Trade Show Success: Learn From An Expert

Have you ever been an attendee at a conference and gone to the exhibit area? You know, where all those trade show booths are and the vendors are standing behind them, ready to espouse their company's benefits to you?

I have been to many; and have been on both sides. I have been an attendee many times and even more so, a vendor.

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What baffles me is that when I am an attendee and walk the exhibit booth isles, I see much aloofness. Many of the vendors don’t even look up because they are talking to their co-worker, checking their Blackberry and/or gazing deeply into their laptop monitor.

I am quite sure that this is not what their boss envisioned when he/she paid thousands of dollars for the company to be there.

What do these vendors expect? That potential customer will make a bee-line for their booth? Good luck with that....

No, an exhibit hall vendor must be very proactive in getting the attention of all the prospects walking by. Odd are, they don’t know much about your company and if you give a smile and good morning, they will do the same to you. Then a simple, "Have you heard of what our company can do for you?" will probably buy you at least a minute to reel them in a bit more.

At a recent event, I walked around a bit to see what the other exhibitors were up to. It never fails to amaze me, but most of the exhibitors barely looked up as I walked past them. I blame them for laziness but also their boss for not being clear about the expectations of a trade show.

Here are some good trade show tips that I found to get the most out a trade show:

Don't sit - The tradeshow environment is a tough one. I know that. By the end of the day your entire body feels weak and numbed. I also know that the next day you’d rather have your legs amputated than stand on them, but buck up! When you’re sitting, you look lazy and less approachable. In that state, lead-generating opportunities will pass you by like grandma getting passed on the highway.

Talking with other booth staff - Remember, this is not the break room and you’re not at the show to talk with “Joe." Save the conversation for the hotel later. Otherwise, if you’re in the middle of chumming it up, show attendees will not even try to interrupt your conversation to ask for information. The same goes for the cell phone as well; if you need to take a call, excuse yourself from the booth.

80/20 - Remember the 80/20 rule – listen 80% of the time and talk 20%. Many people, when put in the show situation, tend to “throw-up” on the attendees. You’ve seen it, I’ve done it. It’s just wrong. For example, the attendee asks a question, “Does your product do this?” Then you reply, “The product does this and that and my company was founded in 1912 by a farmer and a goose. I started working with the company when Carter was president. Boy, it was a hot summer.” You did nothing but point out that you’re uncomfortable being there. Listen to the customer. Process what they want to know, then respond with pertinent information. Wait, then ask if your response adequately answered their question. If you’re nervous, take a breath or two before speaking. You’ll be glad you did.

Train your trade show team - Trade shows are unlike other sales environments. Limited time and attention of attendees requires quick qualifying, and lead generating tactics. Make sure your staff is prepared and has a clear goal for each day.

Call them while they're hot - Sales staff frequently make the mistake of contacting trade show leads, months after the show. Make sure your sales staff has extra time and incentive to follow-up with all leads within weeks of your trade show exhibit.

Booth Love - Effectively utilize display accessories, banners, graphics, lighting, booth design, and materials to heighten visibility and drive sales.

The bottom line - For a successful trade show, make sure you are as approachable and professional as possible. Remember that at any given moment, you will be on center stage. The customer is looking at your booth and asking themselves, “Do I need what they have?” Then they’ll look at you and decide, “Do I want to work with them?” That is not a good time to pick your nose.

You only get one chance to make a first impression. At a trade show, you are making that impression on someone at every moment. How will you and your company be remembered?

This post provided by David Mammano, founder NextStepMagazine.

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Posted in: trade shows

Winning It In Uncertain Times

If you want to test the true character of a person, see how they respond to adversity. Watch how they handle the pressure of a lost sale, an angry client, or a difficult boss. What do they say? How do they act? What is their emotional state? Do they freeze up and get angry, or do they buckle down and increase their focus and commitment?

The same holds true for those who would assume the mantle of leadership in business. When adversity hits, how they respond in the market will determine their ability to stay in business and win.

Leadership - both on a personal and organizational level - ultimately drives the actions taken amidst crisis and change. Today's economy is full of adversity. I call them "missiles of business and life." It seems we are being fired at every day. Rising costs of fuel, shrinking budgets, demanding clients, and a lack of qualified (and loyal) employees all create an intense and constantly changing environment. As soon as we think we defeated one missile, BAM! Another one is fired. As soon as profits start coming in, BAM, another competitor enters the fight. The missiles will come and you will be fired upon.

It's not a matter of if happening, but when and how often. The key is to not get shot down! This week we saw one of the most reputable giants in the financial industry - Lehman Brothers - get shot down. Just a few years ago, who would have thought such a thing could happen? But it did. And it will happen again. It's just the nature of business and life.

In fighter combat, the best pilots who are able to adapt to adversity and change are called Aces. They prepare relentlessly and are the most focused and committed under pressure. They are the respected and accomplished leaders in their squadrons because they don't run away when fear knocks on their door. They buckle down and ultimately take action. The right action.

