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Focus On Building Yourself A Qualified List Of Customers Who Are Eager To Hear From You

06 2008 Tuesday

By David Hurley in Marketing

Your primary focus as an Internet marketer should be on “permission marketing”* and not be quick sales!

Sure, you can set up a website with some great content and plaster it with banners and links to pages that pre-sell products and then link through to the products themselves.

You can even succeed in making a nice little income this way, provided you are driving enough targeted traffic to your site.

But how much of the traffic drives off again without a trace, never to return?

And how many of the people who do click through and buy the product return to you to buy again?

If your site is well designed and targeted then it is quite possible that some people will return and buy again.

But, how much better would it be if instead of trying to get people to part with their cash as soon as possible, you actually focused less on the quick sale and more on building a relationship with the customer?

By focusing on your prospect’s need for trustworthy advice you would stand a much bigger chance of turning your prospect into a life-long customer who trusted you, was eager to hear from you and bought your recommended products time and time again.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Here is a list of the steps you need to take to move towards a method of marketing that places the customer’s needs at the centre and turns the relationship into a dialogue rather than a shouting match!

1. Focus on gaining people’s permission for you to contact them about their needs.

Do this by making a squeeze page (or several) and also by adding a form to each page of your website. Include an incentive for people to sign up, like a compelling free report about stuff they need to know but haven’t seen elsewhere.

2. Link the form on your page to your autoresponder, which has been pre-loaded with a series of messages that will now go out to the subscriber.

3. While you might like to include a link or two to your products, don’t over-do the sales at this stage of the game. Instead, remember that you have not yet won your reader’s trust.

What you have to do in the early stages is set up a dialogue and also provide useful services and recommendations.

To do that, your email newsletters should be packed with useful information that is written in a lively and personal manner and focuses on the customer.

Also, provide free resources, tips and information that are genuinely useful. Don’t be afraid to include links to sites other than your own - subscribers will appreciate your generosity and return for more.

4. From time to time make your subscribers a new opt-in offer. Give them a good incentive and require that they give your some more information that you can use to focus on their needs more closely.

Those who opt in will be transferred from the first to the second mailing list.

The second list will be your more powerful list of clients with whom you have developed a stronger relationship of trust and who will be eager and happy to hear your offers.

That is the list you make your money on in repeat sales and sales of your primary products and services.

But remember, it is also the list you must look after most assiduously. The subscribers on the list have learned to trust you and building trust online with your customers is the key.

If you are tempted to sell them short at this stage for a quick profit, you will soon find that you have succeeded in undermining your credibility and your hard work will have been wasted. Remember, you are seeking to build a long-term relationship of mutual benefit, so don’t muff it by succumbing to short-term greed.

I have only described a couple of stages of this “permission marketing” model.

Moving your customers “up the permission-marketing ladder”* is the key to success. It does not have to be just a one-step move. You can implement several steps, each one moving the customer relationship to a higher and more personal level.

The role of sub-niches is also important here. As you talk to your list and invite a response, you should also be prepared to place different responses on different lists at the higher level.

With fewer subscribers on each niche list, you now have the opportunity to get to know each customer more personally and open up several lines of 1-on-1 dialogue with subscribers who are now repeat-buyers.

Because they have moved up several rungs of the permission-marketing ladder you know a lot more about them and are now in a position to offer them exactly what they need, and they are in a position, based on experience to trust your offers and enjoy your mailings.

They are customers who are eager to hear from you and willing to buy from you, so treat their trust like gold-dust.

NOTE

*See Seth Godin’s “Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends, and Friends Into Customers” (available on Amazon.com)

David Hurley is an Internet marketer who is based in Japan and is the owner of http://grasp-the-nettle.com, which focuses on success mentoring for Internet marketing start-ups. Get your own work-from-home Internet business set up free and find out how you can build an online business and master the net.

How Perfectionism Kills the Online Entrepreneur

06 2008 Friday

By Donna Gunter in Marketing

“No, I’m not ready to release my….(fill in the blank here with ezine, ecourse, ebook, blog, website, etc.) because it’s not quite ready. I need to…(fill in with your excuse here: do more work on it….have it edited….review the copywriting, etc.)”

How many times has a statement similar to that come out of your mouth? I know for me that it’s happened more often than I care to recount. I am a recovering perfectionist who used to utter some variation of the above sentence with great regularity.

What I’ve discovered in my time as an Internet entrepreneur is that my need for perfection in my products or marketing materials is simply another excuse to procrastinate. Yep, when I try and convince myself that the ebook needs more copy editing or that my website needs just a few more pages to make it say just what I want it to say, all I’m doing is creating plausible excuses to put something off for a few more days, or even weeks or months. Why? Because inaction is safe — you’re not putting yourself out there to the world to face possible criticism. The longer you excuse yourself from taking action, however, the more difficult it becomes to build a business and create the kind of life you want for yourself.

Don’t let yourself fall for your own fabricated excuses. Stop waiting for perfection. It’s never going to arrive. Better to release something that may not be perfect than to release nothing at all. How much money can you make on an ebook that no one knows about? Last time I checked, it wasn’t much!

