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39 Free/Low-Cost Tools for Marketing Your Small Business Online

I got this great list of Marketing Tools in an email today and wanted to pass it on:

Thousands of free online marketing tools clamor for attention, with new ones popping up every week it seems. You know you should be doing more to reach out to your customers, but just researching which tools to use can be a vast time investment, even if they don’t require a big financial outlay.

Below is a compiled a list of the most popular (or most useful) low-cost or free small business marketing tools. You might be using some of them already, but you’re sure to find a couple that will round out your small business marketing toolkit nicely. And, if you’re just starting out marketing a new business online, this list may help point you in the right direction.

Directories

The Open Directory – A staple of the SEO crowd, this directory can be tricky to get into but well worth it for the link juice it passes along to your site.

Yahoo! Directory – It’s not free – this directory will set you back a couple hundred bucks a year – but it’s well worth it for inclusion.

Best of the Web Directory – This directory has been around a while and can pass along some good PageRank to your site.

Niche Directories

Find the directories in your industry that pass along good link building opportunities. Some examples to get you started: SBDGraphics.com for ad agencies, web developers, printers and other graphics professionals; sbdpro.com for small businesses and businesses that serve them; Cpapro.com for the accounting industry; SEOAlpaca.org for alpaca breeders, and so on.

Press Release Distribution Services

Marketwire – The most bang for your buck from an actual wire service, Marketwire’s prices are lower than PR Newswire and Businesswire. This newer service is built for powerful online exposure, and you’ll enjoy the full online distribution with any geographical AP wire distribution. (Sometimes you can get statewide wire distribution for nearly the same cost as only your local metropolitan area.) It’s great for building inbound links – just choose the SEO Enhanced option.

PRLog – A good-performing free press release distribution outlet, PRLog press releases rank really well and for a really long time if they are written with SEO copywriting best practices. Press releases include three links, though they are URL based (starting with http) rather than text anchor. PRLog also lets you create your own newsroom where all your press releases reside, as well as an “about us” page and product showcase area.

PitchEngine – A relatively new PR-for-social-media site that promises to let you create and share press releases easily and for free and syndicate content to Google News. Lets you include HTML in your press release, so you can use keyword text anchor links. The site is marketing itself quite aggressively and will likely build a big presence quickly. The only catch is your release will disappear off the site after 30 days if you aren’t a paid member ($50/month for your own press room).

Email Marketing

AWeber – AWeber makes it easy to start building your email marketing list, if you haven’t already. For less than $20/month, you can build unlimited newsletter lists, send unlimited email blasts, and email unlimited autorespond messages to up to 500 subscribers/list. (Then it’s $29/month up to 2500 subscribers.) Also offers a recurring 30% commission – a pretty good affiliate program for a service you’ll appreciate enough to recommend to others. (Disclosure note: the link above is our affiliate link. We’ve been using the service for 3 years now, after trying out Constant Contact and researching about 20 other providers! Most either do autoresponders or email blasts/newsletters – not both.)

Content Sharing Websites

Squidoo – Create a lens around your business area. A good one with lots of information will even rank in the search engines and can bring traffic to your web site.

Scribd – Share your expert content like white papers and articles. You can make them available for free or sell them. You can submit documents in PowerPoint, Word, PDF and many other file formats.

SlideShare – Post your presentations and documents online for others to view and share. This is a great way to get exponential exposure for your sales or marketing materials – or share documents privately. See some tips for getting more visibility with SlideShare: http://bit.ly/aNXmS2

Flikr – Does your product or service translate well visually? Use this popular photo sharing site to get more eyeballs.

Blip.tv – A video-sharing alternative to YouTube, blip.tv lets you embed links in your descriptions and create a TV station showing all your videos in one spot.

Social Networks

Facebook – Create a page for your business. Feed your blog in. Start a group. Get fans. Advertise to targeted users if your products appeal to the Facebook crowd (which is basically everyone nowadays). See using the new Facebook business page layout to learn more. Stop by our page and become a fan, too!

MySpace – Take a second look at this medium for social networking. According to MarketingProfs, more than half of MySpace.com users are 35 or older. Explore using MySpace for your business.

LinkedIn – Like a virtual Rolodex. Build your professional profile, link up with other professionals, join groups or even start a group. Participating in Q&A’s related to your profession is a great way to build credibility and visibility.

Ning – Build your own social network around your business. You may even get your network into the search engine results pages. Learn more about using Ning for business. (http://bit.ly/amLKcE)

Read “Utlize Social Media to Gain Additional Exposure for Your Site” (http://bit.ly/bcoWEQ) for more information about social networks and how they can drive targeted traffic to your site.

Social Bookmarking

Digg – Getting your content on the home page of Digg is one way to bump up your web site’s traffic by thousands within minutes. This can result in valuable links to your site. Start with this beginner’s guide to Digg.

StumbleUpon – Build friends and send them your articles to rate. More thumbs up will get your article shown to more people outside your network and can result in thousands of visitors every day. Tips for using StumbleUpon.

Reddit – Even if your content gets buried on Digg, it can flourish on Reddit – which can be a catalyst for jumping to the home page of other social bookmarking sites. Learn more about the types of topics that do well on Reddit.

Blogs

Your own blog -

Write great content relevant to your business area that people will find useful. Use it to link to deep pages on your site to help them get indexed in the search engines. Build your thought leadership and let your customers get to know your business better. Try WordPress for an easy-to-use platform that’s also search engine friendly.

Others’ blogs -

Read and comment on other blogs in your industry. Use your comment signature to link back to your blog or web site. Build relationships online and spread the link love from your own blog to others’.

Twitter

Micro-blogging. Update your status daily or a couple times a week. Use keywords in your posts and profile to help gain followers on Twitter quickly. Link to your unique content in your updates and take advantage of the multitude of new applications created to help you manage your Twitter experience.

Affiliate Marketing

Post Affiliate Pro

Traditionally links generated through affiliate marketing have not been helpful for search engine optimization – until Post Affiliate Pro, that is. This easy-to-use affiliate program lets you set up a referral program in minutes and keeps your links simple and search engine friendly.

Technorati

Claim your blog at Technorati to make sure it’s indexed in the blog search engines and have your updates broadcast across the network.

Your Own Web Properties

Create A Knowledge Center

Build a content area on your site where you can add articles regularly. This can be as formal as white papers or case studies, but it can also work with less formal articles, as long as they further your company’s thought leadership position and credibility. They will also boost your search engine rankings if you contribute regularly and ensure your site architecture is optimized. See how we’re doing this with SEO Advantage’s new knowledge center.

PowerReviews

People are going to look up user reviews whether on your site or elsewhere – might as well take advantage of the user-generated content for additional search engine visibility. You’ll also rank higher in trust with your efforts at transparency.

SurveyMonkey

Voting/polling/surveys. A tool of engagement that lets you gauge interest, measure customer satisfaction or just provide some fun. (People love to give their opinions.)

Awards and Contests

Enter them and host them. Winning an industry award can add to your credibility, and giving them out can get you lots of press coverage and links. Get creative.

Search Engine Optimization

Make sure your site architecture is optimized for maximum exposure in the search engines. Create link-building campaigns. Add to your content regularly. Enlist the services of a search engine optimization company to guide your efforts or handle implementation completely.

Research

Google

Designate the keywords you’d like to keep track of, and Google will send you alerts of news and pages indexed on those topics “as it happens” with Google News Alerts. You can also enter multiple terms at Google Trends to compare the general level of buzz around those terms.

