Firstly, let me say that anyone that has a business whether it be online or offline, should be looking at develop a marketing one page plan, that incorporates using the Internet marketing techniques. It amazing how so many businesses miss MASSIVE opportunities by not exploring how that can leverage from the world wide web!. Using Article Marketing as part of your lead generation strategy is only one of many area's to explore.

What is Article Marketing and Why should you be exploring the idea! An article is written about a specific topic or niche that your business is in and submitted to article directories and traffic is generated from that article. Pretty simple to start with but there is one extra step that is required to draw more traffic to your website. Next step is to add or create "backlinks" (see my blog fore more on 'backlinks'). If you have not heard this term it is only a link in the article when clicked on will take the reader to the page you want them to visit. With sufficient backlinks you gain a higher recognition with search engines, increasing your page ranking increase on Google, Yahoo etc. Overall, quite an easy and nifty way to generate heaps of traffic your way

Your probably wondering, 'How Do I go About writing an article. I'm a business owner not a writer, I have no experience and don't now what to write!. Let's start thinking laterally about this and how you can get dozens of articles about your chosen topic onto hundreds of article directories with out spending weeks and months doing it.

Firstly, let's look at what to write about, how to write it, what the costs are and where to submit the artcles ..

1. Costs - The only real costs is your own time. Easy investment in my book. If you do outsource to a freelance writer (which is a great way to leverage your time) there will be some small costs but nothing in terms of the return on investment you will get from the increase in traffic.

2. What to write about - you probably talk about your business every day. Think about what customers or potential customers would normally be asking you. What type of 'keywords' are people using in normal conversation or searching the internet for (check out my Blog for more on researching 'Keywords') and brainstorm a list of 10 topics to write about. You may only come up with 5 'issues' customers actually have right now or want to know but you can then merge topics into each other in order to create multiple articles. Do a bit of brainstorming for 30 minutes, right down as many things on a piece of paper, with out pausing to think about whether it's right or wrong and by the end of the 30 mins you will have dozens of ideas not only to write articles about but potentially new product ideas to create new revenue from.

3. How to write the article - Keep it simple! Customers or potential customers don't want to be bamboozled with technical words or loads of information. Give them a little bit of FREE information, a teaser to what is on offer if they purchase your product or draw them to continue through to your website. Make sure your article is unique in some way. There are probably hundreds or thousands of similar articles on the internet. Using a "Spin" feature is common (and there are products out there that can do this for you) which will allow just enough uniqueness for each article. Filter your articles with the lots of 'keywords' that Google, Bing, Yahoo and others will love and start adding your 'backlinks' so people can click on to get further information or be directed back to your website or an affiliates website. Again Search engines thrive on 'backlinks'.

4. Where do I submit the articles? -There are literally hundreds of directories to submit articles too. There is also a viral affect with an number of these directories as other website owners can reprint your articles (under the condition they leave your author bio intact). Here are a few places to start but think about this; 10 articles (the same articles) submitted to 10 different directories, equals 100 articles with 'backlink' back to your website, product or what ever, helping increase traffic.

http://www.ezinearticles.com http://www.goarticles.com http://www.thesearchwarp.com http://www.articlecity.com http://www.articledashboard.com

How many articles/backlinks do you need to get to page one of say Google? More than your competitors. Do you own research by searching for articles with your chosen keywords and see what others are writing about. A great way to work out how to make your article unique. With careful selection of 'keywords' and 'backlinks' and submitting lots of articles to lot's of directories, you would get your desired result which is higher ranking in search engines and more traffic to your site or products.

Can I leverage my time and automate the process of Article Marketing? Yep, and a great idea to boot! If you do not want to write the articles yourself, you can pay someone on Scriptlance to do the writing. Be specific about your keywords and instructions for the writer. (Cost per article is generally $5-10 dollars USD). Free articles may also be taken from an article directory website, which allows republishing (as long as the author bio or link is left in tact). Try to keep this to a minimum, and have the majority of the content unique.

There are so many of these so called article submission products out there that you really need to be very careful in your selection. Again, do your own research but here are a few to consider!

I like the the phrase K.I.S.S -Keep IT Simple & Stupid. Set your self a goal or writing 10 article and submitting them to 10 directories and then go from there.