Sure, you may fall under the scrutiny of other perfectionists in the Internet world who are gleefully waiting to tear you apart by pointing out your errors. Thank them for their constructive feedback, create a correction log, and let the criticism fall off of you like water off a duck’s back. In my experience, those critics who have the leisure time to point out the flaws of others really aren’t doing much with their own lives and businesses. That’s why they have the free time to correct the errors of others.

The whole notion of how perfectionism was holding me back was aptly illustrated at a Coachville conference I attended several years ago. The late Thomas Leonard, founder of Coachville, had brought up on stage a very successful Internet entrepreneur to speak to us about how he had found a great product to sell online and the process he used to uncover the hungry target market who would pay handsomely for the material he was selling. We were all given the 12-page handout of the long sales letter that was used to sell the product, and many of us were taking copious notes.

However, I noticed the guy next to me, an engineer, wasn’t taking notes. Instead it appeared he was going through the sales letter and was making grammatical and punctuation corrections. He disappeared during our next break, and when I returned to my seat afterwards, I discovered that he had returned as well, but seemed to be highly agitated.

Without waiting for an invitation, he proceeded to tell me what had happened over the break that had gotten him so upset. He showed me his copy of the sales letter and the corrections he had made and said that he’d gone up to the speaker during the break and offered to give him the corrections to the sales letter. The speaker took a look and told him, “No, thanks.”

The engineer couldn’t believe that this speaker wouldn’t take advantage of all the work that he (the engineer) had done to correct the sales copy. The engineer thought the speaker was being rather foolish and apparently told the speaker that he was being short-sighted not to take advantage of the offered corrections.

The speaker informed the engineer that the sales letter in question was making him $67,000 per month in sales and that he had no intention of “fixing” a good thing. Furthermore, the speaker explained that because he had worked so hard on crafting the wording of the sales letter and that the letter was bringing him so many sales that he’d be foolish to tinker with any portion of it.

Apparently the engineer left the conversation with the speaker in a huff and returned to his seat, still steaming, and still convinced that the speaker was making a grave mistake by not taking his copy editing advice. The engineer was so blinded by the need to be perfect and be right that he was blocking his path to online success. I bet today that he’s still tweaking his sales copy or his product and has yet to do anything with coaching business.

So, which do you want to be? The engineer with the grammatically correct sales letter that never sees the light of day, or the Internet entrepreneur making $67,000 per month off a product that has a sales letter with grammatical and punctuation mistakes?

Don’t let your need to be perfect hold you back any longer from taking the action you need to release your product or service to the world. In most cases, taking action, even though it might be a bit flawed, is always better than no action.

Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at http://www.OnlineBizU.com. Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at http://www.AskDonnaGunter.com.

Six KEY Parts of an Attraction Marketing System For Online Marketers

06 2008 Thursday

By admin in Marketing

There is a serious lack of marketing skills in the home business industry.The vast majority of people in online businesses do not know enough about marketing and they are intensely interested in finding out how to really make their online, or home based business work.

What Attraction Marketing allows you to do is stand out from the crowd and position yourself as a leader that has something of value to offer. The key to attraction marketing success is to learn what you target market is insatiably interested in learning, and then teaching them those things.

Sounds simple enough and it is if you’re resourceful and creative. And if you focus on learning what your target market is really interested in and you give them that information, you’ll be able to attract quality leads who will turn into responsive prospects and ultimately buy your product, system or become your affiliate or partner.

In the home business/internet marketing arena, specifically the home based business niche, thousands of other online marketers would love to know how to advertise effectively and drive traffic to their websites. They’re also intensely interested in learning what it really takes to turn traffic into closed sales.

You stand to benefit from offering this information to them and teaching them how to market and drive traffic. You’ll build a responsive list faster and for less money and time than if you do what most other amateur marketers do, which is to simply offer hyped sales pitches to join them in their program.

The SIX KEY PARTS In A Powerful Attraction Marketing System

1. Understand that people are looking for LEADERSHIP & Mentors that can actually show them how to make money online.

This is critical to your success. You must position yourself as a leader and offer your target market the training and marketing information they are seeking. Inexperienced people tend to wonder how they can teach marketing if they’re new themselves…

You can go to ezine article directories like EzineArticles and search for articles on topics you want to learn. Read and learn the topics, and then turn around and teach what you just learned. To a new, struggling marketer you’ll still be positioned as a person who can teach them something they don’t know.

2. Know Your Target Market

If you’re in the home based business industry promoting a direct sales or network marketing program, then you should know the hottest target market you can focus on attracting is the existing network marketer and online marketer. The time in your pipeline will be reduced with this target, they already believe in the industry so you won’t have to worry about going through that skeptical debate and most existing marketers are looking for marketing knowledge and information.

By focusing on the existing marketer, you’ll still attract plenty of new marketers as well so you’ll benefit by attracting both targets.

3. Place Simple, Targeted Ads That Compel Your Target Market To Click

This is where Attraction Marketing comes into play. Knowing your target market well will allow you to identify their main frustrations with their business and what benefits or solutions they are looking for. Phrase your ads in a way that you agitate a frustration and then offer a solution that solves their problem. To get to the solution they must click on your ad to get to your offer. Offering free “How To” information to marketers on learning traffic tactics and marketing skills in the form of a free email course, video series, recorded audios, etc… is a high conversion tactic.

