In a traditional market it is good to balance out your push/pull marketing. However in a market like the web, you want to have a much greater emphasis on pull marketing than push marketing. Here’s why. When someone gets on the computer, they choose where they are going to go. If they don’t want to go to your website, they aren’t going to go. Therefore, if you attempt push marketing on the majority of internet users, you’ll find that you will not much a response. An example is your website. If you put a website up online, and then market it using push tactics, not many people are going to go. They don’t want to be sold. They’d rather be on sites like Facebook, YouTube, or CNN. However if you make your site attractive, and give users a reason to go, you are using pull marketing, and you will see an increase in visitors to your site.

Although this defies some marketing convention, it actually makes a lot of sense. Think about it this way. A traditional medium is something like TV. Someone wants to watch their favorite show, but during that show, they are going to be served advertisements. They may not enjoy watching these ads, but they will do so to continue watching their show. This is push marketing. On a new medium like the web however, users choose what they see. Software exists to block advertisements, and people decide on whether they are going to click on them. In other words, most users don’t even need to look at ads to see the content they want. This is why a push marketing strategy will be largely unsuccessful on the web. The Internet is a democratic environment, so the users are going to decide what they see.

So how do you market to this new medium? Pull marketing. It is extremely effective on places like the web, mainly because of the ways the web works. Pull marketing on the Internet is highly related to Social Media and Viral Marketing. When using Social Media to market, you need to utilize the network so that users are attracted to what you are presenting. This is pull marketing in a nutshell. When using viral marketing, you need to create something that will attract users solely because it is something that will benefit them, instead of just advertising your brand.

Here are some ways that you can take advantage of pull marketing on the web:

• Perform extensive Search Engine Optimization on your website, so that when someone is using Google, your listing “pulls” them in.
• Use Google AdWords to serve ads to users that will pull them in.
• Create a new blog with useful content. Give users tips, news, opinions, ideas, etc. Use the blog to link back to your main site sparingly, but always focus on having the blog be beneficial to users.
• Commence a comprehensive Viral Marketing strategy. Come up with things that you can offer users that they will be attracted to due to the benefit they will receive. Then lightly brand the useful content, objects, etc before they are delivered to users.
• Utilize social media networks extensively. Post update about your business, or things you think may be useful on microblogging sites like Twitter. Create a page for your business on Social Media sites like Facebook.
• If you are a web related company, do something useful for the web community. Examples: release a free website template. Work on the development of an Open-Source project such as WordPress or Drupal. Provide industry insight.
• Offer something for free. Nothing sells, or pulls better, then the word free.

Now that you have some ways you can take advantage of Pull Marketing, get to it. There is a whole range of ways to get started. Not exactly sure how? Need some help? Want someone else to do it? Perhaps you should contact RP Design. (Or you can click on the banner to the right.)

Any Web Marketer worth his salt knows that you can’t be successful without goals. And you can’t set goals without being able to measure them. So how do you measure goals in something as obscure as web marketing? Simple. Web Analytics. Web Analytics is technology that tracks how your website is being used. For example it can tell you how many visitors you have, where they are coming from, and what they are doing on your site.

There are two main types of web analytics softwares, server based, and client based. Server based software periodically scans the server logs to determine who was accessing your site. One of the most popular forms of server statistics software is AWStats The overview of AWStats is shown below:

As you can see, AWStats gives you an overview of information, mainly the number of visits organized by the time. There is a lot of other information that AWStats gives you. For example, The specific pages that were accessed, the countries of the visitors, their operating system, etc.

The second type of web analytics software is client based. What this means is that instead of the software running in the background on the server, it is activated every time a visitor accesses the website. This software can either be hosted on your site, or hosted externally. The most popular client-based analytics software is Google Analytics. Google Analytics works by embedding a small tag on each page of your site. This tag activates javascript hosted on Google’s Servers, which then retrieves data and information for analysis. The overview of Google Analytics is shown below:

As you can see, this overview is more intuitive than AWStats. It shows information in a more visual way, and is able to tell you if your traffic is coming from referring sites, or search engines. Google Analytics allows you to set up goals and conversions so you can get a detailed look at the traffic to your site(s).

This video should give you a nice overview of the Google Analytics Interface

As you can see, Google Analytics is very detailed, powerful software. However I would recommend you use both for your analytics needs. They each have their own pros and cons, so using them together is a better way to harness the power of the software.

Now that you know the basics of using analytics, here’s why you should:

• Gives you an overview of how many people are coming to your site.
• The only way to be successful is to measure success, and web statistics allows you to do so.
• Allows you to better focus your marketing efforts on the worst-performing parts of your site.
• Let’s you see the most popular keywords that people are hitting your site from.
• Allows you to set goals based on your traffic, so you can have measurable marketing results.

To get started with analytics right now:

• AWStats: Talk to your administrator or contact your web host to see if you have AWStats currently enabled.
• Google Analytics: visit http://google.com/analytics and sign up. Insert the provided tracking code into all of the pages of your site.

Our first post is going to be the ever-so-popular SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Marketing tips. First off, you should know that Search Engine Optimization may not work. I know there are tons of organizations promising top rankings, key placement, etc, etc. You should know however that even if you are at the top of the organic (normal search results) listings, it does not guarantee more sales. That’s why our first SEO post is going to be about content. I know you may have been expecting information about keywords, key phrases, metatags, etc, but in my experience good Seach Engine Optimization begins with good content.

In short, content that pleases search engine users, and fulfills and information need or prompts them to purchase something, is good. Content that’s highly optimized for search engine algorithms, but fails to satisfy search engine users, is virtually doomed to a fate of obscurity.

First off, you should know that most search engines look intently at the first paragraph of any given page, and then kind of skim over the rest of the content. That’s why you have to make sure that your first paragraph is top notch.

NOTE: Search engines normally determine the first paragraph by the first <p>, or paragraph tag.

The first step in writing good content is to come up with good keywords and key phrases. The phrases you think your target market might be searching for may very well be incorrect. To find the optimal phrases to optimize for, use research tools such as KeywordDiscovery, Wordtracker or Google’s Keyword Tool. Compile lists of the most relevant phrases for your site, and choose a few different ones for every page. Never shoot for general keywords such as “travel” or “vacation,” as they are rarely (if ever) indicative of what your site is really about. In future posts I will go more in depth on choosing keywords and key phrases, so stay tuned!

Now that you have a list of good keywords, you must put them into well written copy. This is a crucial component to having a successful website. The search engines need to read keyword-rich copy on your pages so they can understand how to classify your site. This copy shouldn’t be buried in graphics or hidden in Flash. Write your copy based on your most relevant keyword phrases while also making an emotional connection with your site visitor. Understand that there is no magical number of words per page or number of times to use your phrases in your copy. The important thing is to use your keyword phrases only when and where it makes sense to do so for the real people reading your pages. Simply sticking keyword phrases at the top of the page for no apparent reason isn’t going to cut it, and it just looks silly.

This post has given you a basic overview of writing good content for your pages. Stay tuned for:

• SEO Marketing Part 2: Titles n’ Tags
• SEO Marketing Part 3: Navigation, Categorization, Linking

Thanks for Reading!