Archive for June, 2009
The Evolution Of Online Advertising
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on June 30th, 2009
The Internet has developed no end in the last ten years where seeing more and more video presenters on websites today. The web has grown from simple sharing information to an all encompassing, singing and dancing virtual world. This growth in Internet use and the advances in technology have begun to challenge the media industry, TV can now be viewed anytime, and any place online, the same with films and music. The long wrangling issue of illegally download music, movies and software has seeb advertisers capitalize on this.
Online marketing is worth big money, for a few key reasons:
TV adverts are only shown between programmes, whereas Internet adverts and banners are on screen nearly all the time. Giving businesses advertising much reach.
*The amount of people that can be reached is incredible. For example last year google had 1,118,000,000 view their advert that’s over 18 times the population of the UK.
*Targeting the right market is fairly easy, working out the markets interests and then placing adverts on the main sites of these interests can quickly aim the information straight into the segment the advertiser wants to reach.
Some sites such as myspace and facbook know that their users visit the site almost everyday to check their messages or comments and they know this regular traffic is worth a lot of money. Linking between sites is a technique less well known websites can use to gain traffic, by making a post on for example myspace which includes the web address to their site, owners can guide a section of myspace’s users towards their website and therefore boost their own traffic.
Some website owners have even used internet user’s mistakes to gain traffic. Every place has its own resistered web addresses, such as the United Kingdom has .co.uk, America .com and France .fr. Cameroon in Africa has .cm and one entrepreneur came across a brilliant and highly profitable idea. He bought up hundreds of domains ending in .cm that sounded similar to their .com equivalents. By using user mistakes to gain traffic Kevin Ham made well over 2 million dollars!
Company owners are also starting to realise that text based websites don’t hold their audience interests for as long as needed. Website creators are attempting to combine web video ad and website to create new, more interesting sites that not only entertain but more importantly sell. These website tour guides can greet site guests, show them round and help a company communicate their brand image and intentions. Not only this, but tests have proved that people stay longer on sites that feature a video tour guide rather than just text and user retention is highly important to potential advertisers.
As you can see the world of online sales and advertising is fast moving and constantly changing. The question is where will it go next and if you know then it’s definitely time to invest.
Effective car advertising ideas
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on June 30th, 2009
To wrap or not to wrap, that is the question
Vehicle adverts are leaps ahead, as a low cost means of outdoor advertising.
Leading amongst this kind of advertising are car wraps . They are technically demanding for the professional designers and applicators, but for the vehicle owner, are highly effective for creating brand awareness and generating sales. Car wrap graphics are created for the specific vehicle and take into consideration all the contours and profiles of the car during the design phase.
Fresh ideas are always interesting and that’s what vehicle wraps are, hugely interesting. If you want to be noticed then this is a sure-fire way to get it. With a visual impact of a billboard, they are a fraction of the cost.
How to extract big buck benefits for a small buck expenditure
For impact the car wrap is the best, but sometimes is not to people’s preferences or budget . A lower cost, approach is the good old car magnet.
A car magnet will drive your advertising budget a long way. With a custom car magnet you have total design flexibility to include whatever you’re preferred graphic design may be
Once you’ve decided on car magnets, you’ll be driving around within days, such is the quickness of designing and making them.
You’re proud of what your organisation does, so show the world and harvest the benefits; car wrap or car magnet, just choose the one that’s right for you.
A bright idea to get your fridge magnets out there working
Then, every customer loves a freebie and having grabbed their attention with those fantastic vehicle graphics, “why not make it easy for them to email you?”
Well, it’s easy, with custom fridge magnets plastered all over your car.
Your car has become a magnet distribution machine; boding well for increased sales
Vehicle graphics are less expensive than billboard advertising…
Company’s use cars and trucks because it is necessary to have them. They are justified entirely for this reason – so the addition of advertising reaps a secondary benefit similar to that gained with taxi or billboard advertising. Given the substantial outlay for billboards, your vehicle advertising doesn’t have these expenditures so vehicle advertising is easily justified.
