Microsoft Bpos Blog
Home Internet Marketing Business ABCs
Almost everyone nowadays wants to have his very own profitable home internet marketing business that can ease his financial burdens and help him sail smoothly through the ravages of the global financial crisis currently engulfing the economies of the world. Understanding of the ABCs or fundamentals of internet marketing is essential to the success of any online home business.
Internet Marketing
Different people of different profession and stature have view internet marketing in different perspectives. People in one hand consider internet marketing as simply the act of placing banner ads or inbound links on other websites. On the opposite hand, there are many companies claiming that it is the secret to exponentially increasing one’s wealth overnight. Caution should be exercised however, because most of these many companies only try to make you buy some sort of internet marketing program that they proclaim will make you rich by morning.
At the present, internet marketing or online marketing has successfully evolved to a higher stage which now involves a combination of many components a business can utilize to increase sales regardless whether the said business is being executed fully online, partly online, or fully offline. Internet marketing is fully discretionary and it can’t be fully said that it is strictly needed for success but its recent popularity has caused those who don’t use it get left behind by those who do. It can provide a vast and unique competitive advantage to any company. It is for this reason that some companies even rely purely on online marketing to promote their business, its products, and services.
Internet Marketing Objectives
Internet marketing is being employed to make use of the Internet to do at least one of the succeeding:
1. Communicate a company's message about itself, its products, or its services online.
2. Conduct research as to the nature (demographics, preferences, and needs) of existing and potential customers.
3. Sell goods, services, or advertising space over the Internet.
Internet Marketing Components
Internet marketing is made up of many components which may be summarized into the following:
1. Making a business website and getting it launched and published over the Internet. It may consist of text, images and possibly audio and video elements that broadcast the company’s message to visitors, informing current customers and prospects of the features, benefits, and value-for-money of its products and services. The website may also include additional features that extend its capabilities like the ability to capture and store leads from potential customers or the function to directly sell a product or service online. A website may very well be the best way to establish a company’s own internet persona and business entity. Websites can always outperform their offline equivalents - brochures and mail order catalogs.
2. Marketing a website over the World Wide Web via search engines otherwise known as Search Engine Marketing or SEM is the process of helping a website shop up in the top search engine pages whenever one makes a search with certain defined keywords through search engine optimization or SEO, pay-per-click or PPC advertising, or pay-for-inclusion or PFI advertising in which a website is listed in online website directories, the same way as with yellow page listings.
3. Email marketing is the technique of getting information about a product or service out to customers or getting feedback from customers about a product or service through the use of emails. Email addresses of customers or potential customers can be collected through the use of the company website or purchased from lead generation specialists. Email marketing is simply the online version of direct mail marketing. There are different methods that can be utilized to do this form of online marketing like the regular distribution of newsletters or mass mailing of offers related to the company's product or services.
4. Banner advertising is the online marketing equivalent of the traditional ads in newspapers and magazines. It is the free placement of ads on a website usually known as free ad directories.
5. Online press releasing is the placement of a newsworthy story about a company, regular distribution of newsletters or mass mailing of offers related to the company's product or services on online wire service or online press release directories.
6. Blog marketing is the process of posting comments, expressing opinions or making online announcements in a discussion forum or blog directory that can be done by hosting your own blog or by comment and link exchanges with other blogs whose content is related to your product or service.
7. Article marketing involves the syndication or online publishing in article sites or directories of freshly written or unique articles that tackle things related to your business, products, or services. These articles have the potential to spread and circulate over the internet since online article hosting services allow the re-publication of articles so long as all links in the articles are maintained. Traffic boost can be the primary result of article marketing, together with the promotion of your brand to a wider audience through the syndication of these articles.
Internet Marketing and Home Business
A website is an element that all internet marketing components, prospective customers, and clients anticipate a business to have. Through the years, having a website has become one of the best ways to get a consumer’s trust and interest in a company and its products and services. Having no website may even cause a prospect to lose interest and head to a competitor. Up-to-date information available 24 hours per day, 7 days a week something that can best come from a website. And the all-encompassing use of online means has cased many prospects to decide to transact only with companies that have a good and useful website.
Engaging in online marketing and having a website is so comprehensive in scope that it can benefit even a business that only has very local customers like a single location food store or clothing store. Internet marketing offers a very cost-effective and comprehensive way of attracting customers and it also gives a business a worldwide reach with its own Web presence that can be very hard to get from other methods especially in the case of businesses whose customers are not restricted to ma single geographical area only.
