AdWords Campaign Set Up Tips Part Two

AdWords Campaign Set Up Tips Part Two

by: Chris Burgess

Ready for more tips on how to make your AdWords campaign work more effectively for your business?

Start with a Modest Budget

Just as you should start with a smaller geographical region, start with a modest campaign budget. Spend a few days or a few weeks fine tuning your ads before you really decide to pump up the budget. The more กfinishedก and tuned your ads are before you start spending serious amounts of money on advertising, the better.

Patience in building a strong ad group before you expand will benefit you and your bottom line.

Remember Your Audience

Write ad text that will appeal to your audience and bring in the traffic you want. If your products appeal to hobbiests, use terms that hobbiests would understand. If your products are directed mainly at younger customers, use youthful verbage and terms that will draw their attention.

You only have your ad text to convince the กrightก customers to visit your website. Make those words count by making sure that you target the message toward them.

Attract the กRightก Customer

There is a fine line between writing ads that appeal to customers enough to get a high clickthrough rate and writing ads that merely draw anyone. You want to have a high click through rate on your ads, since it will get you higher placement and save you money. You don’t want to attract customers who won’t ever becom customers though.

Use strong action words in your ads. Include powerful selling points and benefits. Try to stay away from phrases that will draw everyone though such as กfreeก and กbargain.ก Write an ad that will bring you viewers who have a good chance of becoming customers too.

About The Author

Chris Burgess is a Marketing Expert with BuyItSellIt.com Online Stores (http://www.buyitsellit.com). He has established and maintained successful pay per click campaigns for BuyItSellIt.com and many of its customers. To build an online store for your small business quickly and easily, sign up for your own free 30day trial online store at BuyItSellIt.com.

This article was posted on August 22

by Chris Burgess

5 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Site

5 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Site

by: Jennifer Tripp

One thing you can never have too much of online is web site traffic. If you’re looking for ways to drive more visitors to your site, try these traffic generating tips…

TRAFFIC TIP #1: Develop Several Pages Focused On Particular Keywords

Search Engine specialists don’t recommend using external doorway or gateway pages, since sites are being penalized for having duplicate pages. Instead, develop several webpages on your site, each of which is focused on a different keyword or key phrase. For example, rather than listing all your services on a single webpage, try developing a separate one for each. These pages will rank higher for their keywords since they contain targeted rather than general content. And since not many people are doing this yet youกll find itกs possible to get several top 10 rankings.

TRAFFIC TIP #2: Pay Super Affiliates To Promote Your Site

Hand pick webmasters with popular sites or list owners with large, responsive lists and offer them $100 just for signing up for your affiliate program and promoting your link. With this approach you’ll definitely get their attention and ensure that you sign up real affiliates who will actively promote your products and services. Even just 3 or 4 of these affiliates can cause a substantial increase in your site’s traffic (and your sales!).

TRAFFIC TIP #3: Give Away Your Product Or Service To Influential People

In every target market there is a group of people who are the ขinfluencersข. They’re the ones who like to try new products and are very outspoken when they find something they like. The best way to reach these people is to start a word of mouth advertising campaign. Do this by giving away early versions of your product or service to the influencers in your industry and encourage them to spread the word to everyone they know.

TRAFFIC TIP #4: Create An Advergame Specific To Your Site

Advergames are small online games designed to drive traffic to your site based on their entertainment value. As their name suggests their purpose is to advertise your website, product or service in a fun way. If you design one that becomes popular it can create a substantial amount of traffic to your site. Make the most of this by requiring people to give their name and email address before they can play so that you can follow up with them later. The best part is if your game is fun and unique people will tell everyone they know. What a great viral technique!

TRAFFIC TIP #5: Do A Direct Mail Campaign Using Postcards

Postcards have become a favorite advertising method of online marketers because they’re easy to design, inexpensive and they almost always get read. The added bonus is that not only does the recipient read it but often so do several other people along the way. To get started with a postcard campaign use your current customer list and send them a special offer. Another option is to find someone with a list and ask if you can pay them per postcard to send your offer. Or, find a reputable list company and purchase a list of potential customers. Remember though, like all advertising you can’t send one card and expect a flood of orders. Create a campaign that includes a minimum of 3 cards to get the maximum benefit.

About The Author

Learn 96 other ways to get more traffic in the Free Special Report ข101 Tips To Explode Your Web Site Trafficข. Get it now from http://www.mysmallbizcoach.com/trafficarticle.html

This article was posted on October 06, 2004

by Jennifer Tripp

10 Ways To Improve Your Sales

10 Ways To Improve Your Sales

by: Robert Kempster

1. Determine your current situation. How are you currently positioned in the Internet Home business market? How do you compare to the competition? Where would you like to be in a Year or in five years and how would you like to get there? Or more appropriately how can you get there, as it is not always the way that you want that works. Planning requires that you understand how you currently stand.

2. Calculate your operational budget and determine how much you can afford to spend on an Ad campaign. Also, this is the stage to decide your campaign mediums and the effectiveness of different mediums of advertising as it applies to the specific nature of your product and or services. It also helps to retain a percentage of your earnings towards future Ad campaign on an ongoing basis.

3. Since customers are the lifeblood of any business, be sure to develop a good rapport with your customers. To keep your customers visiting, buying and begging for more; let them know how much you appreciate their business. Do not spare any personal touch you can invest in the relationship. It will pay for your time and effort tenfold. Create an Ezine to communicate with your customers and to generate new leads. This can be achieved by offering an opportunity to your visitors to subscribe to your ezine from your website or purchasing leads from a leads company.

4. Now, depending on your current position, you may not even have customers yet. If you are starting from scratch, your first order of business would be to start growing a customer base within your budget of course. Create or have a Strong Sales Copy done for your promotions. Consider targeted Ad campaigns through Google or other search engines. You may also consider some of the other ‘Viral’ marketing Traffic Exchanges out there. Online campaigns consist of generating traffic to your website as this would improve your ranking with the traffic exchanges. Your ultimate goal is to generate free traffic which comes from a high ranking in the traffic exchanges. In other words, you need to generate traffic first and then you can work on converting the traffic into buying customers or better yet, return customers.