4. Drive That Targeted Traffic To Your Own Lead Capture Page

This is where most online marketers fail. Your company’s replicated lead capture page is NOT the answer. Not if you want to attract more opt-ins for less money. Your own personalized lead capture page should contain a strong “Direct Response Marketing” headline, subheadline and some key benefits about your offer. A free newsletter, special report, video training series, audio recording or other compelling free information should be offered here that is designed to solve the frustration your ad agitated. This is key to building a responsive list.

5. Follow up with a systemized email autoresponder

A series of email follow up letters should be linked to your capture page so that you can follow up with your new leads using automation. This is where the majority of your sales will be made. Constant follow up is crucial in building trust, credibility and rapport with your list. By offering valuable content and teaching them exactly what your lead capture page and your initial ad offered to teach, you will warm up your list and prepare them to buy or join you in business.

6. Close Sales

A tremendously weak part of the average marketer’s system. Most automated online sales systems are great at opening up the sales process and attracting leads in. At that point most rely on the marketer to actually follow up and close sales. This is where most home business systems fall woefully short and cause the high failure rate in the industry.

Depending on the process your system uses, you should be able to close on 1-2 sales for every 100 -150 opt ins in most online based home businesses programs that are considered “top tier” ($1,000+ start up pricepoint). If your system is not getting this closing rate then you should carefully analyze the entire system and determine which part in the sales process is weak. Many programs use leverage, technology and systems effectively to open and attract people into the sales process, only to leave the critical part of closing sales to the weakest part of the system - the inexperienced marketer.

Fortunately in recent months there have been a few automated Attraction Marketing Systems that have hit the market that allow the online marketer to focus on the “front end”, which is advertising and driving traffic to their system. The system leverages professional call centers or specialized copywriting, audios and videos on the sales presentation site that actually closes sales without the business owner/marketer needing to get involved.

For more information on how to leverage the internet and automated Attraction Marketing Systems to generate significant cash flow online people can perform Google searches on “Attraction List Building” or “Attraction Marketing” and also search EzineArticles.com for the same keywords and further their understanding of what is available in the marketplace.

Franco Gonzalez is a professional Internet Attraction Marketing coach who helps families build full time home businesses on the internet quickly and affordably. Visit his Attraction Marketing Training Site for more resources and free training videos on how to build lucrative online businesses.

Targeting Niche Audiences – AOL’s New Branding Strategy

06 2008 Wednesday

By Scott Buresh in Marketing

AOL, once considered a pioneer in internet technology, has fallen on hard times over the years, unable to devise an effective branding strategy. A failed merger with Time-Warner, a non-focus on search while Google built an empire (the AOL search engine eventually began serving up Google results on its portal site), and declining dial-up business are all contributing factors to the ongoing difficulties of AOL and its search engine.

However, AOL seems to have a new branding strategy in mind for the AOL search engine, which would revamp its services and target specific niches. And while many “analysts” claim that it is already a failure before the results are in, it is too soon to tell how this will affect AOL and the search engine that bears its name. Personally, I think it’s a smart play for the company - and something that bears watching. If the branding strategy is successful, another huge company may want to follow AOL’s example.

You see, AOL understands that the AOL search engine and its other services are not a brand beloved by many. The AOL search engine and AOL itself are seen as somewhat ancient, old school, 56k, etc. Nightmare stories about its online services are not in short supply. I haven’t done any specific studies on this, but in my circle of friends and business acquaintances, people consider an AOL subscriber a little behind the times.

The point is (in my opinion) that the “AOL brand” itself has decreasing value and may actually have negative value if the specific sites that it owns or has recently purchased are brought in under an umbrella branding strategy. These sites include those catering toward everything from country music fans to moms sharing photos to guys trying to pick up women. In some cases, the niche sites do not even display their affiliation with AOL or its search engine (or if they do, it is not featured very prominently).

The logic behind this branding strategy is clear. First of all, the AOL search engine and portal weren’t attracting new visitors. Secondly, the AOL search engine and brand itself are not particularly hip or fresh. Third, and probably most importantly, specific portal sites attract specific types of users, which are usually highly targeted, prompting a potential for more ad revenue (in theory).

Basically, the AOL portal has stopped trying to be all things to all people. Google is able to pull off the “all things to all people” approach primarily because it doesn’t have issues with a branding strategy yet - in fact, the new vertical searches that it adds under the Google “branding umbrella” are augmented by implied hipness and coolness. However, as AOL has discovered, hipness usually has a shelf life. If people began to see Google as the huge corporation that it is now, rather than the uber-cool underdog, the company may not be able to keep this record up. There have already been some cracks in its veneer, although by and large, the Google brand is still very positive and powerful.

There is another company much bigger than AOL that suffers from much of the same problems (and in some cases, worse problems) than AOL does but still wants to take on Google head to head. I refer, of course, to Microsoft.

In terms of a brand, Microsoft is almost universally disliked. The monopoly issue may be one thing. The fact that it is seen as ‘old school’ may be another. Gates and Ballmer don’t exactly have reputations as “nice guys,” like Sergei and Larry do (the fact that it seems natural to refer to the former two by their last names and the latter two by the first may help illustrate this point). And the list goes on.