AllTop

An “online magazine rack”, this site aggregates content and organizes it. Select your topics and have the latest content delivered to you, or just browse the site when you’re in research mode. Also, be sure to submit your site so it shows among the related content.

WordTracker

Find keywords with a more comprehensive tool than free pay-per-click research tools, which may skew results. A free trial will give you an idea of how it works.

Yahoo! Pipes

See who’s talking about your company or brand by pulling together RSS feeds from different sources around the Web using the beta Yahoo! Pipes. This handy video shows you how.

Analytics

You need to measure all your online marketing efforts. If you’re looking for a free analytics package, try Google Analytics or Yahoo! IndexTools. (Which is better?) However, you’ll probably want some help implementing and interpreting your analytics package to get the most from it – ask your SEO company if they offer this.

Stone Reuning is president of SEO Advantage, a search engine optimization company that helps businesses harness the revenue generation potential of their websites. Referenced in books such as “Writing Web-Based Advertising Copy to Get the Sale” and the BusinessWeek bestseller “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”, http://www.seo-advantage.com/ offers information to help small businesses compete online.

Mar 05, 2010 | 5 comments | View Post

Have You Tried Google Trends?

The Google Trends Website was made public in 1996 but many marketers on the Internet don’t know about it. Some know but don’t understand it and so don’t get the benefits out of it that are possible. The Google Trends website is a service offered by Google to users that want to get some fantastic data about keyword searches in the Google search engine. For example if you wanted to know how popular Levi jeans were over the past 6 years you could type in “Levi Jeans” and get data that would show you the search trend for Levi Jeans. It will not only give you the search trend but you can begin to focus the searches on country, city or even by language.

For anyone looking for a Niche to market and make money Google Trends is something they should not do without.

How to use the Google Trends website Practically?

PPC Marketing – If you are primarily a PPC marketer Google Trends is going to help you in your geo-targeting. I was involved in a niche that was hot in the United States but it gradually tapered off in the USA but got real hot in the Japanese market and so you set up your Adwords campaigns to target Japan. Thank you Google for saving me money on advertising and making me money by knowing where the buyers were.

Spying on Competition – To the right of the trends graph there are a list of links that show you articles that are ranked high for the keyword that you chose. Look over those articles, get some ideas, spin it and submit it. Have you seen our page about Online Article Marketing?

Hot Trends for Bloggers – Google Hot Trends is a separate service and URL. When you are blogging you are in need of content and if you want to have something relevant to your crowd that is timely with world events or something else you can use Google Hot Trends to see what is real relevant. Not long ago Tiger Woods went through his hardship with his family and the reporters. If you type Tiger Woods into the Google Trends website you will see the spike that was created over the bad press. I would not use Hot Trends to determine a niche because it is only reporting the hot things that are very current and as we know, news is changing all the time.

Keyword Analysis – The Google Trends website should be a part of your keyword research in conjunction with a program like Traffic Travis (download Traffic Travis for FREE) and the Google external keyword tool. Google trends will save you money from choosing keywords or a niche that is no longer active in a particular country that you may be targeting.

Another cool part of the keyword analysis that I should mention is something I saw in a webinar. The Google Trends website was used to compare “table tennis” and “ping pong”. Which do you think is more popular? Which country would you think either is more popular? Curious? Well I am not going to tell you. Go to the Google Trends website and check it out for yourself. While you are there play with it and see if you should alter some of the marketing that you are doing.

Note – Remember that this is only Google traffic and does not account for the traffic on other search engines like Ask, Yahoo and Bing. Clearly Google dominates as a search engine and gives a good picture of what is most likely taking place in the other search engines.

Bill Wynne has been an Internet Marketer since 1999. He has been successful in a number of niche markets. Recently he decided to create his own blog where he has decided to share his knowledge of Internet Marketing. He offers many free tools and articles like Google Trends Website on his blog as well as special offers.

Image from selmakoparan

Feb 22, 2010 | 9 comments | View Post

Stupid F*****G Hackers or Crackers or Whatever the Hell They’re Called!

My blog was hacked today. Somehow someone inserted a huge line of code into my blogs header which caused it to redirect to a bunch of stupid sites. I wish I could redirect something right back at them that would blow up their damn computers while they’re busy hacking into someone’s private property. These people make me insane!!!!! I wasn’t aware of how much I didn’t know about these morons. I didn’t know that hacker isn’t really an appropriate word for these #$$@^&*(), the appropriate term would be cracker. Hackers break code for good and crackers break code for evil. Here’s some info from a great site which helped me better understand the world of a hack or crack or whatever the heck they are. hackingalert.com

A Brief History

One might not suspect that the art, or scourge, of computer hacking was created at one of the havens for technological excellence. True, at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), a group of students developed the technique and borrowed their name from the “hackers” of the late 1800s who found amusement in pranking the emerging telephone companies.Getting their laughs and skills from hacking and cracking into primitive computers and exploiting the Arpanet (predecessor to the internet), they created a novelty that would become the target of federal crackdown in years to come. To define hacking in short, we can say that an artistic criminal offense of breaking into another remote system without the owner’s consent for the purpose of stealing information is what is hacking.

However, the act of hacking started out innocently, and was basically a method of trying to figure out how computer systems worked. The 1970s saw the rise in “phreaking,” or phone hacking, headed by John Draper. This method allowed the user of a “blue box,”, when used with a Captain Crunch whistle of 2600 hertz which accessed the AT&T long distance system, to make free long distance calls. Hackers initiated with accessing the free phone calls through a varied range of sources, thereby managing to circumvent into the nation’s radio system and the phoning system resulting in a tremendous phone fraud nationwide.

After the age of “phreaking,” computers became not only the target, but also the forum, for a growing hacker population to communicate. The creation of bulletin board systems (BBS) allowed this communication and the technological possibility of more serious government and credit card hacking became possible. At this time in the early 80’s, hacking groups such as the Legion of Doom began to emerge in the United States, giving organization, and thus more power to hackers across the country.

Once this happened, breaking into the computers became a legitimate activity, with its own groups and soon its own voice with the 2600 magazine, launched in 1984. The effects of computer hacking were serious. Two years later, inevitably, Congress launched the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that outlawed hacking. Over the years, there was a series of noticeable occurrences as the worst consequential effect of computer hacking on more high profile cases, such as the Morris Worm, responsible for infecting government and university systems, and the Mitnick case in 1995, which captured Kevin Mitnick, steeling as many as 20000 credit card numbers.

In 1999, security software became widely known by the public, and with the release of new Windows programs, which were littered with security weaknesses, they became successful because of necessity. This fraudulent act of computer hacking is perhaps the major problem, confronting the rapidly expanding population of Internet users today, with the systems still trying to battle online hackers. Visit hackingalert.com for more info.

Feb 04, 2010 | 29 comments | View Post

10 Profoundly Effective Steps to Internet Marketing Success

Over the years, I’ve read thousands and thousands of marketing articles, both online and off. But to this point, I have never read any article that was what I considered to be 100% idiot-proof – meaning even a dunce, moron, or complete idiot couldn’t screw up the process.

So I decided to write such an article. And if you read and judiciously apply the ridiculously simple, but profoundly effective and proven success steps presented in this article, I am 100% convinced beyond any shadow of doubt that anyone can absolutely, positively make money with Internet Marketing.

