Marketing Science Blog

Blogging is an activity that began to go mainstream in late 90s, early 2000s.  Historically, it was a way to comment an existing web page, an opportunity for visitors and readers to react or voice their opinions on that page.

What started as single sentence commentary has evolved into complete web sites of personal opinions about anything and everything imaginable.  As blogging evolved, online advertising has tapped into the its revenue potential.

Here are 5 reasons why you should use blogging as one of your primary Internet marketing tools.

1.Blogging is simple.  The simplest way to get your say on the Internet is to blog.  Only simple skills are necessary: read and type, click a mouse.  It’s like having a digital notebook or journal where you express your experiences, ideas, new products and hope that the value of your articles motivates your reader to some desired action, like clicking relevant text ads that earn you money.  If you have a computer and an Internet connection (that’s almost everyone) then you can blog and advertise.

2. Blogging is authentic.  Today, when advertising is saturating our lives, we question more than ever the credibility of promoters’ claims.  However, with blogs, real people share their real-life experiences, uninfluenced by paid advertising.  Reading blogs about opinions of products is like talking to people about their first-hand experiences. Everyone wants to buy a tried and tested product.

3. Blogging is free.  Because blogging is now proving itself to be a mainstream online advertising media, most sites see it as something to augment current marketing and offer it for free. Any opportunity for free “web time” is a bonus, particularly to businesses that are just starting up.

4. Blogging builds your credibility.  As you write and post more of your experiences on a particular product or industry, your readers come to realize they can depend on your posts for their own informational needs. You become an expert. As a result, more readers visit your blog and other bloggers link to you. As companies and professional organizations notice the growth of your readership base, they may soon contact you to advertise on your blog page, or invite you to become an affiliate, which pays for every referral sale generated by your blog.

5. Blogging builds your market.  Unless you’re a celebrity, it’s very possible your Mom reads your posts.  Mom has a lot of friends, so she tells her friends how interesting your blog is. But you don’t have to depend on Mom to get visitors to your blog!  Look into the following ways to build your readership and market via blogging:

Through e-mail. Today, blogging is overtaking e-mail to quickly and effectively reach and expand a market. In our new age of speed and instant access, logging in and checking e-mail is time-consuming than going to your favorite blog. And you avoid all the unwanted spam. get people to explore your blog by using a short teaser e-mail message with links to your blog. If your e-mail is on an entirely different subject, use your e-mail signature to give a link to the site.

Using subscriptions. An easy way to get your readers e-mail is to give them an opportunity to subscribe to your blog.  Hold back some exclusive information for your subscribers to entice readers to subscribe and give their e-mail address.  Just be responsible in using their e-mail address, as the last thing you want is a comment on your blog that you are a spammer.

Understanding your readers. Conduct surveys for your readers to understand their true wants and needs.  Ask consumers to give you feedback on posts, an ad link, or a free trial that you shared.  It’s like interviewing your readers without the hassle or intrusion of a physical interview.

Joining a blog network. A blog network is an organized collection of blogs that share similar interests, themes, readership, etc.  Consumers like the convenience of clicking one link to several blogs about a single subject.

Using RSS. RSS is still one of the fastest growing technologies on the Internet.  Having RSS feeds for your blog is another great way of creating awareness for your blog.  Having a variety of feeds also adds interest to your blog.

So, give your business a real boost by using blogging as a primary Internet marketing tool.

Posted by Bob Thomson

List Building Secret #1 - Making Your Content Relevant Keeps Subscribers Happy & Boosts The Number Of People Who Recommend Your Ezine To Their Friends.

One of the biggest problems I see newsletter and ezine publishers having online is that they write about subjects no one in their market is really interested in. They just write about whatever they think people want to know about without doing any of the research, which is a huge no-no.

Another problem is, publishers who have a market well defined don’t then write the content in their newsletters that interests their readers. There is no use having an ezine on coin collecting and running articles on stamp collecting just because you couldn’t be bothered finding the right content for your ezine.

