An important aspect of Facebook ads to recognize right off the bat is its unique opportunity to target ads to user profiles (and related permutations as listed below) as opposed to only keywords and/or locations (such as other PPC platforms).

10 Powerful Ways to Target Facebook Ads You Should Know

1. Location Targeting

2. Likes and Interests Targeting

3. Connection Targeting

4. Relationship Targeting

5. Age Targeting

6. Birthday Targeting

7. Education Targeting

8. Sex Targeting (male/female)

9. Workplace Targeting

10. Language Targeting

If you’re going to test Facebook as an advertising platform, you should contemplate all of the above ways to more effectively target the presentation of your ads.

In addition to testing the workability of Facebook ads for your products/service, also bear in mind Facebook Click Fraud 101 as well as Facebook Demographics.

But if anyone has gone through the trouble of collecting email addresses, and crafting a campaign of messages, then having an awareness of at least what it will take to get the message into inboxes of the recipients should be of interest.

The best way to accomplish bulk email delivery is by using one of the many online services that specialize in such. In fact, it should be emphasized that using a permission-based, Email Service Provider (ESP) is an important component of getting a bulk emails to arrive at the intended destination.

Additionally, ESPs often provide features such as:

♦ The ability to send both HTML and plain text formats. Plain text has the best opportunity for getting through to the intended recipients, but HTML allows the use of colors, embedded images and other formatting choices that make a better email presentation.

♦ Spam scoring, which allows the sender to edit a message before sending it, for the purpose of reducing factors that may result in a message getting blocked before it gets to the recipients.

♦ Automatic list maintenance, which includes stopping emails from being sent to recipients who request such, as well as functionality to allow new subscribers to add themselves via web forms.

♦ Email templates, which can make it easier to send emails that are designed to look more like web pages and/or to make the email messages more readily readable by recipients.

♦ Email analytics, which are statistical metrics pertaining to each email campaign sent, as a way of measuring readership engagement.

Of course, the main point of using an ESP is to get your message through to recipients. Although no service is perfect, there are better ones than others. I have used a number of free and paid ESPs over the years and if you are interested in ESP recommendations, click CONTACT and shoot me a message and I’ll let you know what my current favored choices are.

2) How do you know if you have the best headlines?

3) How do you determine the best offer for your product or service?

The answer is keyword research accompanied by TESTING, TESTING and more TESTING!

Of course there are a variety of ways to test keywords, to test headlines (and other copywriting points), as well as to test for the best offers.

You can certainly set up different pages that are focused on different sets of keywords, with different headlines, and different offers, and monitor key performance metrics, such as “visitors,” and “sales,” and compare them over time to see which perform the best and then continually refine their performance.

However, you can accomplish the same much faster using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

A) Write different PPC ads using your best selected keywords.  Which keywords get more visitors to click on them?

B) Write PPC ads using different combinations of headlines with the best performing keywords.  Which headlines get clicked on the most?

C) Write your best offers on your landing pages for your product or service, which are in harmony with your PPC ads.  Which landing page offers convert the most visitors to sales?  (Click the following link for #1 Copywriting Tip for more information on writing offers.)

With your testing results in hand, you can use this information to refine your long-term SEO campaign. Obviously, you want to keep the winners and get rid of the losers.  But don’t stop there.  Then the game becomes establishing new tests to beat the current “winner” (more technically referred to as the “control” item).

Of course you can accomplish all the above over time using natural traffic, but that takes much longer to be statistically significant.  For relatively small amounts of expenditures, you can test keyword effectiveness and other important factors much faster, using pay-per-click advertising, before embarking on a long and involved strategic SEO process.

In essence you’re trading money for time, so that you can generate higher performance and profits.

In short, basic Internet marketing stuff.

The same key basics that are used to leverage technology to distribute your message farther than ever, with lower costs than in the past.

1) Keywords

Search Engine Optimization should be fundamental to any and all online publications. Press Releases should integrate pertinent keywords for your business products or services (or whatever you wish to rank for). The most prominent keywords should be featured in the title. Of course, don’t go overboard by stuffing an inordinate quantity of keywords into any parts of the press release, including the title or body, which has been ineffective for a long time. (For more info, visit High Keyword Density).

2) Include Links!

Whether paying for a press release service (or using free press release services) to distribute your messages, pointing links back to your website for SEO and traffic benefits is arguably one of the more important purposes. In fact, for some businesses, the search opportunities gained from the embedded links for SEO within their press releases is the main reason they publish ongoing press releases in the first place.

3) Pictures and Graphics

Including images and graphics to make the press release more interesting and informative serves the reader well. Furthermore, image seo is another way to leverage images, in conjunction with press releases, to gain more readers and traffic to your website.

4) Support Your Messages with Video

Videos not only can be more effective at getting out your communications than written text, search engines favor video and offer your business increased opportunities for more exposure. In some cases, video can be embedded directly into your press release, or, it can be linked from your press release to the video itself.  (Visit the following link for the right length for internet videos).

NOTE: Since it is common to upload videos to hosting services such as YouTube and then embed them on a website, I have been asked a number of times, “Which page should I link to from my press release: YouTube or my website’s video page?” There are some circumstances when it would be desirable to link to your YouTube video directly, for example, if you are working to position your YouTube video higher within YouTube itself. However, generally speaking, businesses typically want the traffic on their own website. Hence, for many businesses, linking from your press releases to your video pages on your own site is the way to go.

Visit the following link for 6 Ways to Optimize Your Video for Maximum Search Engine Exposure.

1) Buying traffic or

2) Growing traffic naturally (free), primarily through Search Engine Optimization and including the use of social media.

And if you have a blog, the opportunities are even greater in regards to developing traffic naturally.

Because there is a large community of bloggers in the world, there is a likelihood that there are others blogging about a similar subject that you are.

Some of those bloggers may be influential in their respective areas and may have a considerable following of people who read what they have to say.

If such a high-profile blogger were to cite something that you wrote about, and link to your website, then you stand to benefit from their traffic visiting your site.

And it all has to do with how easy it is for blogs to link to each other, which is an important component of the community of blogging. (Blogging is not about a one-way communication that is typical of static websites. Blogging is about 2-way communication and community).

For example, let’s say you are a beginning blogger writing about the subject of photography. If you search around to discover other bloggers who write about photography, or a related area, such as art or design, you can determine that some have quite a following, as evidenced by the large amount of comments they receive on their blog.

Here is a customary way to inspire such a high-profile blog to link to yours:

A) Write thoughtful comments on their blog

B) Link to their posts from within your own blog

Such bloggers will notice your comments and, over time, they’ll gain insight into your thinking, or humor, or viewpoint, or experience, and personality. Any one of these points could result in that person linking to you.

Many bloggers automatically track what others are saying about them on other blogs. So, when you write their name on your blog, or when you write their website address on your blog, they are automatically notified. Do that a number of times over a period of weeks or months and you may very well inspire a reciprocal mention, which is a useful component of the 3rd part of the SEO Triangle. (See training video Driving Traffic Website Traffic with the SEO Triangle).

Realize that such a link, itself, and all by itself, even if no traffic were to arrive, is valuable enough that search engines may push your site higher up in the search rankings. (See training video on the SEO Triangle).

But when receiving links from a high-profile blogs, this can be a very useful source of like-minded TRAFFIC.

If a high-profile blogger cites an insightful post of yours, you can benefit from a flood of traffic, and some of those visitors will subscribe to your RSS and others may subscribe to your email newsletter list to see what else you’ve got to say in the future, which would then put them in the process of potentially buying something from you, such as a product or service.

