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Unhappy With SEM? You’re Not Alone

By Steve Baldwin in Marketing

A company called X+1 released a study last week   that highlighted the pain felt by many buying keywords from Google and the other engines. Satisfaction with the performance of their companies’ SEM campaigns was egregiously poor: on a scale of 1 to 7, only 12% of respondents gave SEM a top-ranked 7, with 57% ranking SEM a 1 or a 2. Performance satisfaction with fairly simple search campaigns (30 to 100 keywords pointing to customized landing pages) didn’t do any better: a full 42% reported being either “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied.”

The study didn’t really explore what these marketers were doing wrong, but contained a few clues worth mentioning. About 60% of survey respondents were doing SEM in-house. I’m not going to say that it’s impossible to conduct competitive SEM campaigns in-house, and I’d need to know a lot more about the level of automation and staff experience of such in-house teams before laying blame, but it’s still a warning sign. Another cause for concern: key SEM decisions were often made by fairly low-level people, including analysts (48%), strategy/results people (45%) and implementer/tacticians (36%). I’m not saying that these people aren’t qualified to accomplish operational search tasks, but I must question their suitability for high-level tasks such as procuring a suitable SEM agency.

Disappointment over SEM’s performance didn’t seem to dampen these marketers’ willingness to lay out more money in the months ahead. Most (65%) of survey respondents reported that they were planning either to spend the same amount of money in 2009 that they spent last year, with a handful (13%) planning to spend 20% more. I’d hate to think that this is a case of “throwing good money after bad” but one must hope that the survey respondents are taking active steps to reform their operations before handing the search engines even more money.

Unfortunately, there’s no magic bullet for all the dissatisfaction. SEM agencies (and yes, I work for a SEM agency) will likely use this data to hammer companies that continue to do SEM tasks in-house, promising to ride to the rescue. Unfortunately, the reputation of many SEM agencies isn’t exactly stellar; otherwise “agency churn” wouldn’t be as high as it is. Sadly, there are situations in which agencies have done a far worse job with search tasks than a qualified in-house team. Spending more to better train in-house search teams and equip them with an appropriate level of automation will help some, but such investments are difficult to justify in a recession, and the fear that one’s best-trained people will up and leave when the economy improves is well-founded.

If there’s one sure cure for avoiding disappointment, it’s to manage your expectations correctly. Paid search is an exceptionally difficult marketing medium to master, despite the perception (promoted by the search engines) that it’s a self-serve, plug-and-play road to profits. Here, failure isn’t just an option: it’s practically guaranteed for the unwary and the unequipped. Buyers must always be wary, whether they’re buying keywords, staffing in-house teams, or shopping for SEM agencies. The good news is that if you approach this medium with fear, respect, caution, and a first-rate, executable plan, you just might wind up being happy with your results.

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Steve Baldwin is editor-in-chief at Didit, an agency for search engine marketing and auctioned media management based in New York. You can reach Steve at steve.baldwin@didit.com.

Why Internet Marketers Love The Rain

By Cary Ganz in Marketing

There have been more rainy days in the northeast than one can possibly imagine. The weather is obviously playing a role in the way internet marketers approach their daily tasks. But, this article has nothing to do with the effects of global warming.

Instead, I realized today that rain is the best friend of the internet marketer for several reasons. Many of these reasons relate to my six year old son but let me explain…

As an internet marketer myself I walk around with a little blue pad with a list of daily, weekly and monthly tasks written down in order for me to be sure to complete certain tasks on time. Now I know I should be using some kind of PDA instead, but the blue pad is just annoying enough, sticking out in my pocket, to make sure that I don’t forget it’s there. PDAs etc are just too easy to ignore.

So, what are the reasons rain is the best friend of an internet marketer?

Reason #1: The Sun Isn’t Shining - Usually, I would be at my computer trying to finish all of the items on my little blue pad trying to ignore my six year old son’s pleas to play in the yard. Kicking a soccer ball or taking a swim in the pool on a hot, steamy day is difficult to deny. Rain sort of puts a stop to all of this frivolity.

Reason #2: Watching The Media - Rainy days are days for the movies…or so I was told when I was a kid. Now that I’m all grown up, rather than heading to a movie theater, I relaxed with a mug of coffee and reviewed a video directly on my computer screen. OK, it’s not as much fun, but sometimes watching great videos can be a great way to spend time on a really rainy and story day.

Reason #3 - No Distractions - As most of you, there are always distractions when you work out of your home. Postman, FedEx, gardeners, pool guy etc. all have a real need, for some reason, to ring my doorbell to tell me something I really have no reason to hear. On rainy day, no such thing. They all stay home!

Reason #4 - Creativity - Somehow, when all of these distractions; six year old son, no postman, no gardener, no delivery guy etc to bother me just when I need to really dig down deep and be creative.

Now, I fully realize that there may be many other businesses that may also do better in the rain while others may not do as well. However, anyone that works at home and needs to be fully focused can easily relate to this rainy day phenomenon.

On my little blue pad are numerous tasks that seem to just get done a bit better when the sun is hiding behind those dark black clouds.

A perfect case in point occurred today (which may vary depending upon when you reading this article) when I was finished with my blue list tasks (a topic for another article) and I still had some time to spend since in no way was I going out to play in the rain. So….I decided to develop a quick web page, create a free ebook for my loyal subscribers, add a post to my autoresponder and send out an email offering this free ebook to my entire list of subscribers.

