Category Archives: Blog Promotion

The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, Product!

Marketing Mix
photo by TooFarNorth

Following on from my first post in this series on the marketing mix, I would like to introduce the first ‘P’ of the 4 P’s.

Product

Traditionally this refers to a product or service provided by a business.

Relating this to a blog or website is quite easy. Your blog (website) provides a service in that it educates, informs or entertains visitors. If it does not do this for your visitors from your target market, it may fail to achieve any notable growth or maintain existing readers.

Remember content is key, therefore has to be created with your target audience in mind. Failure to do so, is likely to not generate repeat visits. This being crucial inorder to obtain a loyal (and growing number of) visitors.

Trying not to go off topic to is often the best bet, your readers are probably only interested in your main topics, so writing off topic can put people off. A little variety to spice things up, can’t be condemmed, just do it sparingly.

Another point worth considering is to make your blog differentiated from the many ‘me-to’ blogs in your niche. Building a brand or unique identity differentiates you, therefore making your blog more memorable to visitors. Allowing you to stand out in a crowd.

This can be achieved in several ways or by a combination. Some of the most important include using a unique design to your blog, e.g customise your theme, by changing colors or the header, or for the more advanced/adventurous try building your own theme/site from scratch. Also you could try writing in an interesting writing style, although just being yourself can lead to a writing style that is unique. They are just a couple of ideas for now.

Ultimately remember your content must fulfill the wants and needs of your visitors; research, find out what they are, investigate how competing blogs target your niche. Find weaknesses and try and fill the gap.

Finally remember, Product is only one of the 4 P’s, the other 3 (Price, Promotion, Place) will follow later in this series. Product is an essential ingredient but it must also be blended with the 3 other P’s in order to gain the maximum effect.

Best of luck,

Martyn.

Connect with the World

Gain links
photo by Mel B.

Exchanging links, can and is one of the best ways to get a new blog (or website) off the ground.

Potential visitors are highly unlikely to accidentally stumble on to your site unless they are led there from a link. But gaining those initial links can be difficult, top bloggers are not going to link to you, unless you have stunning content. So gaining traffic sources to a new blog will need a proactive attitude.

But who to exchange with and why? Well the general rule is, for bloggers targeting a certain niche, will need to get bloggers from within their niche to link to them. This is mainly because Uncle Google wants you to do this as links from similar sites help Googles crawlers as well as tells Google that your site is important to that niche. In other words it’s like a recommendation to them. Whereas links from sites that are not similar or beneficial to visitors gets marked down by Google.

You may now be wondering why I’m writing this, well I’m looking to exchange links with other bloggers who think that they have content that may be interesting/beneficial to my readers. I’m still new around the blogosphere so exchanging links seems a natural way to make those so important initial connections.

So if your interested I’m going to be actively seeking 5 link exchanges with blogs that are either ‘student’ or ‘make money’ related over the coming two weeks.

If your interested, drop me an email with a link to your blog, see the contact page to find out how.

I can’t guarantee I will take up everyone who asks, but I look forward to any offers.

Cheers,

Martyn

The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, It’s all in the Mix

Marketing Mix
photo by TooFarNorth

The Marketing Mix that is, You may or may not of heard about the 4 P’s. They are essentially the 4 most important points to consider before launching a product, except I’m going for a slight twist, the product is a blog, your blog (or website).

So time for some clever marketing,

the 4 p’s are:-

  • Product
  • Price
  • Promotion
  • Place

So how do they apply,

Product

Your product blog or website must serve a need or want of customers/readers. There is no point creating a blog aimed at no-one. Research your target audience, the likely popularity of your subject/niche and decide what they need or want. There is no point on a ‘make money online’ blog to go and discuss keeping hamsters as a pet, because your readers are not expecting this sort of content. But on the other hand if you have a personal blog you may be able to discuss a wider range of topics, as your readers are not expecting content concentrating on a single subject. In many ways the person behind the blog is the product, in the same way celebrities are in ‘real’ life, the interest is in the actions of the person/blogger.

Price

Unlike normal products, you don’t set a real price on accessing your blog (unless you sell a product). Therefore this part of the marketing mix is open to interpretation to some extent. But for every action for a reader costs, e.g reading your article is costing them time so ultimately they want/need to gain something useful, if they don’t gain from your blog, they may not return. Hence writing valuable content target at your market, therefore your readers, is essential for success. As the average time spent, plus the number of return visits rise, so does the value of your blog.

For those who choose to display advertising, charging too much is not going to encourage repeat business or positive referrals, but charging too little can lead to poor returns. Trying to get a good balance is essential. You may have seen I have added Adtoll and Project Wonderful ads to this site, they are great as the cost of advertising is set by demand and number of readers therefore leading to a fair value for advertising for both parties.

Promotion

If no-one knows about a product it wont sell, If no-one knows about your blog it wont get read.

Promote it, tell the world about your wonderful blog and how it can help them or why they need to read it.

This can be accomplished by many ways, such as web directories, search engine listings, forums, commenting on other blogs, social marketing, exchanging links, widgets (entrecard, blogrush) and word of mouth (tell friends and family) e.t.c.

Placement

Again open to interpretation, for a normal product it describes how many outlets you have got for your product. For a blog this could be seen as how many incoming links you have got, as mentioned within promotion. Network with other bloggers and try to exchange suitable links with your blog. If your link compliments their content, the visitors you get are more likely to be interested in your product, your blog. Therefore could become potential readers/subscribers. A link from a random site will not give you ‘customers’ for your target audience. Targeted traffic is essential.

Overall I hope this has given a useful introduction to the marketing mix and applying it to your blog. Applying all 4 P’s will give you synergy or to rest of us 1+1+1+1 = 5. I will discuss further the 4 P’s individually in future posts, so stay tuned!

Cheers,

Martyn.