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10 Simple Ways to Generate Buzz & Word-of-Mouth Part 4

02 2008 Wednesday

By Andy MacDonald in Marketing

All of this week, we have been looking at the different methods of creating Buzz & Word-of-Mouth Marketing, and doing it right! In our first edition we looked at Buzz & Word-of-Mouth marketing, then we examined Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Success Stories, & in our last post, we looked at ways to Actively Work to Promote Buzz. Today in our final addition to the series, we hit the streets, figure out where to find our big mouths, and creating a business blog. Lets jump straight in…

Hitting the streets

Another way to promote buzz is to take your product or service literally to the streets: to pound pavements where people are out and about, walking and driving. This method isn’t the same as outdoor advertising on billboards, signposts and car livery; instead, it’s more about meeting and greeting potential customers.

For example, we recommend doing such simple and low-budget advertising as putting stickers on every lamppost to build awareness of your brand. When The New York Times started its online service, it hired a small ad agency that gave out paper spoons with the company’s Web site on them, and when those people logged on, they could print out a coupon for a cheap but yummy meal at Daily Soup, a popular café in midtown New York City. That strategy generated buzz about the Web site.

Figuring out where to find your big mouths

In addition to finding the right type of big mouth, you need to know where best to reach him. Finding your market maven requires creative thinking on your part, because you know best (or at least you should!) where your customers are most readily found.

For example: A nurse in San Diego wanted to make more black women aware of and knowledgeable about diabetes and breast cancer. She began in what she thought was the right place, by targeting black churches, but she found that the women who stayed after services were already knowledgeable, and the rest of the congregations just wanted to get home.

So she thought about finding a place where black women would have more time and be more relaxed and therefore be more open to receiving information, and she realized that the best place for her to generate word of mouth was at the beauty salon. So she taught hairdressers to be her mavens, her big mouths, and she generated the buzz she wanted in order to educate women about these diseases and to encourage them to get mammograms and find out even more about how they can protect themselves.

Creating a blog about your business

WOMMA (See Getting the Terminology Straight) also offers a Womnibus (another great name) that posts useful information on the WOMMA Web site for people interested in word-of-mouth marketing trends. WOMMA touts the Womnibus as the primary resource for advertisers wanting to get involved with word-of-mouth strategies. One Womnibus described a study conducted by the Pew research organization about the prevalence of blogs (short for Web logs) as of mid-2007. Among the key findings:

Eight percent of consumers (12 million U.S. adults) keep a blog, up from 7 percent in 2006.
Thirty-nine percent of consumers (57 million U.S. adults) read blogs, an increase from 27 percent in 2006.

Pew concludes that blogs have become one of the key media for word of mouth marketing. Maybe this strategy is something that could work for your business, if your target market spends a lot of time on the Internet. If you plan to start a weblog to encourage buzz and word of mouth marketing, i would suggest Darren at ProBlogger would be a good place to find out exactly what is involved in starting a weblog, and the various different ways in which you can market your blog.

Conclusion

As you can see from this series, there is still a lot of buzz about buzz marketing & word-of-mouth marketing, and it is still an essential part of any marketing campaign you run for your product or service. Whether it be utilizing a big mouth to talk your product or service, hiring beautiful people to promote your company, or just . All will go a long way to increasing the buzz around your product or service, and when you have good buzz, you have word-of-mouth too. Perhaps you have a particular method of creating buzz, or good word-of-mouth marketing? Id be delighted to hear your thoughts, so leave me a comment with your suggestion or questions. Ill always do my best answer all comments or emails i receive.

Author: Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, a website design & search marketing company. For daily tips on Blogging, Marketing, SEO & Making Money Online, Checkout our SEO & Marketing Tips for Webmasters blog or Subscribe by RSS.

10 Simple Ways to Generate Buzz & Word-of-Mouth Part 3

02 2008 Tuesday

By Andy MacDonald in Marketing

As i mentioned in the last article, Word-of-Mouth Success, you don’t have to just sit around and pray for good word of mouth or great buzz — you can actively work to promote it. Check out my suggestions on generating buzz for you, your product, or your service, in the following sections.

Coining a great new phrase

One way to get people talking is to come up with a new expression associated with your business. People love to be in the know and ahead of the curve, and many people love things just because they’re new — and that includes language. In fact, many great ad campaigns were successful because they (often unwittingly) created a new expression that people started using in everyday life and conversation. Think of the saying “Where’s the beef?” This expression was first used in a Wendy’s commercial, where a gruff little old lady was literally looking for the meat in her hamburger, but the expression came to be used in any situation where the substance of something was missing.

Tip: One way to coin a new phrase is to turn your business’s or product’s name into a verb. For example, think of the example of Google.com, an Internet search engine you’re probably familiar with. People now talk about “I Googled it to find out more about it. . . .” So now, when someone needs to look something up on the Internet, Google.com is probably one of the first search engines to come to mind.

Companies used to hate this appropriation of their names. For example, Kleenex and Xerox fought to prevent their brand names from becoming synonymous with the product itself (in this case, face tissue and photocopying). Now, however, many companies are delighted to have that “problem,” because it means that consumers view their names as the brand readers. If your company or brand name becomes part of the popular lexicon, that’s a great way to advertise your business!

Hiring beautiful people to promote your product

Another way to get people talking is to give them something interesting to talk about. If your product or business isn’t already fabulous, try to attach it to something that is. And if your business is already exciting, associate it with something even more intriguing!