Here are a few WingTips that can turn you into an Ace and help you avoid getting shot down on your next mission: A: Attitude + Action. Attitude does not determine altitude. Attitude plus Action does. Being positive and enthusiastic is a critical component of success, but your customer ultimately rewards your actions, not your positive attitude! An attitude that breeds confidence is a by-product of disciplined preparation and mission rehearsal.

When dealing with a price objection, last minute competitor, or late product shipment, it's the commitment, focus and sense of urgency you have to fix the problem, provide value, and deliver results that counts.

C: Customer: Success in business is not about you, your company, or your product. It's about your customer. Prior to each meeting, gather the latest, up to date intelligence (from multiple sources) and commit yourself to meeting the needs of your customer. Be original. Come prepared with questions. Learn about the person you're meeting.

If you're not focused 100% on your customer - your target - you shouldn't strap on your jet to fly. (By the way, it can't hurt to learn about your competition too, but only after learning about your customer.

E: Environment: Every mission is unique. What works with one client or industry, may not work with another. The environment in which you and your customer operate will ultimately determine your tactics.

Was there a recent merger or perhaps some lay-offs at the company you're meeting? How's their stock price? What's the nature of the industry you're operating in? Who are you meeting? Who is the decision maker? What resources (wingmen) do you have that can help you prepare for your meeting? Never sell by the seat of your pants! Take it from somebody who's been shot at in real combat, the winning ACE's in business and life prepare for the worst, but then expect the best. They acknowledge adversity and develop the confidence to overcome it by hard work and focus.

But being an ACE is not easy. You can either "push it up" on your throttle and defeat the missile, or pull it back and risk getting shot down. It's your choice. I hope you'll push it up!

Today's post provided by Lt . Col. Rob "Waldo" Waldman who builds team unity within organizations as a high-energy leadership and inspirational speaker. A former combat-decorated fighter pilot with corporate sales experience, Waldo brings an exciting and valuable message to organizations by using fighter pilot strategies as building blocks for peak performance, teamwork, leadership and trust. To download Waldo's Top Gun Motivation mission briefing, visit Motivational Speaker (http://www.YourWingman.com) or call 1-866-925-3616.

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Posted in: internet marketing

The Power of Internal Linking

Anyone who runs a website should be aware of a few basic search engine linking tactics. Used properly you can interlink your website so that Google, Yahoo and the other major search engines will rate you higher in both page rank and search engine results for your keyword/key phrase niche terms. If you're unaware of what internal linking means, here's a basic overview.

Internal linking involves the links on your website that point to other pages on your website. Internal linking is very important because it allows the search engine spiders, those automated bots that scour the Internet looking for information, to find all of the pages on your website. In comparison, external linking are links that are on your website which link out to other websites, and there are specific tactics for those as well. In this article, however, we're going to cover a few simple tactics and strategies to get your internal linking up to speed.

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When you're developing your website, you will tend to put a whole lot of pages of similar information tailored to a specific niche or subject that you want to convey to your visitors. You probably will have information, news, how-to articles, tips and sales pages, where informed visitors can buy your products or services. Your internal linking structure will not only benefit your visitors, but it will help you rank better with the search engines as well.

Having a good navigation system makes Google and Yahoo happy, and in turn, they will reward because you are doing things to improve the visitors' website experience. So, for example, if you have an internal linking structure that is seamless, intuitive and allows your visitors to quickly find what they're looking for, search engines will give you more page rank, index more of your web pages and and return higher search results for user queries.

Why? You have taken the time to help your website visitors have an excellent customer experience. As result, your tactics and strategies should be geared towards giving arriving visitors not only the information that they seek, but have it presented in a way that they will and search engine bots will love.

So how do you accomplish this? There are a few basic tactics, you can use that will increase your internal linking structure right off the bat.

Number 1 - use the rel="nofollow HTML tag for pages that you don't want to pass rank to Google. For example, let's say you had a three-page site. Now, we all know that most people have more than three pages for an entire website; however, this will make it easier to follow.

The first page is your home page which gets 100% of the search engine ranking and love. The second pages are an information or information/sales page, with the third is a checkout page. If you don't use the nofollow tag on one of the pages, both pages will be passed half of 50% each for the link from the home page. So, they'll each get 25% of the ranking and love passed through from the spiders. The search engine spiders will naturally give your home page the best page rank and index it first. Say, you want to link to the information/sales page and make sure that a lot of people find it, because the information page is what will sell your product or service. For ranking and indexing purposes, you consider the checkout page as useless, so you don't care if the search engines find it or not. In fact, you'd prefer it if they didn't index it all. What do you do?

