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| The Internet Marketing Tools Network is not currently active and cannot accept new posts | Help Planning a New Internet Marketing Tool | Views: 1096 | Jul 13, 2005 10:14 pm | | Help Planning a New Internet Marketing Tool | # | Garland Coulson | | I am looking at developing some software to help people with their Internet
marketing and I am very interested to find out what kinds of Internet marketing
tools members of this group feel are missing, poorly done or too expensive.
I would be grateful for feedback on the following questions:
1. What Internet marketing tasks frustrate you?
2. What Internet marketing tools do you use that are necessary, but
awkward or too expensive? What is wrong with them?
3. What Internet marketing tools have you found the most useful for
you? How much do they cost?
4. If you have a need in any of the following areas, describe your
ideal Internet marketing tool, what it would do and what would be a good value
price to you if you were to purchase it.
a) Web Traffic Building
b) Building Online Relationships
c) E-Newsletter Marketing
d) E-Mail Marketing
e) Article Marketing
f) Internet Research
g) Internet Marketing Tracking
h) Organizing My Internet Marketing
i) Other
Thank you for your feedback! Garland
Coulson, "The E-Business Tutor"
Download my FREE e-book, "Promote
Your Web Site for Free"
Moderator,
Internet Marketing Tools Private Reply to Garland Coulson | Jul 13, 2005 10:49 pm | | re: Help Planning a New Internet Marketing Tool | # | Michelle http://www.exoticpublishing.com | | Well I had to actually copy & paste this in so I could address everything LOL Pls. see my answers below...
I am looking at developing some software to help people with their Internet marketing and I am very interested to find out what kinds of Internet marketing tools members of this group feel are missing, poorly done or too expensive.
I would be grateful for feedback on the following questions:
1. What Internet marketing tasks frustrate you?
***Finding someone who really knows SEO, is ethical & doesn't charge an arm & a leg every month just to do 2-5 hrs. work.
So SEO work, tracking all incoming traffic so my marketing is better utilized etc.
Pretty soon I'm going to invest in a tracking program & the one that seems the best so far is almost $300. That is expensive IMO.
Also I'd have to hire someone to submit my ads to directories, MBs etc.
2. What Internet marketing tools do you use that are necessary, but awkward or too expensive? What is wrong with them?
***I'm not even sure what programs can take the place of a human other than tracking uniques & such. Pls. explain.
3. What Internet marketing tools have you found the most useful for you? How much do they cost?
4. If you have a need in any of the following areas, describe your ideal Internet marketing tool, what it would do and what would be a good value price to you if you were to purchase it.
a) Web Traffic Building
b) Building Online Relationships
c) E-Newsletter Marketing
***I use Constant Contact & once my year is up, I'm switching to something where I have more control.
Right now I can have as many interest categories I want, but I can't stop people from signing up to more than one at time which is a problem.
d) E-Mail Marketing
***Isn't this the same as ezine marketing?
e) Article Marketing
f) Internet Research
***Finding a good researcher (human) is very hard. Most do a mediocre job at best.
g) Internet Marketing Tracking
h) Organizing My Internet Marketing
***Would love something like this where it tells me when I'm up for marketing again.
i) Other
I guess I need more information on what I don't understand to be of more use.
Thanks
MichellePrivate Reply to Michelle http://www.exoticpublishing.com | Jul 14, 2005 7:14 am | | re: Help Planning a New Internet Marketing Tool | # | Lamar Morgan 954-603-7901 | | Garland,
My answers follow your questions:
1. What Internet marketing tasks frustrate you? Ans. HTML editors. I really do not like the one here on Ryze.
2. What Internet marketing tools do you use that are necessary, but awkward or too expensive? What is wrong with them? Ans. Advertising web server. Too expensive and complicated.
3. What Internet marketing tools have you found the most useful for you? Viral marketing. How much do they cost? Nearly 200.00.