For example, Vespas are little known in the United States, though these little scooters are everywhere in Italy. Vespa helped make inroads (pun intended) into the U.S. market by hiring gorgeous models to ride around Los Angeles, stop in at various cafes and have a coffee while chatting with other customers about their cool mini-motorbikes. The models weren’t famous, but they were beautiful, and they attracted attention to themselves first but then to the product they were promoting, and the whole stunt generated buzz — in a city where that’s tough to do!

Taking advantage of celebrity endorsements

If you can get the attention of a celebrity — either purposely or serendipitously, you should leverage that attention as much as possible.

Okay, you can’t solicit spontaneous celebrity mentions, but you can leverage them if they happen on their own. For example, Sandra Bullock became a one-woman marketing machine for Listerine PocketPaks (those little tab-sized breath strips that were introduced in 2005) when she talked about them nonstop at the Oscars in 2002.

Similarly, Rush Limbaugh created buzz for The Millionaire Next Door, a very interesting book that was little known until Limbaugh mentioned it on his radio show, which has an enormous listening audience. The book has since sold more than 2 million copies, and it was on the New York Times bestseller list for 3 years.

If I were working to promote either of the above products, you can bet your last dollar I would do everything possible to maximize that exposure. For example, I would have copies of the Oscar footage where Sandra Bullock talked about the Listerine PocketPaks, and I’d send that video and quote her in all future marketing for that product. And I’d get in touch with her to find out whether she’d be willing to go further and become a spokeswoman for the brand or whether I could use her endorsement in future ad campaigns. Regarding Mr. Limbaugh, if I had been the publisher of that book, I’d have immediately contacted him to get a written endorsement of the book, which I would then feature on every future copy and edition of the book and all subsequent marketing, advertising, and sales materials. You should look for the same opportunities.

So how do you maximize on celebrity exposure? Here are a few things that I would do:

Get a copy of what the celebrity said about your product or business, or request a written endorsement.
Obtain permission from that celebrity (in writing, of course) to use his comments in your future ad campaigns.
Consider asking that celebrity to be your spokesperson.

Throwing a party

Generating buzz by throwing a big bash is considered a publicity party, and publicity isn’t advertising, of course, but parties can generate word of mouth as well as publicity in newspapers, magazines, and other media. The party itself probably won’t be free (unless you can get friends and fans to provide the space and the food and drink, and send out the invitations, which you quite possibly can!). But even if you do have to incur some costs to throw a party, it can be money very well spent because of the word of mouth it can generate.

You can throw a party to announce a grand opening of your store, to introduce a new product or invention, or to celebrate an anniversary, such as the tenth anniversary of your being in business — or anything else that’s new with your business. Of course, you should invite news people, from all the local newspapers (your major city paper as well as smaller neighborhood papers, and freebies around town), local magazines, and local TV and radio personalities, but you also want to invite everyone you know who you think can talk about your product or business in an interesting, exciting way. If they have a great time at your party, they’re more likely to tell all their friends, colleagues, neighbors, and acquaintances about it — especially if you’ve done something unique at the party or given away something fabulous.

For example, one publicity party I attended for a book about a very successful black entrepreneur generated lots of word of mouth. Why? Because the hostess invited Coretta Scott King — and she came, with one of her sons! That was exciting: She and her late husband, the Reverend Martin Luther King, are legends in the world of civil rights, and many people at the party welcomed this unique opportunity to meet her. Mrs. King’s presence at the party got people talking, and it helped the book become a business bestseller and sell more than 100,000 copies, which is terrific for a business book.

Tune in next time, when we look at how you generate buzz by taking your product or service to the streets, blogs have become one of the key media for word of mouth - find out how to utilize them to best effect, and figuring out where to find your big mouths! (see the last article)

SEO Marketing - Why Writing Valuable “Web Page Content” is Worth it!

02 2008 Monday

By Jeffrey Smith in Marketing

If you want your business to thrive online, then using search engines for advertising and marketing is mandatory for optimal visibility. The real question is how much can you afford to spend? and how cost-effective is the medium for producing traffic and conversion?

Let Search Engines Work “For You” Not “Against You”

Looking at the function of search engines, they serve to scout the web and retrieve and index relevant pages for visitors based on related semantic or topical queries (a.k.a keywords). Understanding this, we know that words, (your content) plays a major role in this process and is one of the key metrics that determines where your pages rank as a result.

Focus on producing causes and effects follow naturally.

By addressing the root cause (the content) rather than being preoccupied by surface level effects (the rankings), you can groom your pages for success based on the intrinsic topics of your web page content. Relevance is one of the main factors that determines which sites “stand out” and get promoted to the top 10 positions in search engines. Regardless of the industry, one thing is certain among online industry leaders, “great content” is the foundation.

Whether you meet the criteria deliberately (as a result of SEO) or accidentally, at the end of the day the results are algorithmic. Instead of dueling with a competitor one keyword at a time which only encompasses short-term positioning, think about optimizing the entire niche as a whole instead. Then by developing a solid content development strategy, you can systematically research potential keywords or traffic patterns and tailor web page content and links to acquire a dominant position of authority for those phrases.

There is something to be said about patience, planning and strategic execution. Instead of taking the dog chasing their tail approach to SEO and acquisition of keywords and losing focus (and market share) chasing a narrow range of phrases. On the contrary, if you scale all of your efforts to accommodate the rites of passage and focus on quality themed topics, it’s only a matter of time “before search engines cannot help but promote your site” in multiple top 10 results due to the relevancy and stature of your pages (like a mini Wiki, if created properly).