Of course, underpinning this whole thing is an understanding that you’ve got something of value to add to the community. Conversely, that does not suggest that every post you write should be worthy of a Nobel Prize. Sometimes all it takes is a concise statement of simplicity about a matter of community interest and/or a humorous presentation of something already tacitly understood.

It’s also useful to be aware that the highest profile bloggers have LOTS of other bloggers vying for their link love, hence, depending upon how much traffic they command, it may be some time before they link to you, particularly if your blog only has a few posts, which would be a reflection that you have more developing to do as a blogger to become recognized as a stable source of contribution.

But there is nothing wrong with poking around on the Internet today to start commenting on the websites of other bloggers to set the stage for some later opportunities!

And the best part is that in a number of cases, it’s quite EASY to get links from other bloggers who are NOT so high-profile, which is still very helpful to generating more traffic for you!

(See training video Driving Traffic Website Traffic with the SEO Triangle for a better understanding of this concept).

Although that value can develop naturally over time as incoming links from external sites begin to point to your more important pages, you can give those same important pages an advantage by indicating to the search engines, as well as visitors, which pages are more important, by simply creating internal links (within your own site), that point to those pages.

For example, let’s say you are selling vitamins. Although your website may have many pages on all kinds of vitamins, if you have determined that a handful of all those offerings are more popular and/or more profitable, then by creating more internal links that point to those pages, you are increasing the importance of those pages within your own site, which can help make them more visible externally, as well.

As another example, here is an internal link to Driving Website Traffic with the SEO Triangle. That post has greater overall interest to a larger audience, than this post, and it also has a training video that makes it more valuable. However, the subject matter is related. So, by directing visitors to that post with an internal link, I’m indicating to search engines and to visitors that there is a more important page to serve up to searchers.

One of the common questions I get from clients trying to figure out how to manage their marketing budgets is “Should I use search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to generate more sales for my business?”

SEO embraces all the ways to drive visitors naturally to your website to take advantage of low-cost traffic, including the use of social media.

PPC is simpler to understand, since the concept of paying for ads to drive visitors to purchase products and services is about as interwoven within the fabric of our commercial world as the concept of exchanging money for goods.

In most circumstances, my answer is “You should be using both.”

Although it’s quite common to categorize SEO and PPC as opposing disciplines, they are truly complementary, as explained below.

First of all, let’s review rudimentary points about each.

SEO ADVANTAGES

♦ “Free” Traffic (The traffic may be free, but there is labor involved)
♦ More Traffic (More traffic flows through natural than paid listings)
♦ Building an Asset of Ongoing Traffic (The traffic continues even if you stop doing SEO)
♦ Better ROI (Low-cost traffic means better return on investment)
♦ Competitive Advantage (Fewer business understand and use it)

PPC ADVANTAGES

♦ Instant Results (Set up a campaign now and monitor your results in minutes)
♦ Very Quantifiable Results (Abundant analytics available for paid traffic)
♦ Full Transparency (Each penny can be accounted for)
♦ Ability to Adjust Quickly (Change your ads now and get different results now)
♦ Easy to Target Specific Audiences (Very powerful advantage)
♦ Does Not Require IT Skills (Marketing guys can control this, without consulting with Information Technology professionals)

SEO and PPC SYNERGY

As noted above, it’s best to drive traffic using both SEO and PPC channels to generate better short-term and longer-term performance.

However, they can be used in conjunction with each other to gain greater results.

For example, the immediacy of paid search advertising can be used to determine which keywords would benefit from organic SEO strategies.

Conversely, proper search engine optimization of landing pages leads to better performing paid advertising results and lower costs.

Finally, by having your business show up in natural and paid listings on the same search engine pages, it presents a more dominant presence for a business’s products and services.

For more information, visit The Two Primary Sources of Internet Traffic.

Traditional marketing has broadly relied upon these channels:

• Word-of-mouth
• Fliers, brochures and other printed support materials
• Print ads in newspapers, magazines and trade publications
• Radio and Television commercials
• Billboards
• And much more

However, undercutting all the traditional marketing channels that might potentially carry a message, would be the words of the actual message itself.

• What concepts would inspire a recipient of such a message to seek out more information?

• More specifically, what message would move a person to make a purchase?

By virtue of the myriad experiences that each and every individual already possesses, it could appear to be a complex process to understand the needs and desires of so many unique persons.

As an example, would an individual fresh out of college respond to the same message about purchasing a health book as a middle-aged parent who is seeking to improve their physical fitness?

Heck, do the terms “health” and “physical fitness” even mean the same thing to disparate age groups?

MARKETING MESSAGES

Although crafting messages that generate purposeful response can be complex, the art and science of marketing is founded upon a rudimentary concept of seeking to understand similar characteristics of smaller groups, which can then be analyzed to ascertain similar buying behaviors and characteristics. Such segmentation can be by age, gender, geography, interests, and by many other criteria.

Understanding what messages are the most effective at generating interest in any product or service are gained through market research, including surveys and market testing. A common form of market testing is the process of comparing different marketing messages and advertisements, side-by-side, to analyze which generates the best response. Such results are then used to further refine a message to maximize the response of the presentation.

As an example, let’s suppose you happened to be interested in increasing your personal fitness level and you observed two separate advertisements in your local newspaper, which said:

• “Get healthier and feel better now, call 123-456-7890”

• “Increase your personal health and fitness by calling 123-456-0987”

Which might pique your interest the most?

The answer won’t be the same for every person, but one of those messages may be more effective for a majority of individuals at driving responses.

“Health” products and services are potentially appealing to a large swath of individuals in modern societies. Since that’s a pretty broad category of buyers to understand, more useful insights can be gained by looking at similarities associated with a marketing subgroup, characterized by age.

Advertising to different age groups is more sophisticated than simply having young actors in a TV commercial drinking a certain brand’s health drink to promote that product to that group, and/or depicting a mature couple on a beach sipping the same health drink to appeal to older consumers. (Even though effective use of imagery to demonstrate different age groups would be a minimal requisite).

GENERATIONAL CATEGORIES

Marketing as an art and science to generate more potential customers is akin to the way you and I and everyone else in our world relates to each other: we find it easier to understand and trust others that already have similar ideas and views. Understanding the ideas and views of different age groups simply makes it easier to present products and services to subsegments of society in a way that is more likely to be appealing.

Joe Marconi, in his book, Future Marketing, details characteristic pertaining to several age groups, including those briefly summated as follows:

A) Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964): Image-conscious, yet sensitive and nostalgic

B) Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980): Cynical, yet ideological

C) Generation Y (born between 1981 and 2000): Independent, enigmatic

Additional characteristics identified with these age groups have been detailed this way:

A) Baby Boomers are noted as achievement-oriented, confident, career-focused and responsible. They are said to welcome exciting and challenging projects and further desire to make a difference with their lives.

B) Generation X values freedom and responsibility. This generation is typified as being technologically adept and representing a casual resistance to authority and structured work hours, and particularly, a dislike of being micro-managed. Generation Xers are said to work to live rather than live to work.

C) Generation Y represents the youngest age group of talent in the work force. Generation Yers are said to desire attention in the forms of feedback and guidance and wish to be kept in the broader communication loop. More so than any other age group, Generation Y has grown up being plugged-in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is the most technologically savvy of these age groups.

More to the point, how does one use such information to communicate to potential new customers?

Although the best answer to that question would be resolved through surveys and market testing, there is available research that can be readily leveraged for greater promotional effectiveness.