A website though in some instances is not a complete necessity, can definitely provide a home business operator various benefits due to the virtual nature of most home businesses. A website can act as a storefront for direct selling of products and services as well as serve as a very inexpensive means of getting prospects as well as clients know what your business does or what products it sells especially to those home-based businesses that do not have a physical location.
The internet has been one of the primary drivers that fueled the growth and expansion of home based businesses because it has paved the way for starting and maintaining a web presence with reasonably low cost. It is therefore a must that internet marketing becomes as integral part of your business plan and marketing strategy.
Finding the Right Internet Marketing Mix
Determining and utilizing the right marketing strategy is essential to business success. Defining the percentage of marketing efforts that should be done online, the needed Internet marketing elements and the amount of focus to be given to the website are all vital to the formulation of a marketing plan that will work. The nature of business, the budget, and some personal traits may all affect the marketing mix. All these, and many others influence the development of an internet marketing business blue print.
Using Offline Elements with Internet Marketing Strategies
Only businesses that transact 100% of their business online can make use of a fully online marketing scheme. All others should utilize a marketing mix made up of both online and offline efforts. Traditional methods can greatly supplement the effects and benefits of web marketing. In fact, there are even businesses that conduct all their operations completely online and yet employ the placement of traditional ads on newspapers and magazines to drive prospects to visiting their website and participate in online transactions with the firm. Perfect examples of business that integrate offline elements as components of their internet marketing strategies are Expedia, Travelocity and Monster.com. These firms shell out huge investments in radio and TV advertising as well as other traditional means of advertising to get consumers visit their sites where the real businesses dealings are being transacted.
Develop Internet Marketing Strategies You Like
Only incorporate in your strategy the marketing techniques you like or those that do not annoy you whenever someone does them to you, because most people probably feel the same way. The most hated marketing tool as regarded by many is spam. This is why many companies nowadays do not include email marketing in their arsenal of promotion methods.
Many forget the fact that email marketing does not necessarily mean the sending out of unsolicited emails to every email address you can find. Email marketing can also be accomplished by incorporating a visitor registration webpage on your site. This page then works as a tool to gather email addresses of interested prospects. You can then create a newsletter which you can send to all who have registered in your site. You may also consider updating your newsletter and sending it periodically to your prospects. You may also create a schedule for sending regular emails just to see how your prospects are doing, if your company can be of assistance in any way, or if any of their wants or needs has changed since when you last had a conversation. This is a very efficient way of utilizing email to boost your business promotion even without engaging in email marketing.
Your Budget and Internet Marketing Strategy
The budget plays a very important role in any marketing strategy as it lays out which components and techniques you can develop and exploit. A website for example needs you to select a domain name and then register and purchase it from a web hosting service. Due to the growing demand for web hosting services, the competition has greatly tightened and many now offer discounts. There are those that offer domain name registration for as low as $1.99 per year - provided you also purchase other services, like hosting, which is now also available for less than $10 per month. Next is the design and content of your website. Your can design and write your won content or your can hire a graphics artist for the design and a web content writer for the content. You can also opt to make use of the online website builders that can be found all over the internet.
After your site is all ready to go, getting it found is the next task, because no matter how good or useful a site is, it is of no value if people cannot find it. This is the point where search engine optimization or SEO comes in. SEO is vital to every website. You can either learn and do the SEO yourself or you can hire search engine optimizers to do it for you.
Web content should be search engine optimized from the time it was written. Same goes for the web design as the manner in which a website is designed can either enhance or limit the site traffic it will be receiving in the future. SEO should definitely be a major part of any internet marketing strategy. You can opt to do things faster but more costly or vice versa, depending on your perspective and your budget.
Once your website is up and running, you'll either need to maintain it yourself or outsource the duties to an independent Webmaster to do it for you.
Google AdWords and similar pay-per-click (PPC) advertising services can be a good choice as they go easy on your budget due to the fact that you can specify the maximum amount you are willing or able to spend. You also get to decide how much you will be paying whenever someone clicks on your site as well as the limit of how much you will be paying per day. You also get control over whether the pay-per-click ads appear only on major search engines or on other related websites as well. Geographic and time restrictions regarding when and where your ads run are also at your disposal, making the said ads quite easy to update. Real time tracking of the benefits is also possible with PPC services. You can also use images and/or videos with PPC advertising, which may even be less costly than placing banner ads on other websites. You can also, on the other hand, utilize pay-per-click advertising to earn money with your website to such programs as Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher or Microsoft AdCenter.
