Marketing and Sales Guru

Marketing tactics vary among businesses and industries, but there is one that can help any industry, and that is article marketing. Whether you sell aluminum siding or marketing services, you can benefit from sharing your knowledge with your prospective buyers. What better way to share with them that you are a trustworthy source of information and service than to give away your expertise and knowledge?

The point of this sort of marketing, which can fall into the category of Content Marketing, is to allow the customers to come to you in a n organic manner. They search for ideas on how to choose the right aluminum siding company, and you write an article on how to do so, including ways to verify their credibility, negotiate prices, etc. This sort of information relates directly to your service and company. Seeing that you wanted to share with them useful information that is pertinent to their current decision making needs, customers may be more prone to choose you in the long run.

A quick definition of content marketing, which can also be referred to as educational marketing:

Content Marketing. This is the use of things like article marketing (which is the process of spreading your content through different article sites like Ezine Articles) and social media (where you can also share your content). This is the marketing of your product or service somewhat inadvertently by offering things of value (through your content) and in turn gaining trust and goodwill by being a source of information and advice.

And a quick definition of educational marketing:

Educational Marketing. This is simply the latter part of content marketing where you share your knowledge for free. This is an effective way to share what you know to let others make the decision of whether or not to use your product or service. For example, you are a PR firm who specializes in social media. Create and update a blog on social media, sharing what you know about the market and the industry. This will show others, prospective customers perhaps, that you know what you’re talking about. You will help them to make their decision, and they may in turn remember you when the time comes to finalize their move. (source)

So, why use article marketing? To get the greatest amount of traffic and to generate the greatest amount of reach, you need to share your content and your copy. This increased reach can also help to solidify your expertise in an area, positioning yourself as an authority source.

Ways to get started:

1. Write useful, valuable copy that people are searching for. Moreover, ensure that your copy is SEO (search engine optimized) and that you use keywords to bring more traffic.
2. Create accounts on some of the leading article marketing sites. They include eZine, GoArticles, ArticlesBoard, and many, many more. The great thing about eZine, at least from personal experience, is that they review each article before it is posted to their site. Additionally, you are given a trial period of sorts where you are allowed to upload a few articles initially, and if your content is approved and deemed “useful”, you are then able to upload more as an expert author. Ensure that your author signature links back to you site and that your copy really encourages people to visit your site, download your eBook, or to get in touch. (These are called “calls to action”, and they are pivotal in the success of your Internet Marketing.)
3. Upload content.

From there, it is simply a manner of maintaining your content and doing so consistently. Additionally as important is responding to the inquires, feedback, or comments that you receive so that people really do get the most value from your time and efforts. Some people don’t find article marketing to be worth your time, but the more exposure you can create the better, and so long as your content is valuable and of a high quality, there is no reason why you cannot succeed. My guess is that those that find article marketing to be a waste of time are those individuals who used it once and never continued, hoping for results to be instantaneous.