Market High Priced Programs: What You Need to Know
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on June 28th, 2009
What comes between your idea and selling your first $10,000 program?
Before I tell you, I want you to understand an important truth in the Recommendation Age: not only do your ideal clients NOT know who you are, but they do NOT care who you are!
It sounds quite blunt doesn’t it? Sometimes the truth hurts! I am going to take the liberty and mentor you right now to fully understand the reality of what the Information Age has done to you as an entrepreneur.
Let me summarize this reality so that you understand the playing field fully before you attempt to engage your target market again. Your idea clients are jaded, cynical and listen to what you can do for them through the negative perception of what your competitors are NOT doing.
Yet it is almost ironic, but your ideal clients also want a tested, proven, authenticated person to believe in. And here is the good news, you can easily leverage a little understood law operating in the Recommendation Age—Zipf’s Law—to become the trusted resource for your ideal clients. Zipf’s Law says this: if you build this trust easily, your customers will become clients of yours for life.
So how do you build this kind of trust? Just so you know, it’s trust that is the step between your ideas and selling expensive programs. But it is not any kind of trust—it must be trust build inside of Zipf’s Law.)
But first let me show you what savvy marketers do today to try and manipulate trust with you. They launch a free CD/DVD with hype. They get you to buy it, just for shipping and handling. Then they follow up with a sales’ team that is really a hired boiler house to do whatever it takes to sell you into a high end program. They do NOT care about you. All they care about is making the sale with this only thought: if I don’t make the sale, someone else will sucker you into your hard earned money.
The problem with this paradigm is that there is no real trust built into the process so potential clients are not educated first about what they need to be aware of before going with any high level mentoring program.
This kind of manipulative marketing is built on hype pure and simple.
Here are three simple steps to build the kind of trust to leverage the Recommendation Age so you can create and sell the most expensive programs in your niche:
1. Your target audience must see you as a Thought Leader. You can easily become the standard of your industry by moving the free line where potential clients have the opportunity to educate themselves properly about what they really should be asking any of your competitors.
2. You can offer customized education using this software. Currently, the Expert Positioner Software is the only software that I am aware of that will allow you to leverage Zipf’s Law 24/7. The software is strategically designed to teach your ideal clients the questions that they should be asking of you competitors by delivering a customized free report that ensures a perfect market-to-message match.
When you become the one who does this, you are automatically seen as the credible expert. This software is also designed to eliminate your competitors by positioning them in light of the lowest ranking using a rating scale system (rubric). As your ideal clients self select where they stand in accordance to each question, they are also seeing your competitors from their inability to help them properly.
3. You can easily repurpose your content into video case studies using the Expert Positioner Software. These should quickly summarize a short story that reflects how you have uniquely helped others is a powerful way to exert the kind of emotional connection to your would-be clients who want to trust someone, but are unsure with whom to let their guard down.
Recommendation Age trust is build first on bypassing the negative resistance that your target market has pertaining to your competition. Do this properly, and you can leverage Zipf’s Law to have ideal clients interested in your highest end programs.
What You Need to Market High Priced Programs
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on June 26th, 2009
What comes between your idea and selling your first $10,000 program?
Before I tell you, I want you to understand an important truth in the Recommendation Age: not only do your ideal clients NOT know who you are, but they do NOT care who you are!
It sounds quite blunt doesn’t it? Sometimes the truth hurts! I am going to take the liberty and mentor you right now to fully understand the reality of what the Information Age has done to you as an entrepreneur.
Let me summarize this reality so that you understand the playing field fully before you attempt to engage your target market again. Your idea clients are jaded, cynical and listen to what you can do for them through the negative perception of what your competitors are NOT doing.
