YouPLR

Voice Over Scripts

What is Internet Marketing?

The term “internet marketing” has become associated with a broad range of topics in recent years. For
many, it literally means only what it says: “marketing on the internet”, in which case it is seen as
synonymous with “digital marketing” and “online marketing”. For others, however, it has come to be
associated more specifically with the worlds of affiliate marketing, information products, and the “make
money online” niche. For our purposes, we’ll lean more towards the former and will settle on the
following definition:

Internet marketing is the use of internet properties and traffic to generate leads, sales, or brand
awareness. This is typically done via search engine visibility, social media marketing, email marketing,
and various forms of paid advertising.

One of the best ways to begin understanding internet marketing is to break down the various goals a
business can seek to accomplish with it. The ultimate end goal of marketing is, of course, revenue. With
that in mind, we can certainly classify sales as a primary goal of internet marketing and many businesses
do focus on sending traffic directly to paid offers, whether digital product sales pages or physical
product pages in an eCommerce store. However, for many businesses, sales remain a distant, long term
goal. A more common immediate or short-term goal of these businesses, is lead generation. By using the
internet to affordably collect leads rather than make individual sales, a business can then use their lead
list to continue marketing for free (or close to free) to potential customers from that point forward with
the expectation that multiple future sales will increase the average lifetime value of each lead and result
in a greater long-term ROI from each dollar spent on marketing.

Lead generation for an online business might consist simply of building an email list, perhaps with
customer names associated as well. Lead generation for an eCommerce business or local “offline”
business might also include physical mailing addresses and phone numbers so they can follow up in
other ways such as telemarketing or mailing out catalogues and special offers. Other businesses might
pursue even more robust lead data such as business information like industry categories or number of
employees in the case of B2B marketing, or income ranges and family size in the case of higher-ticket
B2C models like insurance sales or real-estate. Since lead generation is often seen as the most common
and multi-faceted immediate goal of internet marketing, the entirety of video three will be devoted to
the various methods and forms of lead generation.

Finally, another immediate goal of internet marketing is growing brand awareness and familiarity. For
many businesses, this might consist of spending large amounts on banner advertisements or video ads
primarily for the purpose of getting their brand name, logo, or unique selling proposition (USP) in front
of as many eyes as possible as many times as possible. The idea here is to increase top-of-mind
awareness so that the potential customer will think of the brand in future situations when they need
that specific need fulfilled. For example, when a fast food chain airs ads on television, it’s not because
they expect people to immediately hop in the car and go buy a burger because of it. It’s because they
want you to think of their restaurant next time you clock-out for your lunch break and are deciding what
to eat. The internet marketing equivalent of this might be an online tax service heavily investing in
banner ads and video ads in December and January, not because they think people will suddenly start
doing their taxes early, but because in April when 90% of Americans do their taxes at the last minute,
their brand will be the first one they remember. Other forms of brand awareness might simply consist of
frequent social media posting. Companies know that constantly seeing their brand image in their
followers’ newsfeeds or Twitter feeds accomplishes that same top-of-mind awareness as well as other
emotional associations with their brand such as loyalty, pride, good will, and humor (covered in more
detail in Video two).

Video 2:

Internet Marketing Methods

Regardless of whether your intended destination for traffic is a sales page, a lead page, or simply a piece
of content, the potential internet marketing methods are manifold. We’ll cover the most common ones
here.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is unique in this list for a very obvious reason: you already have their email address. In
other words, the main goal of email marketing is sales, whereas the other methods in this list can have
both sales and lead generation as a goal. Email marketing basically consists of sending promotional
email messages to a list of leads, typically using an autoresponder service like GetResponse or Aweber.
Email marketing can be done on a completely manual basis, in which a business sends out newsletters or
offers at their respective times, or on an automatic basis, in which a list of leads are put through a
sequence of pre-planned auto-responder messages.

More recently, the concept of marketing automation has become popular. This is where leads are put
through a unique series of autoresponder sequences that change and adapt based on the actions of the
lead and various “if this then that” (IFTTT) conditions established by the marketer. For example, if a lead
does not open an email, they might be automatically sent a follow-up email asking why they hadn’t
opened the previous one, or if a lead clicks on a certain link in an email which indicates they have a
particular interest, they might be segmented into a separate list or new sequence that caters to that
specific interest.