This is easily overcome. Just send out an email asking your readers what they want to read. Also sign up for other ezines in your market and see what they are writing about.

List Building Secret #2 - Add More Subscription Boxes To Your Website

Sounds simple enough, but few people actually do it. If you have a 100 page website, you should have 100 newsletter subscribe boxes on your website.

You can integrate a subscribe box just about anywhere in a website. You could add one just before an article starts, in the middle of an article or even at the end of the article.

As long as you have good content on your website, you won’t have a problem getting people to subscribe to your newsletter.

An interesting way to do this for a content site is as follows.

Have a look at my website and see what I do to get subscribers…

http://www.marketing-register.com

List Building Secret #3 -  Offer An Outstanding Bonus Or Gift

I’ve had a problem in the past with offering freebies to get people to subscribe to your newsletter, but I also know it can work well, if done properly.

Why do I have a problem with it? Well I really want subscribers to be signing up for my newsletter because they want my newsletter not because they want the freebie im offering.

The best way to offer a freebie is to create one yourself and not something you have reprint rights to with 500 other people. You want it to be unique, and you want it to be something that plugs your newsletter heavily.

Do you know what makes a good bonus? Back issues of your newsletter!

List Building Secret #4 - Use Free Viral Ebooks To Get New Subscribers

Want to get thousands of new subscribers for your ezine without spending a cent on advertising and you’ve tried all the methods above but you still want more?

Viral marketing is the way to go! Writing viral ebooks that get passed around

Writing viral books is nothing new, but it’s still a great way to get your newsletter noticed.

There are a few methods you can use when creating viral ebooks.

You can either create them as a free product, or charge for them and give people the reprint rights to the product so they in turn can give your product away while making some money in the process.

I prefer the reprint right route. The key here is tho, once the momentum of the first book wears out, write another and another and another and another! All in the same method, all with reprint rights and all with your newsletter subscribe from plastered in them.

The goal really isn’t to make money from the sales of the book, it’s to get more subscribers.

So again, find a group of publishers in your markets, let them know you created a new ebook with sales letter that they can use and plug straight into their website and give them a mailing promotion to use and tell them they can have the book for free and that they can either sell the book or the book and the reprint rights to their customers.

This is easy money for them and more subscribers for you!

Doing audio interviews with experts in your field also is a great idea to get more subscribers. I’m not going to get into how to create audio products as that’s a whole other book, but interviewing experts over the phone and recording it on mp3 will get your newsletter splashed all over the Internet, especially in fields other then Internet marketing where people don’t expect to get this much quality information for free

When you take marketing tactics from the Internet marketing field and apply them into other niche markets where they have never been seen before, you will get noticed more. Everything has been done in the Internet marketing field, we are all  immune to even the most brilliant marketing tactics as we see them almost everyday, but other niche markets eat these things up.

Creating audio interviews isn’t hard at all equipment wise and finding experts to interview is a piece of cake.

Do you know how I find experts in any field almost instantly?

Well most FAQ pages at FAQS.Org/faq/ have who its written by and an email address for them. These guys are obviously knowledgeable in their fields, and they would make great experts to interview.

Tell them you want to interview them because you’ve read information they’ve written and it was great and you think your subscribers would appreciate the information.

Most will do this without charging you a cent if you are outside the marketing field, they will just get a thrill out of being interviewed.

Once you have these interviews, tell all the publishers you’ve been in contact with recently that you have this great set of mp3’s just completed and you want to offer them for free to their lists.

Setup a section on your website with the download link to these mp3’s and also put a subscribe form near them for your newsletter and you will be surprised how many people will sign up AFTER they listen to your mp3s.

Don’t make it so these people have to sign up for your newsletter before they get the mp3s.

List Building Secret #5 - Use Pop Up Windows

Pop up windows are still effective ways to get subscribers, especially in niche markets.

Creating popups on your website is as easy as pie. There are however a few different type of popup windows you can use.

The pop up window on exit, which pops up after you leave a website and the popup window on entry which obviously pops up when you first go to a website.