Conclusion - This may not sound like much but if the sun was shining no such free gift would have been created and my loyal subscribers would have lost the positive information contained within that report. Plus, rainy days are just perfect for reading free reports…..

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Get your own copy of , “Profiting From Web 2.0 Sites” - Leverage Your Business and Marketing Power On The Latest Wave on the Internet - written by Cary Ganz, Creator of the Newbie Phenomenon Click Here

Growing Your Business with Online Marketing

By Enzo F. Cesario in Marketing

As a business owner, you know that one of the keys to a successful year is promoting your business. No matter what size your business is, marketing and promotion need to be addressed. Marketing has become a daunting task with the increasing number of online start-up businesses.

And now, along with the traditional offline marketing methods, there are many online marketing tools and methods available.

Online Marketing is also known as Internet Advertising, web marketing, web advertising or e-marketing.

There are many benefits to marketing your business online. Here are a few.

Lowering Your Costs

A recent eMarketer article (http://www.emarketer.com/Article/aspx?R=1007064) sites that “in the wake of the global economic downturn, marketers worldwide are shifting more of their budgets into cheaper, more-measurable categories. In most cases, that means online.”

Your marketing budget is only so big and online marketing can stretch it even farther for you. TV and radio spots are expensive, printing costs for corporate and product brochures are expensive and traditional mailings cost not only in materials and postage, but deplete the environment as well. Why not direct potential customers to your website for information on products and services? Your website is your brochure, a marketing tool available 24 hours a day to prospective customers. Your revenue potential will increase while your costs diminish.

Offline marketing ads for newspapers, TV and radio are for a limited time and you pay for the time slot and space. In online marketing, your ads potentially can stay up longer and over time you end up paying less. Using article marketing, you could either write an article yourself or pay someone else to write it. When that article is distributed online, it stays on the Internet for many years. For a small cost, you’ve placed a marketing proposition that stays around indefinitely, pointing potential customers to your website and your products and services.

Compared to traditional marketing or telemarketing, email marketing costs very little. These targeted messages go directly into the homes and offices of your potential or existing customers.

Reaching a Larger Market and a Targeted Market

The Internet allows people from all over the world to do business with each other.

From another recent eMarketer article, (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1006988) in 2009, more than 65% of Americans are Internet users. They’re not only checking e-mail and Twittering, they are shopping for products and services.

With traditional media, your ads are restricted to a specific location for a limited time. When you promote your business online, you reach a larger audience than you would ever be able to reach otherwise since your marketing activity is not restricted by location. More potential customers always equal more sales opportunities.

Online marketing allows you to target specific demographics such as age, location, gender and income levels and in many cases allows you to track the behaviors of these groups as they interact with your online marketing.

It can also bring a branding campaign to life in a new way. This unique consumer interaction with your brand can leverage emotional links to your brand. Instead of a brand talking to a customer, your customer can interact with and experience your brand. This is intelligent brand marketing. You can influence people at the perfect time - their time, right when they are looking for information, comparison shopping and possibly buying.

Flexibility and Tangible Tracking

Online marketing can include email, newsletters, blogs, microblogs, podcasts, video and social media sites. All of these outlets have the ability to be flexible. An ad placed in a magazine or newspaper can’t be changed until the next submission. With online marketing you’ll know very quickly if a campaign is working and you can change wording or graphics and adapt product information to match changing market conditions.

The Internet also removes any guesswork from measuring campaign results. Using web analytics, you can measure the number of visitors that a campaign brings to your website, how long they stay and the average number of pages they visit. This important information along with the flexibility, allows you to improve the conversion of your campaign and to increase your return on investment.

Instant Conversion Ability

Online marketing allows you to convert a shopper to a customer instantly. A potential customer reading a traditional newspaper ad does not have the ability to click a mouse and buy your product or service immediately. Offline marketing involves more time and money to convert a shopper into a sale.

Online ads allow direct response. Consumers can click to learn more about a product, sign up for a newsletter or RSS feed, or buy right then and there. This will in turn create a database for you, which, with email marketing, will allow you to reach people who have already expressed an interest in your product or service. And online marketing allows you to sell to anyone, anywhere and at any time. You’re not restricted by time, geography and location considerations.

Internet marketing includes strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click marketing (PPC), article marketing, blog marketing, online brandcasting, social media marketing and many more interactive marketing services.

While these strategies may seem daunting at first, with a little research, you can use some of these tools to help you optimize your website and increase web traffic. Or, if you have it in your budget, there are companies that specialize in many SEO services.

There are many benefits to both online and offline marketing. A mix of the two might be just what your business needs to grow.

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Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat, the only online marketing and advertising company employing Brandcasting, the most effective way to brand your company on the web. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. The approach is simple, highly effective and affordable. Learn more at: http://www.Brandsplat.com/

12 Strategies for Effective Email Marketing Campaigns

By Chuck Matthews in Marketing

Most people do not send effective email messages. I know. I spend a lot of time analyzing email messages for our clients, and measuring and tracking their effectiveness.

Whether you send large email newsletters or just use email to communicate with friends, colleagues and customers, following these twelve strategies will make your email more effective. So, here’s my list, compiled and crafted from years of experience and quantitative analysis of tens of millions of messages we’ve sent out for our clients:

1. One Main Message Per Email:

The most effective email messages have one main idea or concept. I spent a summer as an intern at the White House, helping to read and answer the mail. The writing staff taught that the strongest messages were ones that didn’t distract people with extraneous information. Before you start writing a message, write down what you’re trying to communicate. Or at least think about your message before you start writing.

