An Internet Marketing Plan For Beginners - Internet Marketing

Whether you're getting ready to launch your website or internet business, or if you've already launched your site, you need an internet marketing plan. As the saying goes, without marketing, something bad happens: nothing! Without marketing, you're not going to make a penny!

In this article, I'll assume that you already have a website setup to market your product or service, and you need to attract and convert customers to your website. I'll also assume that your website is user friendly, with good sales copy and easy to order from.

The first step in marketing is to identify your target customers. Who are your customers? How old are they? What gender are they? What websites do they visit? What do they search for on the search engines when they are looking for your product or service?

When you first start out, you'll have to make educated guesses about much of this information, but as you go on, you'll start to get data you can use to answer the questions more accurately.

Let's assume that you're selling video games. Your prospective customers are probably largely young males. You can be pretty certain that they are visiting other sites about video games, computers and such. As for search terms, they are probably searching for things like "buy video games" or the name of the game they want to buy.

Now that you have a picture of your customer, it's time to get these prospective buyers to visit your site and make a purchase. Following are several proven marketing methods that are great methods to start marketing your site with.

Press Release

Submit a press release about your site. Spend some time writing the release so that it is unique, newsworthy, and not just an ad for your website.

PPC Campaign

Start a small pay per click search engine advertising campaign. This is an excellent way to get immediate qualified traffic to your site. Start small, and increase your campaign as you track results and know what is working. Google Adwords, Yahoo, Ask, and MSN are all good search engines to advertise with.

Search Engine Optimization

Choose several low competition keyword phrases that will bring you quality visitors, and optimize your site for them. Choose the most targeted phrases that you can.

Link Building

Building links to your website will bring you some traffic, but its main benefit is increased search engine rankings. Free directory submissions are an excellent way to build links to your site - there are hundreds of directories that accept free submissions. Just be patient, as it may take awhile before your submissions are accepted.

Article submissions are another great way to build quality backlinks. Write an article related to your industry, or pay a ghost writer to do it for you. You can then submit the article to article sites yourself, or pay someone to do it.

Link exchanges are still a good way to get links, too. Doing 3 way link exchanges are even better, though. Focus on linking with sites related to your keywords.