Yet it is almost ironic, but your ideal clients also want a tested, proven, authenticated person to believe in. And here is the good news, you can easily leverage a little understood law operating in the Recommendation Age—Zipf’s Law—to become the trusted resource for your ideal clients. Zipf’s Law says this: if you build this trust easily, your customers will become clients of yours for life.
So how do you build this kind of trust? In case you wanted to know, trust is the step between having an idea and selling a high end program. But it is not any kind of trust—it must be trust build inside of Zipf’s Law.)
But first let me show you what savvy marketers do today to try and manipulate trust with you. I know you’ve seen the free CD/DVD offers which are hyped up- and get you to buy because you only page for shipping and handling. Then they follow up with a sales’ team that is really a hired boiler house to do whatever it takes to sell you into a high end program. They don’t think about you. All they care about is making the sale with this only thought: if I don’t make the sale, someone else will sucker you into your hard earned money.
The problem with this paradigm is that there is no real trust built into the process so potential clients are not educated first about what they need to be aware of before going with any high level mentoring program.
This kind of manipulative marketing is built on hype pure and simple.
Here are three simple steps to build the kind of trust to leverage the Recommendation Age so you can create and sell the most expensive programs in your niche:
1. You must be viewed as the Thought Leader of your niche market. You can easily become the standard of your industry by moving the free line where potential clients have the opportunity to educate themselves properly about what they really should be asking any of your competitors.
2. Deliver customized, automatic education using this software. Currently, the Expert Positioner Software is the only software that I am aware of that will allow you to leverage Zipf’s Law 24/7. The software is strategically designed to teach your ideal clients the questions that they should be asking of you competitors by delivering a customized free report that ensures a perfect market-to-message match.
When you become the one who does this, you are automatically seen as the credible expert. This software is also designed to eliminate your competitors by positioning them in light of the lowest ranking using a rating scale system (rubric). As your ideal clients self select where they stand in accordance to each question, they are also seeing your competitors from their inability to help them properly.
3. You can easily repurpose your content into video case studies using the Expert Positioner Software. These should quickly summarize a short story that reflects how you have uniquely helped others is a powerful way to exert the kind of emotional connection to your would-be clients who want to trust someone, but are unsure with whom to let their guard down.
Recommendation Age trust is build first on bypassing the negative resistance that your target market has pertaining to your competition. If you do this properly, you can leverage Zipf’s Law to have your ideal clients interested in your highest end programs.
Publish On Article Directories To Boost Your Site Ranking
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on June 24th, 2009
Anyone who begins down the path of internet marketing will soon learn there are all kinds of “guru’s” who claim to have the latest trick to boost your search engine rankings. The reality is there are a few things to really pay attention to, but most of it really comes down to hard work. Depending on what keywords you want to rank for, you can achieve success in a week or 2 or it may take months of hard work to get any results.
Asisde from basic webpage SEO stuff to make sure everything is done correctly, the biggest single factor still in your rankings is the number of links and where they come from. The PR(page rank) of the site linking to you is important, as is the content on that site. Recipricol links used to work really well (you link me, I link you) but now its really downplayed by Google as a valid method of links.
The easiest way to get links and boost your overall marketing efforts is through article marketing.This is not the path of the least work, it is the best path to get good, long term results. The setup is simple:
1. Do some keyword research on your topic.Pick from two to four keywords you will focus on. Make sure they get decent search volume but do not go after stuff that is too generic (meaning it will have unusually large seached volume) – those will be way too hard to rank on in a reasonable time.
2. Plan on writing 10 – 12 articles of 300-400 words each, using 2 of the keywords with links to your site in each article, with no more than 3 links per article total.Use the kwyword itself as your link text, not http://.
3. Publish 4 of the articles on a major article directory that has good ranking such as Ezine Articles or ArticlesBase. These have human reviewers so it will take a bit of time to get your article published. Luckily they do not expect it to be the first time its published, so while you are waiting there you can post it elsewhere.