Why am I so confident in these steps? Because these are the exact same steps I’ve used to build nearly 100 profitable websites of my own, in a very short period of time. Here are the steps:

1. Brainstorm Your Domain Name

This is an important process, so don’t rush it. Even if it takes you weeks or even months to come up with a domain name you’re satisfied with. Take as much time as you need. Your domain name is that important.

I’m a firm believer in creating generic domain names that utilize your primary keywords. For example, NewyorkCityHotels.com or NapaValleyWines.com. Having a generic domain name serves two crucial purposes:

First, it will attract a more targeted audience to your website. A targeted audience will give you a much higher conversion ratio – allowing you to make maximum use of the traffic you receive.

Second, generic domain names that utilize your primary keywords will help with your search ranking. While SEO experts have opposing viewpoints whether or not this actually helps, based on my own personal experience, I can tell you that it does.

By the way, because of the astronomical number of domains on the Internet, you may have to get a little creative in order to utilize your primary keywords in your domain name.

For example, if your first choice, NewYorkCityHotels.com is already taken, try playing around with different variations of your keywords.

For instance, try this variation, HotelsinNewYorkCity.com…or this one, CityofNewYorkHotels.com. Also, don’t be afraid to use hyphens in your domain name. Using this technique allows me to utilize my primary keywords 100% of the time.

It also allows me to use the much preferred .com domain. You should try to use .com domains whenever possible, because most people will automatically put a .com on the end of a domain when they type it into a search engine. This puts you in prime position to pick up traffic from domains in your category that utilize extensions other than .com.

2. Register Your Domain Name, and Forget It

After you decide on a domain name, don’t build your website right away. Register your domain name, and forget it.

Why? Because in my opinion, you should never build a website without having a plan to promote, as well as monetize your website. Develop a well-thought-out marketing plan going forward, then when you build your website, you can hit the ground running.

3. Develop Your Marketing Plan

I’m a member of several small business forums, and without fail, the two questions that get asked most often are:

“How do I promote my website?” or, “How do I get free traffic to my website?” Those two basic questions get asked every single day.

That’s why it’s so important to develop a marketing plan in advance. You need to know the answer to those questions, before you build your website. You can’t get to your destination, if you don’t know know where you want to go.

4. Your Budget Determines Your Marketing Plan

If you have thousands of dollars to work with, then you have many more options when it comes to promoting your website. For example, you can buy ads in offline publication, as well as online publications.

A word of advice: Unless you are an experienced marketer with extremely deep pockets, stay away from pay-per-click advertising. PPC advertising will eat up your advertising budget quicker than Usain Bolt breaks world records.

In reality, most people coming online don’t have thousands of dollars to work with. In fact, most people coming online have little or no money at all.

But that’s the beauty of the Internet. Even if you are broke, you can still promote your website effectively, if you know what you’re doing.

For example, you can participate in social media networking, and promote your website via mega-popular sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and a host of other social media websites.

Other free and highly effective promotion methods include article marketing, forum posting, guest blogging, RSS feeds, volunteering your expertise on Question & Answer sites like AllExperts.com and more.

5. Learn How to Implement Your Marketing Plan Effectively

Starting a business – any business without having even basic marketing skills is downright foolish. Competency in marketing is the most important business skill that you can have.

If you become proficient in the art of marketing, it will allow you to become profitable that much quicker. And there won’t be anything that you can’t accomplish.

Some of the greatest sales and marketing books ever written are located right under your nose, at your local library – and they’re free. Do yourself a favor and study the classics. Many of the marketing techniques being used today are based on sound marketing principles established many decades ago.

A few of my favorite marketing books include The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy, Advertising Secrets of the Written Word by Joe Sugarman, Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples, Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy, Magic Words That Bring You Riches by Ted Nicholas and How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor O. Schwab.

If you can’t find these books at your local library, you can pick them up for just a few dollars on Amazon.

6. Apply What You Learn

It’s not enough to just read the classics, you have to apply what you learn. Otherwise, what’s the point? That means reading the books more than once – several times if necessary.

Actually, you should read the books as many times as it takes for the information to sink in and become second nature to you.

You should also take copious notes, and practice writing ads over and over and over again. You should give yourself regular written exams on the information in the books, and each time you test yourself, your goal should be to score 100%.

Sounds like hard work, doesn’t it? It is. The question is how hard are you willing to work to get what you want?

7. Monetize Your Website

There are a number of ways that you can monetize your website – from selling advertising on your site to affiliate programs. My preferred method is affiliate programs.

Why? Because affiliate programs are completely hands-off for you. No billing, no inventory, no hassles. You simply choose from among the thousands of affiliate programs available on the Internet, select your program of interest, and promote the living daylights out of it. Then take your checks to the bank…that’s it.

8. Take Your Income to the Next Level

Once you start making $50 per month with affiliate programs, build another website, and start promoting another affiliate program. And when that website starts making $50, build another website and another and another.

Why? Because if you have 10 websites making $50 per month, that’s a monthly income of $500. And therein lies the secret to making money on the Internet.

Why beat yourself up trying to make hundreds – or even thousands of dollars with a single website? Take the path of least resistance. Build a bunch of websites that make just $50 per month. If you can build fifty websites in a year, that’s a monthly income of $2500, or $30,000 a year.

Does your current job pay that much? And the beauty of this method is you can keep giving yourself a raise. If you build another fifty websites the following year, you just doubled your income to $5,000 per month.

And if you can build another fifty websites the following year, you just tripled your income to $7500 per month.

The key to making this method work is building simple, low-maintenance websites. Just add content once or twice a month, and forget about them.

Think it can’t be done? Think again. I’m doing it, and so are thousands of other smart and resourceful entrepreneurs.

9. What About Content?

The key to having a website that other websites want to link to is having quality, content that is relevant to the overall theme of your website. You can either produce the content yourself, import it from somewhere else, or a combination of both.

If you elect to import your content from somewhere else, you can either use free content from article directories like EzineArticles, or you can purchase PLR articles, which I don’t recommmend.

Why? Because hundreds of other people purchased the exact same PLR package as you. So those articles have to be completely rewritten, which is a time-consuming process.

Whichever way you choose to go, just remember, it’s important to have lots and lots of relevant content on your website.

How much content? The more the better. After all, the more content you have on your website, the more often your visitors will return to read that content.

10. Build Your Website

Okay, now that you’ve properly laid the foundation for success, it’s time to build your website. The type of website you build will again depend on the amount of money you have to play around with.

I have a bunch of websites that I paid absolutely nothing for. And I have websites that I paid hundreds of dollars for. My recommendation: If you don’t have to spend money on a website, don’t.

Nowadays, it’s not necessary to spend a lot of money to get a decent looking website.

But whatever you do, be sure to purchase your own domain name. You definitely don’t want the name Blogspot, WordPress or Homestead in your domain name. It just looks amateurish.

I buy most of my domains through NetworkSolutions.com, because I’ve been using them for years, and I’m comfortable with them. Their domains cost a lot more, but they more than make up for it with great customer service.

That’s something you just can’t put a price on. That being said, I’ve also purchased $10 domain names from GoDaddy without any problems.

One last thing, don’t beat your brains out worrying about SEO. Just make sure your primary keywords appear in your title tag, and you’ll be just fine.