SIMPLIFYING THE “AGES” FOR MARKETERS

Much of the point of this article is simplified by Lisa Johnson in her book Mind Your X’s and Y’s: Satisfying the 10 Cravings of a New Generation of Consumers. Johnson categorizes the combined Generation X and Generation Y as the “Connected Generation.” She examines the buying behaviors of 18- to 40-year-olds and depicts these “multitasking, constantly upgrading customers who grew up in the Internet era” to base their decisions upon ten “consumer cravings.”

Johnson identifies such cravings by using terms such as:

1) “Extreme personalization”
2) “Adventure”
3) “Loose connections” by way of social networks
4) “Intuitive design”
5) Helping to “sift through the clutter” by way of interpersonal editors and filters
6) “The rejection of push advertising and the rising influence of peer-to-peer networks”
7) “Connected citizens explore their creative power and influence change”
8) Delivering “a dramatic sense of theater”
9) Finding common ground through “Spiritual hunger and modern media”
10) And finally, by giving back through “volunteerism and the meaning of contribution”

Although a separate series of articles could be devoted to the myriad ways all ten of these “cravings” can be extrapolated to better market health products – or any products and services – what is immediately pertinent is the channel that most engages the “Connected Generation”: the Internet, and especially social media.

In other words, although market surveys and testing would yield more responsive messages to engender more clients, customers and patrons, by simply leveraging social media services such as blogs, YouTube, Facebook and many other related platforms, businesses that are seeking to sell to Generation X and Generation Y would be engaging them via media that is already more intuitive to them in terms of making purchases.

CONCLUSION

The takeaway for this article is that the marketing messages that have been effective at bringing in new business for your company, may or may not be working as effectively as they used to, simply because a large chunk of the buying public has moved their buying research and decision-making to the Internet and to social media.

Although the potential for increasing new sales for your business could be increased via more specific messaging, facilitated by surveys and market testing, easier marketing gains (more sales) may be achieved by conveying your existing messages more effectively via media that is more engaging to both Generation X and particularly Y: The Internet. And more specifically, by way of channels that facilitate user engagement, such as blogs, Facebook, YouTube, and many other types of Social Media.

George Alger is the Principal of Skyworks Marketing, a digital advertising agency specializing in leveraging technology and social media to efficiently generate more leads and sales for increased profits. Contact George, via http://SkyworksMarketing.com/contact/

However, such research often results in a long list of related keywords. If you are trying to sell a product or service, which keywords should you focus on?

Certainly “Testing” the response rates for specific keywords via PPC advertising is the best way, but what if you knew certain keywords reflected a higher probability for a sale than others, wouldn’t that be valuable?

Microsoft has a free online tool for “Detecting Online Commercial Intention” that helps to sort that out.

Here is how Microsoft describes this Commercial Intention tool:

“Web page searches display two levels of commercial intent: informational and transactional. This tool can detect customer intent to acquire information or to purchase products based on their search queries or recently visited URLs.”

This is a very simple and easy to use tool. However, it is not altogether accurate, which is problematic for any mathematical and rules-based search query (think of your own Google searches, which are sometimes immediately fruitful, and other times require more work). I have found this tool to rate some keywords incorrectly, relative to their observable commercial intent.

For example:

1) “Motorcycle” is rated at .98
2) “Harley Davidson” is rated at .87
3) “Harley Davidson Road King” is rated at .95
4) “Harley Davidson XR1200″ is rated at .63

First of all, let’s just ignore what each of the numbers represent by themselves. They are only useful as comparative references to each other.

Of course a narrower (more specific) search term reflects a higher intent to purchase, since the user is drilling down to a particular product or service, which is the standard pattern for a searcher looking for more specific information on their path to making a purchase.

In this case, a more refined keyword, such as example 3, indicates a higher commercial intent (.95) than example 2 (.87). So the tool is correct.

However, example 4 is observably reflective of a higher commercial intent (a specific motorcycle) than example 2, but the tool indicates a lower intent (.63). In other words, the tool is wrong for example #4.

Even more telling is example #1 which observably represents the lowest commercial intent in this group of search terms, since it is the broadest keyword, but the tool gives it the highest ranking (.98). This is a dramatic failure for the tool!

However, I have used this tool for other searches where the indications were correct. I chose these 4 examples to illustrate that it can be wrong, so it is best used with experience and a fundamental understanding of how keywords work.

NOTE: Since the tool also displays a yes/no user feedback poll, it is likely this tool will continue to become more accurate over time and therefore more valuable.

Further, it should be used with other tools to help determine traffic volume as well (see link below for other keyword tools).

If you have a keyword that shows a high commercial intent with very low search volume, you may want to consider another keyword with high commercial intent and higher volume.

Ideally, you would find some balance between traffic and intent.

In simple terms, if you can optimize your content and/or your online advertising to generate high traffic using keywords that have high commercial intent, you are setting yourself up for more visitors and more sales.

Click the following link for Detecting Online Commercial Intention.

Also, click the following link for more Search Engine Optimization tools.

Copywriting Formula for Direct Response Advertisements

1. Get your attention. Successful copywriting is designed to boldly grab your attention now. The opening message or headline should ideally pull you from your life right into the message in such a way that you will ignore the conversation you are having, or the magazine you may be browsing, or your desire to run to the kitchen for a snack, or anything else you may be doing or about to do. If your are not instantly engaged, the rest of the copywriting will not likely move you to make a purchase.

2. Pose a problem. Whether it’s your weight, your hair, your breath, how you prepare food, personal finances, debt, health, the performance of your car, or countless other issues, you were presented a problem. Such can even include positioning something you hadn’t previously considered to be irksome as old and problematic. The more generally troublesome something can be presented, the more you are likely to relate to it.

3. Solve your problem. Yay! The product you purchased was demonstrated to save the day. On TV or web video, this is often represented by visually showing benefits and results as effectively, quickly and easily as possible. With written text, the words will be woven to create similarly strong visual impressions.

4. Offer you a great deal. This is where you were presented a special price, purchasing instructions, added incentives, bonuses, and anything that increased the value of what you purchased.

You were directed to call a toll-free number by showing and/or repeating it over and over and over. Whether on TV, radio or in a written advertisement, that number was presented so that you would take advantage of it now!

If the copywriting directed you to a website to complete your purchase, the web address was shown, announced and/or featured prominently enough for you to get some paper and write it down (even if you had to run across the street to borrow paper and pencil from a neighbor).

5. Guaranteed! The guarantee was designed to lower your resistance and assure you that you made a right decision to purchase the product or service because you could get a refund for any reason. A “no risk,” money-back guarantee would have been emphasized to ensure you reach for your wallet and make that phone call.

As a bit of counter-intuitive benefit to advertisers, in many cases, the longer the guarantee period, the less likely a refund will be requested. It doesn’t make sense, but I have conducted tests that have shown longer guarantees to be more effective in generating sales and still result in less refund requests (obviously this would not hold true with an inferior product). Better guarantees should be longer than 30 days, and in some case can go as far as offering “Lifetime guarantees.” (Although the latter is less effective for companies that are not well established and might even raise doubts about the sincerity of the guarantee for a new company).

6. Call to action. This is when you were told to “BUY NOW,” “ORDER NOW,” and/or “CALL NOW.” This was likely accentuated by emphasizing that the product or service is available only for a “limited time” and/or “while supplies last.” The success of many direct response offers, whether by commercials, infomercials, website ads, direct mail ads, email marketing, magazines, newspapers, etc, is a result of impulse decision making, which diminishes rapidly with passing time.

