketing and by that token, article marketing, is also preferred for its lower costs. Compared with, say, advertising your website via banner ads, article marketing is more affordable. If you are able to write the articles yourself, then that would ensure that the whole strategy is almost cost-free. Even if ghostwriters need to be hired, the return on investment is still high. From my experience, anywhere between USD3-USD10, you get a 500-word article. And once the article is listed on any of the article directories, you can be assured that the marketing agenda is ongoing. As opposed to hard-to-replicate events developed for the purpose of one-off viral marketing, a marketing plan implemented via the article writing method could go on for years.
To better understand this concept, one needs to dig deeper into the actual mechanics. Let us say you own a small business, not immediately recognized outside your town. Perhaps your business sells vintage book collections. You paid good money to develop a website dedicated to the business. But at the most, you get about two or three visitors in the same number of days. And no one stays long enough to shop around either. A cursory glance through the search engines, tells you that most people who search for “books” are led to the most popular sites-Amazon, Barnes & Noble etc. Maybe, just maybe, if people bothered to look further, they would find your site listed somewhere after the eighth page or so. How now, brown cow?
Without wanting to spend a pretty penny, what other alternatives are there? Article marketing advocates would tell you that it is still too early to throw in the towel. By utilizing the back link method, you would be able to see positive results soon enough. This method forms the backbone of internet article marketing-if your site is not popular enough to be given a high page ranking on the search engines, then the next best thing to do is to piggyback on sites that are. So, write an article about vintage books or get someone to write it for you. Then distribute it via article directories or article banks. Granted, some such services may charge you a nominal fee but dollar-to-dollar, it still makes better commercial sense than the traditional forms of Internet advertising. Simply because in a landscape that is already jam packed with pop-up and banner ads, Internet users have become desensitized and are almost blind to these conventional marketing methods.
By making your article available for distribution, it will soon be picked up by interested Netizens and linked via their own sites. This serves to increase the number of links to your business site and in turn, will increase your search engine page ranking in a shorter period than it would otherwise ordinarily take. The benefit is manifold because now, you will have your niche market nicely marked out-you can be sure that all those who picked up your article or even those who merely skimmed through are those who found it relevant. They were on the lookout for that subject matter and their search led them to your article.
So now, instead of hunting for your niche market, your market will soon come to you! Just remember to include the resource box or what is sometimes known as the “bio box” at the end of the article. This contains key details you would like readers to know about you and your business, plus the necessary contact information and links to your site.
Having written the article, you would have also established yourself and by extension, your business as somewhat of an expert on the subject at hand. With trust earned, pre-sell is all but complete. Thus, when they drop in and are further convinced by what they see on your site, the deal is clinched.
And all this because of one cleverly written article focusing on the subject of your business. Who says all guerrillas are bad to the bone?
Recommended Tools for Internet Article Marketing:
- Jetspinner (free) – Avoid Google’s duplicate content filter by creating alternate words, sentences, phrases and paragraphs then having them combined into hundreds of unique articles for distribution
- Jetsubmitter – The first service to ever allow you to submit a unique version of your articles to 400+ article directories automatically
Happy writing and SERPs climbing,
Todd Dickerson