5. Hire, rent, or buy a coach/mentor; and if you can not afford one, get some of the informative ebooks and magazines out there. Your decision making prowess would be much better with this kind of backbone. Take note that even with all the information you may acquire from books and magazines, nothing compares to experience. Now, if you have to go on your experience then you are setting yourself up to learn the hard and costly way.

6. I hope you are getting warmed up by now. This one is a mustdo for all Internet Home business marketers. I am talking about Forum participation and membership. In fact, this whole article could have been written around link promotion, and only one other means compares to Forums when it comes to promoting your link/website and increasing your ranking. Join a Forum that concerns your line of business. The Forum would promote your link as a result of your participation in discussions and postings. The flip side is that it also provides you for free, knowledge base that compares to hiring a mentor.

7. Position your business to benefit from other webmasters traffic. There are several ways to achieve this. The most prominent is link exchanges with other websites that are similar or complementary in nature to your business. You can do this by writing to the owner or webmaster of other sites, you can buy a link exchange program or join a link exchange. Most are free to join and some charge very minimal fees.

8. As your customer base grows and you start to reap the benefits of your actions. Be sure to acquire an Autoresponder to manage email campaigns and Ezine delivery. By now, your actions should start to show returns and you can complement your campaigns by purchasing a leads building campaign if you do not have one in place from the start. It is common knowledge among the big hitters that a lot of sales come from email campaigns. Use your Sales copy Ad to develop an email campaign, and stay in touch with your existing customers. This can also be used to sell new subscribers you generated using step#3.

9. Is your head spinning yet? Well if it is, you are on the right track for success and should now learn to relax and balance work and social responsibilities. This is a very crucial step to achieving anything in life. We all need to step back a little, so we can see more, refresh and increase performance. Everything contained here would be useless if you can not find balance. As you find relaxation, in whatever way you choose, remember to build a support system and share your experiences with acquaintances. You just might increase your network while doing something that relaxes you. The country club offers recreation and relaxation but, it also comes with networking opportunities.

10. At this point you should evaluate your performance and how much you are on Target or off. Go back to step #1 and reinvent the wheel again. By now you have some experience with your business and know what works best for your business. If at any point you find yourself too comfortable, go over your business plans with a fine toothcomb until you experience a little discomfort. This step would always keep you sharp, focused, and abreast of what needs improvement and adjustment. Remember, your goal is to increase sales and not to get too comfortable. Stay motivated and fairly dissatisfied.

About The Author

Robert Kempster is a fairly recent entrant into the Internet Home Business Industry. Background spans Executive Management, Computer Operations, Programming, Real Estate (former COO), and an incomplete EMBA. An ordinary person doing extraordinary things.

http://www.profitcentral.biz

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 26

by Robert Kempster

How Much Should You Pay for a Click

How Much Should You Pay for a Click

by: Andy Quick

You have a web site ready for action. Your product catalog, order tracking, credit card payment system, and fulfillment process are all in place. Now all you need is traffic! Many web entrepreneurs have learned that the magic nut to crack is attraction: get a steady flow of customers who explore your site and eventually purchase goods. The overhead costs of most web businesses are minimal relative to brick and mortar stores. However, the variable marketing costs can over shadow sales revenues by orders of magnitudes. Unfortunately, unlike the saying in the movie Field of Dreams, กIf you build it, they will not come!ก Luckily, the industry has learned this lesson; some the hard way, and others in spite of the losers. Dotcoms are clearly not the darlings of the capital markets any longer; however, there is still money to be made! If you plan to start a web business or already have one but are not sure how to increase traffic and make money at the same time, you should consider a sciencedriven approach. What does that mean? Read on…

How to Lose $500 in 12 Hours

One weekend, my business partner and I created an affiliate commerce site. The site comprised a list of links to other online retailers. People go to our site, pick a link to a jewelry store for example, buy something, and in turn we receive a commission from the sale. The process of creating the site, signing up the affiliate agreements, and turning it on was a cinch. The cost was virtually nothing. We, being new to this whole web business concept, thought we had an incredibly smart marketing idea: pay to have our site come up in an ad box on a major search engine (Google) every time someone searched on the word กgiftsก. The word gifts is searched for 49,000 times per day! We figured we would have a good flow of visitors and the money would start rolling in. For certain, we would at least break even. We sunk $500 in one day and let it rip. Hereกs what happened:

Our investment in Google $ 500

Number of times our ad was displayed (impressions) 36,964

Number of times people actually clicked on our ad when they saw it (clickthroughs) 429

Number of times a person visiting our site made a purchase 10

Our total sales revenue $ 77

Our total gross profit $ (428)

The whole process took less than 12 hours. At least we learned a lesson quickly at a relatively low cost. Letกs look at this event from a slightly different perspective, putting the costs in terms of number of visitors:

Our investment in Google $ 500

Number of times our ad was displayed (impressions) 36,964

Number of times people actually clicked on our ad when they saw it (clickthroughs) 429

Ad cost per visitor $ 1.17

Number of times a person visiting our site made a purchase 10

Average sale per purchase $ 7.70

Average revenue per visitor $ 0.18

Average gross profit per visitor $ (0.99)

We were basically giving $1 away for each visitor that came to the site. Not a winning business model. However, taking this information, we can assess which marketing techniques can work best for the business. Letกs add 2 additional critical data points to our table:

Our investment in Google $ 500

Number of times our ad was displayed (impressions) 36,964

Number of times people actually clicked on our ad when they saw it (clickthroughs) 429

Percentage people who clicked on our ad (clickthrough rate) % 1.16

Ad cost per visitor $ 1.17

Number of times a person visiting our site made a purchase 10

Percentage of visitors who purchased something (conversion rate)% 2.3

Average sale per purchase $ 7.70

Average revenue per visitor $ 0.18

Average gross profit per visitor $ (0.99)

Running the Numbers

Putting this all together, you can create a formula for estimating the gross margin per visitor for a specific marketing campaign:

Average Gross Margin per Visitor = Average revenue per visitor Advertising Cost per Visitor