When you link from your home page, you can do one of two things:

Link to the information page only from the home page. Link to both pages but use the no follow tag to the check out page. In that way, if someone arrives who is already sold on your product, they can go directly to your checkout page and buy the product. However, if it is an uninformed visitor, they can clickthrough to your information/sales page or they click on the indexed Google or Yahoo link that's been picked up by the spider

Two things happen with scenario #2. You give the customer/visitor the option. Because, the search engine is applying SEO love to one page and not two, the page rank passed will not be 25% and 25% for each page, but 0% for the check out page and 50% for the information page which needs it. You maintain the search engine indexing and page rank for those pages that are important. This is just one thing to consider when setting up your website.

This is just one thing that needs to be considered when setting up your website. Professional SEO firms use this algorithm in order to get specific pages on your website to rank hire and return results in the search engine results pages that are much higher than a other pages like your checkout pages which you don't care about.

Number 2 - Add extra links in your navigation area or footer area that link to important pages and main sections on your website. This extremely easy tactic is often overlooked by many websites, but it does return very good results for deep linking, and most SEO firms will review your footer links when they you on as a candidate in order to utilize that other form of deep linking. The reason for this is that so many people forget to do it, and many Web designers add really cool buttons, images and all kinds of funky image stuff that do nothing to increase your page rank or your results in a search engines. You should remember that search engines can't follow image links or links created in JavaScript. So, you want to add simple text links that the robots can follow the indexing your website more fully.

These are only two of the tactics that are covered when you hire a professional, savvy SEO firm to optimize your web layout and linking structure.

This post provided by RZ Concepts, a search engine marketing company specializing in website promotion and internet marketing. http://www.rzconcepts.com

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Posted in: seo

It's All About Building Customer Loyalty

It is no wonder that very few companies enjoy customer loyalty nowadays. Consumers are skeptical of company promises. A "new" product is not really "new." A great looking item on an info-commercial works much differently than demonstrated. The beautifully designed hotel room pictured on the website leaves a lot to be desired.

Why Making Promises Is Not Enough Anymore

The Loyalty Engagement Index by Brand Keys, a New York marketing consultancy, shows consumer expectations climbed for a decade-up 28 percent. Yet, brands only kept up 7 percent of the time. The result: Customers were perpetually disappointed. In 2007 this changed drastically. Consumer expectations leveled off. "Consumers are more realistic," said Brand Keys president Robert Passikoff. "Their desires are now based on experience rather than expectation.

Consumers who've been disappointed for so long seem to have surrendered." In other words, consumers now expect imperfect results from companies. They have become cynical and assume that certain things will likely not go their way. But don't confuse expectation with acceptance.
When the inevitable letdown occurs they search elsewhere for a new product or service provider. Not a good situation. Companies need to turn around these negative expectations.

Making a promise is not enough to get people flocking to your door. You have to give them a credible promise and a reason to believe that your promise is not another empty one. For example:

- You promise me speed? Why should I believe that you could actually deliver speed?
- You promise me luxury? How are you going to deliver luxury?
- You promise me safety and security? Can you really keep me safe?

How to Let Consumers Know Exactly How You Will Fulfill Your Promises:

You have to communicate the "What" and the "How" to your prospects and customers. The Promise is "What" you say you're doing. The reason to believe is "How" you do it.

For example:

- We will deliver speed by flying your packages overnight to your destination rather than truck them. (Fed Ex)

- We will deliver luxury by giving you the Heavenly Bed. (Westin Hotels)

- We will safeguard you with our Roll Over Protection System. (Volvo XC90) Marketers call these the pillars of the promise. They give customers the additional details they need to make an informed decision.

For example, Marriott Hotel promises "Achievement Guests" (those driven to perform and who thrive on personal excellence) an environment that inspires their performance. That's quite a promise. To back it up Marriott developed three pillars to build credibility:

1. Achieve. The hotel's professional, performance-driven side offers well-lit, ergonomic work desks that easily move. This way guests can create the best work environment.

2. Revive. The luxury offerings include aromatherapy bath products, 300-thread-count sheets, and high-definition TVs that guests can connect to personal devices such as iPods.

3. Culture. The emphasis is on warm, friendly, sincere service built on their pledge to provide a refreshingly human touch in today's hectic world.

How To Create A Compelling Brand Promise Supported By Convincing Evidence

Large hotel chains are not the only organizations developing strategic pillars to support their marketplace promises. Dunlop Tires promises performance. Here are the five credible reasons why you can believe that they deliver high performance tires:

Reason #1: Innovative New Products. "New" to Dunlop consists of developing a different product: They don't just make a small change to an existing product and call it "new."

Reason #2: Linkage to the world's most prestigious auto brands. Dunlop can point to prestigious automobile companies that use its tires, which builds credibility.

Reason #3: European Heritage. This third reason to believe was based on its reputation as a performance leader in the fields of European automobiles and racing that played to the customers' emotional connection with their cars.

Reason #4: Link to the racing circuits. Dunlop has a strong reputation in auto and motorcycle racing circuits in the U.S., Europe, Australia and Japan.