SEM

Search Engine Marketing consists of leveraging a search engine’s paid advertising platform to position
your business as a “sponsored” search result in a prominent, visible place on Search Engine Results
Pages (SERPs). The most popular search engines for SEM at the moment are Google and Bing. A business
can setup their ad to target a group of keywords that they’d like to “rank” for, as well as selecting other
variables such as demographics and location. These ads will then appear at the top or bottom of the
SERPs (depending on various factors such as budget and bidding) and will have the appearance of a
typical search result, with the one exception of a small word like “ad” or “sponsored” somewhere on it
(this varies among search engines).

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is the use of various on-site and off-site practices and factors to make your
web properties rank higher in search results. These practices include methods like keyword usage,
original content, frequent updating/posting, backlinking, social sharing, bounce rates (how many people
leave after viewing just one page), visitors’ average time on site, and the use of images and videos. Until
around 2012, SEO was arguably considered the most vital internet marketing method around and,
depending on your industry, it might still be.

However, in recent years the growing number of competing web properties in the online space have
made ranking very difficult and expensive for many businesses. This, along with constant changes to
some of the top search engines’ algorithms have led many businesses to conclude that paid SEM is more
cost-effective than SEO. SEO still maintains its importance in many cases, however, such as in the case of
local “brick and mortar” businesses whose search rankings are positively affected by the use of nearby
city names in the search terms as well as the various search engines’ use of locational data.

Ad Networks
Ad networks are an excellent way to get your brand or offer in front of your target audience on a broad
range of web properties. The most commonly discussed ad network is the Google Ads network but there
are several other out there. Using these networks will allow you to place banner image ads, video ads, or
simple textual ads in front of web traffic on a variety of websites. This approach can be especially
powerful when combined with retargeting. This entails placing retargeting pixels on your web properties
and then specifically targeting your site visitors via ad networks so that the offer they initially looked at
(and are presumably interested in) starts following them around the internet wherever they go. This
may sound creepy, but statistics indicate that people who are retargeted are 70% more likely to convert!

Individual Sites

Some marketers might prefer to do their advertising on a case-by-case basis by personally approaching
individual, relevant websites, forums, or blogs in their niche or industry. When using this manual
method, marketers should be sure to research the metrics of the given site, blog, or forum. Naturally
you’ll want to display your ad in places with a reasonable level of traffic and a positive reputation to
ensure your advertising dollars are spent well. You can learn a lot about websites by researching them
on Alexa. That said, the majority of businesses tend to find the use of ad networks to be a more cost-
effective way of advertising.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing has come a long way in the last several years and has changed the way many
businesses think about marketing in general. For some marketers, social followers have replaced email
addresses, posts and tweets have replaced promotional emails, and likes have replaced email opens.
Virtually every successful business today has not only a social media presence, but a clearly defined
social media strategy. Most of these strategies revolve around posting consistent content.

But it’s more than just posting promotions and offers. A successful social strategy will include various
types of non-promotional content for various types of goals. Posting about a charitable cause associates
your brand with feelings of goodwill. Posting about trendy topics makes your brand seem relevant.
Posting useful tips without a sales pitch makes your business come off as genuinely helpful. Posting
humorous or “feel-good” content associates your business with positive emotions, and so on. But more
importantly, these types of non-promotional posts are accomplishing two other goals. First, they’re
encouraging social sharing, which grows your following even more. Secondly, they’re creating top-of-
mind awareness for your brand. People will get used to seeing your content and your business name,
logo, and USP. As a result, when they have a problem that your business fixes, they’ll be more likely to
think of you first.

All of those social media concepts revolve around organic activity. However, the major social media
platforms today have also developed robust paid advertising systems. The most game-changing of these
has been the concept of social “native advertising”. Native advertising refers to advertisements that
have the appearance of organic content with the exception of a tiny one-word disclaimer somewhere
designating it as “sponsored” or an “advertisement”. This new form of paid social media advertising has
proven to be remarkably effective because social media consumers are already in the habit of looking at,
consuming, and engaging with anything that looks like an organic post in their social feeds. In addition to
this, the line between organic posts and paid native ads have become increasingly blurred as these
native ads act and function just like organic content (they can be shared, liked, etc.) and businesses now
have the ability to pay to promote an organic post to give it further reach.