Advertising Cost per Visitor = Campaign Costs /(Impressions x Clickthrough rate)

Average revenue per visitor = Conversion rate x Average sale per purchase

Putting it together:

Average Gross Margin per Visitor = (Conversion rate x Average sale per purchase) – (Campaign Costs / Impressions x Clickthrough rate)

Using our Google example, the average gross margin per visitor would be calculated as:

Average Gross Margin per Visitor = (0.023 x $ 7.7) $500 / (36,964 x 016) = (0.99)

Remember, this formula can only be used for a single type of campaign. Depending upon your target audience and the type of campaign, all of the above variables can change. When we launched our Google campaign, we used impressionbased advertising, that is, we paid Google a certain amount of money for every 1,000 impressions of our ad (about $15 per 1,000 impressions in our example). However, just because our ad was displayed inside someoneกs browser did not mean they would click on the ad itself.

Enter payperclick advertising. This advertising model allows you to pay for an ad only when a person actually clicks on it. In this model, you are guaranteed to get visitors. However, the cost per click is usually much higher. Let us assume we ran our same Google campaign except we used payperclick advertising. Payperclick also factors in position which will drive the amount you pay per click (the higher the ad position on the screen, the higher the price per click will be). Letกs say we pay google $0.50 per click and based on Googleกs traffic for the word gifts, we receive 170 clicks per day (or visitors), or in total 1000 visitors over the life of the campaign (we still only put in $500, so $500/$0.50 = 1000). Using our same ratios, let us recompute our Average Gross Margin per Visitor, modifying our formula slightly (notice the formula is simpler):

Average Gross Margin per Visitor = (Conversion rate x Average sale per purchase) – (Campaign Costs / Visitors)

Plugging in the numbers:

Average Gross Margin per Visitors = (.023 x $ 7.7) ($500 / 1000) = (0.32)

If we used a payperclick advertising model, we could have saved $100. Either way, we would have lost money, but imagine if we had started with $5,000 instead of $500. The nice feature of payperclick is that you know ahead of time how many visitors you will receive. If you know your conversion rate and your average sale, you can modify the formula to determine the most you should pay for a payperclick campaign:

Max Payperclick = (Conversion rate x Average Sale per purchase)

In our Google example, our maximum payperclick should be $0.18. For every penny we pay less than our maximum payperclick, we’re making money! Unfortunately, as of this writing, the minimum payperclick cost for the word กgiftsก on Google is $0.37. The ultimate lesson is that for this particular site, the Google marketing campaign will not generate sales revenues. But is that really true? We could increase our conversion rate and our average sale per purchase. We could increase our conversion rate by optimizing the design of the web pages. We could increase our average sale per purchase by entering affiliate agreements that offer higher commissions. Letกs say we used the $0.37 payper click model on Google for our gift site. In order to make money we would have to get our average revenue per visitor to at least $0.38. If we just focused on our conversion rate, we would need to increase the percentage of visitors who make a purchase to 4.9%. If we left conversion rate alone, we would need to increase the average sale per purchase to $16.50. Alternatively, we could try and increase them both.

Not All Ad Models Are Created Equal

Using the same model, letกs look at a different type of campaign: newsletter advertising. This form of advertising involves placing an ad embedded in a newsletter that is distributed to a subscriber base via email. The model for calculating average gross margin per visitor is exactly the same as impression based, except your target market is different. For example, let us say we spend $1,000 to place an ad in an email newsletter about shopping tips. And letกs say the newsletter reaches 500,000 subscribers. If we used the same clickthrough rates and conversion rates, our average gross margin per visitor would be:

Average Gross Margin per Visitor = (.023 x $ 7.7) – $1000 / (500,000 x 0116) = $0.004

We’re making money!! (not much, but the margin is positive). Translation: this campaign brings us under a half a penny per visitor. Another helpful ratio is to calculate the return on your advertising dollar:

Return of Advertising = [(Impressions x Clickthrough rate x Conversion rate x Average sale per purchase) – Campaign Cost] / Campaign Cost

Or in our case:

Return of Advertising = [(500,000 x .0116 x .023 x $ 7.7) – $1000] / $1000 = 2.7%. Translation: you’re making 2.7 cents in gross revenue for every dollar of advertising you spend. Also keep in my mind that this newsletter reaches a different target audience. While people on Google may casually look for gifts, the recipients of a shopping newsletter may have a higher tendency to buy (i.e. your conversion rate may be higher). If your conversion rate were higher, letกs say 3%, your new average gross margin per visitor becomes $0.05!! or a 34% return on our dollar.

The Bottom Line

Using formulas to compute the success of marketing plans is extremely helpful and reduces the risk of throwing away precious advertising dollars. However, understand that each marketing campaign will differ based on cost per click, conversion rates, target audience, and average sales per purchase. I encourage you to track all the data available about your marketing campaigns so you can realize profits instead of losses.

Marketing on the web can be difficult. Predicting the behavior of surfers is an art unto itself. Before you begin spending a lot of money on advertising, experiment with different types of campaigns, track all of the results, and make future marketing decisions based on real customer behavior. Also keep in mind that there are other, free forms of advertising. Writing articles, participating in newsgroups, print advertising, and email marketing are other examples. Remember that all of these marketing techniques will have different clickthrough rates, conversion rates, and revenues per visitor.

About The Author

Andy Quick is cofounder of Findmyhosting.com (http://www.findmyhosting.com), a free web hosting directory offering businesses and consumers a hassle free way to find the right hosting plan for their needs. Feel free to contact Andy at [email protected] in case you have any questions or comments regarding this article.

This article was posted on May 2, 2002

by Andy Quick

Creating Effective Optin EMail Campaigns

Creating Effective Optin EMail Campaigns

by: Lee Traupel

Itกs been said before, but important to reemphasize, email is the กkiller applicationก of the information age. According to the latest Forrester Research numbers, the permission based email industry is projected to grow from $164M (USD) in 1999 to $7.3B by 2005. Email is also rapidly moving from a textual communications process to one that is rich in multimedia content via serverbased streaming audio or video. Virtually anyone, even those with extremely low bandwidth, can now view compelling content.