Reason #5: Cutting edge website. The site dares to be different and continually changes to cater to automotive enthusiasts and their lifestyles. This is why Dunlop Tires has superior customer loyalty.

How to Find The Right Marketplace

Promise To Specifically Target Customers -- Then Continually Deliver On It. Not all promises are created equal. Each organization carries its unique marketplace permissions and organizational competencies. Your best customer promise depends on several important factors:

- Is your promise compelling to customers and does it distinguish you from competitors?
- What permissions and limits have customers placed on you? The marketplace has to believe in your ability to keep your promise.
- Do you have credible reasons for the customer to believe your promise? What assurances can you provide that your promise will be delivered in the marketplace?
- Can you consistently deliver on your promise?
- What current or new capabilities can support marketplace implementation? Finding the right promise that resonates best with your target customers is the critical first step. But making empty promises is a futile and unprofitable exercise. Keeping promises made to the customer is the only way you will build customer loyalty. This is the new paradigm for success!

Pioneering Marketing Strategist, Scott Glatstein, President of IMPERATIVES, LLC creates record-breaking profits by showing companies how to build customer loyalty by keeping marketplace promises. Now for the first time, with his new book, "Strategy Activation: How to Turn Your Vision Into Marketplace Success," Scott unveils his groundbreaking plan for higher strategic profits. Get your FREE SNEAK PREVIEW at: http://www.strategyactivation.com

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Posted in: internet marketing

How to Get More Prospects and More Leads

Most small to medium sized companies actually limit the amount of business their customers do with them. I know this sounds crazy, even unbelievable as no one in their right mind would restrict and limit customer purchases.

The problem, of course is that it happens unintentionally. In fact, I'll bet it's happening in your business right now. Here's how:

- Most businesses simply do not allow their prospects and customers enough opportunities to buy from them

- Businesses don't offer enough chances to expand and continue the customer relationship for the long-term. One of the simplest and most immediate ways to turn this situation around is to find ways to stay in touch.

So, how do you get started? Force Yourself to Create a Relentless, Yet Courteous and Helpful Outbound calling Program Most companies fail to maximize their profit potential through the telephone. Even companies that strongly believe they stay in close contact with existing and past customers are usually surprised to discover how many customers they have missed when an actual survey is done. Unless you hire personnel specifically for this task and make them accountable on a daily basis, many valuable customers will be left unattended. An outbound tele-services company may make it easier to uncover revenue you have missed by making more consistent contacts on your behalf.

4 Ways to Effectively Use Outbound Telephone Calling

- Consistently call to follow-up and qualify all your leads, bringing them closer to a closing decision. Research indicates that 78% of leads generated are never followed up with more than once. Research also shows that on the average it takes between 5 and 14 contacts to close a sale. Simple arithmetic tells you that you can immediately begin to make more money by increasing your number of follow-up contacts.

- Maintain an accurate database. When businesses fail to maintain an accurate database, they tend to waste a lot of marketing dollars. For example, they'll continually send information to a company executive that is no longer with the company. Your outbound telephone calls team should gather vital information, and sort leads according to where the prospect is in the buying process. This way, your sales team can focus on the "hot" prospects. You'll stop wasting their time and your money. And, you'll get more sales.

- Prospect or cold call to generate new leads or set appointments. Typically salespeople hate to prospect and are not usually very good at it. Prospecting is the psychological opposite activity of sales and it is usually much more effective when done by non-sales people. A dedicated prospector or appointment setter is usually more effective at this task than a salesperson

- Consistently contact existing and past customer base for new opportunities. Deliver more relevant information and offer desirable end results to your customers more consistently. They will feel like they have a stronger relationship with your company. Your company's barriers to customer purchases will begin to disappear. They will buy from you more. They will make greater efforts to refer more customers to you. And, your sales will inevitably increase.

If you do not have the in-house capability to make these kinds of outbound calls, you should think about hiring an effective outbound tele-services company. Whatever method you use to get it done, there is no question that using your telephone the right way can be extremely profitable.

Customer relationship marketing expert Rich Webb puts small businesses on auto-pilot with automatic contact services that follow-up, communicate, interact, and sell more products and services. Now, discover how to get MORE leads & sales every single week with this FREE Special Report "How You Can Instantly Improve Your Bottom Line Using Customer Relationship Marketing" at: http://www.winningedgemarketing.com/custmax.html

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Posted in: telemarketing

Attract More Customers With A Carbon Neutral Website

Thanks to Al Gore’s ‘The Inconvenient Truth’ the latest buzzword on everyone’s lips is carbon footprint . That may be well and good but I can hear you asking ‘how does this relate to my business and my bottom line’? Well you’d be surprised to know that you have a lot to gain from finding out.