The most effective messages are ones that are crisp, clear and concise.

2. Keep it Short:

If you’re like me, the phone rings off the hook, people walk over to your desk to ask you a question, and other people are instant messaging you. And then your cell phone starts ringing. It’s enough to make anyone a bit crazy and give you Attention Deficit Disorder. Our collective attention spans are very short. People simply have too many distractions to wade through a really long email.

You might think they need all of the information. But when people are faced with dense blocks of text, many people’s eyes glaze over. And then they ignore the entire message. And thus, the most effective email messages are short. Two or three short sentences in length. Perhaps a couple of bullet points. And perhaps the short message is followed by supporting material, an attachment or a link to more information on a website. Enough said. I’ll try to keep this section short.

3. Keep it Relevant:

I believe that attention is the most important asset of any business or organization. What do I mean by this? If your messages are relevant, your recipients will pay attention to what you are trying to say. If you send email that isn’t relevant — they will quickly stop paying attention to your messages.

It’s easy to get into a mentality where you want to send everything to everyone. And with email newsletters or mass broadcasts, it’s not that expensive to do. However, once someone feels your messages aren’t that important, they will simply stop reading them.

4. Reply Early & Reply Often:

With the huge volume of spam, it’s tough to know if your message got through. Right now, four out of every five emails sent over the Internet today is spam. With so much junk, it’s easy for your message to get lost, trapped in a junk mail filter, or simply piled up in someone’s ever-expanding inbox. So you start to worry when you haven’t heard back from someone that you emailed a couple of days ago. Hmmmm, you say. Did that person get my message? Should I send it again? If I do, will that bug them? Am I being too pushy?

So when you’re on the other side of the email message, it’s really important to reply early and reply often. What you’re doing is letting them know you (a) received the message and (b) that you care.

5. From Line:

The single most important part of an email message is the From line. If the person you’re sending to doesn’t recognize your name, your message will be at best skipped over. At worst, it will be simply deleted without opening. Most email programs show a friendly display name instead of the plain email address.

The From line of your email (friendly display name) should have your full name and organization in it. The culprit is that many people have only their first names listed in the friendly From display line. Most of the time the messages aren’t too racy, but with email programs that automatically fill in an email address when you start to type a first name, it’s easy to email the wrong person something that could be seriously career limiting.

6. Subject Line:

After the From line, the subject line is the second most important part of an effective email. If you forget to include a subject line, your message is much more likely to go into a junk mail folder, or just not be opened.

Email marketing professionals live and die by subject lines. A good subject line will sum up what the message is all about, but still entice someone to open the message, read it, and take action. Including the company name in the subject line can increase open rates by up to 32 percent to 60 percent over a subject line without branding. (Jupiter Research)

7. Personalize Each Message:

Except when being called into the principal’s office, everyone likes being called by their name. In this impersonal world of email messages, people like to know that you know who they are, and that you care about them as a person.

Nothing is worse than a highly demanding email that is sent without being addressed to someone by name and is out of context. I’m much more willing to help someone who personalizes the message to me, and gives me a non-threatening reason why this needs to really be done by tomorrow.

8. Always include your contact information:

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve not returned a call promptly because I didn’t have someone’s contact information readily available. In this age of iPhones, Blackberries and cellphones, it’s rare that I have a phone number memorized. So many people rush through their phone number, making it virtually impossible to write down the number without having to go back and listen to their message a couple of extra times.

Ideally, you should always give your phone number, say it slowly, and repeat it twice so that someone can write it down and then make sure it’s correct. Effective emails always include a signature line with contact information. You should include your contact information in every new message or every message you reply to.

9. Strong Call to Action:

In direct marketing or email correspondence, most of the time you want someone to take a specific action when they receive your message. The most effective email messages always have a strong call to action, telling the recipient what you want them to do.

Email is a low context medium. It doesn’t transmit behavioral clues like voice inflection that might otherwise indicate what you want a person to do. So it’s important to be direct and ask what you want the other person to do. It sounds basic, but it’s a key to effective email.

10. Paste Links & Get on the Same Page:

How many times have you felt that the person receiving your email just isn’t on the same page as you? A lot of times it’s literally true. You might be thinking that they are looking at one page on a website, when in fact they are looking at something completely different.

I know I’ve been frustrated by this in the past. Simple pasting a link into an email is the best strategy. Again, it seems simple, but it can mean the difference between confusion and clarity. Sending someone the exact link to the website page you are discussing gets everyone on the same page.

11. Use Folders & Filters:

If you’re like me and you receive a lot of email, you can use folders to store messages from different people or clients. In most email programs, you can set up automatic rules (often called filters) that will place all messages from Joe into a specific folder. That way you can review all of the messages Joe sends over to you, reply to the ones that need attention, and not have to spend the time moving the messages from the inbox to another folder when you’re finished.

This one strategy has made me amazingly more efficient at dealing with the large volume of email I receive each day (usually about 950 messages per day).

12. Know when email doesn’t work:

Pick up the phone instead… Email remains one of the primary ways that businesses communicate internally among their staff, and externally with their customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. However, make sure you recognize when email is losing its effectiveness.

It’s easy to hide behind email when we don’t want to speak to a scary client or team member. I’ve been guilty of that as well when I have a million things going on. But sometimes a three minute conversation can clear up the confusion inherent in five days of back-and-forth email messages.