4. If you have a need in any of the following areas, describe your ideal Internet marketing tool, what it would do and what would be a good value price to you if you were to purchase it.
a) Web Traffic Building - No comment.
b) Building Online Relationships - Ans. Ryze Events.
c) E-Newsletter Marketing - No comment.
d) E-Mail Marketing - No comment.
e) Article Marketing - Ans. Quikonnex.
f) Internet Research - Ans. Google.
g) Internet Marketing Tracking - No comment.
h) Organizing My Internet Marketing - No comment.
i) Other - VMT and the Sirolli Institute Training.
Lamar MorganPrivate Reply to Lamar Morgan 954-603-7901 | Jul 14, 2005 7:35 am | | re: re: Help Planning a New Internet Marketing Tool | # | Michelle http://www.exoticpublishing.com | | What is an Advertising Web Server & Viral Marketing?
Thanks
MichellePrivate Reply to Michelle http://www.exoticpublishing.com | Jul 14, 2005 4:21 pm | | re: Help Planning a New Internet Marketing Tool | # | Garland Coulson | | Wow, thanks for the feedback, Michelle. I think I could probably write
a book while replying to your comments, but I'll try to keep it concise:
>***Finding someone who really knows SEO, is ethical & doesn't charge an arm
& a leg every month just to do 2-5 hrs. work.
I am looking to develop an Internet Marketing Tool, so I'm not sure if your
difficulty in finding the right person really fits. There is software to
help you get better ranking for your web sites like
Web
Position Gold. Perhaps I could develop software to help people find
and analyze the right people. :) There are some places like Elance
where you can go to post your project where people can bid on it.
This might be a way of attracting a number of potential suppliers so you can
find the right one.
>Pretty soon I'm going to invest in a tracking program & the one that seems the
best so far is almost $300. That is expensive IMO.
Are you looking for tracking statistics regarding visitors to your site?
Sometimes your hosting company provides a decent one free of charge. Or
were you looking for an ad tracking solution? Which tracking solution were
you looking at that costs $300?
>***I use Constant Contact & once my year is up, I'm switching to something
where I have more control.
>Right now I can have as many interest categories I want, but I can't stop
people from signing up to more than one at time which is a problem.
Why would you only want a person to sign up for only one category? I
use an auto responder service,
1ShoppingCart, to gather signups in different categories, then I import them
into
Constant Contact once per week. You can make some hidden categories if
you want.
>***Finding a good researcher (human) is very hard. Most do a mediocre job at
best.
Once again, I am looking at doing software, not finding more humans to do
work. I can certainly see the need for better research tools online as I
am very frustrated with Google and other search engine results. As far as
human researchers go, I did have some success using a service called SmartSearch
at a local library where they had a trained researcher pull information together
for me. They did a good job and the price was reasonable.
h) Organizing My Internet Marketing
>***Would love something like this where it tells me when I'm up for marketing
again.
What do you mean by "up for marketing" Michelle? Do you mean expiries
of things like domain names and advertising or something else? Garland
Coulson, "The E-Business Tutor"
Download my FREE e-book, "Questions
to Ask Your Web Designer"
Moderator,
Internet Marketing Tools Private Reply to Garland Coulson | Jul 14, 2005 4:38 pm | | re: Help Planning a New Internet Marketing Tool | # | Garland Coulson | | Hello Lamar,
Thanks for the feedback. Here are a few questions/comments on what you
posted.
>1. What Internet marketing tasks frustrate you? Ans. HTML editors. I really
do not like the one here on Ryze.
I also dislike the Ryze html editor and I don't use it. Unfortunately
that is built into the Ryze system and there is not a lot I can do about that.
I usually do my replies in another html editor, Front Page, and then copy and
paste into the Ryze form. I'm not really a big fan of Front Page, either,
but it does the trick. I am looking more to develop an Internet marketing
tool rather than a web design tool, however as there are already lots of web
design tools out there.
>2. What Internet marketing tools do you use that are necessary, but awkward or
too expensive? What is wrong with them? Ans. Advertising web server. Too
expensive and complicated.
Do you mean to set up your own advertising web server? Where were you
planning on displaying the ads?