There are many ways to minimize your organizations’ carbon footprint but one of the most practical ways to reduce your carbon footprint is by starting with your website. Given that your online ‘shopfront’ is the public face of your company in the virtual world, it offers you the chance to not only market your business globally but it is also a great opportunity to exercise your commitment to sustainability.

Your Website and Carbon Footprint

It’s no secret that web servers require specialized operating conditions and a constant supply of electricity, the majority of which is generated through burning fossil fuels - the primary cause of climate change.

Every website on the internet is hosted on a web server which typically remains switched on 24 hours a day for the entire year. These machines process large amounts of data and as such consume vast amounts of energy to function.

According to Security Space in Australia alone there are around 173, 422 web servers. Each web server consumes around 100 Watts of energy and is responsible for almost a tonne of carbon dioxide emissions every year. It translates to the equivalent of as much carbon dioxide as 35,000 cars!

Five Good Reasons to Make Your Website Green

In case the financial incentive of a more energy efficient IT policy isn’t enough to persuade you to green your website, here are five more good reasons:

1. Reduce greenhouse gases and slow global warming.

2. The internet is the single greatest communications tool ever invented – so let’s make it as green as possible.

3. Being green is better for business - increasingly consumers demand green credentials from the companies they buy from.

4. By helping spread green awareness you can positively influence others to do the same.

5. Several countries are introducing legislation that will make businesses accountable for lowering their carbon emissions - offsetting your website is an excellent, visible first step.

The most obvious way of greening your website is by offsetting the carbon emissions to create less impact on the environment. Becoming ‘carbon neutral’ as the term is now phrased, is one of the main ways this can be done. But what does carbon neutral actually mean? According to Ark Climate,

“carbon neutral means you have reached your CO2 output by as much as possible and then paid an offset provider to take responsibility for your remaining unavoidable emissions. The offset provider uses your money to fund a program which either sequesters (absorbs) an amount of CO2 from the atmosphere equal to your remaining emissions or introduces energy efficiency measures elsewhere which reduce the amount of CO2 that would otherwise have been sent into the atmosphere. The cost of such measures would be covered by you on a $ / tonne of CO2 basis.”

Fortunately there are a number of web design companies in Australia that specialise in carbon neutral websites, one of which is Online Now who have developed a 100% Australian technology called BluBeez, for people to create their own cost effective, carbon neutral business websites.

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Posted in: website

Using Web analytics to optimize PPC campaigns

Improve the effectiveness of your pay-per-click campaigns by using web analytics. Understanding user behavior and applying that to your online marketing campaigns can dramatically improve results. Follow these tips for improved conversions:

Volume & conversion rate comparisons Comparing paid and natural traffic, paid engine to paid engine and paid keyword to natural keyword offers a great opportunity to set goals and find new and missed opportunities. PPC optimizers can make comparisons between landing pages, copy, etc., to make drastic optimizations or minimal tweaking.

New keyword opportunities Seek monthly keyword perfor¬mance data from natural search engine reports and internal search box queries to spot missing paid keywords. Add new keywords, increase appropriate paid ranks/bids where gaps exist and focus on top converters to reap instant gains.

New traffic source opportunities Domain referral reports show where visitors come from, and the associated volume and conversion rates. Identify what the converting sites have in com¬mon and see if there's a way to increase exposure or interaction through display ads, mobile search or international search.

Budget forecasting Flat month-to-month PPC budgets seem to be the standard, yet conversion rates and volume typically change monthly. Seasonality exists in Web analytics data, and monthly ad budgets should reflect those ebbs and flows. Conversion rates should dictate your budget allocation within each engine.

Segmenting user behavior Using click path tools allows insight into how your consumer interacts with your brand. How are people using brand keywords? Has the visitor been to the site before? There is no average user, so build focus on personalized user experience, based on what you find.

Hot products, top converters With a limited budget and possi¬bly thousands of product URLs, where do you focus the keyword lists, customized copy, page optimizations and budget share? Web analytics tools offer product analysis/comparison reports. The 80/20 rule holds true; see what moves the needle — or not — with the data, and focus your limited resources where appropriate.

Landing page analysis/bounce rates There are many land¬ing page choices for your PPC destination URLs. Bounce rates are immediate indicators of what is or isn't working and A/B or multivariate tests can further improve both page “stickiness” and conversion rates.

This post provide by Jeff Campbell, VP, production development and innovation, at Resolution Media. Reach him at jcampbell@resolutionmedia.com.

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Posted in: PPC

Shrinking the Sales & Marketing Divide

Have you had "the conversation" yet? As the economy slows, most B2B marketers are going to be asked to clearly show how marketing programs drive sales results, and what can be done to improve ROI. Challenging times put the focus on what can be done NOW. When "the conversation" comes up, you want to have a clear answer. The best way to get to a clear answer is to ensure that Sales and Marketing are well aligned in your company, and have the numbers to prove it.