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Chuck Matthews - Most people do not send effective email messages. I know. I spend a lot of time analyzing email messages for clients, and measuring and tracking their effectiveness. Whether you send large email newsletters or just use email to communicate with friends, colleagues and customers, following these strategies will make your email more effective. So, here’s my list, compiled and crafted from years of experience and analysis of millions of messages.

Source: http://www.submityourarticle.com

Permalink: http://www.submityourarticle.com/a.php?a=59693

How to Make Money Online With your Online Business Ideas

By Peter Nisbet in Marketing

Great Online business ideas are all very well, but you won’t make money online using them if you don’t know how to. To make money you have to formulate a business plan, and for that you must set targets, and targets need a goal. Without a goal to strive towards you will not succeed, so it is important that in addition to the idea, you also know how to use it.

It has often been said that a failure to plan is a plan to failure, and nothing could be truer. A simple goal to set, though perhaps not easy to achieve, is to decide how much money you want earn this year. Don’t be unrealistic and decide on a million dollars in the first 6 monhts, but be realistic: say $75,000 in your first year.

You can then break that down into monthly amounts, starting small and increasing each month, which will give you the basis of your targets. You should then plan how to meet these monthly targets. That is a good sound basis of a strong business.

However, you now have the problem of how you are going to make that money online from your great online business ideas. There is a large number of ways in which you can make money online, some of the most popular being|:

1. Creating your own product or service.

Maybe you know about something or can do something that others will pay for. You might be a children’s entertainer or a hypnotherapist. Perhaps you can write en eBook about breeding dogs, or make a video series on maintaining your own car.

I know of one person that made a fortune by making series of short videos of how to carry out simple household maintenance tasks, such as changing an electrical plug, changing a tap or faucet washer, and even putting in a new sink and laying a carpet.

A simple idea, yet it is one that has a massive customer base. Just think about all these guys that don’t know one end of a screwdriver from another, or all those women that live alone and need some help. That’s one of the best online business ideas I have come across, and he makes a fortune from it.

Think of what you are good at, or what you have knowledge of, and work out a way of packaging that knowledge or these skills in a way that would sell. I am a professional article ghostwriter, and make money online by writing articles for others to use to promote their products and their websites.

2. Sell somebody else’s product

If you are unable to produce a product of your own, then make money online by selling somebody else’s product. Everybody involved in internet marketing is familiar with the term ‘affiliate marketring’ even if they haven’t been involved in it. Affiliate marketing is selling a product for somebody else in return for a commission.

If that product is able to be delivered online or by email - by email or downloaded - then that commission could be 50% or higher, since there is no replacement cost. Unlike a tub of vitamins, an eBook or software application doesn’t have to be produced again once it has been sold, so the vast majority of the selling price is profit. You can therefore be paid more for selling it. 50% is about minimum for such items, and some go as high as 75% or even 80%.

3. Others

Among other ways of making money online are multi-level marketing (MLM), where you recruit others to sell products for you, you receiving a commission on their sales, buying on eBay, and selling the same items for more than you paid for them, buying items in bulk when they are in high supply, and selling at a high price when they are scarce (e.g. certain toys at Christmas time), and many others.

Each of these money-making techniques has one thing in common: you must learn how to achieve your goals and how to market what you are doing online. Even your eBay business has to be promoted by means of your ‘product description’. If you have any great online business ideas that you believe could make you money, it is important that you learn how to use internet marketing properly, and how to take advantage of all the tools that there are out there to help you to succeed.

Most businesses need a web presence, either as a traditional website or some other presence on the web such as a Squidoo lens or participation in social networking. They will also likely require software, and have to learn how to use it, and also learn how to drive traffic to their wesbite and what to do with it once it gets there - potential customers. Your business cannot succeed without customers.

This is where most people begin to fail. In fact 99 people out of every 100 that try to earn a living online fail. They fail for one of 4 reasons:

1. Lack of Planning

They did not have a clear objective in mind and did not plan properly. The started their business on shaky ground and looked on it as a hobby. They fell into one of the main traps of working at home: worked part-time, and took time off whenever they felt like it rather than set out the daily tasks needed to meet their targets and work until they were completed.

2. Lack of focus: Information Overload

They did not focus, and jumped from one program to another. They had too much information, and were unable to give any one method of making money online the time to work for them. They tried too much at one time and so failed in everything.

3. Lack of Perseverance

They gave up to soon. It takes time to build up a successful online business. Unless you are extremely lucky, there is no such thing as ‘get rich quick’. It is not easy work, making money online, but the succesful are those that persevere during and after failure. Most don’t!

4. Lack of Knowledge

This is the least reason for failure. In this internet age nobody need fail through a lack of knowledge - everything you need to know is out there, yet many people try to do it themselves without getting the information they need. Learn from the work of others: do not reinvent the wheel. It may be trite, but it is certainly true.

Use whatever training courses are available out there. I know that it could cost a lot of money, but it is possible to learn everything you have to know without spending any more than twenty or so dollars each month.

You mjust not fail for any of these avoidable reasons. It is a shame that so many dreams are shattered for a lack of planning, focus, commitment and perseverance, and a lack of knowledge. All are avoidable. Put your unique online business ideas into practice by finding out how to do it the most effective way, and learning how to use the tools that are available to you.

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You can get all the knowledge you need to start making money online through Peter’s membership site. Check it out here: Online Business Ideas - Don’t fail through a lack of knowledge or of the tools to succeed.

Why People Fail to Make Money Online: How to Achieve Internet Home Business Success

By Peter Nisbet in Marketing

There are a number of reasons why most people fail to make money online, and why their internet home business is doomed to failure from the outset. If you can understand these reasons why 99% that start fail to be successful, and consequently avoid them, then you can be one of those 1% that make a comfortable living working online from home.