The bottom line is that I have a hard time seeing MSN.com gaining the kind of traction that Google has, simply because the brand is less than sexy. This means, of course, that any additional vertical search options that MSN adds to its site are bound to be appreciated only by the dwindling few who already swear by the portal.

AOL has decided that its branding strategy for the AOL search engine and niche sites is not nearly as important as the amount of traffic and ad revenue that the site commands. This is not uncommon in the publishing industry, where many different publications on many different topics may be owned by one large (but largely silent) entity. Many of these offline publications have moved online and are beginning to monetize their diverse base of websites. AOL seems to have a similar model and branding strategy in mind for the AOL search engine and other niche sites.

If it works for AOL and its search engine, it could be the best possible branding strategy for Microsoft to follow. Lord knows Microsoft has the money. The company has already bought the ad networks that can service sites under its own new branding strategy. But if pride dictates that it keep everything under the MSN name or add a huge “brought to you by Microsoft” banner across the top of any popular online property that it decides to buy, MSN is, in my opinion, shooting itself in the foot.

I never said it was fair, but your brand and branding strategy can either be an asset, neutral, or a detriment. Microsoft has to realize that most people consider its brand to be in the neutral to detrimental range and that most people consider Google to be in the neutral to asset range (and that’s probably being charitable). Microsoft should not try to compete with Google head to head without considering the disparities in the conceptions of their respective brands.

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the founder of Medium Blue, a search engine optimization company. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including MarketingProfs, ZDNet, SiteProNews, WebProNews, DarwinMag, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Atlantic, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue has local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, and was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world in 2006 and 2007 by PromotionWorld. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

The Virtual Edge - The Website that Shines

06 2008 Monday

By Diana Ennen in Marketing

Do you have the Virtual Edge with your business? That website that when people go there they say, Wow, I want to work with that company. If not, here are a few pointers.

Packing a Punch

Your website is the one thing that defines you and your business and has the potential to draw the entire virtual world to your products or services. How important is it? Well, I just recently had mine redone, and I immediately starting gaining more clients. Also, because I added a more professional edge to my site, I started getting clients who were a higher caliber and who paid more, now it don’t get any better than that.

Here are a few pointers I think you might find useful:

The First Glance - Hook Them!! Keep in mind that the first thing listed in the main body of your site should be the best you offer. The main thing you are bringing people to the site to see. It has to clearly state what is it you want to sell, offer, feature, etc. Go look at your site, have you done it?
Buttons That Tell & Sell - Those side and top buttons-you need to clearly set up so that people want to click on them and find out more. Also, you need to have these labeled correctly so they know what they are clicking on to see. That name is critical to making them take the time to check out that page. § Bullet Power- Clients often skim sites and rarely read through the entire site. They look for items that interest them. If you list paragraph after paragraph, it won’t get read. Think back, do you read those paragraphs. I don’t! Therefore use bullets or symbols instead. And try the slanted bullets or a different bullet style for more eye appeal.
Chose Your Words Wisely - Every word on your site should say something important. Absolutely you need to use keywords, but you also need to use convincing words to sell you and your business. Don’t get so caught up in keywords that you lose the focus of the site. Write the text, edit and delete, and repeat that last step over and over until you have it just right.
Convenience – Clickable Links — In the body of the website itself, whenever you are providing a reference to a site, make sure you have a clickable link, even if you have it on the side panel. People often won’t take the time to go look for the button, so make it easy for them. § Colors Are Cool — Match your colors to your business or your book. For example, for one of my clients who has a science fiction book with an awesome green cover, I designed the website to match. Now you immediately make the connection.
Front Page Magic - Offer Something FREE - On your front page, it helps to offer something for FREE. I offer a free booklet on obtaining clients in a pdf format. How about a free 10 ways to do whatever it is you do? That sort of thing. Let people long after they leave your site remember you and want to come back to you with their money and business.
Contests - Come One- Come All — Yes, we know they work. They get people to your site and that adds to your traffic. But, here’s a tip to make them really successful. Follow-up each response with a personal e-mail. Now, the key is not making it a hard sale sales letter they will never read. Instead, a “Hi, thanks for entering the contests, I’m sorry you did/didn’t win, but I’m …” And then give them something special, including a coupon off of your services. Make them feel special.
Newsletter – List your newsletter on numerous pages if not all. This is what is going to be reconnecting you to your clients and potential clients. § The Eyes Have It - I strongly suggest you have another friend or business associate view your site and offer opinions. It’s incredible what they can see that you don’t as you are too close to it.
Eyes — Take Two — Right now, stop and check out your site. Have you looked at it from a potential client’s viewpoint? What did you think? Did it clearly define you and what you offered? Did it spark your interest?

I hope these tips help you to get the virtual edge you need for your business.

Diana Ennen, Author; Virtual Assistant the Series, Become a Highly Successful, Sought After VA, and Corel Word Perfect Office Ready Virtual Assistant Solution Pack (www.corel.com). She’s the president of Virtual Word Publishing, http://www.virtualwordpublishing.com , offering publicity and book marketing. Article is free to be reprinted as long as author’s bio remains intact.

