You have a great product or service, and you’ve heard great stories from your friends, doing big business online.

Or maybe you read in your favorite newspaper/magazine about people making big profits online.

Now you think to yourself: man, where do I start? It’s so difficult – I dunno anything about computers, let alone the internet. And it’s gonna cost me 2 arms and a leg, and how am I gonna measure the results?

Phew! You’re at the right place! Sit back, take a sip of your favorite beverage and learn everything you need to know about marketing your product or service on the internet.

When you think online marketing, you must see the big picture, have a defenite plan and work that plan.

Consider the following:

1. You must do as much as possible, to be seen on as many webpages as possible, and get as much discussion about you and your product or service going as possible.
2. You must do so in as many formats as possible: text, video, images, directory listings, social media discussions, backlinks, interviews, paid advertising, classifieds and so on.
3. You must be able to create and grow a platform where you can interact with your clients and potential clients. This is done by using mailing lists, social marketing, polls and brand management.
4. Measuring the above is vitally important, as you can then make informed decisions on where to increase your efforts and where to decrease or even stop your efforts.

Let’s take Joe for example.

Joe has his own pizza place in his hometown, Metropolis. Using age old family recipes, Joe makes the tastiest, freshest and hottest pizzas in the world. After reading up on internet marketing and the profit that can be made, Joe decides to market Pretty Pizzas online.

After many hours of hard work, Joe has his IMPI – “Internet Marketing Plan Implementation“, ready:

1. He gets a website and names it prettypizzas dot com (availible at time of writing). He performs the necessary on-page SEO and uploads stunning images of himself, his pizzas, his restaurant and his happy customers.
2. He submits this website to all his local directories, and classified sites like Craigslist.
3. He also registers his restaurant with Google Places.
4. He registers with Google Analytics, as his first step in measuring all his online activities and other important statistics.
5. He makes a video of himself, his pizzas and happy customers, saying good things about Joe and his pizzas. He then uploads the video to Youtube and tells his customers about the video, and they must “Like” it, if they do.
6. He writes and submits articles, about the world of pizzas, to Ezinearticles.
7. He registers on Twitter, with@prettypizzas and tweets about his pizzas, his restaurant and his customers.
8. Joe then gets a Facebook Fan Page, related to his restaurant. On it, he has images, a video and an opt-in form. In the restaurant, he also gets his customers to “Like” his fan page.
9. He has a QR code made, which he puts up in his restaurant. With it, he shows his weekly specials and other exciting stuff.
10. Using some of the extra money Joe now makes, he starts PPC campaigns (Pay per Click), with Google and Facebook (all local). He remembers to measure the performance daily.
11. He finds forums and other blogs where pizzas are discussed and make useful contributions.
12. Joe loves pizzas so much, that he writes a book about it, and publishes and sells the book through Amazon. (He establishes himself as an authority in his niche). And makes extra money doing so! 

Or, instead of doing all the above himself, Joe decides to outsource all this to Adriaan at Hotgrin, and do what he loves most – making pizzas, baby!