Furthermore, successful direct response campaigns have had each of these elements (and more) tested and tested and tested again to refine the copywriting and the presentation for the purpose of generating the most sales or responses.  (For more complex or expensive products, the “response” may not be a sale, but a sales lead or prospect, who has requested information in exchange for their contact details).

Heck, even the term “Search Engine Marketing” (SEM) has not established a universal definition. To many folks SEM refers to the various forms of paid marketing, such as pay-per-click advertising.

To others, SEM encompasses paid search marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), for developing non-paid traffic.

Regardless of the terminology, paid advertising and SEO are the two general ways to get more traffic to your website.

Ideally, your website marketing efforts would include both, however the most non-optimum circumstance is not taking advantage of either.

How about you? What do you do to get visitors to your website?

Although Facebook is a popular social networking platform, from an advertising perspective, it’s more noteworthy as a large marketplace replete with a generous amount of user demographic data that can be readily translated into more targeted ads to carry your message. But not all products and services are profitably suited to advertising on Facebook.

What Products and Services Sell Best on Facebook?

Facebook primarily caters to individuals inclined towards communicating about their lives to friends and family. Hence, products or services that are business-to-consumer oriented (B2C), have a better opportunity at establishing positive results than a company which is advertising business-to-business (B2B) products or services.

Having said that, if you do sell B2B products/services, recognize that you are more likely to successfully advertise to small business owners who are on Facebook, rather than larger company buyers. (Statistically, there are more of the former).

Facebook is a good advertising channel for generating business for art, music, clubs, shared beliefs (ie. political, religious, social causes, etc.), live events, travel, entertainment or for marketing custom or personalized products, as well as things that express individual tastes and preferences.

Facebook Advertising is Not for Everyone

Some examples of B2B products or services that would not likely yield positive results on Facebook would be technical, industrial, or complex products/services.

Also, if you sell products that can be readily purchased anywhere with a price that is well known, then – unless you have a compelling price – your product may not do well on Facebook.

Facebook Advertising Conclusion

Facebook offers a unique opportunity to demographically target a large audience of users, with qualifiers such as likes and interests, geography, age, gender, single or married, and education level.

Even so, if you have a product or service that fits the criteria outlined in this article, then you would be wise to stick your toes in the water first via market testing to develop and refine your advertising, rather than diving in head first with a large ad budget just because it appears so promising.

A) Shorter website names are better because they are easier to remember, and they are easier to communicate to others. (However, all the really short names are taken).

B) It can be useful to have one keyword in the name to benefit from some extra search engine traffic. However, some companies will use relatively short names that have no keywords and no other meaning, and then build a brand around it. (Think “Google” or “Kodak”). That works great as long as you can gain enough attention to get people to look for that name.

C) If your own personal name is available, that may be useful for certain professionals, artists, or anyone who wants to publish a website using their own name. In fact, if your personal name “is” still available, you SHOULD buy it! For less than $10/yr you would have the opportunity to build a website for your name at any point in the future.

D) What about choosing “.com” “.org” “.net” and all the other “top level domains”? (The top level domain, or TLD, is the last part of the website address). In simple terms, “.com” is the best TLD. But if you are a non-profit, you should get “.org” since that is its intended function. If you buy a website name with anything other than “.com,” just realize that you will lose visitors to your competition because, out of habit, visitors will type your name and type “.com” at the end. By the way, even if you are a non-profit, you should buy “.org” as well as “.com.” You can “redirect” the .com use of your name to your .org website. For example, if your non-profit is named “ABC,” you should by abc.com and abc.org and redirect abc.com to abc.org. What that means is every person who types in abc.com will be sent to abc.org. In fact, it is not uncommon for a business to buy their domain with a number of endings, and even common misspellings of their website name and redirect them all to their primary website. (Actually, there are other strategies that get more complex, but that is beyond the scope of this article).

E) What about buying a website name with hyphens? If you have the option of buying abc-business.com or abcbusiness.com, the non-hyphenated version is best. Hyphenated website names are not the first choice one would make, but they can provide website names that might not otherwise be available. A disadvantage is that if your business name is ABC Business, and abcbusiness (no hyphen) is not available, if you buy abc-business.com (hyphenated) and promote it, some of your potential visitors will end up going to the non-hyphenated website. Alternatively, if both versions are available, you can buy both, and redirect one to the other, to exert greater control over your business name.

In most cases a landing page is not a home page (although there are exceptions – including for certain websites that only sell one product or service).

In certain limited examples, a landing page is not even part of a website’s navigation menu, which means that users would not end up on such a page as a result of browsing a particular website. They would arrive, or land there, by being purposefully directed to that page via an email, or an advertisement.  (By the way, the advertisement could be an ad on one’s own site, in addition to other sites).

Landing Page Expectations

Typically, a visitor “lands” on a landing page via an advertisement (such as PPC or other ads), e-mail, or search listing. That initial message establishes the viewer’s expectation for what the user expects to see when they click on a link that leads them to your landing page.

An obvious point that contributes to the sales success of any landing page is how well the landing page delivers on the promise of the ad or email that drove the visitor to the landing page.

If a person clicks on a link from an ad, or email, or search result, with a promise of a solution to a problem, or more information, or certain details, only to land on a generalized page about a company (such as a home page), then the visitor is forced to search again for the information that brought him to the site. Most visitors will leave such a site and look for another website that makes it easier for the searcher to find what they’re after.

For example, if a searcher clicks on an ad that describes a sale for a particular brand of motorcycle tire, only to land on the home page of a motorcycle dealer’s website that features all kinds of motorcycles, helmets, jackets, accessories, parts, mechanical services – as well as motorcycle tires – the visitor would be forced to do further searching on the dealer’s website to find the tire sale.  Many visitors will leave such a website disappointed, and continue their search for a site that will show them the exact motorcycle tire they’re after.

A better example would be a searcher who clicks on an ad for a particular brand of motorcycle tire, and arrives on a web page that has a picture of that exact tire, with the regular price, the sale price, the tire’s specifications, shipping details, a phone number to call for any questions, and a very easy-to-see “BUY” button (or “Add to Shopping Cart”) so that such a consumer can get the info they’re after (if they want), but more importantly, so they make their purchase and move on with their day.

Landing Page Call-to-Action

The “call-to-action” is what you want the visitor to do, such as make a purchase, download some information, make a phone call, etc. In the above example, the call-to-action is represented by a very prominent “BUY” button.

Whatever it is you want the visitor to do, be sure to clearly state it on the landing page. Any visitor should be able to quickly identify what their expected action is.

Market Testing Landing Pages

There is more than one can know about landing pages, including not distracting visitors from the main intent of the web page. Hence, landing pages can be made more effective by “not” including other advertisements.

More importantly, landing pages can be made more effective by testing, testing and more testing. Market testing landing page variables such as the wording in the headlines, the main copywriting information, the placement of “more details,” and product images are among some of the fundamental items that should be statistically compared and then refined.

For more information about testing to improve efficiency, click on “Testing” Your Way To Internet Marketing Success.

For many businesses, ONLY advertising on Google’s search pages is the mainstay of their paid traffic strategy.

However, the Content Network is workable for other businesses.

Google’s Content Network includes all the websites that host ads for Google, and whose publishers are paid when their visitors click on the ads.

One advantage of the Content Network is that ad costs are lower than on the search pages.

But since traffic from the Content Networks comprises a different mindset in relation to viewer interest in such ads, these ads not only necessitate a different copywriting strategy, they may simply NOT be workable for a given business.