Five Keys to Success in Network Marketing

05 2008 Thursday

By Craig Mattice in Marketing

OK! We’ve all heard that there are many “secrets” to success in Network Marketing and MLM. We’ve also heard that your upline is lying to you and not sharing their “secrets” about the business and industry. That’s all just horse hockey! The biggest secret about success in this business and industry is that there isn’t any secret. Surprised? I thought you might be, but it is very true. Oh! And by the way, your sponsor has a vested interest in your personal success so he is not going to be lying to you about what it takes. More on this later.

- Key #1: You! That’s right, you. Here’s what I mean about “you.” The success or failure you experience in network marketing and MLM is totally reliant upon you, your beliefs, your attitude, and the direct actions you take toward success. You must have a very strong “why” you want to be in this business and what you want to attain as the benefits or your efforts. The stronger the why the greater chance of success. I determined my “why” by completing a vision statement of how I want my life to be as a result of my efforts. What my life will look like, smell like, be like, experience and advantages I will have that I don’t have now. Vision statements will be covered in detail in another article.

There are many areas of your life you will need to evaluate to determine what type of product or service you wish to represent and market. Along with that, the choice of company is paramount in keeping yourself aligned with your wants and vision. See yourself as a success with this company and product. If you can’t see it then it won’t happen. Keep searching. You have to be the driving force behind your success. Yes, there are many other elements that come into play but “you” are the ultimate key to your own success.

- Key #2: Product or service. What products or services get you excited or do you already have a firm foundation of experience and knowledge? This may or may not take some time on your part to crystallize. It is as an important key as any of the others and must be addressed from a business point of view. Can you make a profit with this product or service? Is there a ready made market? Is there exclusivity in the product or service not found in the general consumer market? Exclusivity is nice but is also short-lived in this consumer market.

Network Marketing has hundreds of quality products and services available to you including travel, nutritional, health, long distance, VIOP, communication, energy, and many others. Don’t make the mistake of following the herd but then again, don’t be too unique that no one has ever heard of it either. Choosing a product or service to represent in your home based business is as personal as the company you select to partner with that has your offering.

- Key #3: Selecting the company that represents and markets your chosen product or service. This is so important and requires research, due diligence, investigation, interviews with existing reps, interviews with potential sponsors, and following that, oh so important, “gut feeling.” To keep it simple, I will list for you the requirements that I used to pick my current company and this may shed some light on what you need to look for in your company.

Solid company of five years or older
A fun, professional, and enthusiastic “culture”
Competent corporate staff with business management and NWM/MLM experience on the front lines.
Exclusive product by quality unmatched in the marketplace
Products supported by real life studies for efficacy and quality
A robust comp plan that is quick to see results and easy to understand
Ability to retail products at a reasonable price for “right now” money
A quality marketing plan and support tools in place
Solid and increasing annual sales and distributor growth
Qualified Upline with proven success and willingness to share information
A plan for a successful system to plug into and NOT reinvent the wheel
Both company and product recognized in the community for quality
Easy online signups and prospect back office tracking
Company websites provided at no or minimum cost to the distributor
Outstanding customer support in knowledge and helpfulness
No voicemail, phone trees, but “real people” answering the phones
Company MUST be distributor oriented with income based on volume and not on the backs of distributors in the form of fees etc.

- Key #4: Selecting a sponsor may or may not have a direct effect on your success but, it may definitely affect your failure without the correct choice. Many people in the industry will tell you that your sponsor will not dictate your success or failure in the business and industry. This may be true however; I believe having all of the proper support and guidance is to your best advantage. Once you’ve selected a company then begins the process of determining who is the best fit to have as your sponsor? Is this person currently working the business? Are they successful to the point you would like to be someday? Can you relate to this person and like them? Are they forthcoming with information, knowledge, experiences so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel but learn from their experiences?

A final and very important question regarding the selection of a qualified sponsor, would you want to take a 30 day cruise with this person? Think about that for a moment and the answer will be very revealing.

- Key #5: In addition to the above, is there a viable and robust training/marketing system in place and a viable and robust team for support and interaction? All of this lends itself to a further advantage toward success provided the previous keys have been taken seriously and good decisions made. You don’t want to be left out to stand on your own but want a group of like minded people to interact and learn from their experiences. You want to feel part of a successful team, almost like a family.

As for the training/marketing system, do you want to have to create that all by yourself or would you rather have it up and running and productive from day one. Look for video and audio training, sizzle lines, 800#s, contact management back office, auto responders, existing sizzle messages, emails, and auto responder messages. All of this will save you a great deal of time, shorten the learning curve, allow you to focus on building your business, and increasing your ROI (Return On Investment).

OK then! By accomplishing the above keys you have started out on a strong path to becoming successful in your own home based business in network marketing and MLM. I know this looks like a great deal of effort but starting a business is not a flippant decision and needs to be researched in many areas to give you the best chance of success. Above all, you want to have fun in the process of doing. In a later article I will discuss “learn, doing, learn, and being.”

Craig Mattice is totally disabled and works his home based business in network marketing with Vitamark International from his home in Richmond, VA. His works include quality content, personality, humor, and are all personally written. To learn more about the author visit his personal website.

How to Make Your Email Promotions Sell More

05 2008 Wednesday

By Alicia Forest in Marketing

Just like writing a sales page for your product, program or service, writing successful email promotions can be easier than you think. There’s a science to it, more than an art, and to get you started, I’d like to share a tested formula for you to follow.