Here is a condensed primer for developing an effective optin email campaign:

1. First and foremost, what is permission based or optin email and how is it distinguished from Spam? Optin or permission based email (the terms are interchangeable) means recipients have confirmed their interest in receiving email and have signed up (hence the term optin) to receive email about a subject of their interest. The recipient may also unsubscribe from the list at any time and all email messages are clearly identified as coming from a specific and approved vendor or source.

2. We do not recommend Spam (unsolicited bulk email messages) to our clients, nor have we ever developed a campaign that is not optin based. We think there is a growing backlash to Spam and many of us (author included) are inundated with it and delete it as soon as we recognize it.

3. The actual optin email content is very important, like any interactive marketing process. The subject itself needs to be succinct and informative (as this is how most people filter email), the text in the message should be concise, with paragraphs no more than 23 short sentences, customer references should be referred to in the lead paragraph to drive the rest of the message, have no more than two hyperlinks embedded in the content, and utilize a close and signature that thanks people for their time with a link (phone and email) to a ‘realก person.

4. Many marketing types don’t know whether to use HTML (rich media) or textual content. A standard rule of thumb is, if your target audience is consumers, then many prefer the HTML format, due to the snazzier graphical content; but, if you are targeting corporate or technical types, the majority of them want a message that is text only and one that leaves out any/all marketing hype just the concise facts.

5. Costs can vary dramatically depending on your target demographics or market segment. A good rule of thumb is to expect rates of $.05 (USD) to $.25 per message, depending on the size of the media buy and frequency (the number of times you are using a list), type of list demographics, vendor selection (small publisher versus comprehensive services provider such as YesMail), and market conditions in the interactive advertising market.

6. What should a good campaign generate in terms of response rates; i.e., those that clicked through from your message to a web site or called a tollfree number? These numbers will fluctuate based again upon your market segment, product or service you are selling, type of response rate you are seeking (download, ecommerce sale, review of materials via a web site, etc.). But, industry averages are from 4% up to 20%. Unfortunately these numbers are going south as more and more companies integrate optin email with interactive and offline marketing processes.

7. Message testing is also a very important component of this process. Meaning, you need to develop 13 messages (กcreativeก in marketing speak) that have different content and call to action components. Then test by utilizing 1015% of your total media buy by sending out these test messages and assessing the response rates and go to market with the message that generated the highest return. Be forewarned, this process can slow the campaign down, but testing can help you increase your response rates or back end ROI exponentially.

8. Your interactive ad agency or list partner should help you setup กlanding page(s)ก the actual page where people are taken via a hyperlink in your optin email message. This page should have content that is integrated with your optin message and act as a response mechanism by capturing sufficient information to enable you to build your own inhouse newsletter, which in turn helps to leverage downstream media costs.

9. Finally, the last and most important part of the process is setting up tracking reports that will enable you to carefully analyze the results from your optin email campaign. This is typically done by inserting 12 lines of HTML code on 35 pages of your web site (product overview, registration, or home/index pages for instance). A report can then be generated that shows the number of respondents for each page as a subset of the overall response rates from the campaign. This critical analysis process will help you understand the effectiveness of your overall campaign and will also provide valuable insight about your web site content, UI (User Interface) and navigation.

About The Author

Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development and marketing experience he is the founder of Intelective Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com, a resultsdriven marketing services company providing proprietary services to clients encompassing startups to public companies. [email protected]

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 25, 2002

by Lee Traupel

Link Exchanging Basics

Link Exchanging Basics

by: Mjmls

When it comes to Website promotion, gaining quality links is important. However, many people have a different idea of what defines a Quality link. Here I have listed the link considerations used by Mjmls.com when a suggestion is made to the Directory.

Utilize Foresight, Not Hindsight, When Link Exchanging:

Regardless of the premise behind a link exchange, webmasters are essentially sharing traffic. This is done either directly with physical clicks or indirectly through search engine recognition. While search engine recognition seems to be the major motive of most exchanges, using foresight should prominent.

There are a variety of promotional based information sources the illustrate using the Google toolbar to demonstrate how popular the Website is on the internet. While this is a good idea to get an idea of popularity, it is using hindsight. This rates past efforts the developers have implemented. However, low PR does not mean that Website is unworthy.

The Website may quickly gain recognition. This would make the link exchange valuable or equal in the future. How do use foresight? Mjmls utilizes these standards when considering an addition to the Directory:

1. What is the owner’s Email or IP address? Get the owner or developers Email address and IP address or both. Once this information is obtained, compare it to known spam lists. Why? Mjmls considers Website that use Spam, ขunsolicited advertising,ข as a poor candidate to trade links and not a good place to send people and search engines. There are no excuses for spam. It wastes valuable time of consumers, costs online businesses thousands of dollars, slows down the performance of servers, and creates a poor experience for everyone.

The website is doomed to eventually be closed down, appear in Spam Blacklists, and may decrease the value of linking websites both by search engines and physical users. Basically, this is not the type of person that should be endorsed by an honest developer.

2. Analyze the content of the Website. Is there something unique? A unique website that offers resources to users will be bound to succeed. The website will gain recognition over time because of the resources that are offered. However, keep in mind that Websites change frequently. If a link was made to a Website, and the site changed without notice, delete the link and add the user to a personal ban list. A good marketing campaign will keep accurate records of where the site is being promoted.

In contrast, if it contains plagiarized pages with sponsor ads making up a major portion of the content, or prominently displayed over and above the page copy, the site may be a poor candidate to include in a link exchange. Why? The designer’s motives are clear. They are not attempting to offer anything to users. They simply are trying to create a, ขcash cowข. The content will change, the url will probably become blacklisted and eventually the pages that linked to this website will contain a dead link.