Of course, in both circumstances, the ads are displayed only when they are contextually relevant. For example, if you are paying to advertise motorcycles, those ads will only show up for people who are searching for motorcycles (for the search page ads), and they will only show up on website pages that have content that has to do with motorcycles (via the Google’s Content Network).

A DIFFERENT MINDSET ON THE CONTENT NETWORK

The thinking underlying the difference between buying ads on search pages and buying ads on the Content Network could be summed up as follows:

1. Paid ads that are displayed on the search pages represent ads that are relevant to what the searcher has actually indicated they are looking for “right now.” So the ads have a greater potential tendency to engage visitors. (Someone searches for “motorcycles” and sees search results for “motorcycles” as well as ads for “motorcycles.”)
2. Paid ads that are displayed on the Content Network, however, are presented to viewers who have already gone to a website for information, and the ads “may” be deemed more of a distraction. However, the ads are still contextually relevant, in the same way they are on the search pages. (Searcher arrives on a website that has an article about “motorcycles” and sees ads about “motorcycles.”)

As an example, let’s say someone is searching for information about “buying a motorcycle.” When the searcher is reviewing the displayed results of his/her search, he will likely also see paid ads from advertisers who are selling motorcycles. Depending upon where such a searcher is in the process of possibly buying a motorcycle, he may, or may not, be interested in advertisements to buy motorcycles at that moment. He may only be interested in free information about the process of selecting motorcycles.

If that same person then clicks on a search result and goes to a website page that has an article on selecting the best motorcycle, the searcher has found something they are interested in. If that website ALSO happens to be hosting Google’s paid ads (as part of the Google Content Network), then the searcher may once again see ads on buying motorcycles. So, an important question would be, “Is this searcher more inclined, or less inclined, to click on an ad about ‘buying motorcycles’ on the web page he/she has visited, as compared to the search page?”

Market testing will provide the answer for any given product or service.

The distinction is significant enough to recognize that if you are interested in maximizing the performance of your ad budget, ads should be tested on the search pages and ads should be tested on the Content Network separately.

On the other hand, the different mindset of the searcher/visitor on the Content Network “MAY” represent a lower cost media opportunity and even a better quality lead. To continue the example above, let’s suppose the searcher elects to read an article on the process of buying motorcycles and as a result of reading the articles, discovers that there is much more to know about this subject than he/she originally considered.

And then let’s suppose this website visitor sees an advertisement for a book on selecting motorcycles.

At this point, such a person may be considerably MORE inclined to click on such an ad, even if the same ad were displayed on the original search results page. And to further emphasize the different mindset that could be established after a searcher lands on a website, what if that same article about the process of buying motorcycles also recommended the reader buy a book?

You can probably imagine your own scenarios where the Content Network could be a better or worse media. Hence, they need to be tested separately.

TEST THE GOOGLE CONTENT NETWORK SEPARATELY

Bear in mind that Google charges less to advertise on their Content Network because it is not as effective for most advertisers. However, not all advertisers are savvy enough to test DIFFERENT ads on the Content Network, so these advertisers are missing out on a potential opportunity to generate more leads/sales for less money. The fact that some advertisers simply choose NOT to advertise on the Content Network because their results are not as profitable, is part of why the price is lower. But if they never tested DIFFERENT ads on the Content Network, they never actually found out if there is a real opportunity or not. (And again, for some products/services, the testing may confirm that the Content Network does not present an opportunity).

To establish the most fruitful pay-per-click ad testing, it is best to run such ad campaigns independent of each other: Conduct one series of tests on the search pages and another series of tests on the Content Network.

Depending upon the resources you have available to devote to testing, you might even test each area one-at-a-time, instead of concurrently, for the sake of simplicity.

Click here to view the current Introduction to Google Adwords series, and check back to see more as the series continues to expand.

8 Tips For a TV Interview Guest

1. The main point is being relaxed enough to come across naturally. That’s sure easy to say, but for some folks that’s their main hurdle. A good interviewer can help the guest be comfortable, but even so, some folks freeze when the cameras goes on. If that is a potential problem for you, one thing to do is put all your attention on the interviewer and focus on the conversation, which should help you ignore the cameras. If you are able to take a short walk before the interview, that can be beneficial. (However, be sure to coordinate with the Director or Floor Manager, as you may be asked “not” to go away if it’s too close to starting time.)

2. Knowing the material that you are going to be interviewed about is another way to support coming across naturally. However, even if you have a list of “talking points” from the interviewer beforehand, don’t try to memorize what you will say, which can make you appear stiff and unnatural. Just answer the questions as you would in a regular (off camera) conversation.

3. Related to the first point, even if you aren’t afraid of cameras, lights and TV studios, generally speaking, you still don’t want to look into the cameras when they are rolling. Simply look at the interviewer (and not the cameras) in the same manner that you would anyone else you were having a conversation with.

Note: There are certain instances when a person will intentionally look into the camera.  For example, the host of the show “may” look into the camera to speak directly to the audience at the opening and the closing of the program, but that generally does not apply to a person being interviewed.  Even if that were desired for some reason, you would be specifically requested to do so.  However, that would be rare.

4. The interviewer may have some notes to refer to during the discussion, but you won’t. Unless you are specifically required to cite some reference as part of your interview, don’t bring notes onto the set. The information you are imparting as part of a conversational interview should come from your head, not prepared notes.  In fact, bringing anything on the set can be distracting to the audience.  For that reason, even if you are the author of a book, which is the subject of the interview, in many cases it will be the person who is asking the questions who will physically handle the book itself.

5. Short answers are best. Even though you may have a lot to say in response to a given question, you don’t want to speak more than a few sentences at a time. This keeps the dialog going back and forth, which makes for a more interesting program for the viewers. Also, unless you are confident that your program is being produced for a specialized audience, you will connect better with more viewers by avoiding technical jargon, as well as avoiding terms specific to your industry.  Use simple language that will be understood by a broad audience.

6. If the video interview is being conducted in your home or office, instead of a TV studio, you’ll want to use chairs that do not swivel. Interviewees, in particular, tend to move when they are uncomfortable and this is noticeable on TV.

7. Another point about interviews in a home or office is that it’s best to use a room that has as little outside light as possible. Unless the Director specifically prefers to have natural light in the background, it’s trickier to balance the brightness of inside lights with outside light. Furthermore, outside light (daylight) has a blueish cast compared to most lights used inside, which would also require added effort to balance for the camera and lighting crew.

8. Get plenty of sleep the night before, so that you are well rested. Also, have a good meal beforehand so that you are well fed (but don’t eat so much that you become groggy). You may also want to have water readily available so you can start the interview without being thirsty.

BONUS TIP! If you are able to interject some appropriate humor at an apt point or two in the interview, that will help make the conversation more enjoyable for the viewing audience. However, unless you are a comic, or are doing a comedy show, there is no need to go overboard on the humor. For most interviews, the idea is to keep things light. This can help, at times, even if the discussion is about a serious matter. (However, “appropriate humor” is the operative term here as well as good judgment).

By the way, if you are interested in how to dress, you may want to check out this article on What Clothes To Wear For A TV Interview.

It’s worth re-stating that the main idea here is to present yourself on camera at ease and naturally, which contributes to the ease and enjoyment of the viewing audience.

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What’s the best price to charge for a product? How about, what’s the best price to charge for a product that’s not even developed yet?

Market price-testing is a simple concept: It’s mostly about finding the price that makes the most money.

For example, if you market test the prices of $50 and $100 for the same product, you might expect to make more money on the $100 price.  However, if you sell more than twice the amount of the same product by charging $50, then the lower price would be the most profitable one.