Video Marketing

If there’s one thing that has been well established in marketing today, it’s the tremendous power of
video. Nothing else compares. Understandably then, marketers have seized on video and are leveraging
it in numerous ways. Video marketing is often executed as social media marketing. Businesses are
publishing video content on multiple video sites such as YouTube, DailyMotion, and Vimeo just as they
would publish non-video content to Facebook or Twitter.

As with the social media strategy described earlier, a successful video content strategy includes a good
mix of useful, helpful, trending, humorous, and “feel-good” video content, with “salesy” videos being in
the minority. Once published, video content should be cross-promoted on other social media platforms
to increase exposure. Another significant development years ago was that major social networks like
Facebook and Twitter added their own video uploading and streaming functions, and, of course, the rise
of “short video” sites like TikTok and Instagram’s “Reels” feature are increasing the overlap between
video marketing and social media marketing.

One further angle on video marketing is paid video advertising. Presently, the most popular version of
this is YouTube/AdWords video ads which appear at the beginning of videos on both YouTube as well as
other video-playing properties around the web. These video ads can typically be skipped after several
seconds. In addition to the YouTube/AdWords video ad network, businesses also often pay for video ads
on an individual basis on other websites, news sites, and so on.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is largely included in the other marketing methods mentioned thus far, but it’s also
worth discussing by itself. The most common forms of content marketing are blog posts, news articles,
and social posting, but content marketing can also include video and image publishing. The goals of
content marketing are manifold. Firstly, it builds goodwill with followers who associate your brand with
helpful content. Secondly, content marketing provides an opportunity to hide a “soft pitch” within “non-
salesy” content which can lead to sales while at the same time providing useful content. Thirdly, content
marketing can be an excellent way to “pixel” an audience for later retargeting which has proven to be a
devastatingly effective tactic. Finally, content is the primary driver in most search engines’ algorithms
which can result in higher rankings. There are many benefits beyond these four, but these can be
considered the most relevant and directly impactful ones.

Old School Methods

The following methods have largely become less common, if not altogether abandoned, because of
negative connotations or even penalties that have been attached to them in the past. Bit since it’s
theoretically possible to engage in these in a non-spammy manner, it’s worth mentioning them briefly.
Blog commenting and video commenting can often be an effective way to get your brand in front of
relevant audiences. Just make sure that your comments are relevant, useful, and not spammy and
definitely do not mass-post comments for the sake of backlinking as that will likely kill your SEO thanks
to recent search engine algorithms designed to penalize abusers of this tactic.

Forum posting is another marketing method that has become less popular today. However, this was less
due to abuses (although there certainly were some) and more towards a drifting away towards social
media platforms. It simply became more cost-effective and fruitful to focus on social media. However, it
is often the case that most of the serious devotees of a certain niche may be more likely to be found on
niche-related forums, which means it can still be beneficial to market your brand in the signature section
of your posts and interact on relevant forums periodically. Just make sure you’re making genuine and
sincere contributions to the conversation.

Video 3: Internet Lead Generation

Most of the previous marketing methods have the same immediate goal in mind: getting traffic to a web
page. This web page could be either a sales/order page or a lead generation page. Since sales is a
relatively straightforward topic and lead generation is at the forefront of immediate internet marketing
goals, we’ll be focusing on all the variations of lead generation.
Email List Building

At the top of the lead generation list is email list building. They say “the money is in the list” and it’s
true. The most common method of email list building is to send traffic to a lead generation page of some
sort. Typically, this is a landing page pitching some sort of free offer or “lead magnet” in exchange for a
person typing their email into an opt-in form. This opt-in form might also ask for a name, since
personalized subject lines are known to increase open rates by around 30%. In addition to a traditional
opt-in form which often sadly leads to low quality email addresses that are rarely checked or even fake
names and emails, there was a recent development a few years back that allowed marketers to increase
the quality of the contact info they collect. The “lead ad”.