When Keywords Stem Your Content Wins

The premise behind one of the most prominent search engine ranking phenomenon is called (keyword stemming). This occurs when semantic relationships between the keywords spill over and instead of ranking for 10 phrases, now you rank for 20, 30, 40 keywords and so on. This is a boon, since increased traffic an visibility are the result. Not to mention this is naturally occurring phenomenon.

This aspect of the search algorithm dictates that once a website (as a correlation of having themed content) manages to make an impact and garner a degree of traffic & links (which can be hastened by a Stumble, a Digg or a link from an authority site, etc.) it essentially can be fast-tracked into authority status and get the rest of the pages in that site on the map (into the search index with recommendations). What used to take years, can be done in a mere fraction of the time (I have seen instances in as short as 3-4 months) and the site in question virtually ranks for keywords that only appear sparsely on the related content (and higher for a range of keywords that appear more frequently).

Traffic is a metric that equals popularity and this when combined with other known factors for elevating site authority in a niche are ultimately what can escalate your pages from not in the top 1000 search results, to the top 20 or top 10 pages respectively for specific “exact match phrases” as well as their distant “long-tail” cousins.

If cost is a factor and long-term results are important to your search engine positioning strategy, then note that one of the most effective and ethical ways to rank for a competitive or moderately competitive phrases is to incorporate them into your website infrastructure (in a way that search engines understand) through strong internal links and external links from high places for starters.

Once the elements are in place, you must promote that content (so each page can act as it’s own mini-site in essence) and nurture and develop the relationships between those pages into a cohesive knowledge base so that your site is tagged as an authority. For those of you who don’t enjoy composing content, there is a solution, hire a copywriter to do it for you, preferably one who is knowledgeable about keyword density, the appropriate use of tags, relative positioning of grouping keywords and overall delivery (since it has to be encouraging for human visitors to promote conversion).

Why Pay Per Click and Put your Eggs in One basket?

Say for example you were involved in an industry and you opted to use the search engine marketing approach and invest a portion of your sales proceeds every month into PPC (pay per click advertising). Once those clicks are reached, they just dip into your account to refresh the funds and as long as you keep paying, they keep sending traffic your way (at a price per click). So essentially your business model is dependent on that marketing method alone for sustenance. This is definitely not in your best interests for diversifying your link portfolio and only increases your dependence and increases your risk in the advent that something undermines that method such as price.

Yet on the other hand, through performing a function as simple as creating a blog, writing a post or series of posts on topics that relate to your industry (which should roll off the tip of your tongue) this provide an anchor point (for your site) so you can build links back to to elevate those articles and posts organically in search engines.

Renting or Owning? You Decide

You can use the analogy of renting vs. owning from the perspective of real estate. Why invest money in PPC solely, when you could be gaining a return on your short term investments in the long run from utilizing organic optimization coupled with content to systematically increase traffic. The only requirement is patience, quality link development and link building services and promotion if you apply savvy marketing fundamentals known for rousing visitors to act.

Trust is the deciding factor for many to take action (make a phone call, IMS or fill out a contact form), and what better way to gain trust and leads than by housing a formidable range of content that essentially would provide answers to those seeking your expertise in the first place (within your own site).

To say that this is a much stronger selling point than just seeing an advertisement floating around the “hey I am paying for this” Sponsored section, it may as well be a press release. Not to say that using press releases are not part of a larger strategy, but people rarely use a blurb alone to make an informed decision. Once something grabs your attention, the tendency is to dig deeper into the offer by visiting the site, looking at the company profile, other supporting pages, etc. to assure them that they are making an informed decision. This is where your fresh new custom content comes into play.

Which is more Cost-Effective? SEO Copywriting or PPC?

By writing a plethora of topically themed series of articles and posts (then promoting them accordingly, through RSS, social media and building links) you are essentially insuring your future search engine visibility as a result (because search engines love valuable content) in fact they can’t get enough of it. So before you go out and drop a few hundred, a few thousand or few hundred thousand dollars a year on pay per click (you know who you are), consider a tried and true route for building equity in your brand, one page at a time through investing in quality content which can sell on your behalf as a result of the merit and degree of expertise it shares with all who read it.

Once you realize that you can scale and multiply this effect and put your link building, your public relations, your niche authority position and your promotion on the same page, like a symphony if you will. Then you have just graduated from the logic of PPC dependency to using a formulae for developing an authority website which is the forerunner to successful online marketing campaign.

It isn’t about how many top 10 rankings you have, but how many hundreds or thousands you can create as a result of your content development strategy and subsequent relationship with search engines who are insatiably hungry for quality coupled with relevant traffic and promotion to seal the deal (which is your endorsement).

Author: Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

Recession Marketing Part 2: Beating the Recession

02 2008 Wednesday

By Jonathan Cox in Marketing

Last time, we talked about the four major categories of marketing and the importance of balancing your marketing effort. So where do you begin? If you had the time and resources to only pursue one avenue of marketing, make it internet marketing; it’s one of the least expensive and most effective ways to get your name out there and it has the potential to reach the full spectrum of your client demographic.

There are four crucial investments you need to make to ensure a long-lasting return on your internet marketing. These include a professionally designed website, press releases, articles, and social media marketing.

Think of your website just like you would a brick-and-mortar location. What are some of the most important considerations when opening a store?