Of course, you really have to analyze this against all your costs, to reflect your overall return-on-investment (ROI) of producing, marketing and delivering the product.

Although in another example you may very well sell less of the same product at $100, as long as you make more overall profit than selling a larger quantity at $50, then the $100 is the way to go.

Oh! Of course, from a business perspective, sometimes it’s best to select the price that creates the most customers, regardless that it may not generate the most profit, simply because more first-time customers means greater opportunities for increased sales later on.

And just to make things more interesting, there are examples of selling a product at a higher price that results in a larger volume of sales than offering it a lower price.

Still, the more pertinent question for this article is how do you determine what’s the best price for a product that’s not even developed?

Market Testing For The Best Price

The accompanying flow chart illustrates a simple way to test 4 different prices via online pay-per-click advertising (in this case, using Google Adwords). This particular example is also constructed to determine if the product in question should be developed at all. (In this example, what is being tested is a potential information product).

An important purpose here is to spend a small amount of advertising money upfront – before creating the product – to determine if the product will be profitable enough to bother developing in the first place.

Another important purpose of this test is to determine the response levels of four different prices. The responses are then evaluated to determine which price is the most profitable.  Of course you would also evaluate the results against your business intent:

• Do you want to use the price that generates the highest ROI?
• Or do you want the price that generates the greatest number of responses with an acceptable ROI?

Price Testing Flow Chart

In this flow chart the four prices are rotated and displayed to searchers looking for the keywords specified for this product. (The same keywords are used for all four ads).

Google Adwords allows rotation of the ads to searchers and provides good metrics to evaluate the responsiveness of each ad. (Which, in this case, is simply how many clicked on the product landing page).

If this were solely a “Price Test,” this campaign could be simplified by ending the test at the landing page to reveal which ad generated the greatest response. However this flow chart depicts a test which goes further by also seeing how many respondents would click on the “Buy” button.

If you were testing different prices with a product that was ready to be delivered, then anyone who clicked the “Buy” button could be charged the indicated price and the product delivery would be executed.

However, in this flow chart example, the product has not been developed.

Hence, each visitor who clicks “Buy” is directed to the Registration Page, informed that the product is not ready, and is given the opportunity to be notified as soon as the product is available.

Of course, not everyone who lands on this page will enter their name and email.  For example, those who would want the product immediately will probably continue their Internet search to buy what they’re after. However, any visitors that do add their name and email would be categorized as “hot prospects” in a database.

So in addition to using this test as a way to determine the best price, it’s also a way to generate potential buyers. (Of course a number of the hot prospects will have been introduced to the offer by any of the other four prices than the price they originally clicked on, so not all “hot prospects” will buy the product in the end with a different price).

From a testing perspective, the amount of visitors who click the “Buy” button represents an important metric, since it would be the best estimate of what percentage of visitors would result in a purchase.

Once the results of the test have been evaluated and the price determined – and in this case, the decision made to even develop the product – then the hot prospects can be sent a series of emails offering them the opportunity to buy the product when it is ready.

In this way, some of the advertising money may be offset by some initial purchasers.

This would also be the time to ramp up all of your marketing efforts to sell this product in volume at the best price.

Future Price Testing

Once a product is developed, price testing for the exact same product can be repeated from time to time, as the market evolves and changes.  Some of the conditions that might indicate an opportunity for a higher or lower price could be accounted for by more (or less) competition, an increase in your brand’s prominence, a greater (or reduced) demand for your product, or even a different business intent for the product itself within your company’s overall business goals.

Of course if the results of the test demonstrate that it won’t be profitable to develop the product at all, then the next step is to abandon this product and test your next product idea.

By the way, it’s worth emphasizing that this article is about “Price Testing,” especially to determine the viability of developing a product. However, there are other types of testing. In fact, testing is an ongoing proposition. For example, once you have determined to develop a product and have determined the best price, a larger body of testing would be directed towards improving various aspects of the ad copy and the landing page presentation, to make the sales process MORE profitable. For more information on this topic visit this link on Internet marketing testing.

♦ Driving LEADS into your business

♦ Converting LEADS into SALES

♦ Turning SALES into PROFIT

And it all needs to be continuously refined for greater efficiency and affluence.

In my experience writing and executing large direct mail and email campaigns, “the offer” is the most vital. The offer is how you are presenting what it is you are selling (product or service). Although some might argue that the headline is the most important element of copywriting because it is the first point of contact with potential visitors, in my experience, no matter how many individuals you drive to your offer through an effective headline, you will not capitalize on that traffic without an effective offer.

Conversely, if you have a weak headline for an email or direct mail piece or print ad, you can still convert the visitors that do arrive to your offer – as long as you have an effective offer!

Of course the headline is very important, and it would not make sense to craft a weak headline and a strong offer. The point is that focusing on and testing different headlines for their value in determining which is the best headline to attract visitors, should be done in conjunction with testing which offer is the most appealing to your visitors. In fact, a heavier emphasis should be given towards testing the offer.

Here are a few traditional components for crafting an offer:

1) Presenting Something New
Rightly or wrongly, consumers are more interested in “new” stuff as opposed to old stuff, even if old stuff might be better. What can you present as “new”?

2) Sale
Positioning any product or service for a reduced cost is the surest way to boost sales.

3) Premium or Bonus
Including bonuses for “buying now” are an effective way to sweeten any offer.

4) Limited Time Offer
Making any offer available for a limited time will inspire some potential customers who are sitting on the fence to “Buy Now,” which is always a good thing, since so many transactions that don’t occur “now” will simply never occur.

5) Free Trial
If you can introduce people to your products or service for free, so they can experience the real value you are presenting, you will eliminate the major obstacle that potential customers have when considering a purchase: “Am I going to get ripped off?” Of course, a percentage of those users who take advantage of your free trial will never become clients or customers anyway, but the percentage of those that DO give you money for your offer will be higher overall.

6) Buy Now, Pay Later
“Multiple payment” options, and “buy now, pay later” also lower the barrier of uncertainty among potential customers. This tends to work best for large ticket items: the perceived cost is reduced by breaking up an expensive purchase into multiple smaller payments.

Of course, the best offer includes many of these ingredients. In fact, whenever I write a sales letter for a client, I will attempt to include as many as possible to craft a number of powerful offers, and then test them to see which is the best!

Regardless of how you get potential paying customers to arrive at your website, the following six basic mistakes reduce the likelihood those hard-earned visitors will buy your products and/or services.

1. No prominent phone number. Displaying your phone number prominently not only provides a way for potential purchasers to get questions answered when they are read to purchase, in some buyers minds, it’s a credibility assurance knowing the phone is readily available, just in case they have a question after they buy.

2. You’re not attempting to gain email info from visitors who are “just looking.” Most visitors are not going to buy now. But if you offer something of value to these visitors in exchange for their email, you can send them marketing messages into the future to inspire them to buy with a sale or to stay on their radar screen until they are ready to spend their money. (Check out What Are YOU Giving Away For FREE?)

3. Your pages are text heavy instead of visually enticing. Pictures, graphics and videos can convey the benefits of your products and services more effectively and more interestingly than words – and are less boring to boot. If you are trying to sell stuff with too many words and few images, you are losing sales.

4. Your call-to-action buttons, such as “BUY NOW” or “ADD TO CART” blend in with your site and do not pop out with contrasting color to make it easy for visitors to get the goods instantly when they are ready to buy.

5. If you sell a lot of products, and your navigation bar is not segmented into logical and instantly recognizable categories, then you are forcing visitors to read every link to find what they want. Which means some percentage of your visitors are clicking away to another site where the pickings are easier.