4. Make sure you get some software that helps to spin the article content and links. Basically spinning allows you to subsitute words and sentences for one another so that you can get a different article from the same basic article. DO NOT try to use rewriting software – I have seen none that do a decent job – usually it reads like garbage and that will not help your rankings. If you spin an article right, you can easilly get 10-20 different reading articles from a single article, enough to not worry about duplicate content out there (and possible penalties).
5. The next step is to mass distribute your articles to sites looking for great content. You can do this manually for free, or find some tools to purchase that can greatly speed this up. I usually choose to pay some money in the savings of time.There are so many aspects to getting good rankings, you need a trade off somewhere so you can get more done. You want to make sure you spread out the distribution - its unnatural for any site to go from no links to 500 links in 1 day - what is more natural is 0 to 10 to 18 to 25 to 40 … over many weeks build the level up.
6. You should start tracking where you rank on the few keywords you have chosen.After you have used article directories to get about 300 links or so you should start to see a boost in rankings. Some keywords that are not as competitive, much less, and of course, some it might take thousands.Your goal on most keywords should be to get into the top 10-15 in ranking, number 1 is nice but sometimes the effort needed to keep and hold it is not worth it.
7. In addition to the article work, you can also use social media accounts to link to each of the articles you publish AND also to your main web site. You should make a hub pages site and a squidoo lens about your site or niche as well with links to the site.
Sites all want content on them to improve the quality score.Most want articles about their site topic to keep the viewer on the site longer and to get better search enging ranking. This is exactly why article marketing works - you get links on disribution sites, webmasters get to search for content to add to their site from what is published.
Write eBooks and Make Money at Home By Corinne Bridgewater
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on June 18th, 2009
People are making money on the internet every day Cash-strapped with nothing else to do except surf and write online. Some of the ways to make money on the internet is with an affiliate program. An affiliate program is where you are selling a product or service for a particular company and you earn commissions from doing so.
The reasons that people write eBooks are:
The biggest one is to make money
To be an author
To share something that is important to you
They don’t need to find a publisher
They don’t have to have it approved and wait to have it printed sometimes two years. They don’t need to keep them stored
They don’t have to pay to have them shipped
They don’t have to spend time going to the post office
They don’t have to spend money self publishing.
Other ways to make money on the internet are with eBooks and survey companies. You can make up your own eBook with your own ideas to sell and make a profit. Or you can get a free eBook from an online company to sell. You should have your first unedited draft now, do a first editing. Check for grammar problems and word flow. Make sure the paragraphs are short as people get bored if they are reading long paragraphs.
Do a final editing and let someone read it and point out things they see.
Created or hire someone to make up an eBook cover.
There are now several sites on the Internet that offers writers or anyone who are willing to do the job and to write articles for blog sites. Simply write a given topic that the developer asks of you, within a specified number of words, and that’s it. Getting your income is not a big deal either. With the Internet, it is really easy nowadays to make money.
Online cash payment services like Paypal. It is easy to do and just takes a few minutes for each survey completed. These are just a few of the ways to make money on the internet.
One your squeeze page you will have an order button. You will need to set up an account with PayPal or Clickbank for processing the money. PayPal takes a percentage of your order but is free to sign up. Clickbank charges a fee when you submit your eBook for sale and also take a small percentage of sales. Both are excellent to use. Start with one way and then once it is profitable, try other ways see how many profits they can pull in for you.
Resource Author Francisco Rodriguez Higueras work at home trabajo
Why Creative Business Cards Help Your Business
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on June 18th, 2009
Remember that your business stationery is always working for you or against you! Your letterhead, compliments slips, invoices and stationery generally are in constant sight with someone every single day whether it is a government office, a competitor, an existing client, a prospect, member of the press or media or the public at large. More than this, stationery has a long shelf life and can be looked at years from now.