If a change is made to the content of the Website, rendering the site irrelevant to previous promotions, or the URL has changed, the person behind the marketing should immediately notify everyone that needs to update the links or advertisements on their Website. If this is not done, the person marketing the Website simply does not care about you or your Website. Add his or her IP Address, Email Address, and known URLs to your personal Ban List. Unless a formal apology is received in the future, this person should be avoided. A computer makes managing a marketing campaign extremely easy, especially if the computer has a database application such as Microsoft Access. Therefore, the only reason not to notify linking sites is that the necessary time was not taken when developing the marketing campaign, or they are ignorant to you and your visitors.

Check all links at least every quarter (3 months).

3. Does the company or entrepreneur have an active promotional campaign?

Where are links to the Website found? Scout the internet for the Website. Links are sure to appear on irrelevant Webpages with a poor description and anchor text, as anyone can add a link to their site with a custom name and description, but there should be quality links too. How and where the website is advertised will reveal the type of promotional efforts being implemented. Is the Website featured in useful directories with strict listing policies or directories that charge a fee? This would indicate that the developer is active in seeking quality leads rather than herds of traffic that are not interested in his or her Website.

Analyze the description and anchor text (usually a title) that is being suggested. This will indicate how much they truly care about their Website and the traffic that visits. If the description and title are packed with keywords, they are attempting to spam the search engines. Once again, it is suggested to avoid linking with these types of people.

An active and quality linking campaign would require thought. A uniform title and description should be used. This title and description should be concise and to the point. It should not include phrasing such as: the best place on the web, or the number one place in the world, etc… The title and description should contain some keywords, after all, these are words that describe the Website.

Tip: When a request is presented, read the title and description suggested and attempt to envision the site before opening the page in a browser. Then visit the page while keeping the title and description in mind. In the majority of cases, opening the page will not even be necessary. Mjmls declines three out of four free submissions from reading the title and description while considering the category the Website was suggested. However, do not get fooled by a well written title and description. Open the page and surf around. In some cases, the Website is not remotely close to the impression that is provided from the title and description. Regardless of how many visitors will actually see the link, remember they will not be happy clicking on deceptive links with a poor description.

How Well is the Website Maintained

Before referring people and search engines to another website, take a close look at how well the site is monitored. Scan for broken links. A developer only needs to devote a couple hours out of his or her week to look for and remove broken links. Here is a free and resourceful utility that allows anyone to surf any Website while revealing dead or questionable links (double check questionable links): http://www.poisontooth.com/linkcheck/.

If you are finding an abundance of broken and deceptive links, this indicates that there is a lack of maintenance to the Website. The developer has lost interest or simply does not care if his or her visitors are clicking on broken links. Avoid linking to this Website all together.

Summing Up

As most will discover, an active and quality linking campaign is not easy. Allocate a predetermined amount of time to link development. It may take several months to several years to reap the benefits of a linking campaign. Keep in mind, the benefits of a good linking campaign generally surpasses all other promotional efforts. In addition, it is probably the most affordable alternative that offers longterm rewards. By planning, monitoring, and being proactive in a linking campaign, your Website will gain significant recognition. If your suggestions are being declined, don’t get discouraged. Try and figure out why it is being declined so often. Look for typo’s in the text. Read the title and description. Ensure that keywords are not being overly used. Most importantly, read the terms of linking if applicable.

About The Author

Mjmls provides opensource advertising solutions through three unique domains.

Article Forums: http://forums.mjmls.com/

Online Classifieds: http://www.mjmls.com/

Website Directory: http://links.mjmls.com/

About Poison Tooth:

If youกre interested in flora desktop pictures, visit Shades Of Insanity while youกre there, take note that every single graphic request being made is dynamically routed to a different server. This project/product is unreleased and works with Apache/PHP/MySQL to provide low bandwidth hosts a way to publish graphic intensive sites without eating up bandwidth. Images and requests are transfered automatically to remote servers onthefly. The web developer simply develops the program takes care of everything else.

This article was posted on February 26, 2005

by Mjmls

Common Ways People Waste Their Marketing Dollars!

Common Ways People Waste Their Marketing Dollars! (1 of 2)

by: Blair Ballard

1. Why paying to get your web site automatically submitted to ten zillion search engines doesn’t pay off.

The key search engines prefer you to submit manually in order to get the best results. In fact some view automatic submissions as spam, persistent submitting may result in more harm than good for your site.

Search engines get their listings by either surfing (spidering) the web like you and I, or from the 2 key directories Dmoz and Yahoo. To my knowledge you cannot automatically submit to these directories, nor would you want to as they are manually updated.

If you still insist on going the automatic submission route there are lots of free submission sites out there just do a search for กFree search engine submissionก. I just entered that phrase for an exact match on Google and got 268,000 results!

2. Ignoring the importance of กNegative Keywordsก in PPC campaigns.

Why? First let me explain what is a negative keyword in this context. When you create a PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign through the likes of Google or Overture you want your ad shown when people search for certain keywords. These keywords are probably not that different from the contents of your meta tags. A negative keyword is a word or phrase that you do not want to appear along with your keyword. For instance an internet marketing company might choose กWeb Promotionก as a keyword. Their ad will now appear whenever someone searches for those two words.

Consider this company may not want to do web marketing for a particular line of business. The web company may want to add กFreeก as negative words. By adding the negative keyword, when a User does a search for กFree Web Promotionก the companyกs ad will not be displayed. This saves a potential wasted click by the User and stops the company wasting money on a useless Sales Lead.

So just as you may have hundreds of Keywords in a campaign, you could have 10100 Negative Keywords, depending on your target audience. But that just goes back to the point above Marketing Plan!

3. Running a PPC campaign and don’t check your own web site logs.

Why? PPC sites give you lots of stats telling you how many Users saw your ad, whether they clicked on it, what keywords were most successful etc. But a PPC siteกs idea of success is a User clicking to your site and making them money. Your idea of success is the User staying a while on your site, and hopefully you making a Sale.

You need to follow Users coming to your site through these campaigns and watch what they do next. By tracking the referred url, it will tell you what PPC campaign and keyword they used. This can be done easily enough by adjusting the urls within the PPC campaign itself. But now you need to track their stay on your site. Did they actually look at more than just that one page they landed on, how long did they hang around for, etc?