You want a good location that’s easy for your customers to find.
The storefront should have good curb appeal; it should capture the attention of prospective customers and be pleasing to the eye.
The interior of the store should be easy to navigate, and customers should be able to find what they want quickly and easily
Maximize your layout by positioning items so that customers can find other products or services on the way to their original objectives.
You should have a quick and painless means of capturing customer information so that you can follow up with them in the future. (Ever given your name and phone number to a sales rep while checking out?)

The same timeless principles above apply just as readily to your website.
Location: Your domain name should be short and to the point. The longer and more difficult it is to spell or remember, the less likely it is that the customer will ever make it there.

“Curb appeal”: Your front page is your image. It should convey the order and professionalism you want your company to convey to your customers.

Layout/Navigation: Your website must be easy to navigate. Customers who can’t find what they want generally leave a website after SIX SECONDS, never to return.

Optimization: Buddy up your products. If you have a product that sells very well and a product that’s suffered in the past, place them close together in your site navigation. Coupling a popular product with a lesser-known product will dramatically boost your traffic and sales for less popular lines.

Lead capturing: Placing your company’s phone number in a highly visible location on your front page and placing a tasteful contact form in a prominent location will increase the amount of leads you get by as much as 300% in many cases. Better still, offer coupons, a free quote, a free newsletter packed with useful tips, or a chance to win a product or service to entice visitors to complete contact information.

Now that you’ve finished your website, you need to get the word out to customers. Of course, you’ll want to do this in the most powerful, long lasting way possible for the least amount of money.

Well written, internet optimized press releases and articles are an incredibly powerful means of getting publicity, generating buzz, and attaining highly qualified leads for your business. Unlike running an article or a press release in a print publication, press releases and articles on the internet stay on the web permanently, getting you traffic and qualified leads for months or even years to come.

An experienced PR firm will get your press releases into venues such as Google News, Yahoo News, MSN News, and Reuters, and your articles into high traffic information sites such as about.com, ehow.com, and work.com. If the pieces are properly optimized, they’ll include a link back to your website and tastefully include keywords related to your business to boost search engine results.

Lastly, we have social media marketing. Think of it as business networking online. By utilizing pre-existing networks such as Face Book, MySpace, LinkedIn, and business forums, and even creating your own business blog, you can forge partnerships, acquire affiliates, and generate word of mouth with thousands of prospects and business owners. Better still, you can repurpose all of those excellent articles and press releases as blog content.

Author: Jonathan Cox is a marketing analyst and consultant for Xeal Precision Marketing. He has ten years experience in the marketing, design, and IT industries. www.xeal.com

Harnessing Marketing’s Awesome Power

02 2008 Tuesday

By Dan Lok in Marketing

If you’re brand new to doing business on the internet, then you have an excuse for not knowing the sheer power of information marketing. If done right… it’ll make you as much as your heart desires. Among other things, information marketing is scalable.

What does that mean?

Here… say you have a pay-per-click campaign going and you’re selling an ebook, which is information. You’ve done your homework and your campaign is into profit. And you’re spending $10 a day on your clicks. What’s next?

Start selling another product? No, silly. You find ways to kick your existing campaign into high gear. You ’scale’ it up!

Reinvest… did I say, REINVEST? Yes, put your money back into your campaign and UP the voltage. Buy more clicks. Increase your daily budget. Find new keywords and phrases. Create more PPC campaigns for the same product.

How about taking your winning ads and moving into other search engine PPC marketing areas? How about taking those winning ads and doing some offline marketing like… classified ads! Hey…

Those ads work on humans at G, MSN, and Yahoo. Think they’ll work on humans reading a paper? YES!

Marketing is never-ending. Did you know that? You should do something to market your products every single day. And then…

You do the slightly tired and overused cliché… rinse ‘n repeat!

Yeah! R ‘n R is the operative phrase, here. That’s another thing about information marketing that is SO great. It’s great because there are so many products you can market as an affiliate. And now that you have a successful campaign under your belt, you start another one. R ‘n R, baby!

And if you’re new to all this, here’s a suggestion…

Why not try dipping into affiliate marketing first before trying to create your own product? Just an idea. But here’s why I suggest it.

So much is already done for you! Product? Done. Marketing materials? Usually done and available. Payment processing? Forget about it… done. All you need to do is market it. And it’s a great way to introduce your self to online business. And then?

It’s cool to start thinking about creating your OWN information products. Of course it’s entirely ok and up to you if you want to do that first. What else…

What about pricing for your own information products? Lets talk about that…

You have to think about the problem your info product solves. If it’s something that people want NOW because their problem is so great… so painful, annoying and awful, then your price point can be higher than usual.

But your product MUST deliver! Your products should always be good to high quality. Your product must make good on the promises you make in your sales material. If you have those items together, then test your pricing and find what the market will bear.

What else is so great about marketing information products?

You don’t need a warehouse to store them! Unless you’re selling info delivered via CD’s or DVD’s. Most info marketers like going with downloadable info products. And if you’re starting out, you may want to consider doing that. But again, it’s up to you! If you cut your marketing teeth on downloadable info products, then you can start thinking about serious profits with physical info goods.

Building a list for your products, even as an affiliate, is where your own personal gold lies. And I can show you how to build a list as an affiliate. But that’s another story…

You probably already know that info products delivered as books, CD’s, or DVD’s have a higher perceived value than a downloaded product. And it’s something you should remember and explore because very serious money can be made on the backend.