Tracking the Results of Internet Marketing Strategies
Putting up and operating a successful home-based business is not that easy especially for the average home business operator. Tracking is very important especially when you spend money on strategic Internet marketing initiatives. You should know the effectiveness on such initiatives to be able to make the right decision on whether to go on or discontinue with them. If you are satisfied with the performance of the currently implemented techniques, continue using them. If you are not satisfied, learn from your mistakes. Determine why such approaches did not work and find other means that can work better. Such practice is sure to improve your skills and enhance your chances for success. Your business will mature and grow faster and more efficiently if you know which internet marketing strategies are worth spending your money.
Remain patient in tracking the performance of your internet marketing efforts and they will surely pay off. Always keep in mind that effects do not occur overnight and a significant amount of time is usually needed before you can feel the benefits. The same is with revenues, at first your efforts may seem to be in vain but after some time, more revenues will surely materialize.
Strategic Internet Marketing Needs to be Flexible
There are millions of people wanting to succeed with their own home internet marketing business and most of these also engage in strategic internet marketing. It is therefore vital that you make your marketing strategy flexible. It should be ready to quickly absorb changes and necessary adjustments. However, some knowledge, some capable assistance, and a well-managed strategic Internet marketing plan can increase your chances for success.
Join the revolutionary 4StepstoSuccess Action Plan now and master the art and science of having your very own home internet marketing business. 4S2S has been awarded a perfect rating of 5 Stars by the United Chambers of Commerce; celebrity endorsed by famous radio personality Al Roker Jr., backed up by the premier Philippine BPO Company CallComInc, and partnered by the highly reliable 2-GetCash Offshore Debit Card and MasterCard. 4S2S pays its members large commissions with its patented Money Line Pay System while they learn all the secrets of establishing their own successful internet home-based business with the 4S2S training modules.
About the Author
Who am I?
I am who I am..
Microsoft Bpos Blog
Getting started with BPOS part 1
|
|
Peeping Blog $11.52 Peeping Blog |
|
|
Space Blog $30.15 Space Blog |
|
|
Blog Theory $48.49 Blog Theory |
|
|
Diary and Blog $19.99 Diary and Blog - Premium Poster |
|
|
Learning on the Blog $21.61 "Best-selling author Will Richardson's Learning on the Blog is a compilation of posts by the author on his acclaimed education blog weblogg-ed.com. Each blog specifically relates to trends and goals of the kinds of educational reform that can be accomplis |
Internships: Recruiting the Very Best College Interns -jobsabode.com
Internships: Recruiting the Very Best College Interns
Innovative approaches for finding and retaining interns
Surveys by Wetfeet and IOMA show that internships are the best way to hire quality college graduates. While few corporations actually track the most effective sources in college recruiting, those that I have worked with have consistently found that quality internship programs produce the highest quality candidates, the most productive hires, and the hires with the highest retention rates.
Unfortunately, many college internship programs are poorly designed, have no or few metrics, are underfunded, and are run by individuals with little knowledge of what separates a great program from the average one.
In addition to producing poor results, poor-performing internship programs can have a negative impact on HR's image because CEOs and senior executives are frequently strong supporters of capturing the "best and brightest" from the top campuses.
If you're responsible for developing college recruiting programs, here are 41 of the best practices and tips. These include 13 ways to identify the very best interns; 18 approaches to selling your internship opportunities; and 10 design elements of a compelling internship experience.
13 Ways to Identify the Best Interns
If you can't find the best students for your internship slots, obviously the other elements of your internship program will make little difference. Some of the most effective approaches for identifying top-quality interns include:
1. Grad assistants know the best. Because grad assistants are involved both in teaching classes and in research, they have often worked directly with the very best students. They are also likely to know which students are bright, team players with other highly desirable soft skills. In my experience, grad assistants are more than willing to help, they just have to be asked. Because grad assistants are normally hand-picked by faculty, they should also be considered potential interns. These influential grad assistants are likely to help you recruit other interns if they themselves have a great internship experience. Find grad assistants with a single phone call to the department assistant, or by scanning the websites for target faculty.
2. Use your current interns. Identify the very best interns you have now and pay them a small stipend when they return to campus to act as your "recruiting ambassadors." QUALCOMM has experienced great success leveraging this approach, as have many other technology companies.
3. Ask last year's graduates. If you're fortunate enough to have hired individuals from your "target" campus, ask them for the names of impressive underclassmen. Ask them to make some calls or send some emails to the best students they know. In fact, routinely ask all college new hires during orientation "Who else is good?" and "What professors would produce the best students?"