David Jackson is a writer, marketing consultant and entrepreneur. Which online services can you trust? Find out here:http://reviews-by-customers.com

Feb 02, 2010 | 4 comments | View Post

Pull New Traffic In Through Online Video

After Google, YouTube is now apparently the most-used search engine in the world. YouTube now allegedly sees more searches than either Yahoo or MSN. I think that’s amazing. And I also think it is an amazing opportunity for those of us who want to increase traffic to our websites.

But does YouTube really represent a realistic option for increasing traffic to your site? Last year I set out to test this very theory because, frankly, I was a little cynical. My own suspicions were that most of these searches were from teenage kids looking for clips of their favourite bands or stupid stunts and I doubted that YouTube could be effectively harnessed for the sake of marketers.

So I created a small number of short (2-5 minute) videos on a topic related to one of my websites and published them to see what happened.

And I must say that the results truly impressed me. People were finding my videos either in YouTube itself – or on Google which tends to rank videos highly – and then watching my videos. Over a few months, thousands of people watched them and a decent number then clicked on the link pointing to my site.

As a result I saw a marked increase in my traffic as a result of this experiment and it really turned me on to the possibilities.

So how difficult is it to harness the power of YouTube? Honestly, the answer is not very, and I’d to tell you exactly how I did it in the hope that you too can benefit from the power of online video.

Making The Video

Nothing flashy is need to make a video to market your website. Personally I used a cheap digital camera and just basically spoke into the lens. For YouTube ensure your videos don’t go over 10 minutes in total length. Personally I pretty much read some of my more popular articles and tips so I was able to reuse much of my existing content rather than having to create plenty of new content.

I literally took an article that was generating traffic and then read it to camera.

Upload The Video

Sign up for a free YouTube account if you haven’t already and you will find how easy it is to upload the video. All you need to do is to locate it on your computer and press the upload button.

Once the video is uploaded the final step is to name it correctly. As you are basically reusing the content of an existing article, use the article title as the title for your video and include a link back to your website in the description.

That really is pretty much all there is too it. I recommend doing a number of these videos as they can be a little hit and miss and the more you have out there the greater the difference will be to your traffic levels.

One final tip is to enable comments on your videos in your YouTube account as I have found a surprising number of people are keen to ask questions about the videos I have uploaded and this can also be a good way to lure people back to my site by explaining that the answer to their questions is at this page or that page on my site.

10 Tips for Making the Most of Online Video

1. Make Sure Your Video is Professionally Done.

This is an absolute must. The whole point here is to establish credibility and trust, but you’ll do the opposite with a poorly executed and produced video. Yes, many of the videos you find on sharing sites are mediocre at best, but that is changing rapidly as companies begin to see the value of promoting themselves in this manner. In fact, a recent Permission TV survey found that 67% of 400 hundred top executives intended to focus their online marketing efforts on video in 2009. The rush is coming – find a personable, engaging interviewer and a top notch production crew to really stand out.

2. Submit Your Video to as Many Outlets as Possible.

While YouTube is the clear leader here, there are many other video sharing sites worthy of consideration. Here are some others you won’t want to pass up:

• Google Video
• Yahoo! Video
• Daily Motion
• MySpaceTV

• MetaCafe
• Revver
• Veoh
• Blinkx
• Break

3. Embed Your Video on the Front Page of Your Site.

Don’t hide what’s going to become one of your most effective selling tools on a dusty inside page. Get it out front. Customers and search engines will love you for it.

4. Find Out What Search Terms Your Potential Clients are Using
and Put Them in Your Video’s Title.

If you don’t know what words clients in need of your services are typing into Google and other search engines, get professional help or use some of the resources featured on this page. Once you’ve identified these terms, use the most popular in your video’s title.

5. Make Your Tags and Descriptions SEO-friendly, too.

Most video sharing sites let you tag videos with keywords and post a short description, so get the most out of these by sprinkling in the search terms you’ve identified.

6. Don’t Forget Your Thumbnail.

A thumbnail is a still shot from your video that appears along with search results. Don’t waste this opportunity to present yourself in the best light possible – choose a key moment from your video, preferably one where you’re smiling as you speak with your interviewer.

7. Link Back to Your Site.

Put your URL near the top of your video’s description. You’ll get a higher search ranking and potential clients will quickly learn where to go for more information.

8. Interact With Your Viewers.

Most video sharing sites allow viewer comments. Use this opportunity to answer questions, respond to comments, and further promote your business.

9. Consider a Pay-Per-Click Campaign.

Natural search engine optimization, while effective, takes time to bear fruit. In the meantime, you might want to jump start the process with a pay-per-click campaign that gives you a sponsored search listing. You can learn more about PPC advertising at:

• www.google.com/intl/en/ads

• sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/searchenginemarketing

• advertising.microsoft.com/search-advertising

10. Add New Content Often.

Search engines look for it and so do potential clients. Keep your content fresh and up-to-date and keep visitors coming back for more.

With an ever-increasing stream of competition, it’s more important than ever to stand out from the crowd. These days standing out means maximizing your online presence and leveraging the technology to present the unique advantages of you and your firm. There’s no better way for a growth-oriented business to build a solid and secure future than by using effective and affordable online video.

Use these free resources to get a handle on the terms that potential clients are using to search for you right now.

• Wordtracker
• Google AdWords
• Keyword Discovery
• KwMap
• Google Trends

Richard Adams – To find which cheap camcorder I recommend for online video please visit flip video cameras

Jan 18, 2010 | 7 comments | View Post

Generate Viral Traffic To Your Website

If you can create viral traffic then you’ve won the battle for traffic generation. Driving traffic is a continuous task, so viral traffic which grows on its own is a dream for all online business owners. But not many online business owners know or even try to implement it. Here are 5 steps to creating viral traffic so that your traffic building efforts produces the most amount of visitors and subscribers.

1. Create A Squeeze Page

Get a landing page which does nothing but offer some free gifts in exchange for the visitor’s email. This is where you start to build your list.

Hire a good graphics designer and come up with attractive gifts such as valuable reports and/or free software.

2. Create A Report To Sell

Your next task is to create a report which you’re going to sell. Again, make sure the graphics are eye-catching and pay a good graphics designer to create your website.

Your report has to look fantastic and the information needs to be good. Do the required research and put as much information as possible into this report.

With your website, sell the report for $97. This is a steep price for a report but your objective is not to sell many copies of it. Do the necessary promotion and get the word out about your report. And don’t forget to put links in the report to your website.

3. Free Gift

When people sign up to your list via your squeeze page, send them to a page where you will offer your $97 report as a gift. To claim the gift, the subscriber needs to refer at least 3 of their friends to your squeeze page.

Now when your subscribers see that your gift is worth $97 and that you are currently selling it for that price, it will drive conversions through the roof.

No one can resist a true free gift that is currently selling for $97. This can help you generate viral traffic. Your subscribers’ friends might sign up to your list and repeat the whole process by referring their friends to your squeeze page.

4. Email To List

Now while your squeeze page is building your list virally, you can create a report and continue to send it to your list for free. Of course, they would have to refer 3 or more of their friends to download the free gift.

Using this technique you are training your list to refer their friends in order to get your free reports. You are also testing to see which kind of offers create the best responses.

5. Contest

When you know which type of offers send you the most amount of referrals, you can create a contest and announce it to your list.

For the contest you will need to provide something which is perceived to be a high priced item otherwise it won’t work. The best type of offers are video training with personal coaching from you based on the offer with the most responses.