Some of the major reasons for failure are outlined below: keep them in mind and do your best to avoid them.

1. A Failure to Plan is a Plan to Fail Although this is a massively abused cliché, it is true nonetheless

To achieve success with an online business you must have a strategic plan and must set targets over various time-frames. Get a sheet of paper and a felt tip marker, and write down in bold letters exactly what your objective is: “I Want To Earn Enough This year to Buy a New Dream House”, or “I Want To Leave The Day Job By Christmas”. Stick in a prominent place where you see it every day.

Set targets for your year, each month and each week. Have a daily list of tasks to be completed to enable you to meet these targets. Review your plan and your targets, and make changes to suit progress: IF YOU FALL BEHIND, THEN WORK LONGER HOURS. Which takes us on to Number 2:

2. It’s Your Job, Not a Pastime

Just because you have no boss to report to doesn’t mean an internet home business is not a job. Many people fail to make money online because they don’t take their business seriously enough: they take time off when they feel like it, finish earlier in the day than they did in their regular job and find it difficult to concentrate on tasks.

You must not fall into this trap, and setting daily tasks and targets to meet will help you to get through the work needed to be successful in making money online. An online business is hard work to start with, although it does get easier. However, if you enter into it thinking it easy money, then you are in for a shock and you will likely fail.

3. Get Rich Quick? No Chance

This leads nicely into the get rich quick syndrome from which many people appear to suffer. Those starting an internet home business looking for quick success and to become very rich in a matter of weeks - or even days - are in for a huge fall. Such people make up a good proportion of the 99% that fail to make money online, and if this is you then change your mindset immediately.

If you knew a foolproof way to get very rich by spending only a couple of hundred dollars would you tell everybody else about it? Of course not! You have no idea how many of these ’schemes’ involve you paying money to somebody who will tell you their system: to charge people money for a get rich quick scheme that is charging people money for a get rich quick scheme. Nobody has any online program other than telling people to do as they do - collect their money and then tell them to do as you are doing.

Keep completely clear of these because eventually there will an awful lot of losers.

4. Lack of Focus

Information Overload! How many different ways of making money online have you seen advertised? There are literally hundreds. I won’t go into any of them right now, but will just say that a very large proportion of failures is due to a lack focus on any one of them.

Many people spend an awful lot of money paying for loads of eBooks, ways to make money on the internet, ways to avoid failing to make money online, software, mentoring and everything else on offer out there. Rather than settling on one and targeting that they start on many different programs, and when they fins that they are not making anything they leave it and try something else, and so on, and so on.

Target just one and focus on that. Spend all your time and effort on it and you might be very surprised. Because the thing is that most of these programs and ideas actually do work! It’s just that people don’t give them enough time.

If you heard that jigsaw puzzles were fun to do would you buy up twenty of them and then start them all, and finally give them up because they are no good? Of course not: you would complete them one at a time and think that jigsaw puzzles were great, and eventually you would be able to work on twenty at a time. The same is true of online income streams.

5. Where Do I Start?

Lot’s of people just don’t know where to start. They are bewildered by the choices available; by the number of different ways in which the can make money online. There are so many that they don’t know what form their internet home business should take.

Sure, they know that they WANT their own business, and they know that they might even NEED a home business, but the problem is WHAT home business and HOW they find out what is available without getting burnt.

That’s when you should be looking for a site that offers regular information, teaching and product reviews, so that you can be helped by like-minded people that have been exactly where you are now and understands your problems and knows how you feel when that credit card bill comes through the door, but you haven’t the money to pay.

Internet business membership sites are ideal to help in this way, and not only do you normally have permanent information on the website that you can refer to whenever you feel the need, but also special members-only products. They are not gifts, because you pay for them with your monthly membership fee, but nice to get nevertheless.

If you want to make money online, and want to start up a successful internet home business of your own, then a good live online membership site can help you more than any individual eBook or program that is starting to get obsolete the day that you purchased it. Internet home business success is based upon sound knowledge and access to expert help when you most need it.

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You now know why people fail. To make sure that you are not one of them visit Marketing Membership for details of a membership offering you detailed help with each of the above problems. If you are not yet ready, then try Online Business Ideas where you will find more reasons why people fail.

The $7 Product - Myth, Reality, Or Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?

By Mike Adams in Marketing

You may have noticed the explosion of $7 products and the $7 script phenomenon. You could hardly miss it!

This all started when a well-known marketer released an ebook in which he contended that $7 was the perfect price point for impulse buys. He claimed that if a product was $7 or below, people were more likely to buy because the price was in the ballpark of what they would pay for other impulse buys, like going out for lunch. And of course he then released a $7 script designed to sell things for, you guessed it, $7.

The next thing you knew, products that were previously selling for $19.95 or $27 were selling for $7. $7 products were everywhere.

Now most direct marketers will tell you that if you that if you have a good offer and good copy, you are usually better off selling for more rather than less. Logically, it makes more sense to sell a $97 product than a $7 product. Theoretically it’s the same amount of work.

I have noticed though, at least with my lists, that there really does seem to be a dramatic increase in sales when the product is priced at $7 or under. I often get as much as an 8% conversion or more at $7 compared to a 1-3% conversion at $27. That seems weird to me. After all, $27 isn’t really a huge price tag either in today’s economy. But with that difference in conversion, a product may actually produce more dollars in total sales at a $7 price point than at a $27 price point!