4. Student referrals. Referrals are routinely the best way to identify potential experienced employees, but few realize that they are also extremely effective in identifying potential interns. Intuit and Valero have had a good deal of success offering small rewards to students for referring the best students they know and compete with in the classroom. Endeca gave away a flat-screen TV as a referral bonus to college students who referred a successful hire.
5. Technical contests. Online contests are excellent mechanisms for both attracting and assessing potential college interns. Contests are superior because they can help you find relatively unknown students and, in addition, they are great ways to assess talent. Offer contests to student groups, individual classes, or the world population via the Internet. Leading companies like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! routinely use contests to identify the very best students.
6. Student groups. The Dean's office in any school can tell you the names and the presidents of each of the professional student groups active on campus. You can sponsor the group or even just one meeting and build friends for life. Organization presidents are usually more than willing to share a list of their student members. If you're bold, you can even hire the top officers as interns or as campus representatives for your firm.
7. Networking sites. College students are extremely active on networking sites (especially Facebook and MySpace) and in chat rooms. Consider asking recruiters and current interns to post a profile on these sites in order to attract potential interns.
8. Internet searches. Students who write, win scholarships and awards, and are written up in publications are relatively easy to find using Internet searches. Be careful here, because some of the awards and scholarships might be based on grades and not on the student's ability to work in a business environment.
9. Faculty internship advisors. Many large programs have one or more faculty assigned to monitor and grade internships. These faculty are generally aware of which students are actively seeking internships and they will certainly know of any quality students who have completed their first internship.
10. Scholarship contests. Scholarship winners are not always the best overall students, but if you offer scholarships you can then use the biographical information from every applicant to help identify great intern prospects.
11. Faculty referrals. Not all faculty are willing to make internship referrals, but if you have a relationship with them, it's always a good idea to ask them to make referrals each year. If you have the resources to attend academic conferences, they are an excellent opportunity to build relationships and to ask for internship referrals.
12. Student mentors. Some professional schools have volunteer peer mentor programs. These mentors should be prime targets.
13. Campus newspaper ads. These ads are expensive, but if your firm has a great employment brand, they can be an effective tool in attracting interns.
18 Approaches for Selling Your Internship Opportunities
Every major campus has numerous firms with great employment brands that are offering compelling internship opportunities. If you want your internship opportunities to stand out from the crowd, here are some approaches to consider:
1. Offer short-term projects. Some students are reluctant to accept an internship because they generally require relocation and an "all summer" time commitment. An alternative approach conceived by Whirlpool involves offering short-term projects ranging in duration that can be completed nearly anytime throughout the year. By offering short but exciting projects that last only a few days to a few weeks, students can gain needed experience and the company is given more of an opportunity to both assess and influence the student than they had before. Allowing projects to be completed remotely means that students won't have to wait till summer break or to travel to get practical experience. You can allow students to "bid" on projects and you can also offer students the option of applying for project internships as a group. Simply post project descriptions online and let students or student groups apply for them. This is a great way to attract problem-solving students if you are not a well-known employer.
2. CEO talks. Having your CEO give a speech on campus has proven to be a tremendously effective tool for attracting students. This approach has been used successfully by Microsoft, Whirlpool, Google, Ernst & Young, and Deloitte.
3. CEO calls. Having your CEO (or other notable executives) call targeted intern candidates directly and ask them to accept your internship offer has had a nearly 100% success rate in companies that have tried it.
4. Post a video. Students are in love with online videos, so if you post a compelling video about what it's like to work at your firm or profiles of your recent interns or college hires, you will pique their interest. This might cause them to forward your video or to talk about you. The most popular site is currently YouTube, which has been used by Google, the U.S. Army, Microsoft, and Deloitte, to name a few.
5. Use "green" recruiting. Being environmentally friendly is essential if you want to attract the very best interns. As a result, it's critical that you make potential interns aware of what your organization does to protect the environment.
6. Offer technical training on campus. Students are always interested in supplementing their academic education with practical training. Firms like Microsoft, Google, and Cisco have had success in offering on-campus technical training classes in order to attract and assess potential interns and hires.
7. Conduct career seminars on campus. These sessions can be effective mechanisms for increasing your exposure and making students aware of the opportunities that your firm offers to interns and new college hires.
8. Make "same day" offers. Students in high demand can change their mind rather quickly. If you want to avoid this problem, consider completing the intern selection process within one day and then making your offers before the candidates leave. If you scan what students write about regarding campus recruiting on various blogs, you already know that the timeline and process are their number one complaint.