Offer your prize to 3 winners only. Since you are offering personal coaching and video training, you can set a high price for the prize. Pricing it at $1,000 is not unreasonable.

To win the contest, your list needs to send you traffic to your squeeze page. The top 3 who sends the most subscribers will win the $1000 prize. This is very attractive.

Once they spread the news by telling people about your contest, more and more people will join your list and promote the contest. This is the viral effect you’re looking for. You can even issue a press release to inform more people about your contest.

Carrying out these 5 steps will ensure unstoppable viral traffic to your website. It needs planning and setting up the system for it to work and creation of the reports, but you are sure to get an avalanche of traffic. Using this viral traffic to get people subscribed to your list, you can promote your information products to them and push those sales figures through the roof.

For more tips on how to promote your online business and increase sales, visit information product creation. To hire professionals to create your own best selling information products, Alan Cheng, Elite Ghostwriters

Jan 15, 2010 | 8 comments | View Post

Hot Advertising Ideas

I’m always trying to come up with new ways to advertise and had to laugh when I came across this story by By EMILY FREDRIX for the The Associated Press

“Fast-food chain KFC is giving two Indiana cities $7,500 so it can emblazon founder Colonel Sanders’ face on their hydrants and fire extinguishers to promote new “fiery” chicken wings.

Experts say to expect more ads like this, on public property from sewer grates to the local landfill, as companies look to cut through the clutter of traditional advertising. Cash-strapped governments have long sold space on mass transit, benches, trash cans and other public property to help stretch budgets.

KFC told Indianapolis and nearby Brazil, Ind., it wanted to improve their fire safety by helping pay for new hydrants and extinguishers in exchange for advertising on them. The company plans to e-mail a national network of mayors on Wednesday to find three more cities to participate in the approximately $15,000, monthlong effort, which began Tuesday.

Alternative marketing efforts like this have been growing as people become immune to advertising in print, outdoors and on television, said Allen Adamson, managing director of branding firm Landor Associates in New York.

“I think it’s the tip of an iceberg of things to come as marketers struggle to find places to reach consumers and as cities look for ways to squeeze more dollars,” Adamson said.

Laura Ries, president of marketing consulting firm Ries&Ries outside Atlanta, said marketers must find new places to reach consumers.

“People ignore advertising, they try to get away from it whenever possible,” she said. “So hitting them in unusual and unlikely places, at least initially, is likely to get some attention.”

Read Full Story Here

What a great idea. Governments are broke, big companies have money to spend. Advertising can work if people stop to take notice, especially if it’s really weird and garners free publicity. So, putting a business ad on an unexpected place can do wonders.

Here’s a few more weird advertising ideas:

On top of coffee lids – You don’t expect to see a marketing message staring up at you when taking that morning sip of coffee.
On a competitor’s product – This may be difficult to do but if you and a competitor advertise on each other’s products it would even out. This may attract free publicity, as well.
Inside the pages of books – Magazines have pages of ads, so why not books? There could be a special advertising section in books. This could provide very targeted advertising.
Straws – I’ve yet to see an ad on a McDonalds straw that I drink my Coca-Cola with.
Songs – We’ve seen product placement in movies and TV shows like Donald Trump’s The Apprentice, but I’ve yet to hear a product placement in a song. Imagine paying Britney Spears to sing about your product in the chorus of one of her hit pop songs that gets a lot of radio play… Hit me baby one more time – in the passenger seat of my brand-new 2008 Audi A4.
Beside the “nutrition facts” label of food products – This one might be geared more towards diet or weight loss types of companies. The people that actually look at these labels are probably more likely to notice that type of marketing message.
Emergency vehicles – Police, ambulance, fire trucks. That might be difficult to set up, but what better way for, say, a cash strapped police department to find revenue to hire more police officers than to sell some advertising space on their police cars?
Moon – I’m sure it can’t be done, and if it can it would cost too much. But, how about an advertisement on the face of the moon?
Eggs – One year CBS advertised their fall schedule on 35 million eggs.
Nighttime Silhouettes. You’ve probably never seen one of these… which means no one else in your town has seen one either. First, locate a tall wall in a part of town that has lots of traffic at night, especially foot traffic. Then arrange with the owner of that building – and the building across the street – to let you install a logo projector. They’re effective and cheap. In some situations you can even use an old slide projector to achieve the desired effect.
Publicity Stunt. Few things are as powerful as a publicity stunt that wins public attention. Going for inclusion in the Guinness Book of World Records requires a lot of work, but holding a world record is extremely cool. Did you hear about the guy who dropped a golf ball at the edge of Mongolia, then whacked it 1,234 miles all the way to the other side? The journey required 12,170 swings of the club, 90 days and 510 lost balls. But he got interviewed by Jay Leno on The Tonight Show followed by The Today Show, CNN, CNN International, CTV, ESPN Cold Pizza, and PGA Tour Sunday. Articles were published about him in the New York Times and the Times of London. Then the Associated Press issued a worldwide story about the exploit. Outside Magazine featured him as one of its 25 Coolest People, the Men’s Journal put him in their Hall of Fame, National Public Radio broadcast their interview with him from coast to coast, then several European radio networks jumped on the bandwagon. Not a bad R.O.I. on a 90-day investment.
Telemarketer reversal. Why not turn the tables on those telemarketers that bother you? Start to tell them about your website and why they should visit it. It is a lot more fun than telling them ‘no thanks’ over and over again!
Answering machine. Do you have an answering machine? Telemarketers and other callers are people too! Leave a little blurp on your machine to visit your website and they just might.
Tattoo your body. This is a little extreme but you can tattoo your body with your websites URL or get somebody else to do it. I’ve seen this done on ebay before. Just as a side note, you can also do fake tattoos or a permanent marker just for once off situations.

Jan 07, 2010 | 7 comments | View Post

Make People Angry – That’ll Make Them Love You!!!

A couple days ago I was driving my kids to school when my daughter started freaking out in the back seat. Luckily we were stuck at a long red light and I was able to figure out what had made her so upset.

Just great! PETA Strikes again!

The headquarters for PETA is located about a mile from my house. We have had to put up with some of their antics before living so close, but this is the first time a group of fanatical morons with a point to make has upset my kid. Instead of being afraid of eating chicken nuggets (which is kind of the point of this whole campaign – they are trying to get McDonalds to change their methods of killing chickens – by targeting children in their advertisements) I never really paid much attention to these guys before now but after some research they seem to be a bunch of overzealous hypocrites who spend all their money on a) negative advertising or 2) pictures of naked women (there campaign against wearing fur).

I could complain about these guys a lot more but that isn’t the point of this post. I just wish they’d grow up and start targeting someone their own age. My daughter will have nightmares of that psycho Ronald McDonald coming after her. Idiots! They set up their little stands outside McDonalds and hand out Unhappy meals to everyone. Inside, a bloody rubber chicken, a packet of blood and a PETA T-shirt (give one to my kid and I’ll shove it up your *** !!!)

Anyway, to get on with it – Right after I saw the Van I was really trying to figure out why someone would want to run a negative advertising campaign. What do they get out of it? All they do is piss off all the parents of the kids that get upset. I don’t really see people flocking to PETA and their beliefs because of the nasty, negative advertising campaign they run. Sure they stir up controvresy, but where does it get them? What purpose does it serve? With all of the lawsuits and bad press, I’d think they are just hurting their group. Someone isn’t thinking of the big picture. Here’s one they got blasted for and ended up taking down:

Would you try to gain attention by pissing people off? Is this a good form of advertisement? I think I am going to go rent a fur coat, ride a horse-drawn carriage down the street to PETA and hand out Chicken Teriyaki.