You can buy software to do this, but you can also do a rudimentary job of this yourself looking at your web stats. It depends on what type of traffic volume your site gets and what type of stats you get about your web site. I have to recommend some freeware software that does a great online tracking job http://www.statcounter.com. For larger operations , you can upgrade to a more detailed analysis.

PPC campaigns have 2 parts. a) Listing your ad on search engines and b) Listing the ad on กPartner Sitesก. Usually you can turn the latter off if you want, but not always. The Partner Sitesก listings are better known as those little boxes you see on the side of web sites saying something like กAds by Googleก at the bottom. Iกm not picking on Google, but they are the most obvious.

Often the volume of click thrus can be much greater from Partner Sites, but the longevity of their visit at your site can be very short. It depends on your keywords and which PPC company you choose. We actually dropped using one PPC company due to the ineffectiveness of their Partner Sitesก listings.

About The Author

About the Author: Blair Ballard is founder of the MARKET YOUR WEB group. His experience spans from that of Corporate Project Manager to Webmaster for a Non Profit organisation. http://www.marketyourweb.com.

© Copyright http://MarketYourWeb.com 2005. All rights reserved

You may only reproduce this article ขAs Isข and where URLs are live active links.

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 19

by Blair Ballard

Lumpy Mail Gets Your Message Through

Lumpy Mail Gets Your Message Through

by: John Jantsch

When it comes to your gravy, lumps are bad. When it comes to getting your marketing message through the mail room, past the gate keepers, and onto your buyer’s desk, lumps are just the ticket. I love direct mail for small business marketing and I’m particularly fond of something I call ขlumpy mail.ข Lumpy mail is a direct mail piece or package with some dimension to it. A box is lumpy mail. A balloon arrangement, a kitten, a hoola hoop. You name it. The point is you just can’t ignore a piece of lumpy mail.

It’s getting harder and harder to get your message through all of the advertising clutter so sometimes you need to up the ante and make a real statement. A lumpy mail package screams notice me, open me.

A lumpy mail campaign can give your marketing message center stage attention. Of course, you’ve still got to deliver the performance. But half the battle is finding an audience.

How to run a lumpy mail campaign

Go to your core marketing messages. You core point of difference or benefit. The primary things you promote when you want to tell your prospects why they should hire you.

Now think of some unique items, trinkets, or packaging that you can use to help communicate your point. We’ll jump through hoops to get your business – the hoola hoop. We’re the key to your success – a box of keys. We provide total solutions – a box of Total brand cereal. We’ve got the tools to help you get the job done – a box of play tools. It’s very important that you can create a very strong image and metaphor for the message you are trying to communicate.

Repetition

Like any good direct mail campaign, repetition will improve your results. I usually suggest looking at three installments in your campaign. If done correctly this will usually leave the recipient eager to perform whatever call to action you request at the end of the campaign.

A building series

A very powerful way to construct your campaign, particularly if your audience is not too familiar with you, is to create your three pieces in a story fashion. Each piece builds on the last and delivers an integrated message. You can use this method to build intrigue. Many times I will send the first piece in a lumpy campaign without a company name, logo, or return address. Generally, I will imply that there is more to come. The impact of this technique can be pretty strong. In some cases your prospects will actually look forward to getting the next piece. People love a good mystery.

The Call to Action

Like any marketing campaign, decide what you want the final outcome or call to action to be and deliver it in the last piece. If you want them to call your office, take your call, visit a website, attend a workshop, make it painfully clear what the price of the game has been.

I’ve actually had clients tell me that prospects who wouldn’t even return their phone calls, eagerly made appointments and sometime still displayed the items they were sent throughout the campaign in their office. People don’t get this kind of attention from much in their lives and they want it. More than ever your prospects crave two things – content and contact. A lumpy mail campaign had the potential to deliver both with a bang. (careful with too much auditory impact)

How Much For Those Lumps

A lumpy mail campaign can get relatively expensive when compared to, say, a postcard mailing so its important for you to consider two things when you are designing yours. How many clients you can serve and what the lifetime value a new client has to your business.

Most small businesses only need a handful of new clients at any given time to thrive. Lumpy mail is perfect for that kind of growth. Carefully target 10 new businesses at a time, throw the kitchen sink at them and watch your appointment rate soar to about 70%.

If you are in a business that sells a one time $19 product then you can’t really spend to much to acquire a new client but if your business can generate thousands of dollars from a long term, loyal client then perhaps spending even $100/new client running a creative lumpy mail program makes a ton of sense.

So get to your local toy store to get the creative gravy flowing and pass the mashed potatoes already.

Copyright 2004 John Jantsch

About The Author

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant and creator of Duct Tape Marketing, a small business marketing system. You can reach him at [email protected].

This article was posted on March 16, 2004

by John Jantsch

Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing Starting A

Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing Starting A Campaign

by: Martin Lemieux

Pay per click advertising is an ongoing and growing arsenal for all entrepreneurs world wide. Whether your have a small business or a large business, buying a search engine placement is definitely the way to go.

Why fight a never ending battle against some of the worlds best webmasters who have years of experience and are deticated to search engine placement 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?

Don’t fight the battle, win the battle by utilizing pay per click search engine marketing!

1st Thing 1st: Testing Your Market Place…

If youกve never attempted a pay per click campaign, a good idea is to start with a small budget in order to test your market place.

The key is to find what your potential customers are searching for. Thereกs no better place to test that out by going to Google. Google allows you to pay for a small ad off to the right within a small green box.

Huh? If youกve never seen these small ads within Google, go to: http://www.google.com

If you type in กweb designก in googleกs search engine, you will no doubt get the regular results on the left, as well as a list of small ads off to the right within small green boxes.

Underneath the small green boxes, you will see a link that says; กPlace your ad hereก. Another route is by going here: http://adwords.google.com

Please do yourself a favor and deticate yourself to a small ad within Google in order to learn the ropes and utilize an inexpensive way to some fabulous research information.

Youกll want to determine how much you are willing to pay for 1 month. It could be as low as $20, but I recommend starting out with $50.00 to start your 1st campaign.

Try coming up with an ad thatกs catchy and to the point!