Taking the time to consider and answer the questions below before you write your email promotion will make it easier to write, easier for your reader to engage with, and easier to turn your prospect into a buyer.

Here are 5 essential elements to writing email promotions that will increase your sales:

1. Who’s your audience?

It’s important to know exactly who your audience is before you start writing the copy for your email promotion. Obviously, you’ll be sending your promotion to your list. But will it be for your entire ezine subscribers list? Or are you making an offer only to the people on your list who have bought from you before, your customers? Or are you targeting your one-on-one clients only?

Getting really specific about who you are writing your email promotion to will allow you to make it as personal as possible, and the more personal you can make it, the more sales you’ll make.

2. What action do you want to your reader to take?

Decide what it is exactly that you want your reader to do. Is it to subscribe to your ezine? Is it to join one of your group programs? Do you want them to invest in a new product or take advantage of a sale you’re having on an established product?

Choose only ONE thing for your reader to do (remember, ‘a confused mind always says no’) and they are much more likely to do it!

3. What benefits will your reader get?

If your reader purchases your product, how will they benefit? If someone subscribes to your ezine, what will they get out of it? If a reader signs up to work with you one-on-one, how will that make things better, easier, more fun or whatever it is that you can do for them?

Make the benefits your reader gets crystal clear in your email promotions. If you have more than one, use bullets to make them easier to read and digest, and lead the reader smoothly to your call to action.

4. What’s your ‘take action now’ lever?

For each promotion you do, you want to choose and use a tactic for getting people to take action. We’re all procrastinators, so you want to strongly encourage your reader to take action right away.

Some tactics you can use are to offer a limited availability, a limited time, limit spots, special price, free shipping for a limited time, etc.

5. What’s your format?

Couple of notes on the format of your email promotions:

Testing shows that HTML emails with bullets tend to generate higher response rates, as long as they are between 1-2 pages.
Make sure your call to action (’Buy Now’, ‘Visit This Page for More Info’, ‘Order Today’) is near the end of your email promotion, after your list of benefits and your ‘take action’ lever.
Include contact information at the bottom of your email promotions, with an email address and/or phone number for people who have questions.
Don’t forget your unsubscribe information as well, to comply with CAN-SPAM laws.
Include a PS, which is the second most read part of any sales copy. One effective use of a PS is to ask for the order again, including the link.

Use these 5 elements as a framework for your next email promotion and track your conversion rates. You should see more results and make more sales by doing so!

Alicia M Forest, MBA, Multiple Streams Queen & CoachT, founder of ClientAbundance.com and creator of 21 Easy & Essential Steps to Online Success SystemT, teaches professionals how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to create abundance in your business, visit http://www.ClientAbundance.com .

How To Get And Keep More Loyal Ezine Subscribers

05 2008 Monday

By Willie Crawford in Marketing

When I noticed an automatically generated note from one of my email list hosting accounts at ProfitAutomation warning me that the account was approaching the 200,000 subscriber limit, and that I needed to increase its size, I realized that I finally had all of the subscribers that I really “needed.” That account is one of five that I have with ProfitAutomation, and I also have one with Aweber.

So, while I still have a goal of building my database to over 1 million subscribers before the end of 2008, subconsciously I have to admit… that’s somewhat for “bragging rights.”

As I studied list building over the years, I eventually realized that a more important question than how to grow your list is “How do you keep loyal subscribers.”

Growing a large list is fairly simple… depending upon your definition of large.

It’s as simple as:

- Having a subscribe box on every page of your website

- Having a subscribe box somewhere in the backend of each sales processes

- Giving people a very specific reason for subscribing (telling them what benefit they’ll gain from being on your list)

- Using testimonials from happy subscribers to prove that other already enjoy your ezine

- Focusing your ezine on a tightly niched topic that your audience has a real interest in

There are other things that you can do such as joint ventures, and finding ways to get in front of other publishers’ audiences, but it all centers around answering the question of “What’s in it for me?” that all of your potential subscribers have.

Once you get subscribers though, how do you keep them?

My friend Paul Myers, in his ebook, “The Amazing List Machine” taught me that you simply deliver to your subscribers what you promised them when they first joined your list.

If your ezine is on affiliate marketing, then your content teaches them affiliate marketing.

If your ezine is on website traffic generation then your content teaches them about website traffic generation.

If your ezine is on cooking (as one of mine is) then you teach them to cook.

Sounds fairly simple doesn’t it?

If you give your subscribers what you promised them when you enticed them to join your list, they should stay on your list, and read your newsletters, provided their needs don’t change.

For many ezine publishers, the tougher question becomes “How do I monetize my list without driving off subscribers.” After all, isn’t that why most of us started a newsletter?

Yes, it’s fun writing something that people enjoy reading. It’s nice getting emails telling you how long they’ve been a subscriber, and how much of a difference your lessons have made in their lives.

However, that won’t put food on your table. So, how do you monetize your list?

The answer is that you offer them goods and services directly related to the topic of your list. If your list is on cooking, then you offer them cookbooks, and cooking gadgets, and perhaps cooking videos… or live workshops.