Author: A former college dropout, Dan “The Man” Lok transformed himself from a grocery bagger in a local supermarket to an internet multi-millionaire. Discover how you can maximize your website profits in minimum time. For a limited time, you can test-drive Dan’s Insiders Club for 30-days Risk-Free and get $1,165 dollars worth of bonus gifts. Rush cover to: http://www.websiteconversionexpert.com/testdrive.html

Making Smart Choices With Affiliate Programs

02 2008 Monday

By Stephen Wright in Marketing

Before you jump into just any affiliate program there are a number of key questions and considerations you should address first. It can be complicated, but armed with some of the more important issues you will be able to avoid the more common pitfalls. So, before you sign up, consider these questions:

The time to ask questions is before you join an affiliate program. Especially, for those that charge fees or other miscellaneous costs. Do a little research about the choices of programs. Will it cost you anything to join? Most affiliate programs being offered today are free of charge. So why settle for those that charge you some dollars before joining, unless there is a crystal clear benefit for the investment.

When do they issue commission checks? Every program is different. Some issue their checks once a month, every quarter, etc. Select the one that is suited to your payment time choice. Many affiliate programs are setting a minimum earned commission amount that an affiliate must meet or exceed in order for their checks to be issued.

What is the hit per sale ratio? This is the average number of hits to a banner or text link it takes to generate a sale based on all affiliate statistics. This factor is extremely important because this will tell you how much traffic you must generate before you can earn a commission from the sale.

How are referrals from an affiliate’s site tracked and for how long do they remain in the system? You need to be confident on the program enough to track those people you refer from your site. This is the only way that you can credit for a sale.

The period of time that those people stay in the system is also important. This is because some visitors do not buy initially but may want to return later to make the purchase. Know if you will still get credit for the sale if it is done some months from a certain day.

What kind and type of affiliate stats available? Your choice of affiliate programs should be capable of offering detailed stats. They should be available online anytime you decide to check them out.

Constantly checking your individual stats is important. To know how many impressions, hits and sales are generated from your site is critical data. Impressions are the number of times the banner or text link was viewed by a visitor of your site. A hit is the one clicking on the banner or text links.

Does the affiliate program also pay for hits and impressions besides the commissions on sales? It is important that impressions and hits are also paid, as this will add to the earnings you get from the sales commission. This is especially important if the program you are in offers low sales to be able to hit ratio.

Who is the online retailer? Find out whom you are doing business with to know if it is really a solid company. Know the products they are selling and the average amount they are achieving. The more you know about the retailer offering you the affiliate program, the easier it will be for you to know if that program is really for you and your site.

Is the affiliate a one tier or two tier program? A single tier program pays you only for the business you yourself have generated. A two tier program pays you for the business, plus it also pays you a commission on the on the sales generated by any affiliate you sponsor in your program. Some two-tier programs are even paying small fees on each new affiliate you sponsor. More like a recruitment fee.

Lastly, what is the amount of commission paid? 5% - 20% is the commission paid by most programs. .01% - .05% is the amount paid for each hit. If you find a program that also pays for impressions, the amount paid is not much at all. As you can see from the figures, you will now understand why the average sales amount and hit to sale ratio is important.

These are just some of the questions that need to be clarified before making the important program selection decisions. Hopefully, this information will help you in making good choices and getting your online marketing efforts into high gear!

Author: Stephen Wright is President & CEO of InternetMarketingUSA.com Do you own a work at home business opportunity website?! Already have a website, need more traffic and revenues? Visit InternetMarketingUSA today for information and techniques proven to make you successful. Get Started: http://www.InternetMarketingUSA.com/pips.html

Recession Marketing Part 1: Beating the Recession

02 2008 Monday

By Jonathan Cox in Marketing

An unspoken air of tension hangs over the populace. Whispers spread back and forth…”The market’s down, hard times are coming.” Sound familiar? There’s a lot of negativity about the state of the market right now, but let’s look past the gossip and examine the facts.

All markets fluctuate to varying degrees. Economic cycles come and go, businesses rise and fall. But look at companies like McDonalds, Johnson & Johnson and Colgate that have survived and even grown in periods of economic recession. What’s their secret?

If you’ve ever been busy and on a budget, you’ve probably eaten at McDonald’s. What makes them worthy of the title of “largest fast-food chain in the world?” Ba-da-ba-ba-ba, I’m luvin’ it! Ever had that stuck in your head, followed by a slight tinge of resentment because you’re now craving a burger, fries, and a Coke? Super-size it!

And after that, don’t forget to brush your teeth. How do you protect your teeth for 12 hours after brushing? Colgate!

If you’re a parent, you’ve probably used Johnson’s Baby Powder at some point; it’s almost a conditioned response. Why? Because we hear that warm, maternal voice articulating how smooth and clean it leaves our skin feeling. We see the happy, giggling baby laying in the sunlight, clutching her parent’s finger after a changing.

All of these companies have one thing in common, and this is their secret:

They all understand the value of marketing. Each of these companies continued to market and even expanded their marketing during past recessions.

Marketing during a recession

A series of six studies conducted by the research firm of Meldrum & Fewsmith showed conclusively that advertising aggressively during recessions not only increases sales but increases profits. This fact has held true for all post-World War II recessions studied by American Business Press starting in 1949.

With that being said, marketing can be a costly enterprise, and there’s never been more information to absorb or avenues to choose from. How do you make the right choice?

What are my options?

