The most important aspect of Internet Marketing is….

Short post today. If you are wondering why I am posting so often these days, I have taken “winter holiday” of sorts which in effect gives me some time to do nothing and enjoy my days. Of course, taking time off also gives me the benefit of having time to think which in turn sometimes will manifest itself in the form of a post. And make no bones about it….when it comes to internet marketing strategies, I am constantly thinking of ways to deliver what I consider to be the most crucial ingredient to making money online.

So, most of you have been doing this for awhile. What do you consider to be the most important aspect of internet marketing?

Since I have a lot of readers coming from Ben’s blog as well as students of court’s internet marketing school and Grizzly, I imagine that the huge majority of you will answer organic rankings. Others will say rather generic “internet marketer geek speak” like building a list. Still others will hold onto the notion that social traffic actually will mean something for whatever reason….

And I would say that all of the above are right but only because they fall under the umbrella of what I would consider to be the most important part for the online marketer. And I have a true story to illustrate my point before I give you the answer…

A year or so back, I had a bevy of eBay portals that were just getting a smattering of traffic here and there based on long tails. They were earning, sure, but I wanted more traffic without the PPC expense and I didn’t want to rely on the fickleness of google search for the traffic. (and good thing…they started devaluing eBay portals much like they did amazon portals a few years back). Besides, to call these sites “thin” would have been the understatement of the year. Other than the RSS feed from eBay, they had little to no content.

So, I decided that I was going to use Craig’s list to promote my sites, one of which was a pinball machine eBay portal.

Now, I have stated in the past that I am not as squeaky clean as some of my posts indicate and this will probably offend many but it is a strategy nonetheless. Also, understand that Craig’s List has recently come down hard on these tactics so I probably wouldn’t try this particular strategy yourself. What I am hoping that you come away with is the creativity of what I was doing…..

• So, I grab a few craigslist accounts and write an ad stating that I am selling blah-blah pinball machine. I say that it is going cheap and give some reason as to why I am selling it. I leave my email address and say that anyone that is interested should email me for more details. Now, I don’t have a pinball machine to sell so what I need to do is direct my potential buyers to a place where they may find what they are looking for….in this case, it is my ebay portal website.
• I set up my gmail accounts to autorespond and make it so it doesn’t do so immediately to make it appear that this is a real offer. In the autoresponder, it says something like “I need to take this ad down because I have reconsidered selling it/Someone already bought it/ect…ect….. but if you are still looking for a (fill-in-the-blank) pinball machine, you can check this site out…they are decent and have fair prices..ect…ect…”
• The end result was not only did I get traffic….I got targeted traffic…folks that were looking to buy pinball machines…and because the traffic was so targeted, my CTR to eBay was over 45%. In addition to this, eBay gave me an impressive score because not only did the traffic click through, it converted.
• The next step was to simply automate the process. Rinse and repeat the process with other niches.

Once again, this isn’t squeaky clean and could be considered deceptive but if you focus on that, you will be missing the point. I found folks that were interested in buying a pinball machine, found a way to speak to these people, and sent them to a place where they could find (maybe) what they were looking for.
So what is the most important aspect of internet marketing?

Finding people who want to buy what you are selling and give them an easy way to find you. This can come in the form of organic traffic. It can come in the form of pay-per-click traffic. It can come in the form of a no-followed link in the right place on another site which gets traffic for whatever reason. And yes….it can also come from social traffic. Sometimes it just takes a little creativity to figure out how to find them and more importantly…how they can find YOU.

While everyone else is searching for some paint-by-the-numbers blueprint for internet marketing and forgetting that traffic for traffic’s sake is nothing but a waste of bandwidth, you could be examining your market for quick and easy free “ins” to giving the person what they are truly looking for.

Everything else you read in regards to marketing online does not matter as much. Delivery is important, sure. But you can have the best delivery in the world and if you aren’t speaking to the right people, then it would be totally meaningless.

It is part of the reason why marketing in forums works so well. It is also why organic traffic is considered to be so juicy. It is also why most social traffic (but not all) sucks so bad.

Match the right offer with the right person and give them a way to find you and you will make money online. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.