Ex. Legal Services

Get A FREE Consultation!

Legal Services in Ontario

legalservices.com

After that you need to predetermine the กKey Phrasesก you think that your potential clients are typing in Google when it comes to your product or service.

EX. กLegal Servicesก.

When Google asks you to enter your key words or phrases, you might want to try entering something like this….

Legal Services

Lawyers in Ontario

Law Services

Lawyer Services

Lawyer Services in Ontario

Try using as many as you can think of… Google will later show you the most popular key phrases compared to the key phrases that don’t work at all.

Please Note: I am using Googleกs Adwords as an example because of how easy it is to log into your account at any time and check to see how many people have seen your ad and how many people have actually clicked on your ad to visit your site.

Once youกve entered your กKey Words & Phrasesก now you’re going to be asked to enter the maximum amount of money you want to pay every time someone clicks on your ad.

Ex. If someone searches กLegal Servicesก, you enter that you will pay a maximum of 0.07cts per click.

This will give you a prequalified potential client for 0.07cts.

Letกs move on a little now..

Assuming that your ad is all set up and already on the way. Now you can return to Google, log into your account and see how your กKey Words & Key Phrasesก are performing with your campaign.

It might read something like this….

Legal Services Ad was viewed 2000 times Clicked on 100 times.

Lawyers in Ontario Ad was viewed 4560 times Clicked on 9 times.

Now you will get a much better understanding at what your potential clients are searching for and what they are actually clicking on.

KEY NOTE: Try to experiment with this as much as possible and as quickly as possible so you can really begin your Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing.

Are you ready???

Now that you have your predetermined key words of phrases you want to use, you can now start looking into pay per click campaigns. Per per click search engines are a little different compared to the Google Adwords because instead of getting a small ad off to the right you are now going to bid on actual search engine placements.

1st thing you want to do is to visit a pay per click search engine. For instance, you might want to visit: www.goto.com or www.lycos.com or any other pay per click search engine online and test your new key words to determine what the top placements are paying for those spots.

Ex. Letกs use กLawyer Servicesก again, type in that phrase in any ppc search engine and look at the top placements! It should read something like this…

5) Legal Services.com

Our firm is dedicated to helping you win your case each and every time.

Cost: $0.10

The key is to look at the cost. The cost is what กLegal Services.comก was willing to pay for the 5th search engine placement.

And there you go, you now have the basic knowledge to plan out a pay per click campaign. Always remember to lay out how much you are willing to commit to your search engine campaign and keep yourself to it.

I recommend to all my clients to atleast master the Google Adword program. Googleกs search engine is the #1 hotspot on the internet for potential clients, why not get a slice of the pie!

Good Luck To All!

About The Author

Martin Lemieux

Smartads President

http://www.smartads.info

Affordable web site design & Web Site Marketing Tips

http://www.flyinggelatingames.com

ASES Affordable Search Engine Specialists

GOING TO PUBLISH THIS ARTICLE?

Send us a note of the location so we can add a link on our site to where you have used the article! http://www.smartads.info/contact

This article was posted on November 12, 2003

by Martin Lemieux

3 Quick Tips To Get The Most From Your Pay Per Cli

3 Quick Tips To Get The Most From Your Pay Per Click Ads

by: Kate OกNeill

Running a pay per click campaign can be a valuable, fast source of online sales – but it can also cost you a lot of money if you don’t know what you’re doing. Many pay per click newbies do the following:

They sign up with a pay per click search engine and start their pay per click campaign.

They get lots of traffic, lots of clicks and pay lots of money.

They don’t make a single sale.

Thatกs not how it should go you can make tons of sales using pay per click advertising. I have several websites that ONLY receive pay per click traffic and they make sales on a consistent basis.

The problem is that you have to know what you’re doing. With that in mind here are 3 quick and easy tips to help you get the most from your pay per click campaign:

Tip #1: Pull Them In With An AttentionGetting, Optimized Title

Your web site title is the first thing the searcher sees. Make sure it matches what your web site offers or else youกll tick your searchers off and thatกs not a good way to start a potential customer relationship!

(How many times have you been looking for something and clicked on a title only to find a porn site or a getoutofdebtfast site…talk about bad Internet etiquette!)

Also, try to put the relevant, most popular keywords in the title. Titles with keywords in them have been proven to get up to 50% more clickthroughs.

If you can, write a title that lists a benefit to the customer or evokes curiosity. Titles with benefits will pull more clickthroughs than stale, factual titles.

ขShed Pounds Fast With Celebrity Diet Secretsข will always beat ขThe Diets Of Famous Peopleข. One lists a benefit while evoking curiosity – the second just evokes minor curiosity.

Test different titles and see which ones pull a higher click through rate. Youกll eventually find one or two titles that pull in the most clicks (as well as the most sales) and youกll probably want to stick with those.

Tip #2: Use Your Description to Prequality and Presell

If the searcher gets past the title to the description you’re doing well…but you have to hook them with your description. Again, make sure the description elaborates on the title and tells your searcher EXACTLY what they can expect.

This is also a way you can further กprequalifyก your traffic. You don’t want to spend money on people who don’t fit your perfect customer criteria so be as specific as possible about what your website offers them.

Don’t just say กA website that sells a variety of cheesecakesก Presell and prequality your traffic with a description like:

กGourmet New York Specialty cheesecakes sold exclusively online. From Chocolate Brownie Cheesecake to Baileyกs Irish Cream Cheesecake. Check out our online catalogue if you want to serve your guests something heavenly!ก

Makes your mouth water already doesn’t it? And chances are that someone only looking for a free cheesecake recipe won’t click through so youกve prequalified your traffic and your conversion rate will go through the roof!

Tip #3: Think กNicheก with your keywords

Unless you are Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig, chances are you can’t afford to spend $5.00 on the word กdietก. Thatกs ok you don’t have to.

You can pick up a huge variety of more specific keywords that probably very few pay per click competitors have bid on (for example, what about กheart healthy dietก?)

Just make sure to do your homework and remember to get the misspellings people use also.