If you ezine is about list-building then you offer them supplemental courses on list-building. You offer them software that automates the process more. You offer them case-studies that show how others are building large, responsive lists.

The whole process is fairly simple when you step back and look at it. You entice subscribers to join your list by promising them exactly what they want (that you can deliver). You keep them by delivering what you promised. Finally, you monetize your list by selling them things that make it easier for them to get what they were looking for when they first joined your list.

Take a few minutes now and examine your process. Honestly look for weak points in your system… and then fix them. Then you too will one day realize the you no longer need to focus on growing your list. Then the challenge becomes deepening the relationship that you have with list members, although you should have been focused on that all along too

Willie Crawford has been running an online business, largely driven by email marketing, since late-1996. He is the author of the popular ebook “How I Boosted My Ezine Sign-Up Rate By 5200 MORE Subscribers Per Month - Virtually Overnight - And You Can Too.” Get your copy now at http://TheRealSecrets.com/5200/

Do you hesitate to send email to your subscribers and customers?

05 2008 Friday

By Bjorn Brands in Marketing

If you’re one of the people who worries that your customers will think you’re spamming if you send them email, no matter HOW useful the information is, I urge you to reconsider.

The truth is, when you do your email marketing right, not only is it an excellent source of income for you, but your subscribers and customers will actually appreciate hearing from you!

Here are three tried and tested ideas for successful email promotions:

Damaged or returned stock promotions - Offer damaged or returned stock for 50% off! Everyone gets returns, it’s a part of doing business. And of course damaged stock is unavoidable. Why not take advantage of email to clear out your stock that’s otherwise going to take up space, while at the same time offering your customers deals that they’re sure to appreciate?

Limited time offer - By offering a great discount on your products for a limited amount of time, people who receive the email feel like it’s urgent they respond, so there’s less chance they’ll close the email to “think about it” and never come back.

Limited quantity offer - Similar to the limited time offer, the people who receive this email will also feel a sense of urgency.

If you go with “limited time or quantity offer stick with the offer. If you write in your email that a product is available for a limited time, then stick to it.

Sometimes you see that a product is available till midnight, 14 days later it’s still available till midnight.

And those are just a few to get you started. Use your imagination, and I’m sure you’ll come up with all kinds of things to send your list that they’ll really ENJOY having. And if you find an email promotion that really works for you.

Do you panic at the thought of writing your own promotional email?

Here’s something you should know: writing an email is 95% rules, and only 5% creativity. So as long as you stick to the rules, you’ll write an email that’s suitable for sending to your customers every time!

Hypnotize the reader with compelling benefits - The most effective email promotions grab readers’ attention with compelling benefits that speak directly to the readers’ deepest desires and greatest fears. Benefits build the value you need to drive people to act when presented with your call to action.

Write your email like you were talking to a friend. Be informal, use contractions, and don’t be afraid to start a sentence with “and” or “but.”To transfer ownership, you want to make sure your reader can actually picture themselves using your product

Use automation to create personalized offers - Nothing is more appealing to people than the ’sound’ of their own names, and nothing grabs someone’s attention faster than something that affects them directly!

We don’t recommend you try to get yours subscriber to purchase directly from your email. Instead, you should ask them to “click here now to learn more,” or something similar.

How it LOOKS makes a big impact on readers, too. Here is how to format your email.

Width - Be sure to format your email message in a table that is not over 60/65 characters wide. If you exceed that, your message may be cut off on the right side of the screen — or at the very least, not print properly

Images - Try to avoid using graphics whenever possible. People with slow connections will have trouble downloading them, and people reading your message offline won’t see them at all.

Bolding - Use bolding just to emphasize the biggest and best benefits in the offer. You should be able to scan the message and instantly understand the biggest benefits

Bullets - Using bulleted points is one of the best ways to break up your copy and make some of your key points really stand out. As will all formatting techniques, make sure to don’t swamp your email with bullet points.

Finally, once you’ve written the letter, give it a final “scan test.” Set it aside for an hour, then return to it with fresh eyes BUT don’t read it word for word. Scan over the letter and see which sections jump out at you. Make sure that those sections contain the key benefits.

Stick to these few simple rules, and you’ll have no trouble turning out emails that get a response, because your customers actually WANT to receive them!

Bjorn Brands is a successful entrepreneur who transitioned from having his own building company to a great online business. Check out his site and see for yourself how his FREE course can help you do the same. http://www.moneyacces.com

PPC Management - A User’s Review of MSN

04 2008 Wednesday

By Tim Rule in Marketing

This is the first in a series of articles intended to convey my personal impressions of managing PPC through Google Adwords, Yahoo Panama and MSN Adcenter. Each engine has its pluses and minuses and I thought I would write a short blurb describing my experiences using the interface for each of these. The first engine I will be looking at is the lesser utilized of the three, MSN Adcenter. Interface One of the things I like about working within Adcenter is the clean look. Although from time to time I wonder if the uncluttered interface is more a product of its relative youth, there’s no denying it’s easier on the eyes than either of its competitors. In part, this appears to be due to the lack of clutter that plagues both Panama and AdWords. Perhaps Microsoft hasn’t had time to fill every gap on each page as seems to be the case with the others. Part of the reason however, is the use of bullet links. More often than not, clicking on these causes the additional information to appear in place, without having to navigate to another page. This is a refreshing change, as most of my time using these seems to be spent hitting my back button and waiting for complete pages to load. The layout of subsections is based on 4 tabs; Campaigns, Accounts & Billing, Research and Reports. Clicking on these takes you to exactly what you would expect, no more no less. Everything is laid out in a logical format and it’s pretty quick and easy to find what you’re looking for. After struggling to navigate through Panama in particular, I find this refreshingly simple. Campaign Setup Setting up is a 5 step process.