6. You don’t implement cross selling and/or upselling for your products, which means your average sale amount is considerably lower than it should be.

Because you are so busy with life, family, business, social activities and learning more about Internet marketing, it’s easy to lose sight of some of the basics of using a website to help you make money.

Let’s say you’ve created an Internet marketing engine to drive traffic to your website:

• You’ve got a blog
• You’re adding new content to your blog every day
• You’ve got a professional email service pushing visitors to your site on auto-pilot
• You’re using photos, and graphics
• You’re optimizing the photos and graphics to generate traffic for your site
• You’re using video
• You’re creating a series of videos and optimizing them to generate traffic to your site
• You’re taking advantage of local search opportunities
• You’re using social media to drive traffic to your website
• You’re delivering great products/services which results in a stream of happy customers and clients and positive testimonials
• You’ve established an excellent reputation and word-of-mouth referrals from your happy customers, which is also driving traffic to your site
• You’ve established a growing network of incoming links
• You are using offline marketing actions, such as direct mail, print ads, radio, and TV, to drive even more traffic to your website

Jeez! Your Internet marketing engine is really pumping a lot of visitors to your website. How come you’re not turning more of those visitors into customers and clients!?

Before diving into a hefty evaluation of your entire Internet marketing machine, simply review what you are giving away for free.

A large percentage of those visitors are only coming one time. And they are visiting for a remarkably short period of time.

You’ve only got a few seconds to engage them and help them in some meaningful way, so that you can develop a relationship which will yield a greater benefit for them, and more business for you.

Many people who land on your site are looking for specific information: some need to solve a problem or to get an answer RIGHT NOW. Others are gathering info to support buying decisions that may be made sooner or later.

Even if some of these visitors determine very quickly that you are providing something they want, if you do not engage them, you will lose a number of your most interested visitors – every day.

And an easy way to engage visitors is to offer them something for free that is relevant to why they arrived on your site in the first place.

On top of that, you should present that free giveaway like you were selling an expensive diamond, because that’s how valuable it is for your visitors and for your business!

When you give away something for free – in exchange for their email – you have an opportunity to help them and of course, as a result, you are building a relationship, which is further developed through an automated email campaign.

In short, no matter how much (or how little) traffic you have coming to your site, if you are not engaging your visitors and offering something valuable enough to capture their imagination – for free – you have lost an opportunity to help them because the likelihood that they will ever return is very low.

If should be emphasized that whatever you are giving away better be GOOD, so that it will genuinely help your visitors, which will result in building a relationship that will be mutually beneficial.

Oh! One more thing. Giving away something valuable is also useful for building incoming links, which is just one more reason to really make sure your giveaways are REALLY GOOD!

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There are many ways to generate leads. Heck, there are many ways just to take advantage of online lead generation, which is only one component of all the channels that can be used to drive leads to your business. (Check out Ten Lead Generation Models).

In the world of online marketing, incorporating email into a lead generation campaign would be considered a mature practice, since it’s been so thoroughly and routinely utilized going back to the 90′s. (I began my email marketing career back in 1995 and have never stopped.)

The accompanying graphic of a simple email lead generation flow chart depicts the flow of a stream of Internet visitors moving through a website, getting sorted into segmented databases and leveraging those databases to maximize marketing leads and sales.

Free Offer in Exchange for an Email Address

It all begins with some kind of offer – and it’s typically a free offer. This can be as simple as a free download that would be valuable to the targeted market segment. The download could be a PDF, or an audio program or a video, or even a multi-part email educational “course.”

The offer should be something desirable for your target audience. As an example, if you were generating leads to cultivate financial service clients, you would offer something of value to those types of clients. If you were offering leads to potential students for educational products or services, you would need something that specific target audience needs, and it should also relate to the product or service you are selling.

Regardless of what the offer is, it should be emphasized that it needs to be valuable. Over the years it’s gotten harder and harder to inspire visitors to part with their email address in exchange for downloadable information, and if what you provide is not truly deemed valuable by the recipients, then you will have lost the opportunity to convert those visitors into new customers.  In fact, they might not be interested in anything you have to offer at any time thereafter.

Conversely, if you truly delight them with your offer, they may be inclined to consider that if you provided that much value for free, you’ll probably provide even more value for your paid products or services.

Do You Really Need More Info Than Your Visitors’ Email?

By the way, the more information you ask of your visitors, the less of them who will respond. Of course all marketers typically want as much information as possible from their potential leads, but that’s not always the best practice. In other words, if you ask for more info than their name and email (such as their phone number, and address, etc.) many visitors will decline your free offer.

It’s more acceptable to simply ask for name and email.  Some marketers only ask for an email (and no name), knowing that the more visitors that they convert into their database, the more FUTURE opportunities there will be to get more contact information, and more importantly, MORE SALES.

Lead Generation: Quality vs. Quantity

Some marketers are willing to accept less potential leads, and instead, ask for as much information as they believe is necessary to qualify a lead upfront. This is simply a business decision. Do you want a larger volume of leads? Or do you want a more qualified stream of leads?

However, this particularly flow chart highlights a process that attempts to gain a higher quantity of leads AND a higher quality by guiding visitors through an initial two-step process.  It’s simple and gives visitors more control over their experience while gaining more demographic information for the marketer.

More specifically, the initial offer in this example only requires name and email. However, once that is provided, an optional survey is presented, which has several qualifying questions, and also makes an optional request for a phone number. Since a visitor can choose whether to provide their phone number or not, most that do enter their phone number, can be considered to be amenable to a sales call. (Especially if you make it clear that someone will contact them if they leave a phone number).

By the way, if you want to make this simple flow chart even simpler, then the survey can be dispensed with.

Database Marketing

This flow chart represents a simple, rudimentary and initial aspect of database marketing. In this example, ALL emails that are exchanged for the offer go into a central “All Prospects Database,” and those that give their phone number are segmented into a “Hot Prospects Database,” whom are immediately contacted via telephone as part of a sales process.

Of course, not all the prospects that are included in the sales process will be reached by phone and of those that are contactable, not all will turn into customers.

However, by way of the ongoing email follow-up campaign, which integrates more information about the topic that is of interest to the visitors (as well as additional marketing email messages), these follow up emails represent the crux of this campaign as they can continue on indefinitely until the subscriber buys a product or service or unsubscribes from the database.

Bear in mind that most prospects will “not” provide their phone number, which means the majority of conversions from inquiries to actual hot prospects will be a result of the ongoing email marketing efforts.  It is only then, after those who are reading the emails get to know your business better, that they will select themselves into the “Hot Prospects Database” by contacting you to ask questions or to buy your product or service.

And the best part is that the entire lead generation process is automated up to the point that prospects enter the sales process.  (If interested, you are welcome to contact me about which email services may be best for your business).

Email Lead Generation Conclusion

There is certainly more that one can know about online email lead generation, including testing the offers and landing pages, testing which survey questions yield the best results in terms of prospect engagement and qualifying the leads. Furthermore, there is more that one can know about tuning the variables of quantity vs. quality of leads. And there is definitely more that can be known about database marketing and lead segmentation, especially as it relates to gaining more demographic information from your email database as time goes on and as your readers receive more of your mailings. But this simple flow chart does serve as an example of one method that can be used to construct an email lead generation campaign to increase your business profits.

One of the most fundamental aspects of utilizing search engine optimization to push your website higher on the search engine results page is to establish more and more links to your site (and specific pages) from external sites. And not just any links, you want inbound links that are high value – the higher the better.

Get Links From External High Ranking Web Pages

So, what’s “high value”?