So is there really something magical about the $7 price point? I think there is. But I think it’s the magic of expectations. You see, so many people bought into the $7 phenomenon that tons of products were released for $7 each. So it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy. People are used to seeing ebooks priced at $7, and even collections of multiple ebooks priced at $7.

People are so used to it that when they receive an offer priced at more than $7, they subconsciously feel like it is overpriced. They could be getting 30 ebooks of 100 pages each for $27 - less than $1 per ebook. The problem is that with so many people selling things for $7, it starts to feel like a bad deal whenever the price of anything is more than $7, even though logically they would never expect to be able to purchase books so inexpensively in a bookstore.

I have noticed that even at $9, conversions can drop precipitously. There can be much more of a change than one would expect with only a $2 difference. After noticing this repeatedly, I can only assume that the $7 phenomenon has become an expectation, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So the question becomes what to do about the $7 phenomenon now that it has become such an expectation. The easy way out is to just price things at $7. And I must admit that I often do that, as it makes for easy fast sales. But I don’t always do that, because I’m not sure it’s good to feed the expectation of such a low price point. Most good products really are worth more than $7.

Maybe it’s time that someone comes out with a report extolling the magic of the $97 price point! After all, I would much rather be getting an 8% conversion at $97 per sale than $7 per sale, wouldn’t you?

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Mike Adams is the owner of Gigantic Resale Rights. Looking for tons of resale products to feed your $7 (or $97) sales? Get all of the resale rights products you will ever need with a membership at Gigantic Resale Rights.

The Road to Email Success Is Paved With Strategy

By Ryan Deutsch in Marketing

Another excellent Memorial Day weekend! Although I have to admit, I spent a little too much time thinking about email marketing (as I often do on long road trips in the minivan while my two kids are watching a movie and my wife is asleep in the passenger seat). On this particular trip I could not stop thinking about some excellent meetings my team and I have had with clients recently.

The overarching takeaway from all of these meetings is that email marketers seem to really be focusing on the strategy behind their programs. We’ve been spending more and more time with marketers on planning their digital programs — something too few email marketers are committed to. There seems to be a disproportionate amount of time spent reviewing email and campaign management technology (features) as opposed to the strategy that is meant to drive the use of that technology.

Consider my Memorial Day trek to Cincinnati to visit family. I was totally confident we would have a great weekend. Why, you ask? Simple: planning — a clear understanding of where we were starting, an agreed-upon vision for the trip and a concerted effort to get all the essentials lined up so that we could execute on the vision. Is your marketing team investing enough in the strategy behind your email programs? Here are a few questions to ask yourselves to be sure.

How do my programs compare to my competitors?

It is hard to get somewhere when you are unclear where you started. Just try to get directions from Yahoo Maps without entering a starting point. Email marketers need to look at four key areas to assess where their programs stand today (three internal and one external).

1. Data — where is it and how difficult is it to access?
2. Content — where is it and how rich is my content library?
3. Programs — what are all of the current email programs being delivered to consumers or other stakeholders?
4. Competition — do I understand what my competitors are doing? How does my competition use the email channel — what is their recipient experience around subscriptions, unsubscribe and transactional communications?

Do not take shortcuts on the competitive analysis; a clear understanding of how your programs stack up against your competition is the foundation for understanding where your email programs are today.

Do I have a program vision?

When my wife and I planned our trip, we spent the majority of our time discussing what we wanted the experience to be, what priorities we had for time with cousins and grandparent, and what a real “win” would be for the vacation, which boiled down to having the kids at the end of the trip kicking and screaming when we forced them to head back to Chicago. Email marketers should be committing the same focus to their strategic planning.

Once you have a firm understanding of how your business uses email and how that compares to the competition, it’s time to create a vision for what the email channel could be for your business. This vision needs to include specific success criteria so you can track progress towards your ultimate goal.

Here are a few examples of simple, trackable visions that we have seen clients develop in the last few months.

• Marketing will own all email communications to our consumers; specifically, in 2009, we will integrate marketing communications into our transactional email and drive (insert specific conversion metric, revenue, clicks, ad impressions, etc.) per week and per month. Transactional email deployment will transfer to marketing and be in production no later than Sept. 1.
• Marketing will increase conversion rates (click-through rates and purchases) by 35% across all email programs, solidifying competitive position and maximum leverage of the email channel.
• Marketing will make testing a core element of our programs, including performing spilt tests on all subject lines and offers.

Do I have a clear roadmap for executing the vision?

Unfortunately, most marketers start putting together a roadmap before they truly understand where they are or where they want to go. Picture the 20-page vendor RFPs that are all about the “how do I get there” without defining “where am I going?” While selecting the right partners and technology is critical, it is not as important as the first two steps.

One of the real pitfalls we see with email marketers looking to take their programs to the next level is the lack of executive buy-in. This is usually due to management’s limited understanding of the vision behind the email channel. Vision development is essential for communicating to the company the reasons behind additional investment in email marketing technology and resources. You would be surprised how quickly companies invest in programs backed by sound strategic vision.

At the end of the day, marketers should invest as much in strategic planning as they do in the execution of email. Many companies have internal expertise to rely on, while others turn to their solution providers for help. If it has been more than six months since you had a serious talk about email strategy, I suggest you and your team walk through an assessment of where you are today, your vision for the coming year and your plans to execute on the vision.

With the growing consumer sophistication, the addition of new online channels and the advent of the social web, email marketers cannot afford to be tactical, rather than strategic, for too long.