I'm a big believer in clearly aligning Sales and Marketing, and this was one of our key 2008 focus areas for the Business.com Marketing team. We're seeing great results and here are my top tips for bridging the Sales and Marketing divide:

1. Respect the people and fix the process (not the other way around) – 99% of misalignment can be traced to conflicting goals, incentives and process, not personality issues.

2. Identify and focus on "our goal" – find and focus on the common goal that unites the teams
3. Start with the lead – as noted by lead generation guru Brian Carroll, it's critical that Sales and Marketing agree on the definition of a sales-ready lead.

If you haven't had "the conversation," you're going to. And if you haven't clearly aligned sales and marketing, you need to. For a more comprehensive look at improving sales and marketing alignment to drive business results, check out Mapping the Traps and Sales Effectiveness Gaps from the CMO Council or the MarketingProfs guide "Marketing ROI and the Sales Funnel".

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Posted in: sales

How To Market Your Business With Little or No Money

Recently, a colleague asked me how he to market his small business with little or no money. Although it sounds like an almost impossible task, it's not. Keep in mind that marketing isn't just about advertising and trade shows... it's about communicating your message - brand, product benefits, etc. - in all you do.

I suggested three things that could be done immediately to being marketing without money.

1. Change your voicemail. Add you company tag line, mention a new product, or let your caller know about a recent offer. This can be done at zero cost and helps to market your company, products and services.

2. Ask for a Referral. The purpose of marketing is to sell. Why not cut to the chase? After each sale, ask for a referral. Your customer usually knows at least one other person who can benefit from your service.

3. Write a letter. Do you have a short list of prospects that you've been trying to reach but no marketing materials? No matter.... generate a handwritten not that specifically addresses your prospect's pain points and how you and your business can alleviate them. For less than 50 cents, you've created a powerful marketing piece that can generate significant results.

Marketing doesn't have to cost a lot, or anything for that matter. Keep it simple and think about those ways in which you're currently communicating with your prospects and customers. Can you turn these communications into marketing opportunities?

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Posted in: marketing

Updates to CAN-SPAM Legislation You Need to Know About

Today's Good Marketing Tip: CAN-SPAM

A few months ago, the Federal Trade Commission approved a new rule provision under the CAN-SPAM Act that clarified opt-out and other legal responsibilities for “multiple sender” e-mail messages — those messages that contain advertisements from numerous parties.

Before the ruling, many senders were unclear about what was required in such situations. A strict reading of the law would have it that each entity whose products and services were advertised in an e-mail should pool and process their opt-out files before deployment of every campaign and that each message should contain an unsubscribe link for each and every marketer.

In a nutshell, the FTC's new ruling says that it is acceptable for a single marketer to assume full CAN-SPAM responsibility for a message, without the need for an onerous, pre-deployment, multiple-marketer scrub, and a confusing multiple opt-out link process for consumers. As long as one of the marketers assuming compliance responsibility is one of the advertisers in the message, is identified as the sender in the “from” line, and includes a way to opt out from its own list, it is OK for that marketer to be the sole entity responsible for compliance.

The clarification should come as a sigh of relief for the many firms who previously went through the difficult multiple opt-out processes or avoided including third-party ads in their messages altogether. Now, the door has been opened for senders of all sizes to start monetizing their lists to the fullest.

Publishers and editorially focused senders aren't the only organizations that can benefit from selling ad space in their e-mail newsletters. Retailers can include offers for complementary third-party products. For example, credit card companies can help sell rental cars, hotels and high-speed broadband connections; or automakers can pitch lifestyle magazines. The possibilities are really endless.

But hold no illusions — nothing in the e-mail space comes easy, and there remains significant challenges to maximizing the monetization of e-mail programs. The debate about metrics transparency that has consumed the online advertising world lately is no less relevant to the e-mail space. In an era where advertisers demand total accountability, how could they possibly invest heavily into a channel, such as e-mail, when there's no guarantee their ads are going to be rendered and viewed? The list they're buying may be blocked or placed as spam into junk folders. However, hope remains in the form of services that can help e-mail get delivered.

Post provided by Jordan Cohen, senior director of industry relations at Goodmail Systems.

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Posted in: internet marketing

Make the Most of Your PPC Campaigns

Pay Per Click (PPC) is an online marketing and advertising formula, where the advertiser does not pay a fee to place an advert, but rather pays a certain amount of money each time someone clicks on their ad and is taken to their website.

In PPC you can choose the keywords or phrases you want your website to be associated with when a search is performed. This means you have to decide how much you are willing to pay each time someone clicks on the search result - but the upshot is that you are advertising to people who are already interested in you.

PPC expert

Ian Howie is a leading expert in Google AdWords and PPC. For 12 years he has worked in web creation and online marketing. He now works for 1UpSearch in London, helping businesses large and small create new marketing opportunities online.

Seven steps

So - you know your customer, you know what your approach is going to be, you know what you want to promote and you have a clear marketing message - now Howie is going to reveal the seven step strategy he applies to all his PPC campaigns.

