Marketing Outside The Box

By Melanie Ullman

For most Internet business, marketing generally tends to consist of the basic IM strategies such as Article Marketing, Social Bookmarking, etc. Increasingly, however, the most successful businesses get there by thinking "outside the box".

For some types of businesses, this can present a challenge. As an example, this site about potty training girls might not be the sort of topic that lends itself well to casual conversation.

However, most businesses online tend to fall into the more traditional arena of product & service purveyors, such as ecommerce sites like this one talking about Homedics back massager products.

What is "outside the box" marketing consist of? To answer that, let's first look at what marketing itself is. In this context, marketing is the means of finding prospects, people who would have an interest in the product or service we are selling. We could also think of marketing as traffic generation. As an online business, our "business address" is our website. By getting more people to show up at our website, we increase our business, whether that means more sales, more sign-ups, etc.

So how can we increase traffic by thinking outside the box? Here are a few ideas; hopefully these will serve to spark some creative thinking to come up with additional ways.

Traditional advertising avenues

Using the more traditional means of advertising, we can increase the number of people coming to our website. These might include classified ads in newspapers, newsletters, and bulletin boards. Placing free or low-cost advertisements with our website address can generate traffic that we might not otherwise get through those common online marketing methods.

Organizations and affinity groups

Word-of-mouth is very powerful. By finding and joining groups such as our local Chamber of Commerce, we have the opportunity to get our message across and attract new prospects to our website. Affinity, or special interest groups can server the same purpose.

Reciprocal advertising

In the IM world, this often consists of emailing to each others lists. Thinking outside the box, we can talk to "bricks & mortar" businesses and offer to mention them in return for having a flyer with our website address posted at their location.

These are just a few of the ways we can market our business and increase our traffic beyond the current online methods we now use. By simply thinking along different lines, you will find yourself starting to look at marketing in whole new ways. Spend a little time each day thinking about how to get your website address in front of people. You'll find there are an almost unlimited number of opportunities for marketing, most of which can reach an entirely new and different set of prospects than current online methods!

Back - And Blasting Out A New Experiment!

Well, after quite a long absence from marketing, I'm back with a renewed plan and internet marketing strategy.

I'm beginning with something of an experiment. Part of the experiment involves testing to see how long it takes to get a brand new site up, indexed, and ranking in the SERPS. I'm beginning the 'test' with five new domains and sites:


Homedics Back Massager
Pool Vacuum Cleaners
Gas Leaf Blowers
Portable Propane Heaters
Atomic Wall Clocks

Of these sites, there are two .com TLD's, two .org TLD's, and one .info TLD. I've gone through just the very basics of on-page SEO.

Off-page SEO - meaning back link building - has consisted of a very basic campaign. I've submitted the first page of each site to Digg, Blinklist, added it to StumbleUpon, and used Onlywire to tag them to about a dozen more social bookmarking sites.

In addition, each site has 1-3 articles submitted to article directories including Ezinearticles and Goarticles.

I'll be watching and tracking the progress, meaning how long it takes each web site to get indexed, where in the SERPS the initial ranking is, and how long it takes for the other backlinks to show up.

I'll post my results here as I get them.

Guaranteed Traffic Formula

Traffic is the lifeblood of Internet marketing, ecommerce, and all online business.

There are many ways to generate traffic, from Pay per Click (ppc), to Free-for-All sites (FFA's). But one of the most popular methods being used today is Article Marketing.

Article marketing is done by submitting articles to article directories. The articles contain backlinks to your site by way of a "resource box". Someone reads the article, and hopefully clicks through to your site.

One of the best things about Article Marketing is that it is free (it is often referred to as "bum marketing", though this term encompasses much more).

There is a great article on generating traffic at the Improve Your Internet Marketing, the in-house blog of Analogy Marketing.

Follow their 'guaranteed' formula, and you can generate as much traffic to your sites as you like!

Gauranteed Formula for Free Traffic Generation!

We all know the success of Internet Marketing rests on our ability to generate traffic. Regardless of what you do online, if it involves Internet marketing, you need traffic. Conversions are necessary of course, but without traffic, there isn’t anything to convert.

In order to improve internet marketing results, we must improve our traffic generating techniques and methods.

After many years online, after many failures and some successes, I have refined my “formula” for generating traffic. It revolves around article marketing, works, it’s repeatable, and it’s sustainable.

I posted a complete step-by-step "formula" to my blog at Analogy Marketing. Read it. Memorize it. Act on it. Live it!

Pay per click (PPC) is a wonderful thing - after all, I am a Google Adwords Certified Professional and manage over $100,000 in Adwords spending, but the bread and butter for most internet marketers revolves around free traffic methods.

Go ahead and read this, print it out, and begin improve internet marketing for yourself:

http://www.improveyourinternetmarketing.com/free-guaranteed-traffic-formula/