Online Advertising Solution: Article Marketing

Whether you have a product or service to sell, no matter how great it is, people generally don't respond to hype, especially in the form of the written word. Which makes it all the harder for Internet marketers, being that the written word is the most often used form of online advertising. The use of video and other images are not as effective as many would have you believe either. Most of these types of presentations are based in hype as well. The online advertising solution that overcomes the hype hurdle is, of course, article marketing. What makes article marketing so effective? The reasons are many... Let's look at a few of them. First, people these days are looking for solutions to problems they face or needs they want met. They are also very hard pressed to part with their cash, in order to try something new. What people want is information. Article marketing gives it to them. Most people want information so that they can make an educated decision before spending money on anything. They don't want to be pitched. Second the whole concept of article marketing targets your audience and provides that audience with the information they seek. After they've been impressed by the information they've read, they click through to your web site and your site should close the sale. Targeting your audience is a major step in increasing sales. Why waste time marketing to a million people who are looking for something you do not have to offer them? Article marketing targets your audience in a way that no other online advertising medium can. For one thing, writing articles about your product or service and submitting them to article directories and ezines is free. Articles are then exposed to the people looking for that particular type of information. For example: You write an article about keeping your cat healthy. Publishers who have newsletters or ezines that are targeted toward your topic may publish your article to be read by a list of cat owners; your target market. (If you're not a good writer, hire one. You don't want poor writing to turn people off.) Another benefit to article marketing is the implementation of RSS feeds. If you can get your article syndicated on an RSS feed, and it is properly written for keyword optimization, you will find yourself in the search results from search engines, again putting yourself right in front of your target market. Search engines don't index and rank advertisements, like classifieds, but they do index and rank content; keyword specific articles. Furthermore, the fastest way to get your article indexed by search engines is to publish it to an RSS feed. Why? Because search engines look for fresh content and because RSS feeds are dynamic in their ability to frequently update, and with a little help from pinging services, the search engines crawl feeds more often than every 30 days. Static web pages however, are crawled in 30 day intervals. Article marketing also gives you the opportunity to establish credibility with your targeted audience. Provide them with the information they seek, in a way they can understand, and a link to your site, and you've got a much greater chance of obtaining a new customer/client than if you'd thrown a bunch of hype at them. Article marketing allows you to become a Trusted Information Provider, and when your customers trust you, they will refer you to others. Article marketing is not the only online advertising solution available, but it is one that can give you an edge over other Internet marketers.