Dec 13, 2009 | 18 comments | View Post

How to Get Better Results From Your Internet Marketing and Any Other Advertising You Do

Most of us buy newspapers and magazines for the editorial content. Although there may be a few exceptions, we generally don’t buy them to read the advertisements. We surf the internet, watch television and listen to the radio for information and/or entertainment. The advertisements just happen to be part of that experience. In most cases we are not actively looking for advertising. So, what can we learn from this?

Simple! If people are not looking for advertising, then why make your advertising look like advertising? Wouldn’t it make more sense to make you advertising look more like editorial or information?

This is a basic principle of direct market and one that I have successfully applied to marketing on the internet. I present my advertising as information rather than have it look like advertising. I don’t use flashy graphics or anything else that screams “I’m an advertisement!” I aim to generate interest and build credibility and confidence before I ask for the sale.

When marketing on the internet I start with a powerful headline. The best headlines are usually those that tell the reader the most important benefit they will get from using your product or service. This is a basic rule that is overlooked by 95% of advertisers. And, remember headlines are not just for newspapers, use them in your internet marketing too.

A study of the 100 most effective headlines ever written found the 10 most frequently used words were:

You, Your, How, New, Who, Money, Now, People, Want, Why

If you look back at the headline for this article you will see it starts with the word “How” and includes a benefit.

I then write lots of supporting copy.

Write about the benefits your client will enjoy by doing business with you. Although we don’t like to admit it, we are all selfish and want to know – what’s in it for me – (WIIFM).

Your advertisement can never be too long, only too boring.

Long copy can often convey the impression that you have something important to say, whether they read it all or not. The idea is to generate interest and create the desire to buy.

Copy length ultimately depends on the person’s fascination with the subject matter.

As an example, if you were given 10 pages of copy that someone had written about you, then you would probably read every word.

Where possible I use powerful testimonials.

Include interesting testimonials from happy clients. Testimonials from real people can provide convincing proof. It is even better if people can supply a photo to support their testimonial.

Add a personal guarantee to further instill confidence that what you say is true. And, remember to ask for the sale!

Guest Author: Noel Peebles – Noel has a friend with a new mens jewelry website with helpful information on selecting a Mens Gold Bracelet and Mens Gold Chains. This site has helpful information for jewelry buyers both male and female.

Dec 09, 2009 | 5 comments | View Post

Honest Advertising – An Oxymoron?

One of the greatest moments in blogging history was when the FCC ruled that bloggers had to disclose their relationships with advertisers. Bloggers must now disclose if they are receiving free products or perks in exchange for write-ups and reviews. The rules extend to Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets. I cannot tell you how many times I got annoyed when I spent a few minutes drawn into what I thought was an inspired post only to find out that it was a paid review – once I realize it’s a paid review I just think that whatever the post says it is probably BS, either a real stretch or an outright lie – even if the writer didn’t make up the information in the article I am left feeling like I somehow had the wool pulled over my eyes. (I know this doesn’t apply to everyone out there doing paid reviews, but when I read an article from someone in the Phillipines raving about some lawyer in the US I get annoyed) Sometimes it happens often enough that I won’t revisit a site. But, with the new rule in place I know ahead of time that the article is a paid review and I can make the decision whether or not to read on, and, sometimes I do.

It’s all about honesty in advertising. Don’t try to trick me. Do advertisers really believe the public is so stupid? They may be able to fool people for a while, but eventually we catch on and then your screwed.

How about some real honest advertising?

Here is some advice for advertisers from the BBB -

Advertising is an essential part of business; not only can it attract new customers or clients, but it can also leave a lasting impression of a business’ brand or reputation. Misleading or unclear advertising can lead to unhappy customers.

BBB encourages self-regulation: Ultimately, the primary responsibility for truthful and non-deceptive advertising rests with the advertiser.

Your Better Business Bureau serving Alaska, Oregon, and Western Washington provides the following guidance about advertising phrases and tactics that can be misleading to consumers if not used properly:

FREE may be used whenever the advertiser is offering an unconditional and temporary gift, not a continuous combination offer. If an additional item must be purchased in order to receive a gift, such as “buy one, get one free,” the advertiser must clearly disclose the conditions. In addition, an advertiser may not increase the price of the purchased item, nor decrease quantity or quality in conjunction with the free offer.
PRICE-REDUCTION CLAIMS such as “save up to …,” should state both the minimum and maximum savings. The offer should not over emphasize the maximum savings value in a misleading manner. For example: An advertiser should not imply that the majority of the items on the sales rack are 50 percent off, when only 2 out of the 30 items are on sale for that discount. The number of items available at the maximum savings should comprise at least 10 percent of all the sale merchandise (unless local or state law requires otherwise).
LOWEST PRICES for products and services fluctuate regularly and it can be extremely difficult to claim, with certainty, that prices are lower than a competitors. Such claims should be avoided unless the advertiser can provide substantiation.
BAIT AND SWITCH is an illegal tactic in which an ad “baits” consumers with an alluring but insincere offer for a product or service that the company does not intend to sell. Instead, they “switch” and attempt to convince consumers to buy it at a higher price. In other situations, the same price is offered, but the item or service is a lower quality than what was advertised.
GUARANTEES AND WARRANTIES like “satisfaction guaranteed” and similar representations should be used in advertising only if the seller or manufacturer refunds the full purchase price at the buyer’s request. A “lifetime guarantee” should clearly and prominently disclose the exact length of time the offer is valid. Any material limitations or conditions should be clearly and prominently disclosed, with complete details made accessible at the advertiser’s store or on their Web site prior to the sale of the service or product. In the case of mail or telephone order sales, the full guarantee or warranty should be available free upon request.

Dec 04, 2009 | 5 comments | View Post

7 Killer Ways To Make People Click On Your Ads

Fed up with wasting money on ads that don’t work? Here are some killer ways to turn things around and get writing ads that pull in the clicks, visitors and sales in droves.

1. Reverse Psychology This is where you encourage people to do the opposite of what you really do want them to. For instance, if you want them to sign up for your marketing newsletter say something like “If you’ve got all the sales, visitors and profits you need, don’t sign up for our SuccessNewsletter”. Just remember that people don’t want to be told what to do, or what not to do, so out of sheer cussedness, and a helping of curiosity they will click.

2. Use exciting and appealing words People respond best to words that appeal to their emotions and to their desire for money, so use words that aim at these two aspects of the human psyche. Use words such as You, Ultimate, Free, Master, Power, Discovery, Easy, Guaranteed, Love, Money, New, Scientific, Profits, Proven, Results, Incredible, Discover, Breakthrough, Secret, Private, Cash, Shocked, Shocking, Revealed, Uncovered, Hidden, Exciting, Sizzling, Hot and so on. Be careful not to overdo it as less is more when it comes to emotive words.

3. Offer a discount The Internet started out as the place to get things free. Usually this meant information in the early days, so capitalise on this basic human instinct of wanting ’something for nothing’ and offer your visitors a discount if they buy NOW! Alternatively off a free bonus. Make it compatible with the product you’re selling so that they both form a useful combo.