>3. What Internet marketing tools have you found the most useful for you? Viral
marketing. How much do they cost? Nearly 200.00.
Which viral marketing tools have you found useful?
Thanks again for your feedback. Garland
Coulson, "The E-Business Tutor"
Download my FREE e-book, "Promote
Your Web Site for Free"
Moderator,
Internet Marketing Tools
Private Reply to Garland Coulson | Jul 14, 2005 5:19 pm | | re: re: Help Planning a New Internet Marketing Tool | # | Chris Rempel | | Garland,
Here's a few of my thoughts:
1. What Internet marketing tasks frustrate you?
Finding good people. And building quality links.
2. What Internet marketing tools do you use that are necessary, but awkward or too expensive? What is wrong with them?
Affiliate Programs. The features are there, but they're often complicated, which turns off affiliates (or potential ones) from using it as much as they could. There needs to be an easy way for affiliates to log in, check stats, and track payments without jumping through hoops. It would also be nice if that sort of app. didn't break your wallet.
Also, a simplified, fast, universal newsletter application. All the ones I've used have trouble importing and exporting mail lists, and they're filled with bugs.
As well, I personally find SEO tools like backlink finders and html/code analyzers basically useless. The online tools like linkpopularity.com and the wordtracker.com trial, etc. are far better, and they're free. I think alot of the SEO apps were created for a hype market; to make sales. Because we all know that SEO is not as complicated as it seems.
3. What Internet marketing tools have you found the most useful for you? How much do they cost?
Ironically, affiliate programs. Usually around $100 - $200.
4. If you have a need in any of the following areas, describe your ideal Internet marketing tool, what it would do and what would be a good value price to you if you were to purchase it.
a) Web Traffic Building: It would be beautiful if something could actually accomplish this. I'd be truly amazed as to how this would work automatically, though... but I'd be willing to pay over $1000 for a program that worked.
b) Building Online Relationships: Same answer as above.
c) E-Newsletter Marketing: NEED a working, STABLE newsletter app that can import/export CSV files and txt files, and includes smtp support. Would pay over $100.
d) E-Mail Marketing: Same as above.
e) Article Marketing: I've seen a program called "article bot" that can apparently compose original, well-written and "human-sounding" articles of any length, about any topic, in seconds. Something like this would be at the very least, extremely cool to play around with. Here's the link to the site that sells the article bot for your reference: http://www.articlebot.com I'd rather pay a one-time fee, rather than a subscription like article bot. If it worked, I'd pay up to $1000.
f) Internet Research: Something that combines and improves on the likes of www.wordtracker.com, www.linkpopularity.com (just SE results, I know), and the research tools included in Adwords and Overture.
Perhaps the most useful form of something like this would be as a browser toolbar. My dream toolbar would have the Google PR rating, the Alexa ranking, the Backlinks found by Google, Yahoo, MSN and AltaVista, and an indication of the top, relative keywords for each visited website.
Depending on the functionality of the utility, I'd probably pay around $100.
g) Internet Marketing Tracking: If there is a way to somehow measure the ROI and conversion rates of any given link development, press release, targeted advertising and partnership marketing campaign in one central application, then I'm buying it. I'd spend up to $350.
h) Organizing My Internet Marketing: Similar to the above suggestion.
i) Other: A rather basic, client-management application, with basic planning, organizing and information storage for each client or campaign would be invaluable to any marketer or consultant. I'd pay around $200 for something like this.
I hope this was helpful in some way.
If you're seriously developing a sort of "do-all" marketing tool, then you have a massive project on your hands, and I wish you all the best with it.
Cheers,
Chris Rempel Marketing Consultant Testiment Marketing http://www.testiment.com Private Reply to Chris Rempel | Jul 14, 2005 9:13 pm | | re: Help Planning a New Internet Marketing Tool | # | Garland Coulson | | Hi Chris,
Thanks for the feedback. Here are my thoughts:
>1. What Internet marketing tasks frustrate you?