9. Rewrite your internship descriptions. Most organizations fail to realize that their internship descriptions are notoriously dull. If you want to excite top students, make your internship descriptions compelling and include the most desirable "features" that students are looking for.
10. Provide students with choices. Many internship opportunities are quite structured, which can scare away some students. Give the interns you select some options in projects, locations, the duration of the internship, or which business unit.
11. Write a blog. Blogs and podcasts are currently extremely popular among college students. Having a recent hire, intern, or manager write a periodic blog that addresses college student issues will likely soften your image and personalize any corporation.
12. Provide "local" internships. Many students enjoy university towns and as a result, they would love the opportunity to complete an internship without having to relocate. If your organization has a "branch office" that happens to be close to campus, offer school break and summer internships at that site.
13. Do "wow!" things. Consider doing something outrageous like sending free pizza to the dorms or student lounge during final exam week to create a buzz (Google does this). Try to come up with something that is innovative enough to be written about in the student newspaper.
14. Offer video interviews. Some internship programs require potential interns to visit the corporate site. This time commitment sometimes limits the number of candidates for internship openings. To help minimize this problem, consider offering telephone or video interviews to potential interns.
15. Hire interns early in their academic career. The competition for students in their last year is tremendous. You can excite and build relationships with the best students early on by targeting them early in their college career. Firms like Ernst & Young and Deloitte have had success in offering internships to sophomores and juniors.
16. Hire them both. College students often develop strong bonds and friendships with their colleagues. Having the courage to offer to hire the best students and their "best friend" as a duo will dramatically improve your chances of getting the best as interns.
17. Check your negatives on the Internet. In an Internet world, your image can be tarnished very quickly. As a result, it's important to occasionally scan the Web to see what individuals are saying about you, both positive and negative. Don't forget to search vault.com, which is a prime source of information for students.
18. Highlight internships on your corporate career website. No matter how good your reputation or sales pitch, no student will pursue an internship without first visiting your corporate website. As a result, make sure that your website doesn't directly contradict the message you send on campus. Where possible, provide a separate website that covers information about available internships.
10 Elements of a Compelling Internship Experience
If you have the opportunity to redesign your entire internship experience and program, here are 10 elements of the internship experience that have really excited interns and improved the probability of them wanting to return for a permanent position:
1. Provide meaningful work. Students take internships in order to test the capabilities and to build their experience. Unfortunately, some managers are skeptical about the capabilities of interns and as a result, they provide them with work with little meaning or impact. Effective internship programs take steps to minimize the "busy work" and to ensure that students have tangible takeaways.
2. A chance to complete a project. Design your internship program so that students begin and finish a complete project or task; they are more likely to be satisfied and to want to return. Give them an opportunity to formally "present" their work at the end of their internship.
3. Avoid bad managers. Nothing frustrates an intern more than having to work under a manager who is insensitive to their needs. Survey interns at the end of their experience in order to identify problems and bad managers. These bad managers need to be prohibited from accepting future interns. (Cisco Systems does this.)
4. The latest technology. Design your internship experience so that they have a chance to work with the kind of technology that they have previously only read about.
5. An opportunity to make a difference. A good number of college students want to make a difference, and if you supplement their regular internship assignment with the opportunity to help out in the community, you will improve your chances of getting them to return as a regular hire.
6. A chance to work with senior executives. Meeting senior executives is exciting, but a chance to work alongside a notable individual on a project is more likely to have a lasting impact. Great internship programs ask students directly who they would like to meet and in addition, who they would like to work directly with.
7. A great location. Combining an internship with an exciting location is a great selling feature. Recently, international placement opportunities are becoming more desirable.
8. A mentor. Providing students with a mentor who is near their age can dramatically improve their experience.
9. Diversity. The competition for diverse candidates is even more intense. So if you should expect to attract and retain diverse interns, your program must contain enough flexibility to meet their unique needs.
10. How much fun? Of course, college students like to have fun but they also want to develop contacts and build their resumes. If you offer too many fun events, and not enough meaningful work, few of your interns will return as regular employees.
Final Thoughts
The battle for interns and new college hires has always been intense but recently it has become a truly global competition. Companies are constantly changing their approach in order to increase their share of interns and new hires.
As a result, if your firm wants to dominate the market for interns at the best schools, your internship program must innovate at a rate that was unnecessary as few as five years ago. The status quo is no longer sustainable or competitive.
About the Author