1. Identify the product you are selling

Let's say you are selling iPod cases. Look at your range and decide which ones you want to promote. Look at what you're offering in terms of price, and how competitive you are in terms of price, customer service and delivery. Do some searches on Google to see which ads come up, and which offers your competitors are focusing on.

2. Keyword research and PPC

Use Wordtracker for keyword research, and you'll find it's particularly good for finding negative keywords. SEOs are mainly concerned with keywords they can include in their copy, but in PPC you have different match types - broad, phrase and exact.

If this is your first PPC campaign you can use broad matches to try and see what the market is doing and what people are typing in. Use exact match when you are sure they are the best keywords to go for. Another very popular technique is to use broad and phrase matches with a lot of negative keywords.

For example, if we entered 'iPod nano', with a broad match, the results would include ‘MP3 nano’, or even ‘iPod classic’. To prevent this we can add negative keywords into our campaign to stop ‘MP3’ or ‘classic’ coming in: this will eliminate a lot of wastage. It's hard to believe that people don't use negative keywords.

3. Build your PPC campaign piece by piece

Let’s say your iPod cases site has sections for Nano accessories, classic accessories, and one each for iTouch and iPhone etc. Each one of these sections is a campaign and each has its own ad group - so you will have many ad groups, and each ad group is really just a collection of keywords and adverts. Each type of Nano accessory would have its own AdGroup - furthermore, the AdGroups for iPod Nano cases can be broken down by color and by style.

A good PPC campaign should start with at least 10 AdGroups, and ideally (if you have time) 50 or more. For iPod Nano Accessories you may have over 20 to 30 groups just on Nano cases. The more relevant the keywords and the ads in each AdGroup, the better the Click Through Ratio (CTR). CTR is the ratio of clicks to impressions – it is the measurement of response. The better the CTR (ideally 1% or above) – the more likely you are of getting rewarded by Google by lowering the amount you pay for a click and increasing your ads position on the page.

If a customer is looking for a Black iPod Nano case specifically and they see an advert for a Black iPod Nano case, they are more likely to click on this one, rather than on a generic iPod Nano case advert with no mention of color. It's one of the most common mistakes people make - building generic ads doesn't mean you are targeting the widest possible range of people. The opposite is true - what you should do is dig into the long tail keywords - and the way we do that is by breaking down the ad groups into tightly themed groups of keywords and ads.

4. Build specific landing pages

Each of your products should have their own page, with a very clear 'buy button' and a nice description. Amazon do this very well. Link the ad straight to that page – the keyword should mirror the ad, which should mirror the landing page. It only takes people three to four seconds to make their decision so you have to make sure the page is quick to load.

5. Ad variation

PPC campaigns allow you to have different ad variations, so you can have text ads which can increase your CTR. By producing different kinds of ad you can monitor any patterns showing which ad is being clicked, and which aren't.

6. Report and analytics

Use Google Analytics or Yahoo Index Tools to help you look at your SEO and PPC keywords. Pay attention to your bounce rates because that is a very important indicator in PPC. If you are getting a high bounce rate of over 50%, but a high CTR rate (ie 3% or more), then you need to work on your landing pages.

Questions to ask – does your copy match the PPC ad? Is your copy above the fold? Is it clear what the user should do next? If you are getting both a high bouce rate and a low CTR rate – then you need to look at your PPC campaign. Look at your Ad text and ask yourself - does it match the Keyword Query? You may need more negative keywords so that you can get more relevant traffic.

7. Refine Your Campaign

Keep looking at your campaign, keep studying it, learn from it and keep refining it wherever possible. We apply the 80/20 rule. Out of all the keywords, only 20% to 40% may give you real value - ie sales. So never be afraid to pause Keywords or AdGroups that are not delivering a positive ROI.

It's a very interactive process with the end-users – use PPC to get people into your Landing Page and use Analytics to learn what they do after they get there. Following this step will really help you make the most out of your PPC campaigns. And the great thing is that all the lessons you learn from PPC can be taken into your SEO campaigns.

Post provided by Rachelle Money, a freelance journalist based in Scotland, UK. She graduated from the Scottish School of Journalism in 2005 where she was awarded an internship with two national publications - The Sunday Herald newspaper and The Big Issue magazine. Rachelle has been working with Wordtracker since August 2007 and is a regular contributor to the newsletter.

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Posted in: PPC

The Google Credit Check and Page Rank

Getting your site listed on the first page of Google search results is a bit like getting a loan from a bank. You aren't likely to be approved for a loan if you have no income and no credit history. It's too risky for the bank to extend credit to those who aren't worthy of it.

Google trades in a different currency... traffic, and just like the banks assess risk before lending money, Google will assess risk before "lending" traffic. Google may not care if you've ever paid a bill late, but make no mistake about it, they have their own version of a credit check and you need to pass it in order to be found in their search results.