Google’s PageRank is a scale that ranks web pages from 0-10 (10 being the best). Although all links have some value, the best links are PageRank 3 and higher. Each ranking up the scale is 10x the value of the one below. So, a PageRank 3 is 10x more valuable than a PageRank 2. A PageRank 4 is 10x more valuable than a PageRank 3.

Get Links With The Right Keywords

One more important point is that the anchor text (underlined blue text that makes up the link) should contain the keywords you are attempting to rank higher. In short, that text is a description of your page from an external site and the search engines consider that description when determining what your web page is about. And if the link and anchor text is from a high value (high PageRank) external site, then that inbound link has even more SEO weight.

Examples Of How To Get Links With The Right Keywords

In years past, the way to get links was to plead with other webmasters to link to you.

Then, and especially now, a better way is to create content that is of such value and usefulness that other website owners and bloggers would “want” to link to your site to share your content with their readers.

However, this can be easier said than done. In short, it involves work: More specifically, it involves research and creativity to provide something valuable that is better than, or at least different than, what’s already readily available to your visitors elsewhere.

Here are some examples of how to get links for the keywords you need.

1) Research, write and publish some type of valuable content for the audience you are targeting. This could be some kind of review or comparison of products or services that are of interest to your potential and actual visitors.

It could also be timely research, such as quarterly or annual reviews of your industry.

Heck, even explaining and/or presenting complex or technical concepts in simple ways to make the material more readily understandable to others can be very desirable to visitors.  This can include presenting graphics, charts, videos, and other content that is uniquely instructive to others.

Such types of content could be a separate web page, or a downloadable report. (The latter having the benefit of building an email list, since giving away freebies in exchange for email addresses is a common occurrence).

If you are simply re-writing what’s already out there and readily available to your audience then you won’t create the impact you are hoping for. But if you provide content that is truly unique, relevant and valuable, then you will be rewarded with links from other sites.

And what anchor text will they use?

Although you cannot control the text others will use when linking to your site, it is likely that if you name the title of the content with keywords that are relevant to what you are targeting, then you will get a good portion of links with those same keywords.

2) For top-ranked sites that you want links from, you can suggest content to those sites that you’ll provide for free.  Alternatively, just ask what content they might suggest you provide. If you write blog posts or articles that they publish on their sites, this will help them to raise value for their readers. And you’ll minimally be able to include at least one link back to your own site – but more likely you can structure the content to contain more links.

3) Interview industry leaders over the phone, or in person and/or with a video camera. Publish the interviews as valuable content for your readers.  Furthermore, the person who is the subject of the interview may very well post links to your content, too, from their company website. As you establish more prominent interview subjects, you will be able to leverage those contacts to get even more prominent interview subjects.

4) Write an ebook that will be valuable to your readers and give it away for free. If it’s truly useful, then you’ll gain incoming links.

5) Linkbait is content specifically designed to generate inbound links. Although it could be stated that any content published with the intent of generating inbound links would be linkbait, this type of content is often characterized as sensational, controversial or provocative, specifically presented to move visitors emotionally and get them to react (positively or negatively) and write their own responses with links to your content.

Note On Building Inbound Links

Any of these examples need some initial promotion to get the link building started. If you have an email list, that’s a great way to get some publicity established.

Additionally, generating press releases about your content is another way to attract interest (and you don’t need an email list to do so).

If you can cultivate partnerships with other website owners and/or owners of email lists who will promote your content, this is great way to maximize the potential impact your content will make.

The point is to generate as much initial publicity as possible, which will get others to start linking to you, which of course will begin to drive new traffic to your content, and ideally, a percentage of the new traffic will also link to your site.

In an ideal world, you’d hit a home run with your link-building campaign, and this endeavor would result in an ever-expanding stream of natural link building and achieve a viral aspect.  The reality is that you will likely need to keep going up to bat to hit singles and doubles over and over to generate a large quantity of inbound links.  Regardless, these are tried and true strategies for growing inbound links and increasing your search engine results, which I have used for numerous other sites for more traffic and profit.

For more info on how link building fits into SEO, check out this short video on Driving Website Traffic with the SEO Triangle.

Michael Arrington at Techcrunch posted “The Age of Facebook” today and, among other things noted “The fact is that Facebook is permeating the Web.”

More vital to marketers is how Facebook can help connect businesses to potential customers and clients.  Facebook has more demographic information available to advertisers than, for example, Google’s AdWords.

Facebook provides rich demographic data about their users, which is a goldmine for marketers, such as:

• Likes and Interests
• Geography
• Age
• Gender
• Single or Married
• Education Level

Furthermore, you can pay-per-click, to get your message out, or you can pay-per-impression to place your products and services in front of the prospects most likely to be interested in your offerings.

Of course there is the whole social media marketing aspect available, as well, which Facebook is much more widely known for.  (See Social Media Chocolate Strategy for integrating Facebook with other social media platforms.)

The point for marketers is simple: If you haven’t tested the Facebook advertising platform yet, the earlier you do so, the less it will cost, because we can be sure that advertising costs for Facebook will go the same route as Adwords, which has resulted in rocketing ad rates, compared to the Adwords rates of several years ago.  And it’s worth emphasizing that I’m referring to “Facebook Ads” and not Facebook as a marketing channel via their social media platform, which, although is effective for some businesses, is not universally as effective and as measurable as direct advertising.

Whether you utilize Facebook as a personal social media platform, or not, it is certainly an advertising platform that is worthy of your testing.

There is considerably more information available nowadays, but the common theme is what you and I have understood about evaluating the worth of most any item:  The final value of a website is determined between a buyer and seller.

Regardless, following are some tools, tips, theory, technical and practical info on ways to enter a discussion about website value.

Profitable Websites vs. Websites that are Not.

Although the ways to value a website are quite varied, there is a dividing line between websites that make a profit and those that don’t.

1) Websites that cannot prove profitability are subject to greater whimsy in terms of valuation between buyer and seller.

2) Websites that can prove profitability can be more effectively valued, but the ultimate worth is still subject to many factors that have varying degrees of importance between buyers and sellers.

In either case, sellers tend to believe their sites are worth more than some hypothetical reality, and buyers tend to believe they are worth less than some hypothetical average, so establishing some basis for discussion at least can allow a discussion to occur.

Free Tools for Website Valuation

There are a number of free tools for determining a website’s value, including:

http://directory.sootle.com/website-worth/

http://dnscoop.com/

http://tidget.com/

http://valuemyweb.com/

http://yourwebsitevalue.com/

Independent of the relevance (or not) of such free tools, which arbitrarily assign value to criteria associated with a website, here’s the most useful I’ve encountered.

http://ebizvaluations.com/

This tool includes user-input data as part of its evaluation. I also like the tools comparative analysis against a database of actual website sales.

“This tool values your site based on what hundreds of similar sites have actually sold for. As it’s a tool that is grounded in reality, it can offer an reliable estimation of your web business’s value.”

Theory and Technical Info on Website Valuations

If you want to gain insight into the subject of website valuations, I recommend the following two articles. They are both somewhat lengthy (6 pages each), but offer a good theoretical and technical overview.

The first link is what I consider to be a relatively simple and generally useful overview of the theory of website valuations.

What’s Your Web Site Worth? By Georgina Laidlaw.

The Ultimate Web Site Valuation Guide By Clinton Lee.

The second is more technical, and is an outline of what is behind the ebizvaluations.com tool above.

In the end, the final value of a website is determined between a buyer and seller. But the preceding info can help both buyers and sellers understand a broader spectrum of variables to consider for discussion.