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Ryan Deutsch is vice president, strategic services & market development, for StrongMail Systems, a leading provider of commercial-grade solutions for marketing and transactional email.

Creating High-Leverage Marketing Assets

By Adam Urbanski in Marketing

The single biggest, non-renewable asset you have is your time. There are only three things you can do with it: waste it, sell it, or invest it. As an entrepreneur or a service professional, what you do with your time acutely impacts how much money you can make.

If this year you want to make clients come to you, earn a six-figure or beyond income, become the expert in your chosen field, positively impact lives of many people, gain fame and earn respect of your peers — you have to invest your time into creating marketing assets!

Just like the wealthy invest in assets that continuously appreciate and generate more money — like real estate, the savvy entrepreneurs invest in creating marketing assets that grow your business with no additional expense. What are those assets? Here is just a short list:

• Content
• Info products
• Referral partners
• Ezine subscribers list
• Customers list
• Incoming links to your website
• Testimonials
• Education

So if you want to become the ‘top dog’ in your industry, you’ve got to start doing what the ‘big dogs’ do.

To begin investing your time into creating high leverage marketing assets, use this short checklist:

DON’T design expensive logos. While establishing your uniqueness is important, people will not do business with you because you spent money on a cute graphic!

DO survey your ideal clients. Learning and understanding their needs allow you to offer them solutions they want — and that makes you incredibly attractive to them.

DON’T place ads that feature little more but your logo, phone number and address. Stop kidding yourself thinking you are the next IBM or Coca-Cola and that merely mentioning your name will get people pounding on your door!

DO create content that addresses the most pressing needs your prospects and clients are desperately trying to solve! Write articles, create special reports, publish an e-zine or e-book (or regular book), and record audio/video products. If you advertise — advertise those products not your services.

DO take time to learn and leverage free publicity. Research media contacts, take time to understand what type of information appeals to them, and become good at presenting your information in the format they like best.

DON’T attend every networking meeting you can find. Your time is much too valuable to try to attract business in one-on-one fashion. Contrary to the popular belief — networking isn’t cheap!

If you sum up the cost of your time, the price you pay to eat all that rubber chicken, and the energy to follow-up with people who will likely never do business with you — it’s a very expensive (and ineffective) way to find only a handful of qualified prospects!

DO develop informative presentations. Find large gatherings of your ideal prospects and become good at getting yourself invited as a speaker.

DON’T fiddle around adjusting the shades of colors on your website!

DO look for online communities that already attract your ideal clients and find a way to make them link to you. Ask them to post your articles. Make your site content rich so they will want to list it as a resource. Or sell an info product and invite them to become an affiliate.

DON’T beg for referrals!

DO create ways your current clients can easily ‘give you away’ (like an article or an audio CD)

DO build relationships with referral partners. Create ways in which they can introduce you to hundreds or even thousands of prospects at once!

DON’T try to figure everything out on your own — that’s a very expensive way to learn marketing and build your business.

DO invest in knowledge products and access to experts. An hour or two with a knowledgeable advisor can save you thousands of dollars in time and money wasted on wrong strategies and improperly implemented tactics.

Providing people with easily accessible information about solutions will position you as a valuable resource and an expert. These tools will not only attract all the new business you want, but they will allow you to charge the money you deserve and create the lifestyle you desire.

So stop wasting time eating all that rubber chicken and chasing people who will likely never do business with you nor refer a single client. Instead, start creating high-leverage marketing tools that over time will generate an avalanche of new business!

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2009 Marketing Mentors. All Rights Reserved. The author, Adam Urbanski, teaches service professionals and business owners how to develop better marketing strategies to increase sales and profits. His website offers more how-to articles and free tips to create a winning marketing action plan at http://www.themarketingmentors.com

The Third Missing Element In Online Marketing

By Michel Fortin in Marketing

In practically every major marketing teaching, course, or seminar I’ve come across, I have found that almost all successful marketing on the Internet really boils down to two essential factors: traffic and conversion.

Visitors and sales.

In fact, I’ve been to two-day Internet marketing seminars and workshops, where the first day focused on generating traffic and the second on building sales.

That’s all well and good. However, I believe there’s one more key component. It’s one that’s growing not only in popularity, but also in need and importance. It’s the one factor on which the other two hinge. And it’s one that seems to be the least talked about.

Incorporate this third element in your business model and chances are significant you’re going to see substantial, continuous growth in your business - and with a lot less effort than you’ve originally thought possible.

What is it? What is this third, missing element?

First, let’s talk about traffic for a moment.

One of the most common sources of traffic is, without question, the search engines. It’s the largest source of traffic online for almost every website.

But when I hear marketers talk about search engine strategies, optimization techniques, submission software, etc, it befuddles me to see there are still some marketers out there who rely heavily and strictly on them.

Don’t get me wrong. Search engines are important and they are an essential part of a marketer’s strategy. Learning and applying SEO are undoubtedly crucial and necessary.

But search engines (or any other traffic-generation strategy) are not, and should never be, your sole source of traffic.

While marketers must never discount the search engines, a savvy marketer’s portfolio must go beyond them.

Since marketing requires an investment of time, money, and energy, and like all other investments, you should look at managing your marketing just as you would manage your investments in the financial arena.

A well-balanced marketing portfolio consists of a combination of diversified strategies that are executed synchronously, diligently, and intelligently.

Look at it this way: many reputable entrepreneurs state that the surest way to achieve wealth is through multiple streams of income. Online, the surest way to achieve success is through multiple streams of both visitors and sales.

