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Since the dawn of online marketing, people have been trying to "build a better mouse trap" to funnel potential buyers onto sales pages and order forms. And while outlets such as classified ads, and lately social networks, have proved successful to one extent or another, they tend to lack the ability to solidify a real base of enthusiastic customers. This is one area where article marketing works, perhaps better than all others.

The Long Sales Page Dilemma

When you think about it, long sales pages became necessary in the era of the classified ads. Classifieds are short, maybe three line blurbs about a product or service with little room for elaboration. So it was necessary to use the sales page as the clarification and justification for purchases.

A marketer would have to use the sales page to do all the convincing and explaining in order to make the sale. Most times visitors would still simply scroll down to the bottom of the page to get to the "bottom line," or the price. At best, a long sales page could produce a 10% conversion rate, IF the visitor took the time to read the argument in favor of the product.

But in reality, the more serious customer wants to know just a couple of things, namely, "what you have; what it does; and how much it costs." Everything else on a long sales page is seen as fluff.

So this creates a dilemma for the marketer because he or she is forced to do all the convincing on a single page that, frankly will probably not be read in its entirety. Thus it becomes a hit or miss scenario for him.

The Social Resistance Movement

Social networking a sales promotion seems to be doing a little better than classified ads. At the least, a marketer can create a blog post, much like writing an article with some elaboration allowed, and spread it far and wide across the social platforms. However there seems to be an enormous group of "socialites" who resent having their "news" format used for advertising.

So the trick is to camouflage the concept of marketing so it can penetrate the front lines of social network puritans just looking to vote down or bury anything that smack of sales promotions. It doesn't always work.

On top of that, the social network system is all about getting on the coveted "front page," or convincing enough social enthusiasts to make your story popular by voting it up. This puts anything submitted in direct competition with real news stories, political pieces, and everything else the trends refer to as "hot topics."

The good part about social networking is, you get to network. You can build a large group of "friends and fans" who you can share your stories with in hopes that they will vote it up. The down side is, it's very difficult to determine what a friend or fan might actually be into. So again, we find the hit or miss scenario which may get a story voted up, but without sales conversion from the people we share the promotions with. Most often friends and fans who do vote up a story, do so to get you to vote theirs up in return.

The Logic of Article Marketing

So now let's take the shortfalls of classified ads and social networking and see how article marketing can remedy and counteract them . . .

Now no one is saying these other methods of promotion are wrong or useless. They have their merit for sure. But article marketing offers an entirely different opportunity the others do not.

>From a targeting perspective, articles are submitted to article directories and placed in a specific category so they're easily found by people looking for specific information on the topic. This enhanced relevance not only allows for more enthusiastic readers, but creates a more relevant and valuable back link to your site. (We'll get into back links in another article shortly).

Looking at it from a promotional aspect, articles can be used to build interest for a recommended product by touching on the benefits and explaining its value. This can alleviate the need for long explanations on a sales page and actually pre-sell a prospective customer long before they ever reach your sale page or order form.

If we look at this from a "real life" perspective, classified ads in magazines tend to get a much better conversion rate when there's a full length article somewhere in the magazine highlighting the value of the product the ad offers. And this stands to reason because, the article predisposes the reader in a favorable way and thus they are more likely to follow through having just read something about it.

Likewise, in the online world, targeted articles tend to predispose the reader favorably toward the recommended product they talk about. (Again, we'll elaborate on this in another article).

Finally, as we saw with social networking, article marketing can get you a following of people if you do it right. The difference however, is the following you get from article marketing is much more finely tuned and targeted than merely befriending other socialites. These people who follow your articles tend to be much more enthusiastic about the message, and so become a much higher percentage of buyers.

On top of this, when your articles are used as a teaching tool, these readers will gradually begin seeing you as an expert in your field which will increase the potential for sales. People tend to take the recommendations from others they can learn from much more readily than from someone simply promoting something. (More on this later as well.)

This article then becomes the first in a mini eCourse series on article marketing where we'll get into the real meat about how to create a successful article campaign that'll seriously enhance your online career. Article Marketing works wonders when done correctly, and you're about to learn how. Stay tuned!

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