What your business stationery says about you is absolutely vital. Of all of the items in your stationery kit, the most important are your business cards because they are going to be the front line troops for your business identity. They will be handed out and passed around in volumes by various employees! Your business card will speak more about you than just the information printed on it. Spend the necessary energy and time in getting the perfect business card design.
Try some of these suggestions and you won’t have to look at the same boring corporate design business cards again.
Make Your Card Look Like Something it Isn’t
Try a card that has all of your information and contact details on it but turn the card into something else such as a cinema ticket, grocery coupon or luggage tag. This makes them stand out and become a talking point at the water cooler because they look like something they are not but they perform exactly the same function.
Use Vibrant Color Images
If you have a drawer full of white, plain looking cards you are going to have a very hard time standing out from the crowd if your business card is also a plain, white card – here’s an opportunity to stand out by using a vibrant color set and better, a really good image that dominates the card such as a tropical sea blue or foliage green as backdrops to the card itself.
Don’t Use Paper
There are other materials you can use instead of simply card stock; the issue becomes the cost involved when you are using non-standard materials however, these really do stand out from the crowd and are likely to be kept forever instead of being lost in an office desk drawer. Check with a printing company to see what alternatives they offer.
Embossed metal really makes a statement and if you combine the metal card with something functional such as a letter opener, they’ll have something unique and practical. Perspex also makes a good business card with a clear, see through “card” and your contact information embossed or printed over it.
Opt for an Alternative Shape
You don’t have to be square with your business cards; you can opt for different shapes for your business cards as they are primarily used to provide a permanent aide memoire for your business information. There is no point in making a statement if it becomes inconvenient. You can use odd outline or circular shaped cards but remember they must be able to be kept in a business card holder or wallet.
Keep Our Booth Babes Around!
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on June 18th, 2009
The clock is ticking down, your team is down by 6 and a tense silence has fallen over the field. Then you hear it…”We want to score! We want a touchdown!” The cheerleaders have taken hold and start to jump around, clap and scream. The crowd is on its feet cheering right along with them. The bleachers start to rumble with excitement. The players turn and look at their personal pep rally and pump their fists with a newfound energy. The ball is snapped…its in the air…the receiver catches the ball…breaks one tackle…then another…he clears the goal line…TOUCHDOWN!!! The crowd goes crazy; the cheerleaders start their dance and lead the crowd in the victory song.
What would a football game be without the cheerleaders? They aren’t necessary to the game but they add a level of excitement that no one else could bring. So, why are the girls who grace us with their presence at trade shows often looked upon as tacky or a gimmick? They have the same job to do as cheerleaders. They are there to get customers excited about a product, get them interested and eventually to hopefully open their wallets.
The days of “booth babes” seem to be slowing exponentially. Female empowerment is on the rise again with society focusing more on inner beauty. This is not good news for the scantily clad babes of auto and gaming trade shows. There are always going to be women in this world who are going to make their living off their looks but their employment opportunities are being seriously limited. What better way to attract people’s attention to your product than with beautiful smiling women ready and willing to flatter your potential customers at the drop of a dime?
Consider the girls seen at every auto trade show across the globe. In a world of fast cars, bumping systems and roaring engines, it just wouldn’t be complete without beautiful women. Call it a stereotype, sexist or whatever you wish, but these shows are generally geared towards a male audience. There is no better way to get these testosterone pumping men to open their wallets than to have gorgeous girls flatter them. Think about this for a minute…how empty would photos of bright, shiny sports cars be without a beautiful woman dressed in a bikini sprawled out on the hood? Very, very empty.
Now let's look at gaming trade shows. What video game doesn't have a sexy woman in it these days. Again, these shows and the games are aimed at a mostly male audience. Most of the guys attending these shows are geeky (at least by our typical societal standards) who only dream of having a scantily clad model as their very own. Bring in the booth babes. Many of these girls dress up like the characters in the video game they are promoting. Real girls dressed up as video games heroins is every guy's fantasy. These girls make the guys feel good, tell them about a new game and hopefully in the end get the company a loyal new customer.