The “lead ad” or “lead card” concepts are available on Facebook and Twitter’s advertising platforms.
This newer type of ad pre-fills Facebook and Twitter users’ name and email in the opt-in form, and
requires them only to tap the submit button. This is beneficial because the emails and names associated
with a person’s social media account are more likely to be real and regularly checked. That said, many
people set up their social accounts many years ago, and no longer check those email addresses regularly
and users can still choose to click on and change the auto filled data in those fields to a “secondary”,
rarely checked, or even fake email address. But in general, this should still result in a higher likelihood of
a quality email address than a typical lead page.

Robust Lead Generation

For businesses that require a bit more lead data, a more robust lead collection approach may be
necessary. This simply entails adding more fields to an opt-in form. Depending on a business’ needs, this
may include items such as phone numbers, mailing addresses, business names, industries, income levels,
family size, and so on.

SMS List Building

Text Message Marketing has become increasingly popular in recent years. Initially, the main use of SMS
list building was for major retailers to send out special coupons and promotional messages. However,
more recently, many online businesses have been leveraging SMS messaging for things such as webinar
reminders and sales promotions. There are various ways of conducting this type of list building,
including having people input their mobile numbers or having them send a text message to a special
number.
Push Notifications

Another recent trend has been to have people opt in to push notifications. This involves a pop-up on
your website requesting permission to send people future updates directly via their browsers. When a
person consents to this, you are then able to send notifications that pop up in a box on the bottom right
of their screen at any time in the future.

Retargeting

Building a retargeting audience can be considered another form of list building and is relatively easy to
do. Most platforms including Google Ads, AdRoll, Facebook, Twitter, and many others have a retargeting
pixel that you can paste onto your web properties. Once this is done, all traffic to these pages will be
cookied and added to your retargeting list. From that point forward, you’ll have the ability to place your
ads in front of these people almost anywhere on the web. This includes on social platforms like
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, video sites like YouTube, and virtually any website, news site, blog, or
forum that participates in any of the major online ad networks. This is a very valuable form of lead
generation because retargeted traffic has been shown to convert at a 70% higher rate than cold traffic.

Social Followers

Finally, building a social following can be considered another form of lead generation. In fact, some are
of the opinion that social followings have replaced the email list. With a large enough social following, a
business can post to one of the major social networks and have their content and promotions seen in
the social feeds of countless potential customers. Developments like YouTube’s “subscribe” and “bell
icon” features have added to this phenomenon. The possibility of these followers sharing these posts
gives businesses yet another way to expand their list even further. Some social networks, like Facebook,
have recently decreased the percentage of a business’ audience that will see organic posts in their news
feeds. However, if an audience is large enough, social posting remains a powerful form of marketing
today.

Video 4: Internet Marketing Tools

This will be a relatively quick module in which we briefly list several of the tools available in each of
these categories. But it’s by no means exhaustive.

For email list building, you’ll require a minimum of two tools: an autoresponder and a landing page
builder. Your autoresponder will be the platform where your email list is sent, stored, and
communicated with. Your landing page builder, on the other hand, will be where you place your opt-in
forms and collect your leads.

Popular autoresponders include:

GetResponse

Aweber

SendReach

Constant Contact

Active Campaign

MailChimp

Popular landing page builders include:

InstaPage

LeadPages

ClickFunnels

Convertri

Thrive Themes

For businesses that require more robust lead generation data, this can usually be done with the above-
mentioned autoresponders and landing page builders. However, for more flexible and wide ranging
forms, a business might find that a service like [Link], Wufoo, or Formstack will fill their needs
better.
There are a variety of potential tools for SMS list building including:

TextDeliver

Twilio

Trumpia

Push-notifications can be accomplished with multiple tools including:

VWO Engage (previously called PushCrew)

OneSignal

Airship

Retargeting can be accomplished via various platforms such as:

Facebook

Twitter

Google Ads

AdRoll

Perfect Audience

Finally, social media marketing can easily be done via the various social platforms themselves. However,
many marketers prefer to rely on social media management tools such as:

HootSuite

OnlyWire