A combination of marketing techniques is the most effective strategy.

Here are the four major categories of marketing media you can focus on:

Internet
Television
Radio
Print (newspaper, magazines, journals, etc)

Be aware that each category is generally more effective within different age groups. Internet marketing has the highest impact on the 18-35 age group. Television is more effective with the age 35-50 crowd. Radio reaches a fairly broad age range, but doesn’t always grab attention as effectively as the other venues. Print media marketing is generally more effective for an audience of ages 35-75.

So how do you get the most out of your marketing dollar?

Tailor your marketing mix based on your client demographic
Get better results and save money with traditional advertising (by cutting excess spending and integrating your website with traditional marketing)
Shift spending towards more traceable marketing venues (internet, track, capture info/etc)

Here are a few tips for recession marketing that will save you money and keep your company at the head of the pack:

Know Your Clients

Consider your own client base. What are the average ages for the top 20% of your clients? How many of your clients are over 50? How many of them are over 35? This will help you narrow down where your clients go for information. Identifying the strategic ground is crucial to winning market share.

No matter what form of advertising you use, everyone’s favorite radio station, TV station or blog is W.I.I.F.E, “What’s In It For Me?” That’s what everyone’s tuned in to. Make sure your ads answer that question in 10 seconds or less.

Run a Lean, Focused Campaign

Look for ways to cut excess spending while still maintaining visibility. Focus on results by driving marketing and traffic to your website. Then you can convert those visitors into leads and a database of contact information.

Waste not, want not. A ¾ page ad in the yellow pages can be just as effective as a full page. Rather than running a full page sales letter in a magazine or tabloid, offer a free report that people can print out online once they visit your web site.

Negotiate with your stations to buy filler inventory. Often radio stations will have 10 to 15 seconds where they have to push filler in order to start a show on time. Those 10 to 15 seconds could easily be your ad at a significant discount. The station gets the extra dollars they need during a recession and you get the extra exposure.

Invest in a Strong Web Presence

Think of ways to drive people to your website. Consider using an easy-to remember URL with your promotions, like “KFAQLovesPizza.com.” Make sure your URL is easy to spell and contains no symbols. This strategy makes it very simple to track your promotions.

In addition to your phone number and URL in your advertisements, offer a free report, a free newsletter, coupons, or some other free information of value to your target market. This is always appealing to customers, even more so in difficult times.

One crucial aspect of your website marketing mix is capturing your visitor’s information. A simple contact form tastefully placed on your front page with places for name, e-mail address, and phone number will dramatically increase the amount of leads you receive.

Join me next time for my article on how to beat the recession and grow your business through the first of the four categories, Internet Marketing.

Author: Jonathan Cox is a marketing analyst and consultant for Xeal Precision Marketing. He has ten years experience in the marketing, design, and IT industries. www.xeal.com

How To Generate Emergency Money Now

02 2008 Thursday

By Willie Crawford in Marketing

Over the past 11 1/2 years, I’ve created dozens of information products, and sold hundreds of affiliate products. I’ve discovered what does and what doesn’t work in quickly creating and marketing information products.

I’ve also shared with dozens of clients, and thousands of subscribers, my very successful methods for earning a living online. When I say shared, I’m referring to those who were willing to listen and apply what I taught them. Those who listened, but didn’t do, aren’t counted in that number because to me “sharing” is a two-way communication.

Today, I’d like to share with you exactly what I’ve instructed dozens of people to do when they’ve came to me with cash-flow emergencies. These were people who usually came to me looking for a loan or a hand-out. Instead, I usually had them do what I’m about to share with you.

I’ve learned over the year that giving handouts too quickly only conditions the person to come back a few weeks later for another handout. I believe that it’s important to teach them a proven method for extricating themselves from such situations.

Here’s the exact plan that I’ve directed many people to follow:

Look around you, and identify two large, related problems that you could create two information product as solutions to. These need to be painful enough problems that people are acutely aware of, that they desperately want to solve, and that they’ll pay for good solutions to.
You generally want related problems because the plan calls for selling both solutions to the SAME people. You’re going to sell the first solution through affiliates, giving them the majority of the money, and then you’re going to keep at least half of the money on the second (backend) product.

You’re going to set up you sales process so that you “lead” with one product and then offer the second product as an upsell, or special offer after the first purchase is made.

The reason that you’re going to pay your affiliates so much is that you need them NOW. Without their enthusiastic promotion of your products, this plan often CAN’T work very quickly.

The most CRITICAL part of this whole plan is step 1, and the most CRITICL part of step 1 is making sure that you identify a real problem that people actually want to solve. Otherwise, you end up creating products that no one will buy.

When I look at why products fail, the number one reason (in my opinion) is that demand wasn’t verified beforehand).

Teaching you how to do the research is beyond the scope of this short article, but it only needs to take an hour or two. It is too important to skip. An excellent guide to conducting painless research is Steve Wagenheim’s “Niche Research Revolution.”