During such hard economic times, companies need to get creative in order to let their product stand out among the crowd. A lot of people think booth babes are just a gimmick that only makes the company look bad. I think gimmick is a harsh word. Booth babes are just another marketing strategy used to appeal to a specific audience. So I say let these girls don their short shorts, fishnets and knee high boots. Let them loose in the trade show arena and sell their little hearts out. In the end, you walk away with higher sales and they can walk away knowing that somewhere, they are the focus of a guy’s dream and all they had to do was collect a paycheck.
Cost Effective Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on June 17th, 2009
When you are stuck in a position where business dimensions do not allow you to splurge on a huge marketing campaign, you need to think big within small dimensions. One of the pillars of business is marketing, getting the word out and educating the market on your products and services so that consumers can start spending their dollars on you. In the end of the day, the by word is profit, and no matter the nature of your business, the consumer capitalist equation means you need to do some hefty marketing. A long time ago, it meant having huge a&p budgets, below and above the line marketing, designing collaterals, sales copy, the pitch.
Both above and below the line marketing requires spending that is not cheap, especially if the product is designed for the masses. But do not worry, here are some principles to ensure that you do not need to spend so much on your marketing campaign. They will allow you to save money and utilise every inch of advertising real estate to your advantage. The market you are in is something that you have to find out first. No product is designed to reach out to everybody, so you need to understand the demographics of your market before you start your campaign. A marketing campaign for a specific target market is not only more effective but also cheaper. Throwing money into something vague and general is almost always a hit and miss solution.
Think about the characteristics of your product or service. Who is most likely to use it? Identify the age range, the interest group, the market, their spending power and most importantly; where will their attention be diverted most. What medium do they use, what places do they go to, what do they watch on television, what do they like, what sparks their interest? Once you can answer these questions, then you can design a marketing campaign to fit them to the T. Building a campaign for 100, 000 people is alot cheaper than doing it for a few million. You can choose which magazine, where to place a specific billboard, how best to reach out to them. Then and only then will you be able to build a small scale business marketing campaign that can gain momentum and see some growth in time to come.
Also, to those who are starting a business fresh, you have to understand the importance of using every dollar you have into marketing. Do not waste your money on inconsequential things like rent. The digital real estate market exists for you to make use of it. Why would you want to spend large amount of money setting up a physical office when your business has not even built momentum? Virtual offices are the answer to cutting cost and pumping more money into marketing. Once you have a strong customer base, then you can think about going physical. Until then, for small business marketing, think of saving every penny you have.
The Benefits of Good Market Research
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on June 17th, 2009
What will conducting effective market research teach you?
Know your customers – Market research will help you better understand your customers in a number of ways including demographic information such as their age, gender and geographic spread. The better you know your customer the easier it is to fine tune your product or service towards the target market.
Know your target market – Who exactly are your existing customers and where do they live? What age group does your product or service appeal to? Do you know who your potential customers are and where they live?
Know your competition – Market Research will help you measure your service compared to others. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your organization and are you improving in the right areas?
Products and services – Do you have the products or services that people want? Do you represent value for money? How do your services and products compare to those of your competitors? Can you, do you, should you deliver directly to your customer?
Ease of doing business – Do your customers find it easy to deal with you and when they visit your store and/or website do they find what they want? Is there sufficient advice and assistance on hand be it in the form of notices, leaflets or human assistance? Do you make it easy for people to buy from you? Are all your employees properly trained, helpful, knowledgeable and available?
Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. Which marketing channels are effective and which ones are ineffective?
Do the right people understand your marketing message? Does your marketing properly embody your brand? Do you use the right promotion channels? Are you reaching the right people?
With the power of the Internet it is now very easy to conduct market research using one of the many online survey software sites that make conducting surveys and collating good market research intelligence quick, easy and extremely cost effective.