4. Include testimonials If you have people write or email you thanking you for your product, get back to them and ask if you can quote them in your advertising. Mostly they will be happy for you to do so. This lets prospective buyers know that a real person has got a real benefit from your product or eBook etc. Don’t be afraid to ask for a testimonial. Send buyers a follow-up email to see if they have benefited from your product and ask them to tell you why (if they have). Testimonials are one of the most persuasive tactics there are.

5. Use a guarantee Always use a strong guarantee in your ad. One guarantee you often see on downloadable products is ‘Try this eBook for 8 Weeks’ because this is now the length of time ClickBank will offer an automatic money back facility. Other payment providers may differ. Include the guarantee in your headline: ‘Our eBook Will Save You Money – Guaranteed!’

6. Tell your customers what to do People will often act on an instruction such as ‘Click Here Now’. It may be stating the obvious but this is again the psychology of the prospect. They often need just that little nudge to make them take action.

7. State the major benefit of your product or website Make sure you tell people what the major benefit of your product is. Even in a classified ad you must answer the question ‘What’s in it for me?’ With some products this is not difficult. For instance if you product is a cure for acne, make you can say something like ‘Our product can cure your acne in 21 days’. If you are selling something less obvious you could say ‘Our Nirvana CDs will soothe and relax you after a hard day’. Make it clear what benefit your product or website has to offer. Now take a good look at your current ads and apply one or more of the tactics given above and you will begin to see some real results. When you do, why not email me and let me know? I like to get testimonials too!

Mervyn Love writes articles on various aspects of Internet Marketing, and his website – http://www.fortresspublishing.com – has a wealth of resources and information on all aspects of starting and running an online business. Sign up for his newsletter here: http://www.fortresspublishing.com/MPNsplash.html

Nov 22, 2009 | 13 comments | View Post

Internet WidePublishing Your RSS Feed

It took me a while to figure out what RSS was and why it is such a great advertising tool. I had my blog going for 6 months before I even logged in to my feed and realized I could customize it – add adsense and images to it. When was the last time you logged into your feed and actually saw what other people see when they subscribe to your site? Do you know how many people have subscribed and how to get more to sign up? You can advertise your RSS feed just like you can advertise anything else on the internet. Check out this info on RSS Publishing -

So you’ve created an RSS feed and it contains current cutting edge information in your field of interest. Now how do you get the word out to other webmasters who might be interested in putting the content from your RSS feed on their site?

Just how easy, or hard, is it to publish your feed and have other webmasters pick it up and publish it on their site?

If you’ve created your feed and validated it then most of the hard work is complete. Now you’re going to get the word out about it being available.

So what should be your first step?

I think I would first give the search engines the easiest path to find your feed and index it. To get the search engines to do this you should add this short piece of html code to between the tags on the webpage that has a link for your feed.

Be sure to replace http://www.yourdomain.com/rss.xml with the URL to the RSS feed.

Next, I would be sure to display the Feed on your website using a graphic. The basic RSS or XML graphic in bright orange rectangles, will lead people visually to the feed.

Here’s an RSS graphics tool that will allow you to customize a graphic for your site:
http://www.feedforall.com/public/rss-graphic-tool.htm

Now that you have it on your site I would begin submitting your feed to all of the RSS directories and search engines you can find. The last time I reviewed them there was well over a hundred (that I could find).

There is a large list of RSS directories located here:
http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm

By submitting to directories and search engines you will be helping to increase the link popularity of your feed and your site.

You can also use email to promote your RSS Feed. Simply include the feed url in your sig file on all outgoing mail. If you have an ezine be sure to include it in each issue. I would also go so far as to provide a link to a either or both a desktop RSS reader and a website reader for those webmaster who may want to use your content on their site.

Another way to promote your feed is to include the feed on a personal my.yahoo or my.msn home page. This is probably the fastest way to have your feed spidered by Yahoo and MSN. If you don’t already have an account and a personal webpage go to each site and create one. After you have created your account add your RSS Feed. In Yahoo, go to your personal page click on Add Content, then add the URL of your blog RSS feed into the Find Content box.

A good point to keep in mind is to have content available in your feed before you add it to either of your personal webpages on the SE’s above.

To keep the search engine spiders coing back you can implement a simple strategy to let them know you have posted new material and it’s time to come back. This strategy is simply called ‘pinging’.

You can let the main RSS/blog directories know you have placed new material by “pinging” them. Now you could go to each of the directories individually or you could automatically ‘ping’ all of them at once by going to this site:

http://www.pingomatic.com

You type in your rss/blog URL, Click Submit and Pingomatic will send your ping to all of the large directories available on its page. Doing this will bring the spiders back to your site almost immediately!

Be sure to add relevant content to your RsSS feed as often as you can as the more often you add new content the more likely you will be to develop more traffic.

Once you’ve started implementing these ideas and strategies you should be well on your way to getting more recognition for your RSS Feed.

Author Ed Duvall is a webmaster for http://www.cashway.com and http://www.instantnettraffic.com providing internet marketing tools and resourcesto help you with your online business.

Oct 25, 2009 | 3 comments | View Post

Top 9 Reasons You Should Advertise

Awareness = Existence.
Little to no advertising means you are generating little to no awareness about who your company is and what you offer. FACT: Buyers are always more aware of the companies with the most aggressive marketing. It doesn’t matter how great your product or service is if nobody knows about it! Basically put, if you don’t advertise, and do it frequently and effectively—you don’t exist.

Your image defines you.TM
Your advertising puts you in a unique position to personally design your own corporate identity and create how the outside world views your company. Your company’s brand relies heavily on your corporate identity and advertising. If designed correctly, you can use your advertising to position your company as a leader in your industry, neutralize negative publicity and PR, and expose your competitors weaknesses while highlighting your strengths.

Potential customers are ready to listen—Are you talking?
About half of consumers buy an item within one week of deciding to make the purchase, but the actual purchase time is typically unplanned. As an example, say you decide to buy a new refrigerator. For the next week, you are not only willing to listen to advertisements but eager to in order to see what your options are to find the best deal. They will soak in your advertising like a sponge in order to help them decide where to buy.

If you’re not First—you’re Last.
Simmons Research concluded that consumers believe buying a familiar brand usually guarantees approval while buying unfamiliar brands is risky… Keep in mind also that a large percentage of consumers postpone buying and spend a lot of time comparing prices, quality, and service. For these consumers, you want your advertising to consistently reach them throughout their entire decision-making process. Your goal is to become the First Familiar brand that comes to mind when they are ready to buy.

INTENTION is nothing without ACTION.
An occasional advertisement may help in terms of generating some awareness but it will do little in terms of creating sales. Potential customers may know who you are, and may intend to use your products/services one day—but that’s not going to keep you in business. Consistent advertisements designed with a call-to-action such as limited-time sales, coupons, and promotional codes that expire give consumers in the “I’ll have to do that one of these days” phase an incentive to act now.

Advertising creates traffic, which increases sales.
Advertise to drive traffic to your store, website, or any service location. Once your prospective customer is present you can us limited-time promotions and other call-to-action advertising locally to increase impulse and point-of-sale purchases. A National Retail Federation survey found that for every 100 items consumers plan to buy, they make an additional 30 unanticipated purchases!