First off, you lay out your basic campaign structure by naming the campaign and initial ad group. One of the nifty features at this stage is a checkbox allowing you to copy an existing ad group. I have found this can be a useful time saving feature. Network targeting, campaign scheduling, language and regional targeting can all be set up on this same page. Also, conversion tracking can either be set up here or later in the campaign interface with a single click.
The next step is writing ad copy. The biggest advantage I have found in this stage is that the interface allows you to paste the entire ad description in one line rather than having to fuss with the character limitations for 2 lines of ad text, such as in both Google and Yahoo.
Now you can add your keywords. This is a very straightforward process, You have the option to add your own pre-made list of keywords and/or using a keyword tool that scans a site, or the ad destination URLs. This tool can generate a list of synonyms based on a suggested term, including the number of searches conducted in the previous month.
The last main step is to determine pricing settings. This includes setting a budget (see annoyances and oddities section), bidding and setting bidding options, such as incremental bidding. Here also you can set bids specifically targeting for location, day, time, age, or gender.
The final step is simply a review of all the information entered to this point and the option to change settings. I find this a bit annoying, as opting to change anything takes you back to that stage and after making your adjustment you have to cycle back through the entire process to the review page once again.

Keywords The only tool this interface has at the moment is the keyword research tool. This can be accessed under the research tab or when editing keyword settings. I have found this far less awkward and time consuming to use than either of the other 2 engines. One thing to note about adjusting keyword settings is how robust the options are generally. When adjusting existing keywords it is simple to add negative keywords to individual keywords, as well as adjust the match types and specific destination URLs by keyword. Another interesting feature is the trend charts, viewable by keyword. With this handy feature you can view individual keyword trends by age and gender, geographical location, social class and affluence. One major difference with keywords between MSN and the others is the level of editorial control exerted. Recently I was managing a campaign with a particular ad group that had quite a few different ads. Some keywords were reported by MSN as being declined for certain ads, but approved for others. This is certainly a departure from my experiences with either AdWords or Panama, where if a keyword is declined for any reason, that’s that. Reports The reporting feature is also quite robust. One can run single use reports or create saved templates for performance, accounting or targeting. It allows for quite a number of specific report types from account overview down to specific ad or keyword performance. A report can be set to display information from hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. Additionally, filters can be set to customize reports to only display information you wish to view. Automated report scheduling is also an option if you wish to receive emails periodically, without having to fetch them personally. The format for these reports are limited. Currently downloading one gets you a zipped csv file. Hopefully they’ll expand that to allow options for other file formats. Annoyances and Oddities These are some of the gripes I have with Adcenter.

For some reason, they’ve incorporated the option to select campaign settings for either daily budgeting or monthly. While this isn’t really a bad thing, if you select daily budgeting, it requires you to set a monthly budget as well. In my experience, doing this seems to have little effect on the amount spent on a given day. For example, I had set a daily budget of $10.00 while selecting a monthly cap of $310.00 to reflect 31 days in a month. Day by day this particular campaign was spending regularly up to and in excess of $20.00 daily. No amount of fiddling seemed to change that behavior, so consequently the monthly budget was used up in half the time.
Normally, when optimizing ads and keywords, I like to pause poorly performing ads. Pausing them, rather than deleting them, allows me to retain the statistics for later viewing. This is handy because sometimes I do not wish to drop an ad or a keyword entirely, but just want to turn it off for a time, for whatever reason. Unfortunately, there is no option to pause either an ad or a specific keyword. There is no way short of deletion to stop displaying a specific ad and the only way to “pause” a keyword without deleting it, is to drop the max CPC to the absolute minimum.
There is a limitation on viewing data at campaign, ad group or even ad or keyword level. One can only view yesterday, this month, last month, this year, last year or entire time. I find it very strange that unlike anywhere else in this interface, you cannot specify a custom date range. To get around this, you have to go to reports and create and run a report specifying what start and end date you wish to view data for. This can be time consuming and is an obvious flaw that will hopefully be worked out soon.
The timeout is quite short. Many times while working in Adcenter, I’ve tabbed back after only several minutes, only to find the system has logged me out and I have to re-login and navigate back to what I’d been working on.

Summary Overall, I’d have to say that MSN Adcenter is quite easy to use. Although MSN gets the least amount of traffic of the 3 engines, this isn’t entirely disadvantageous. One result of this disparity is that spend for a given campaign is generally significantly less than in either Adwords or Panama. Given that, when a conversion is achieved the difference in ROI is notable. This engine is certainly worth advertising on and with some improvements will be a fine choice.

Tim Rule is a PPC Specialist at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.; based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read more of Tim’s articles and those of the StepForth team at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com/, Tel - 250-385-1190, Toll Free - 877-385-5526, Fax - 250-385-1198

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