Internet article marketing is a great marketing strategy provided your efforts follow proven marketing and writing tactics. This action marries well with accepted and proven marketing strategies and presumes that you know what those strategies are. Additionally, I have taken two specific actions that many others may ignore, but more about these later. Note: If you are curious now, read numbers six and seven.

First, if you use Internet article marketing as a strategy to increase sales, then follow the proven AIDA model. Internet marketing is still marketing with the Internet as the delivery vehicle. Your articles must:

ATTRACT the attention of both readers and search engines' robots through key words

INTEREST through the content from both the readers and the search engines

DESIRE for the reader to search for more of your articles because you have convinced them

ACTION from forwarding the article to someone else, leaving a rating, visiting your website, dropping you an email or giving you a call must happen

Second, do you incorporate the 7-P's of marketing. The first 4 - P's are fairly well known:

Product Price Place Promotion

However in article marketing, there are 3 additional P's:

Position - Are you placing your article in the correct position including keywords and the article submission site or portal.

Preference - Have you done the research to determine the reader's preference. What are readers looking to find in these types of articles?

People - Do you write to engage people? Some writers are so busy trying to sell themselves that they fail to recognize the needs of their audience. A wise man once told me "If you are telling, you ain't selling." Are your words tell more about you than telling more about how your insight can help others?

Third, do you infuse the 3-Q's?

Quality - Do you provide quality content? In the Internet, quality content reigns supreme.

Quantity - Do you have enough quantity as far as submitted articles to a specific site? When I first started using article submission as an Internet marketing strategy, I had the opportunity to speak with Chris Knight, founder of Ezine Articles. At that time, he indicated that 100 articles was the absolute minimum and hundreds of articles were necessary. This goes along with direct mail statistics that requires mailings of 1,000 to determine the effectiveness of your actions.

Qualify - Do your articles help to qualify prospects as well as your own subject matter expertise? If you are submitting articles in 10 to 15 different topics areas, you are diluting your ability to qualify your prospects. Pick 5 to 7 categories and focus all of your efforts within those topics.

Fourth do you infuse solid writing techniques specific to Internet readers? Remember the last P - people? People have less time to read than ever before. Your article must recognize this limitation.

Fifth, are you a good writer? Writing is a skill set that many learn, but good writers are truly hard to find. You may have exceptional qualifications as a national top speaker, consultant or coach, but these skills may not transfer to being a good writer.

Sixth, do you measure your results? This is all about marketing with the goal to increase sales. Are you measuring your results through number of reads, traffic to your site and Google page ranking, etc.?

Seventh, do you leverage the power of the process? Internet article marketing is a process. After measuring the results, what actions are you taking to improve the process? If you don't have a strategic plan, this might be part of the problem.

As a business coach, I can attest that Internet article marketing is a proven strategy to increase website traffic and number of clients. After 2 years of using this strategy, I am securing at least 1 executive coaching client per month from my site, at least 1 new monthly speaking engagement and my website traffic is increasing on a monthly average of 15-20%.

Some authors may continue to write articles that suggest Internet article marketing is an ineffective use of time and energy. After reading their articles, I believe that these individuals have failed to recognize that Internet article marketing is a multi-dimensional process that supports the attitude of slow and steady wins the race.