The Google credit check is of course the process of determining "Page Rank". Nobody outside of Google, and probably very few people on the inside actually know how page rank is calculated. There are a number of factors, but exactly what they are and how they're weighted is about as closely guarded as the recipe for coca-cola.

We may not ever know the formula in its entirety, but we don't need to. The most important ingredients are always obvious. Sugar and water for coca-cola... Relevance and Link Popularity for Google Page Rank.

Relevance is something Google is very good at figuring out. If you sell widgets on your site, as long as Google has crawled it... they know your site is about widgets and you're already in the result set for the search term "widgets".

The problem is that no matter what you do in terms of optimizing the content and structure of your website, it is going to start out on the last page of the result set instead of page 1, and that's where it will stay until you establish your credit history (link popularity).

Google's own assessment of relevance isn't sufficient for anything other than inclusion in a result set. To move you up in the result set, Google has to be sure your site will actually be perceived as relevant and important by human beings.

That's where the link popularity comes in. If webmasters of other sites that Google thinks are in some way relevant to widgets see fit to send traffic to your widget site, then that confirms to Google that human beings will perceive relevance.

Inbound links form your credit report, which is an indication of humann perception of relevance. That's what makes Google comfortable with sending their traffic to you.

If you want traffic, and the top spot on Google, then you need to get other webmasters to link to you from relevant sites... period.

Fortunately, that is a very easy thing to accomplish. It simply involves offering something of value in exchange for each link you receive. There are literally dozens of ways to do this for free... and on a massive scale.

To learn these techniques, refer to the other articles in this series, which are available by free subscription to the author's newsletter.

This post provided by Sean Proske, CEO of thewebhostcompany.com. For website marketing tips subscribe to the author's free newsletter at http://www.thewebhostcompany.com

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Posted in: google

Today's Marketing Tip: Email in a Web 2.0 World

For those of you who have been under a rock for the past year or so, Web 2.0 refers to Web technologies that facilitate creativity, information sharing and collaboration. Think Web-based communities and hosted services such as social networks, blogs and wikis. Many of your online businesses are already offering Web 2.0 tools in order to enhance the customer experience.

As Web 2.0 technologies make the Internet increasingly compelling and targeted, marketers are challenged to find better ways to customize and personalize their e-mail campaigns in a similar fashion. As a result, many of you are seeking innovative technologies that will allow you to tailor e-mail messages in a way that will engage your customers and bring them back to your site again and again.

What you need is e-mail 2.0 for a Web 2.0 world. But does such a thing exist?

As your customers become more accustomed to interacting via multi-faceted Web 2.0 ways, they're going to expect all their communications to follow suit. E-mail plays an important role in the process, driving the site visits and page views that make the business model behind Web 2.0 work.

In fact, Web 2.0 has actually increased the volume of e-mail traffic you need to deliver, track and manage, while responding to your customers' heightened expectations about personalization, speed of response and appropriateness of content. If you haven't already determined a way to successfully align your e-mail marketing efforts with your company's Web 2.0 strategies, now is the perfect time to get up to speed.

By taking a holistic approach and aligning your e-mail campaigns with current social media trends, you can effectively engage in e-mail 2.0 practices. For example, activities such as regular e-mail communication with your customers via personalized newsletters or instant notification of new activity within relevant online communities can keep your users engaged, informed and active.

One example of a company that has successfully integrated e-mail 2.0 into its Web 2.0 strategy is Wetpaint. Wetpaint is the largest network of free wiki websites that allow anyone to create and contribute to sites that combine aspects of wikis, blogs, forums and social networ

ks. Since its launch, the company has powered more than 1,00,000 user-created wikis on a wide variety of topics.

From the start, Wetpaint recognized that e-mail would play a critical role in fostering collaboration and keeping users informed of the activity within their communities. Thus the company allows users to set preferences to be notified by e-mail when selected Wikis are updated, other users have sent them a message, or new Wikis are created on a related topic.

These e-mail updates are essential for keeping the Wetpaint community informed of important activities that affect their online experience.

Similarly, eHarmony has also embraced e-mail as a critical tool for keeping its 17 million members engaged and informed. E-mail notifications and confirmations are sent out to users to alert them of newly found matches, any new messages in their online inbox, or a variety of other updates to help them get the most out of the eHarmony experience. E-mail serves the dual purpose of keeping users informed and also driving traffic back to eHarmony.com, which helps drive additional revenue from online advertisements.

No matter where you are in the e-mail 2.0 process, keep in mind that to be successful, you'll need a solution in place that allows you to customize, deliver, track and optimize both your marketing and transactional e-mail. Such a solution should offer tight integration with backend systems to enable continuous, member-generated e-mail communications, powerful personalization capabilities to keep users engaged, and the pricing model and scalability to accommodate rapid user growth.

Post provided by DMnews

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Posted in: direct mail