If you need help with the research, it’s at: http://TheRealSecrets.com/SteveWagenheim/
Create the solution (product), or better yet, modify and improve on an existing solution.If you are good at researching, or already an expert on a topic, then by all means write an ebook on it, or create a piece of software that solves a big problem. At the same time, in many niches you are surrounded by thousands of experts who have already done the majority of the work for you. They’ve already created the product and will often sell (or even GIVE) you the rights to it. Then all you need to do is refine and improve on these product that you have “Private Label Rights” to.
Just go to any search engine, and do a search on your keywords plus the term “private label right” or “PLR,” and you’ll locate dozens of sources. Alternatively, just visit my blog, and you’ll often discover dozens of people giving away private label rights for various reasons. That blog is at: http://WillieCrawford.com/blog/

Simply sit down and refine those PLR products (where someone has already done 90% of the work) into something truly valuable.
Get a few people to critique your product, offering you feedback that both allows you to improve your solution and that perhaps you can use as testimonials. After your product is created, simply post on a discussion forum (after confirming that it’s permissible) that you are looking for product reviewers. You’ll get dozens of volunteers.
If you don’t get dozens of volunteers, I would take that as an indication that you haven’t really found a painful enough problem… at least not one that that particular community cares about.

Do one product all the way through until it’s ready to launch and then do the other one. For many people, doing them simultaneously is too confusing.
Set these products up for sale with their own affiliate program. Use a system such as Rapid Action Profits that allows you to pay instant commissions. The instant commissions are “key” because instant cashflow is as important to many of your potential affiliates as it is to you. You’ll recruit lot of affiliates who are promoting your products almost on impulse.That’s great!
You want people who will promote your product today rather than a week or two from now.

I recommend Rapid Action Profits as the affiliate program platform because it’s inexpensive, easy to set up, and you can use it on as many different websites (with as many different products as you want) after purchasing the software just once. I use it on over a dozen websites. You can get RAP here: http://TheRealSecrets.com/RapidActionProfits/

Rapid Action Profits is designed to work with Paypal, meaning that you don’t need a merchant account, and that anyone with a Paypal account can become one of your affiliates.
Recruit affiliates by posting to forums that have a “joint ventures” section. Post to communities set up to facilitate your recruiting affiliates such as JV Alert and The International Association of Joint Venture Brokers.Announce to your email list that you are looking for affiliates.
Private Message (PM) or email ideal affiliates that you’ve noticed promoting similar products, and ask them directly to promote yours. Be very clear in these communications or you’re likely to get declined or to not get firm commitments to promote your products.
Turn customers into affiliates. Email customers who have purchased your previous products thanking them, and pointing out your new product(s). Explain why it’s a match for them and rather than focusing on making a sale, make your focus recruiting them as an affiliate (if appropriate).Set up your autoresponder system so that any time anyone purchases your product they are automatically invited to become an affiliate. Consider adding a blurb right on your download page that invites them to join your affiliate program.
Your best potential affiliate ARE those who know and like your product, so it makes perfect sense to recruit customers as affiliates.
Use article marketing to generate interest and find customers. Write a 500 - 1000 word article that:
1. Describes the problem that your product solves.
2. Explains why this really IS a problem that they DO want to resolve.
3. Proves why your product is the perfect solution.
Submit these articles to every appropriate article directory that you can locate as well as post them on your blogs, your sites, and on discussion forums that have article sections. If you can afford it, use an article submission service such as ISnare.com or ThePhantomWriters.com. This will save you considerable time and quickly get your articles in 100 times as many places.
Leave “the land of excuses” and just do it! Make the decision that you’re going to implement this plan, and then instead of looking for reasons why you can’t implement it, look at the very real reasons why you MUST implement this plan.Acknowledge that the key to the success of your plan is taking massive, immediate action, and refusing to EVER give up.
Update, test and track your sales process. As your articles, affiliates, and emails drive traffic through your site, evaluate how well your sales letters are converting. The ability to split-test, and determine the exact conversion rates for your sales letters is built right into Rapid Action Profits. Test four or five different versions of the sales letter changing only minor things on each one, such as the main headline or the number of testimonials.When you discover one sales letter that works better than others, keep the one that is working, but then create a slightly different version of the winner to test against your new “control.”
Rinse and repeat. Once the sales start coming in, and you see that this formula does indeed work, use the same system to roll out other products. You are now building an army of active, happy affiliates. Offer them other, equally-lucrative products to promote.Don’t allow the momentum to stop once you get it going - that’s incredibly wasteful.
IMPORTANT: Slow down enough to act rationally rather than in desperation. I put this step at the bottom because I want it at the top of your mind as you get started.As you implement this simple, proven plan, make sure that you take a deep breath and don’t act out of desperation. People who feel like that “HAVE” to get results today, often make very bad decisions. Slow down enough to make sure that you’re actually doing each of the preceding 10 steps, and in particular make sure that you really confirmed that what you’re offering the market is something that they want.
I’ve watched dozens of people use this exact method when they suddenly found themselves needing to make a house payment, pay a medical bill, or catch up with mortgage payments… and their bank balance was “less than zero.”

This system does work. If you really examine it, there’s nothing magical or mysterious about it. It’s just common sense, and taking massive action. Now it’s time for you to apply both.

Author: Willie Crawford is an internationally-acclaimed speaker, author, seminar and radio show host, and leading Internet marketing expert. When not out fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, Willie can be found sharing his 11 1/2 years of online marketing experience with members of The Internet Marketing Inner Circle. Join them at: http://TheInternetMarketingInnerCircle.com

How to Make Your Article Marketing Campaign More Efficient

02 2008 Monday

By Tyler Monesy in Marketing

In this article I am going to discuss how you can employ some useful tools in a clever way to increase the efficiency of submitting articles and publishing content for syndication. But first we need to understand some of the popular strategies that are being used today, why article marketing works in the first place, and an important term called a “duplicate content filter.”