I prefer the exit popup. So when someone leaves  a page on your website they get a popup window asking them to subscribe to your newsletter.

This can get annoying so what you want to do is use a popup that allows you to tell if a persons already seen your popup before so it won’t keep showing.

You can find these sort of popup scripts all over the Internet.

List Building Secret #6 - Use Name Squeeze Pages

Name Squeeze is a big buzz word lately and it’s something people having been beating to death, but they really do work.

Name Squeeze is nothing new, it’s just that Jonathan Mizel gave an old technique a new name and new appeal. Good marketing on his part. He’s also trademarked the phrase.

The best way to explain a name squeeze page is to show you a good example.

http://www.scrapbookingprofits.com

This is a great name squeeze page. Basically, what a name squeeze page is, is a simple subscribe form that then leads them to either a free report or a sales letter.

Sign up for the following name squeeze pages to get a good idea of what to do.

http://www.doubleyourdating.com
http://www.scrapbookingprofits.com
http://www.fireyourweddingplanner.com

Notice how these sites have nothing to do with Internet marketing? But they are ALL pulling in tens of thousands of dollars monthly. Doubleyourdating.com is pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly.

List Building Secret #7 - Buy Leads With Co-Registration

Quick and easy way to get subscribers, but not the best way. That’s how I describe Co- registration.

Some marketers swear by it and have great results, others fail and have to throw out the entire list they brought because it’s riddled with fake addresses, spam complaints and basically freebie seekers.

So what is Co-registration?

Basically its building lists by buying subscribers from a 3rd party service.

Here is how Dr Raplh Wilson put it…..

“Co-registration is a widely-used approach to increase the size of your e-mail lists. Co-registration works this way: After completing a subscription form or upon leaving a website, visitors are invited to subscribe to one or more e-zines. If yours is listed among these and the site gets a substantial amount of traffic, you’ll begin to receive a number of subscriptions. ”
Have a look at the two best Co-registration companies to see what I mean.

http://www.worldwidelists.com
http://www.profitinfo.com/leadfactory/

What you do is you pay a fee to these companies per subscriber. So everytime they supply you with a new lead you pay them a fee. Usually around 15 cents to $1 depending on the niche market and if you want double opt-in or single opt-in.
Always go for double opt-in if you can.

The best way to make money from these types of subscribers is to first give something away for free. Build trust with your subscribers. Sign them up for a free course, give them some bonus products like you created before and remember if anyone asks to be removed from your list, just do it! And don’t argue with them… ever!

That’s the quickest way to get your newsletter shutdown.

Posted By Bob Thomson

The Internet is now a full-blown medium for product and service advertisements.  Almost every company that can afford print, radio and TV advertisements has ventured into placing ads on the Internet.

But with millions of websites being visited by millions of surfers, how can you make sure your ad will be seen by your target customers and that your leads will be followed by these users?  Here are a few tips.

1.  Place an ad on the websites frequented by your target customers.  Before doing this, you need to define who your target customers are.  Placing an ad on sites they frequent increases the possibility that your ad will gain the attention and will be followed your target customers.

Also, consider the website’s search engine placement, traffic, external linking and the other ads placed on it.  External linking will determine if there are other sites that link to this site.  This will mean that people can get to the site where your ad is placed, even if they are browsing a different site.  Check if any of your competitors have ads on the site.

2.  Placing ads on some sites cost some money.  However, there are also sites that can place a link to your site, product or service in exchange of having their link being displayed on your site.  This is also true about the newsletters sent by site owners to its mailing list members regularly.

Also, having helpful links placed on your site and having sites link to your pages help in boosting search engine ranking.  This is similar to making a statement that your site’s content is important that other sites have links to your web pages.

3.  Pay per click (PPC) is a good lead generation method in Internet marketing.  You will only need to pay for the ad if the link is clicked.  If you prefer this method of advertising, make sure you’re using services that set limits on daily expenses.  There are also services that help you determine effective keywords and monitor your PPC results.

