Internet Marketing in a Nutshell

Internet Marketing in a Nutshell

By Martha Nelson

The Internet is everywhere! We walk around with our cell phones to try and find a WiFi connection in shops or restaurants. How crazy is that? Companies rent billboard signs just to put their web addresses on it. The Goodyear blimp flashes a website across its bottom after the ad sometimes! WE all use the Internet most everyday. If you would rather be teaching than computing, AMSonilne can help you even though it is a computer web-based software you use on your computer. AMSonline can help you with everything.

After researching over many months about Internet marketing we discovered that the Internet is a very powerful marketing tool. Utilizing matching software systems such as AMSonline web-based management system and the AMSweb for your school’s website, it is so much easier to keep track of all of your marketing and spending while integrating everything. By having the AMSweb address of your school, you may link the address to many of the other websites you have. This way people can click the link and be spun right to your martial arts school’s website! This is the text marketing I mentioned in the past article.

If you haven’t signed up with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Yahoo Martial arts group, MSN, Reddick, Youtube, or Linked In, now is the time to do so. You are missing out on some valuable and free advertising you may not be utilizing to your full advantage. Especially if you sign up with the Youtube account, because you may upload your martial arts videos and embed them into your AMSweb Sensational website or your MySpace account. If you really know what you are doing with the editing software and the filming, you can even create your own infomercial of your own to put out on the Internet. Put your school’s web address even in the video! Place your video on your blog, or post the link on your status of your Facebook page. The video will play right on the page of whoever is your friend!

Let’s not forget about Twitter! Twitter has become a huge way to market your brand or school if it is done in a correct manner. First you must try to accumulate many followers and you may follow as many people as you would like to. There is a right way and a wrong way to market or post on Twitter. Twitter posts are micro-blogging, which means each post is 140 characters or less. As a school owner, you should post the different exciting events and happenings at your martial arts school. You may want a personal account as well as a business account exclusively for your school. There are many companies with a Twitter account.

You don’t have time to keep up with all of these different accounts and post on each one all of the time? No problem! You can link up all of the sites so you only have to post on one of them and the one post will automatically update all of them! How great is that? You can update your Twitter stream’s status with a new event and your Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, and Youtube accounts can be automatically updated too! So, even if you haven’t signed on to one of your accounts in a while, it will seem as though it is active with fresh updates. However, if you would like to not have your Youtube updated, but have the rest updated, you have that control. You can choose which ones will be updated automatically or not.

If you haven’t installed the Alexa toolbar for your computer, you should. It tells you which sites are the most popular sites to advertise on. So, if you do decide to spend money advertising on the web, you will be more informed to what sites to place your ads on. The Internet can be very overwhelming with over 188 social networking website applications and too many other websites to mention, how will you know where to put your ad for the best return on your investment. With the Alexa toolbar, the answer to that question becomes clearer. It will show what sites are top ranked and which ones are not.

There are several sizes and shapes of ads you may want to put on a particular site. Facebook has its own type of banner ad that is placed in the side panel of its application. Look for the option, “Create your ad” and follow the step by step instructions. Facebook alone, the estimated readers who can be reached, who live in the United States are 139,690,120 people.

You may want to choose placing an ad on the Google search engine. The best way to do this is to go the AdWords site on the Internet. This is a text ad when you Google something no the Internet and want the name of your school to come up in the ‘martial arts’ category within your zip code range. Google will usually charge a PPC fee (pay per click) and what you pay is determined what the CPC is (cost per click). You must bid on your cost per click fee and the person with the higher fee when the category is googled, will come up with the higher SERP (search engine results page). However, if you are active enough on the Internet, your SERP rating may be high enough not to have to spend any money for PPC ads. Just link up your web addresss to as many of your social networking sites and your school may come up many times on the Google search results page.

The other ways to market is to contact your local group coupon advertisers. It is usually the application called ‘Groupon’ or Living Socials’ or find out what is available in your area. Usually there is no, up-front costs and the consumer pays immediately for the goods before they even get the item or service. The company takes a commission from what is sold, and there must be a minimum sold in order to make a profit for the company offering such a discounted rate.

After utilizing all of this marketing on the Internet, you must keep track of it all the computerized way. How else? The best and easiest way is to sign up with Google Analytics. It is free and web-based. It works great with the AdWords in which you may have purchased some ads for the Google search engine or another site. Other similar softwar product are DoshDosh.com, Onestat.com, LyrisHQ.com, Mineful.com, Smartfocus.com, data marketing applications you may take advantage of.

The best part of doing all of this Internet marketing, once you get it started, it doesn’t take up that much of your time, nor that much of your money! But remember, to do this in addition to your traditional print marketing. Always put your web address on all of your traditional marketing as well as your phone number. Soon enough people will be calling or simply emailing you from the ads or your website from the Internet!