Advertising SAVES you Time and Money.
A significant number of sales are lost simply because the consumer didn’t have enough knowledge of the product and all of their available options. You can use your advertising to educate the consumer about your service/product’s features and its benefits. Knowledgeable consumers save you time and money by comparison shopping first and often already know what they want reducing your direct selling costs, the costs associated with hiring additional salespeople, and the time spent selling it to them.

Invest in your success.
Consistent advertising gives you an advantage over competitors who reduce or eliminate their advertising. A survey of more than 3,000 companies found that advertisers who expanded or at least maintained a steady level of advertising over a five-year period saw their sales increase an average of 100%, whereas companies that reduced advertising grew at less than half that rate.

Learn from the pros. Copy Success.
Simply put, effective advertising works. Successful businesses are usually consistent and aggressive advertisers. A common excuse from small business owners is “The BIG businesses can afford to advertise, but we’re just a small company.” Our response is this—“What came first, the chicken or the egg?” Sure, some of these big businesses started out with large investment capital, but consider this perspective—Perhaps they were small, gained momentum, and continued to grow because they understood the importance of and utilized their advertising. They out-advertised their competition in order to gain their position, and then have continued to advertise to maintain that position.

Brian S. Holmes Visit his site at http://www.EASinteractive.com

Sep 22, 2009 | 13 comments | View Post

Best Blog Tools – Different Basic Tools to Maintain Your Blog

With the help of different blog tools, setting up your own blog is now a fairly simple task. Blog sites and other websites are now offering a variety of tools and accessories available to bloggers. Most of these tools and accessories need only the basic knowledge of using a web browser, but other tools are more complex than the others and require some knowledge of configuring web scripts, uploading files, and even HTML coding.

Here are some of my favorite blog tools worth considering because they are very useful and popular as well.

Stat Counter

This will give you much more detailed statistics about how many page impressions your site receives, the number visitors and where they have come from. Because of this feature, many people are getting addicted to refreshing their stats.

Feed burner

It’s the good ole’ daddy of RSS tools and using a couple of the features offered by Feed burner can prove very useful. It generates a smart feed for free compatible with all feed readers. Readers can easily subscribe with their email address and once a day receives your most recent articles. Don’t forget to place the code near the top of your site so people can spot it easily. Their Headline Animator is also a very useful tool, which allows you to feature other stories from elsewhere on your site; this is great if you have more than one site.

Google Search Box

As you write substantial articles, you may want to make it as easy as possible for readers to find what interests them on your site and this is the function of the Google Search Box. It is easy to install and allowing you to change the setting so it will fit efficiently into your site.

Technorati

Add a Technorati profile in your blog. It allows you to declare your blog in this blogosphere. The cool feature iworks kind of like a publicist for your blog. Whenever someone mentions or links to any page of your blog, Technorati knows it and shows exactly how many site links you have. To register with Technorati, you need to incorporate a small piece of code on your site and then Technorati checks this and will begin indexing your site.

Google AdSense and Search

Many bloggers write and share their experiences and expertise with other but isn’t it nice to optimize it to make some money? Just sign up for this feature and insert the designated code to be able to activate your AdSense account.

These blog tools are essential to maintain and monitor your blog. And before I forget, make sure to include your company address on every page; it helps with location based searches.

- By: Real Andrews

Sep 17, 2009 | 8 comments | View Post

Marketing your Business on the Internet – The Basics

marketing your business on the internet Even if you know how important it is to market your business on the internet, you don’t have thousands of dollars to spend each month, and you may not be an expert on Search Engine Optimization or Keyword Advertising (yet).

This article is about using consistent, free (or cheap) marketing strategies that you can start using today to make a difference in your business.

The Goal of marketing your business on the internet is to get consistent traffic to your site from your target market.

The three key words to remember about internet marketing are Consistent, Targeted, and Smart.

Consistent marketing practices will help you build a trusted presence on the web, and catch people who visit the same sites regularly. New people are always suspect, and you may not start to get results until you’ve been around long enough for people to trust you.

A Targeted strategy will focus on the type of person who is most likely to be interested in your product or service. If your ideal customer is a truck driver between 40 and 50 years old, you should not be marketing to young single moms on Myspace.

Smart marketing means using the tools the big kids use. Find out what successful marketers are doing to get such high traffic and do what they do. My mentor Walter Hailey always told me that “It’s easier to copy genius than to create mediocrity.”

It will take time to create the kind of web presence that will generate consistent traffic (and revenue) for your business, but as long as your effort is targeted, consistent, and smart, you will attract quality customers without spending thousands of dollars or hundreds of hours of your time.

Let’s get down to specifics – what can I start doing in my business tomorrow that will put me on the path to generating more traffic for my site and putting more money in my pocket?

I will assume that you already have a website for your business, and a professional email address with a unique url (not generic like yourname@gmail. com or business@yahoo. com). If you don’t have one yet, you can get one free from Google. Your next step is getting your business name, image, and content onto the web where your target market will find it and become a customer/client.

There are three main categories of marketing strategies to investigate as you are creating a marketing plan: Networking, Blogging/Article Writing, and Advertising.

1. Social or Business Networking.
Become a part of a networking community where you can build your own profile or web page and interact with others in the community. There are a ton of networking sites on the internet, some of which are mostly for socializing about niche topics, others are more focused on doing business. Choose 3-5 networks to join, and make sure all of them are connected to each other, and back to your website.

Here are a few to get you started: Facebook, Myspace, Squidoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, Direct Matches, Shmoozii, Biznik

2. Blogging and Article Writing.
They go together like peanuts and raisins. Every article you write for the blog should also be published on the web to as many article directories as possible, with your link included in the resource box. The more places your link appears on the web, the better. Update the blog frequently, put an RSS feed on your website and social networking profiles, and tell your friends about it. Search engines love fresh, new content that matches keywords, so including keywords in the blog content can help searchers find you.

For the beginner blogger, Google’s Blogspot is a good way to get started. Wordpress, Squarespace, Typepad, and Thoughts.com all have great templates and can be set up in a day.

As for Article Directories, you can submit by hand, but I wouldn’t recommend it. People getting real results with article writing have an automated service that submits articles to hundreds of directories automatically. I have found two: SubmitYOURArticle (web-based) and Article Submitter Platinum (Software). They are not free, but they are worth it if you choose article writing as one of your marketing strategies.

3. Advertising using Adwords, keywords, pay-per-click, or traffic exchanges.
A much less personal approach, advertising can give you access to a huge number of people for a relatively small cost – and most sites have free trials or sign-up bonuses that can help you create an ad that works before you start paying for it. Use the same keywords that are on your website and blog in your advertisements, and search engines will like you even more.

My short list of Advertising sites would include: Adland Pro, Bananapile, ReaLook, Spiderjump, and HitsFrenzy. Also look at Clickable – a service that can manage advertising campaigns on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and others simultaneously.

Using a few of the services from all three of the above categories in tandem will create a tight web to capture your customers and send them to your site. As long as you update Consistently, Target your campaigns accurately, and be Smart about where you spend your money and time, you can see results in a little as a few weeks and secure your long-term success.

Best of luck with your research, stick with it, and remember that even in the tedious moments, owning your own business is so much better than going to work at 9am in a job that doesn’t fulfill you.

Do Good and Be Well.

Colin Turner has been an entrepreneur since the age of 17, and is a regular blogger and writer about home based businesses. He has become a mentor and trusted source for information on Internet Marketing for Home Businesses. http://www.marketingsystemforsuccess.com

Sep 14, 2009 | 7 comments | View Post