So those are 3 tips to get the most from your pay per click campaign. By grabbing customers with an attention getting title, prequalifying them with a detailed description and choosing niche keywords, you’re sure to get readytobuy traffic for pennies per keyword.

Good luck and may you make millions with your online business!

About The Author

Kate O’Neill is chief editor for Pay Per Click Advertising – a website dedicated to helping you run a successful, optimized pay per click campaign.

For more free tips and articles, visit: http://www.payperclick.homestead.com

This article was posted on March 19

by Kate OกNeill

The Successful Use Of Free Articles

The Successful Use Of Free Articles

by: C.E. David

One of the best ways to increase your site’s visibility and traffic is by authoring articles and then offering them for free at a variety of locations. Each article contains your URL, thus creating a link back to you every time it appears on the internet.

The power of links with respect to search engine placement is tremendous, and having your name spread across cyberspace increases your credibility and reputation. A successful article creation and distribution campaign can pay huge dividends.

However, it is easy to turn this potential bonanza into a disaster! An unsuccessfully operated campaign can lead to negative publicity and poor performance. It also risks wasting the considerable time and energy required to conduct an article campaign. Those considering using content as a promotional tool need to make sure both the production and distribution components of the strategy are enacted flawlessly.

Poor content is a very common error. Excited at the prospect of building an extensive backlink library, the site owner quickly authors a series of haphazard articles and submits them to various locations.

Although acting quickly does help increase your exposure quickly, poor content leads to very poor results.

Many sites that welcome submissions may refuse to use the article. The power of articles is wellknown and many sites are flooded with free submissions. As a result, they are becoming more selective and may decide not to accept a lessthanstellar piece.

A poorly worded or uninformative article, even if accepted at an article clearinghouse, is unlikely to be picked up by other webmasters. One of the chief advantages of an article campaign is its potential for exponential growth. An article appears in one location, leading three others to use it. Those three sites lead to use by others, ad infinitum.

If the actual content is of lowquality, that growth potential is nipped in the bud even if the article is accepted by an initial target.

Inferior copy also reflects poorly on the author and his or her site. Although a primary goal of an article campaign may be increasing backlinks, one must also realize that people may actually read the article—and that it has the author’s name and URL attached!

Instead of promoting the business, a poorlywritten article can actually advertise inadequacy—potentially driving business away and reducing the supplying site’s credibility.

Using free articles as a promotional tool requires wellwritten and welledited content that provides readers with valuable information.

It is not only important to write good articles, it is important to distribute them correctly. Shooting your article off to a halforganized list of potential targets can seriously undermine your campaign’s effectiveness.

A successfully articlebased advertising campaign requires a wellresearched and comprehensive list of submission targets. When one considers the effort required to produce effective content, it makes no sense to follow through with a lessthanoptimal distribution plan.

Distribution should be targeted to sites that are likely to accept the submission and are visited by others similarly interested in your content and using it. Additionally, article authors should make sure the sites to which they submit allow clickable URLs in resource boxes and must be sure to take advantage of those locations providing an opportunity to use anchor text in their links.

Appropriately distributing an article can be tedious work. The sites that accept submissions often require completing a membership process prior to presenting the article. They may require an eventual confirmation after an email is sent to the author before publishing. They use different submission forms, making automation extremely difficult.

However, great distribution is at the heart of a successful article campaign.

Using free articles to increase your exposure and linkbase is effective. That effectiveness, however, is contingent upon great execution in both production and distribution.

About The Author

C.E. David

Article Staff offers customproduced content and contentrelated services including editing and article distribution. http://www.articlestaff.netfirms.com/. Article Staff blogs at http://articlestaff.blogspot.com/.

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 10

by C.E. David

HiTech Poster Reigns!

HiTech Poster Reigns!

by: Maricon Williams

Modern world equates to greater involvement. But we cannot involve our body with lots of socialization, functions and other activities all at the same time. To maximize involvement we extend our personality and facility. We do this with the help of advertising and marketing materials like posters, flyers, billboards, business cards and the likes.

Nowadays, poster printing is very in demand. Posters are made especially for movies, music, photography, marketing and fine arts. Their objective is to inform and to advertise. To achieve this objective they need to be catchy and captivating. Nice posters creates good and lasting image. It can capture not only the eyes but the heart of the one staring.

Recent advancement in connection to poster printing brought about an extended selection of posters with very harmonizing tone of colors. Posters now come in a realistic view of pictures to accentuate the idea and the message that they want to transmit.

Hitech posters have also invaded London. Interactive posters are scattered all over the city to advertise the festive season. The poster includes a contact number of a person by whom the driver can ask the safest route home. Just ahead of the posters are infrared posts to beam information directly to the handset. These posters are said to be for the London’s safe travel at night campaign. Said campaign is intended to help local folks keep away from trouble on their way home.

Said posters will automatically give out information to any mobile phone equipped with an IR port affixed red icon glowing on the poster. There is also an ongoing study about poster that will use shortrange Bluetooth radio technology to swap data. Before the campaign was instated the proponents are doubtful if it will turn out successful. Nevertheless, when they started it they were amazed to know that riders did come making their campaign overwhelmingly successful.

Poster printing services are now adding up new and exciting features to serve businesses and companies better. These services are adherent to improvise and innovative way of printing. Printing services are made up of the accumulation of perfectly suited colors, paper type and the recent technology. With this combination your poster can definitely chase with the fast paced modern worlds as well as our modern needs!

Life need not be complicated it just needs to cope up and go with the flow in order to survive and compete with the rest!

About The Author

Maricon Williams

I love reading. Give me a book and Iกll finish it in one sitting. Reading is the chance to be transported to a different world and so is writing. Iกm more enthusiastic about writing however, since you can relay your ideas to someone else. I can only imagine that feeling when I hear a complete stranger talking about my ideas which read on an article somewhere. To relay my message to as many people is the same as touching people with music. Only mineกs less harmonic. I try to make up for it with the color I bring with words. And most of the time, it’s more than enough.

For additional information and comments about the article you may log on to http://www.wholesaleprintingteam.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on April 25

by Maricon Williams