Your traffic must originate from different sources. The adage “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” applies just as much with your traffic as it does with your income.

Whether you write articles, buy classified ads, advertise with banners, bid on keywords, publish fresh content, interact in social media, or submit to the search engines, your marketing efforts must never rely on a single source.

An individual traffic source may generate just a small stream of visitors. But when you invest in multiple traffic sources and add them together, the total equals a high and consistent stream of visitors.

Of course, a single source may be more rewarding and effective than others. But like prudent financial investing, the key is to diversify by investing your marketing efforts into multiple sources in order to reduce your risks.

Sales are no different. If your business consists of only one website, or if it sells only one product, diversify your sales and develop additional streams of income.

In addition to looking at multiple ways to increase individual streams of income (e.g., through split-testing, list-building, adding upsells, etc), you should also look at building various streams of income, too.

For example, join third-party affiliate programs to sell related, non-competing products. Sell back-end products to your current clients. Monetize your opt-in subscriber list with special offers. Sell ad space on your blogs. Develop joint-venture alliances to bundle products or traffic sources together. Create continuity programs and membership sites.

The list goes on.

In short, develop additional streams of income and traffic, as well as different streams of traffic for each stream of income, too. Just be careful not to overextend your core funnel, dilute your brand, or lose sight of your target niche.

In other words, don’t be a jack of all trades and a master of none.

Diversify, but stay focused.

Nevertheless, if you only have one stream of income and it slows down to a crawl, for whatever reason (e.g., the economy, the industry, the competition, etc), you’re dead. Similarly, if one source of traffic slows down, dries up, or depletes entirely, the loss is minimal when compared to the whole picture.

However, earlier I said there’s a third element that has become an essential process to building a successful online business. Why? Because visitors and sales are not enough.

While everyone on the Internet extols the virtues of driving traffic and increasing conversions, this one element seems to have slipped off of many people’s radars. It’s the one element that probably deserves more attention than the other two.

And that’s credibility.

With its vastness and lack of one-on-one, face-to-face interaction, the Internet adds this third dimension to the mix that’s often not as apparent. It’s the need to develop credibility, as well as to look at multiple ways to communicate it and boost it.

Don’t just be credible. Look for ways to increase credibility and maintain it, too. There are a great variety of ways for doing this, from adding seals of approval to your website and adding elements of proof to your sales copy, to interacting in social media.

However, one of the easiest ways to improve your credibility…

… Is to develop and nurture relationships.

You may have some traffic and it might bring in some sales. But if you don’t have credibility, you have nothing. Nothing will grow your traffic and your sales, let alone your business, more than the relationships you create and keep.

And relationships are built on trust.

So to that end, look at every relationship that’s tied to your business as a partnership - whether it’s with your subscribers, your referrals, your affiliates, your joint-venture partners, your suppliers, your service providers, and of course, your clients.

Every person connected with your business, regardless of how they are connected to it, is, and should be considered as, a partner in your business. And every relationship deserves the attention, care, and concern that a partnership typically requires.

When compared to traditional offline businesses, online people are more important than ever before. Why? Because the Internet is cold and impersonal, and takes away the human element from the sales process. So people are easier to forget online.

Too many marketers nowadays look at their clients not as partners or even as people, but as hits, clickthroughs, and conversion rates - or, as my wife Sylvie Fortin would say, as “nameless, faceless wallets.”

Therefore, it goes to reason that we can use the Internet to supplant what is often easier to do offline, such as meeting people and interacting with them.

It’s one of if not the key reason behind the rise of social media.

(It’s also the reason why I spend some time on social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, or any other social website. I don’t use social media marketing as a way to drum up traffic or sales, but to create trust and build relationships.)

Trust is also the area on which the other two highly depend. Why? Because it is never enough to simply attract visitors. And it is never enough to simply sell visitors, either - as strange as that may seem. If you don’t believe me, ask the following:

Are your visitors highly qualified or simply curious? Are they impulsive and trusting, or leery and skeptical? Are they only buying once, or buying again and again? Are they silent, or telling the world about you, good or bad?

All three (i.e., visitors, relationships, and sales) are essential in the development of a successful online business.

So regardless of the marketing tactic, a successful marketing portfolio consists of numerous strategies focused on three core elements, and on developing them equally:

1. Building Traffic
2. Building Trust
3. Building Sales

Solid, long-term, sustainable-growth businesses rely on those three key factors. It is no longer enough to simply build traffic and converting that traffic. Today, it is just as important to build and maintain credibility.

Therefore, keep in mind that every single marketing activity you perform, from search engines to social media, must revert to, result in, or improve upon all those three.

Look at the successful marketers out there. Many will tell you their success is not based on a single source but on many. They are focused on all of the above three areas in some way, shape, or form. You should do the same.

Unfortunately, the web is also replete with marketers who rely on one area alone, or on a mere handful of tactics that amount to meager results. If they do produce results of any significance, they’re short-lived at best.

In other words, if you work with only one traffic-building source, one income-building source, and one credibility-building source, your business will do poorly - or it will be built on a shaky foundation that could crumble at any time.

So, think like a savvy investor.

Expand, balance, and diversify your online marketing portfolio. Focus on multiple ways to build traffic, trust, and sales. If you do, you will multiply your chances of online success.

Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, author, speaker, and consultant. Visit his blog and signup free to get tested conversion strategies and response-boosting tips by email, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to http://www.michelfortin.com. While you’re at it, follow him on Twitter.

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