One of the popular methods that bloggers or webmasters will use in order to get more traffic to their website is to create a detailed post about their topic or niche and then submit that same post for syndication in article directories. While syndicating content can be a good way to increase exposure and gain more incoming links, by doing this it is also possible to get slapped with a duplicate content penalty.

The duplicate content filter is something that major search engines recently introduced after the widespread use of link spamming to artificially boost search engine rankings. Link spam is where a webmaster will create numerous copies of a single web page and post them on different domain names in order to increase the number of incoming links to his website. But since this is an artificial way to get more links (as opposed to having various websites link to you on their on accord), it is considered to be a manipulation of the search engine algorithms and is frowned upon.

As soon as the major search engines like this realized that web pages that were irrelevant and filled with advertisements were gaining top rankings due to link spam, they went to work devising a filter that would block all identical pages from being listed, along with any of the pages that they link to (thereby eliminating the artificial rankings that these web pages would get).

In order for a large search engine like Google to return relevant results, they must employ a web robot to “crawl” around the internet and save a copy of every single web page that it finds. This collection of saved pages is called the ‘cache,’ and every time you go to a search engine and type in a keyword, it will search through the cache of stored web pages and deliver the one that is the most relevant to your search and has the most incoming links (an incoming link is considered to be a “vote” that a certain web page is good, and therefore worth linking to).

Well if the Google bot happens to come across a web page that is an identical copy of some other page, the duplicate content filter comes into play and it will make sure that only one copy of this web page is displayed on the search engine results page. But which one to choose?

The search engine is going to brand one of the web pages as the original, and then all other copies of it are going to be subsequently blocked. A few of the factors that determine which page is branded as the original are when it was created, the link strength or Pagerank of the website, and the relevancy of the domain name.

So how does this apply to your article marketing and content syndication? Well if you were to submit the same piece of content to multiple different directories and syndicated feeds, many of those pages are going to end up getting slapped by the duplicate content filter since they are basically carbon copies of each other. The ideal way to avoid this would be to create a unique piece of content to submit to every source, but that would be extremely time consuming.

The way that you can save time and also avoid the duplicate content filter is to use a tool called a “duplicate content checker.” By using this kind of tool, instead of creating a new article from scratch, you can re-write small parts of your existing article and check it to make sure that it is unique enough that it will not be branded as duplicate content. This way, instead of spending 30-50 minutes coming up with a brand new article, you can spend only around 3-5 minutes by creating a slightly altered version that will not appear to be an identical copy.

By doing this you can increase the effectiveness of your article marketing and content syndication, because you can rework each article you submit in just a few minutes so that it will overcome the duplicate content filter, and more pages displaying links back to your website will rank high in the search engines.

Author: You can find a free and great duplicate content tool at http://Coach-Tyler.com/dupchecker which will allow you to compare two articles side by side and make sure that you can overcome the search engine filter.

Social Media Marketing For Beginners

01 2008 Wednesday

By Kevin Sinclair in Marketing

In the recent past years Social Media Marketing and Social Media have dominated and defined Internet marketing. The popularity of social sites like MySpace and social bookmarking sites like Digg has caused this push. Social media has two main components, user generated content and the networking capability allowing you to form groups of friends and others that you can share content with.

Sites like MySpace, Zubby, and Facebook allow users to create profiles using text, videos and pictures to design their pages. These can then be shared with a selected group of other people in a special ‘friends’ network and if the user wishes these pages can be shared over the whole social network.

Sites like Digg, Flickr, Associated Content and YouTube allow users to submit links to their favorite news articles online, pictures, articles, and videos then vote on the content that others have submitted. The most popular content is displayed on the front page of the site and the other pages are available to the general public to browse through. These drive traffic to the site and to the pages that are bookmarked.

There are many different ways to use these types of sites, either together or alone.

The use of these types of sites to promote your products and services is what is known as social media marketing. The types of traffic you get once your content is discovered and becomes well known in social media are primary traffic and secondary traffic.

Primary traffic is the direct traffic from the site that you used to make your site popular. If you are using a site that has fairly heavy traffic like Digg to promote your site you could get a large amount of traffic in a short amount of time so you need to make sure your site can handle the traffic, otherwise it may crash.

Once a site becomes popular on a social media site it gets talked about. When people talk about these sites they post links to the site which draws more traffic to the content. This indirect traffic is the secondary traffic. It is the secondary traffic that continues to flow to your site after the initial surge of direct traffic slows.

The benefits of primary and secondary traffic coming from social media sites include exposure to your site initially. Once your site is known by the general public then organic traffic will begin and repeat visitors start to show up, as long as you have something to entice them to come back.

Natural links to your site are beneficial because they are given by people or companies who have nothing to gain from your business venture. These are generally from relevant sites increasing the likelihood that visitors are going to be genuinely interested in your products and services. These links improve your search engine rankings and improve organic traffic.

Social media marketing allows your site to get exposure in a larger site and to a larger group of people. If your traffic levels off you can use social media marketing to jump start your traffic and work on taking your search engine traffic to the next level.

The alternative for increasing your search engine traffic is using pay per click advertisement. Using pay per click campaigns can help you to sustain increased traffic from the search engines but this traffic comes with a price tag.

Using social media marketing is free and can increase your traffic and your ratings in the search engines. Getting your site notices a couple times a year in the social media arena can make your site popular enough to bring in traffic throughout the year.

Author: Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of Be Successful News, a site that provides information and articles on how to succeed in your own home or small business.

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