Posted by Adam T. Sutton in Internet Marketing Systems	June 20, 2007

Online marketing works best with a solid foundation that builds lists

By Adam T. Sutton, Managing Editor, Mequoda Group, LLC

To have a solid online business, you need a solid online marketing system.

How solid is your online marketing? Is it really a system? Or is it just a few disjointed tactics?

A true marketing system is a concerted effort that acquires, builds and monetizes customer relationships.

It's easy to say "build a list, satisfy the customers, and start selling products," but it is harder to develop a system that will do it continually.

The best way to develop an effective online marketing system is to give it a solid foundation and plan ahead. Don't waste money on trial and error.

One component of this solid foundation is the Internet Hub website.

Your Hub should be designed to attract users and build your marketing file. That means the foundation for a marketing system is list building.

To attract users, the hub has:

• Strong search engine optimization
  
• Incentives like free content
  
• Other traffic conductors like PPC ads pointing to it
  
• Forums and other community building architecture

To turn users into names on your marketing file, the hub also has:

• OFIEs and OFINs
• Rapid conversion landing pages
  
• Floaters
  
• Freemiums (free products as incentives)

The Hub attracts users and gives them valuable content and community in exchange for their information, like an email address and full name.

There are other steps to building an online marketing system, but if you start by building a Hub you'll be on the path to profit.