>Finding good people. And building quality links.
What kind of people are you looking for, Chris?
Building quality links is tough. The programs that I've seen that try
to automate it make it tough because high ranking sites are bombarded with so
many link requests that they stop replying to any. My preferred link
building technique has been to write articles and then to submit them to article
directories. This works well and there are some tools to automate article
submission. This is one of the tools I am thinking of.
>2. What Internet marketing tools do you use that are necessary, but awkward or
too expensive? What is wrong with them?
>Affiliate Programs. The features are there, but they're often complicated,
which turns off affiliates (or potential ones) from >using it as much as they
could. There needs to be an easy way for affiliates to log in, check stats, and
track payments without >jumping through hoops. It would also be nice if that
sort of app. didn't break your wallet.
Have you looked at
Ultimate Affiliate Manager yet? I was impressed with their demo and
they are affordable at a one time fee of $97. I have been suggesting it to
people for ad tracking and auto responders as well. Have a look at the
free demo if you haven't yet.:
>Also, a simplified, fast, universal newsletter application. All the ones I've
used have trouble importing and exporting mail lists, >and they're filled with
bugs.
I am using
Constant Contact and I haven't had any problems with imports. And I
find it very easy and quick to set up newsletters and their tracking service has
been great.
>Web Traffic Building: It would be beautiful if something could actually
accomplish this. I'd be truly amazed as to how this >would work automatically,
though... but I'd be willing to pay over $1000 for a program that worked.
Great Chris, where do you want the invoice sent? lol
Web traffic comes from many sources, so it would be tough to automate all of
it, but I have a few ideas.
>Article Marketing: I've seen a program called "article bot" that can apparently
compose original, well-written and "human->sounding" articles of any length,
about any topic, in seconds. Something like this would be at the very least,
extremely cool to >play around with. Here's the link to the site that sells the
article bot for your reference:
http://www.articlebot.com
I'd rather >pay a one-time fee, rather than a subscription like article bot. If
it worked, I'd pay up to $1000.
I not sure computers are able to write high quality articles, yet but an
interesting thought. Perhaps a brainstorming tool that would pull together
some research on a topic and suggest approaches.
>:Internet Research: Something that combines and improves on the likes of
www.wordtracker.com, www.linkpopularity.com >(just SE results, I know), and the
research tools included in Adwords and Overture.
>Perhaps the most useful form of something like this would be as a browser
toolbar. My dream toolbar would have the >Google PR rating, the Alexa ranking,
the Backlinks found by Google, Yahoo, MSN and AltaVista, and an indication of
the >top, relative keywords for each visited website.
>Depending on the functionality of the utility, I'd probably pay around $100.
I think a tool like this is definitely doable.
>g) Internet Marketing Tracking: If there is a way to somehow measure the ROI
and conversion rates of any given link >development, press release, targeted
advertising and partnership marketing campaign in one central application, then
I'm >buying it. I'd spend up to $350.
Hi Chris. I think
Ultimate Affiliate Manager can do this for you.
>i) Other: A rather basic, client-management application, with basic planning,
organizing and information storage for each client >or campaign would be
invaluable to any marketer or consultant. I'd pay around $200 for something like
this.
I have been using a free tool called
Kplan for
this, but I think there could be something more comprehensive done.
Thanks for your feedback!
Garland
Coulson, "The E-Business Tutor"
Download my FREE e-book, "Promote
Your Web Site for Free"
Moderator,
Internet Marketing Tools Private Reply to Garland Coulson | Jul 14, 2005 11:56 pm | | re: re: Help Planning a New Internet Marketing Tool | # | Michelle http://www.exoticpublishing.com | | Oh geeze, one thing I don't like about Ryze is that it doesn't copy the previous post into the reply, so I'm going on memory here.
Yeh sorry about that, I know you aren't into building humans LOL, at least not yet anyway : )
I was told Web Position Gold sucks, so I'm not looking for software.
This is the tracking system I'm going to look in to... http://www.interspire.com/forum/usercp.php?