4.  Choose your domain name wisely.  It is still being debated if domain names matter when it comes to search engine placement.  Whether it does or not, having product related domain names help consumers remember your domain, that they can go back to your site even without the links.

5.  Make sure you have useful content on your sites.  While keyword density is important in search engine placement, having useless information or annoying repetition of keywords will not increase your customer’s confidence in your site.  It may even affect your sites traffic and can get your site removed from search engines.  So make sure that keywords are used strategically.

6.  When thinking of keywords, think like your target customers.  What do you think are they going to search so they can get to your site?  Also, use specific keywords or key phrases.  Submitting a single word or a very general phrase to a search engine will not get you to the top of the search results compared to submitting specific keywords that describe your product and services perfectly.

7.  Track your ads.  Always check how much you have spent on placing links on frequently visited sites and on PPC.  There are services that allow you to monitor PPC transactions and how many of these end in sales.  You always need to consider if the ads that you have placed on these websites are getting you to your target consumers and if these ads can lead to revenue.

One final tip on marketing products and services, sell the benefits.  This is absolutely critical.

It will boost p your marketing tremendously if you highlight the benefits of choosing your products and services instead of merely discussing the product features or product specifications.  These things may not mean much to customers, unless they know what the the benefit is (how these specifications affect the quality of the product or service).

Getting to the top of search engine results can be difficult since millions of websites exist, many of which are using the same keywords you’re using.

While this is true, this doesn’t mean that your website has to be placed under your competitors’ websites when presenting search engine results.  Strategic advertising and linking, together with useful content, can also get you to the top of the search results.

By being mindful of these 7 tips, you’ll be well on your way to achieving your strategic Internet marketing goals (translation: You’ll be making more sales & profits!)

Posted by Bob

The other day I was networking with a fellow marketing consultant and he asked me the following question:

“Do you think a business website should have a physical address and pictures of the owners? In other words, should you provide personal touches? Or could people care less and are only concerned with quick and valuable service?”

We get bombarded on a daily basis with hundreds up to several thousand marketing messages. Because of the pounding people take from these messages, I believe it takes a more intimate approach to break through the clutter and command attention.

A photo is a great start in establishing trust and what’s called marketing intimacy. A photo associates a real person with the your web site and tells the world that you are confident about your product or service. This bumps up credibility and trust.

For even more effect, add an audio clip below your picture and benefit from the marketing synergy of your picture and voice together.

Here’s an example:

“A Special Welcome From Our Founder”…

This can really help establish marketing intimacy, credibility and trust with web site users. Even in a world of give-it-to-me-now instant gratification, the personal touches add real value if not on a conscious level, a sub-conscious one.

What else can you do you create marketing intimacy with your visitors/prospects?

Well according to marketing genius Alex Mandossian, you engage your prospects and customers on as many sensory levels as you can (tactile, audio, visual) in order to build trust, credibility and a positive, enduring business relationship.

Alex opines the most important dynamic e at work for establishing marketing intimacy is the power of your own voice. I agree with him completely.

When you use personal photos of yourself, vocal audio clips and web videos in your site, you are engaging your prospects in a way a regular sites do not.

After all, text is text and having to read volumes on the Web can get very tiringt. Audio and video are fun, easy ways to learn information. This is a big opportunity for smart businesses who can provide information, products and services to people in the exact forms they desire.

Other media and methods you can use to establish marketing intimacy (without having to physically be there) include:

teleseminars, webinars, web casts, video conferencing, social networking sites …

As for having an address on your site, I firmly believe you should. It will help with trust and credibility. I know that when I cannot find an address on a site, especially one trying to sell me something, it’s a concern. I feel like the owner wants to hide behind an email address.

By having your physical address on your web site you help prospects eliminate some of the uncertainty and objections about you and what you’re offering. It certainly can’t hurt.

Posted by Bob T.

I’m a big fan of Joe Vitale. I’ve been through his motivational and success consciousness program, The Key. It’s helped me immensely along with other self help courses.

Joe had a great post today about attracting more money into your life. I encourage you to check it out.

7 Ways To Attract More Money