eMetaStar Blog Non-Mainstream Marketing

BloodBath & Beyond Gun Emporium, owned by the Hanson Brothers, came to us for internet marketing advice. Frustrated, Stinky Pete & Tex 'snake in my boot' Hanson tried affiliate marketing with a local popular newspaper, community magazine and since it was Georgia, Churches. In Georgia, you can carry a gun in Church now. No one would accept BloodBath & Beyond Gun Emporium advertising. Could be because of the name...BloodBath & Beyond Gun Emporium falls into the category of non-mainstream. Examples of mainstream could be soap, automobiles, hardware, groceries to name of few. Mainstream are products and services embraced by most all people as acceptable and non-offensive. BloodBath & Beyond Gun Emporium represents violence and sells products to a niche. Those who purchase weapons... So, how can we help Stinky Pete & Tex Hanson?First fundamental question, who are our potential and current customers. Where are they, how did they find us and what products will most of them buy? Simple enough... Mainstream or non-mainstream, same questions. Stinky Pete & Tex want to stay within the Georgia area or 'Geo internet marketing'. The Hanson brothers want Georgia searchers who are looking for guns to type in GEO keywords that lead them to the their web site and Emporium. The post popular items sold at the Emporium are AK-47 and 'Midnight Specials'. Hanson Brothers want those items featured along with a discount coupon redeemable at their store. Idea is to get potential customers into the store for shopping other products.We do some research finding moderately competitive GEO keywords both by checking keyword analytics and extraction from competitor web sites. A beautiful web site (domain name is a popular keyword) is put together with features on the AK-47 and 'Midnight Specials'. A printable discount coupon is displayed. Since the Hanson Brothers don't want to monotize their website, in other words purchase weapons over the internet, they display their inventory.The division between mainstream and non-mainstream now becomes more apparent. For our example, let's say the Social Networks (Facebook, Google+ pages, Google Marketplace, Manta, Angies List) are more stringent than expected. Non-mainstream doesn't really fall into their business plan as acceptable and not as much money is made. However, Social Networks are important because Google weighs heavily on measuring popularity. Visability on the Social Networks is one thing. It's easy to blog and have links back to your website. Social Networks shows popularity by how many liked your business page, shared and liked your postings.Social networks vary on how strict they are about content posted on a business page. Facebook can be tough and a penalty means losing all your work. So, let's see if we can get away with the following. Let's suppose the Hanson Brothers create a Facebook business page which features exotic game hunting and the weapons illustrated are stocked at their store. Instead of featuring the guns directly, beautiful pictures of wildlands in Africa are posted. We can setup a blog with entries posted on the Facebook Page or use contextual links back to the Emporiums website. Keywords, keywords, keywords... The Hansons want their Facebook Page to be found. Yes, those who search on Facebook can find their business page. Like the page, share the posting, like the posting. All measurables to Google and we keep close tabs on it's growth. Analytics include how many viewed the posting. Viral postings can catch you off guard...Of all the Social Network instruments of promotion, Google Products are the most important. Go figure! A Google+ business page is very powerful merely because your new domain may not show up on a Google search front page (SERP) but your Google+ posting will... So, instead of waiting for your new website to 'season', otherwords your keywords and links begin to take hold, searchers can find you on higher Page Rank sites. Remember, experience tells you how tolerant Social Networks are... Say, you could feature your weapon inventory directly on Google+, Pinterest and Tumblr but Manta and others might have a problem.Hanson Brothers come to us and talk about their frustration of having a banner advertising campaign. The local popular information web sites didn't want to advertise guns. We asked Stinky Pete & Tex what other items besides guns they sold at the Emporium. Bloodbath & Beyond also sells 'all weather' gear that doesn't neccessarly have to be used for hunting. Excellent but we have one problem. The name 'bloodbath & beyond'. So, let's do some research for moderately popular GEO keywords related to 'all weather' gear. Again, competitors and their keywords are extracted. We buy a 'keyword' domain and put together a web site featuring 'all weather' gear and where it can be purchased. Bloodbath & Beyond of course... Your local 'all weather' gear supplier. Just get them into the store and look at all the other merchandise. Same as before, start to promote using social networks and now the banner advertising campaign is acceptable. Were building an inbound linking campaign for the Hanson Brothers. We've done analysis of competitors links and beginning to see timeline graphs of their link building. We look for several domains that one competitor might own. We see hubs where closely related merchandise have arranged for swapping links. Diversification of links and Page Ranks of links are graphically examined. Also, we download Moz link analysis and with these measurable factors, weaknesses can be seen in search engine results. Other words, we see the #2 google search result has weaknesses in factors such as Moz Domain authority. We can beef up our measurable link variables and try to obtain the #2 position. As we go on, analysis becomes more granular.Last topic, one that becomes quite intriguing. Buying traffic... Brokers are in place that buy and sell traffic. In this example, GEO traffic isn't as easy to buy and sell. But, suppose the Hanson Brothers wanted to go national and have a monitized eCommerce website. A broker would assist them in buying traffic from related merchandisers and likewise could swap. The traffic can't be anything. It must relate to the Hansons products, otherwise it's worthless.To conclude, in more extreme non-mainstream, the Internet Marketer's choices become narrow and creativity is at a premium. Non-mainstream internet marketing, everything is for sale. Domains, links and traffic. Domains hold value with pagerank, organic seo, link value and monitization. Links are measured for value, purchased and swapped. Traffic streams, likewise, are a valuable commodity. All can be analysed and a forcasted price placed on them.Dedicated to Hugh Hefner - Genius of converting Non-Mainstream to Mainstream