AWstats is ok, but not robust enough to give me more of what I need.
I use 1SC right now, but my WD said to have them sign up for seperate categories & then inport them into CC would take longer than me just telling him who is a customer & who isn't.
The reason I don't want them in more than one category is b/c I have different sites & for each site, paying & non paying customers.
I think I covered everything.
Nope, I didn't. Ok, when I say up for marketing meaning that if something expires I want to know a few days prior that hey, it's up for expirey, should I bother paying again? Whether it be a banner, text ad, a membership for a network like here in Ryze, a newspaper ad that goes in weekly or monthly, even a free ad that may have to be resubmitted according to when you submitted it. Hell, if the program would then tell me how many customers I got from that one campaign & therefore how much each customer cost me based on how much I spent on that campaign, that would make my life sooo much easier. I wouldn't have to hire someone to figure out the stats or figure out if it was really worth it.
Then I could even compare all the campaigns & drop the ones that aren't producings, but the stats program would have to be really really good giving me what an expensive one gives me.
Ok, so when are you going to develop this? I'm waiting. LOL
I'm not doing that many compaigns just yet, but I will be.
Thanks
Michelle : ) Private Reply to Michelle http://www.exoticpublishing.com | Jul 15, 2005 6:34 pm | | re: Help Planning a New Internet Marketing Tool | # | Garland Coulson | | Hi Michelle,
>This is the tracking system I'm going to look in to...
http://www.interspire.com/forum/usercp.php?
I can't access this link because I am not a member. Can you provide the
link to the actual tool rather than the forum posting?
>AWstats is ok, but not robust enough to give me more of what I need.
Here is an unusual one for you to check out.
ClickTracks is a visual tracking tool that lets you look at your web site
and tell immediately which areas are getting traffic. You can see where people
go, what campaigns they came in from, and see return on investment at a glance.
>I use 1SC right now, but my WD said to have them sign up for seperate
categories & then inport them into CC would take >longer than me just telling
him who is a customer & who isn't.
I'm not sure exactly how you are doing this, but what I do with
1ShoppingCart (1SC) is I have a number of different signup forms and auto
responders people sign up for. For example, I might have a form where they
can sign up for a free e-book or my online course schedule. In 1SC, I can
easily export all the people that signed up for this auto responder in a few
seconds, then import into
Constant Contact in a few seconds more. This saves me a LOT of time,
so I'm not sure why your designer thinks it is quicker any other way, especially
as I do this for 100 or more people at a time.
>Ok, when I say up for marketing meaning that if something expires I want to
know a few days prior that hey, it's up for >expirey, should I bother paying
again? Whether it be a banner, text ad, a membership for a network like here in
Ryze, a >newspaper ad that goes in weekly or monthly, even a free ad that may
have to be resubmitted according to when you >submitted it. Hell, if the program
would then tell me how many customers I got from that one campaign & therefore
how >much each customer cost me based on how much I spent on that campaign, that
would make my life sooo much easier. I >wouldn't have to hire someone to figure
out the stats or figure out if it was really worth it.
The ad tracking system in 1SC will tell you:
- How many people clicked on your ad
- How many people signed up for something (leads)
- How many sales were generated
- What percentage of click throughs converted to leads
- What percentage of click throughs converted to sales
- Sales generated by the campaign
- Value generated per click through
It doesn't generate a reminder when an ad is up for renewal and that would be
an excellent feature to add if I develop this. It also doesn't show the
campaign costs and calculate ROI which would be another nice feature.
>Ok, so when are you going to develop this? I'm waiting. LOL
Nice to know I have a market already! :) I am still evaluating
which type of tool to develop first. Eventually I expect to have 3 or 4
great Internet marketing software tools based on the needs people are telling me
about. When they are ready, I will be announcing them here and in my
newsletter. Garland
Coulson, "The E-Business Tutor"
Download my FREE e-book, "Promote
Your Web Site for Free"
Moderator,
Internet Marketing Tools Private Reply to Garland Coulson | |
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