Let’s use the comments section of this post for both marketers (looking for a business to work with) and business owners (looking for a marketer to work with them).
Note to businesses – there is no rule against using more than one marketer. Many marketers use only a limited number of techniques, so as long as the different marketers are using different methods, there should be no problem with toes being stepped on. Just offer a generous commission to anyone offering to bring you leads or sales.
Opt-in to watch the free video at:
http://www.bizmastermind.com
It’s sort of geared toward the small business owner as an introduction for increasing retail sales, boosting a personal practice, consulting clients, upsell, reduce wasted untrackable offline advertising, etc.
It tells them that they need an autoresponder with confirmed opt-in, and so on. In other words, for the experienced marketer it’s VERY basic.
BUT if you look at it from the perspective of the Internet-clueless small business owner, it’s good information for YOU to have – when you offer your services to those real-world businesses. All that basic stuff that a real-world business needs to do to start making additional money online, seems very complicated and lengthy – but to YOU, it’s all second-nature, right?
So Jonathan Mizel recently released Traffic Evolution:
http://trafficevolution.com/
Traffic Evolution
This is not a course that relates to taking your Internet marketing skills and working with a real business – and it’s not for most business owners looking to branch into online sales.
HOWEVER – it IS an update of the “Banner Ad Traffic Machine” and the banneradmagic.com site that I used to run up until about 7 years ago.
The course is about buying advertising in the 85% chunk of online media space that is NOT pay per click. Banner ads (and their varying sizes – leaderboards, boxes, skyscrapers/towers), email rental, etc.
You can open accounts at some of these media sources in do-it-yourself fashion, for $100 – $300.
Nifty. Even I didn’t know that, until I went through Jon’s course last week.
This is, indeed, a hodge-podge of tips …
Repeat your autoresponder sequence but change the subject lines. Then you can
send the autoresponder sequence 2 or 3 times – so a series of 7 autoresponders
becomes 14 or 21 – and if you add in a month of silence you can send them yet
again, making it 28 or 42 total emails you send.
When marketing through videos and blogs use these psychological approaches …
- new / fresh
- inspirational
- innovative
- controversial
- edgy
- funny
- heartwarming
- taboo
- secretive
- engaging (participation)
- suspenseful
- your persona
- your vision of market – what you think your market should look like
- your “creation myth” – the genesis of how you got into business
- polarized point of view – “us vs them”
Don’t stop content network display of adwords ads if you are having problems
and need to stop advertising for a time. Instead, adjust your budget down to
$5 a day. Otherwise, google will start all over again, evaluating your content
network keywords and ads from scratch, when you start up again.
Most of the keywords that google “suggests” you add to your adgroups,
will in fact dilute and remove focus from that adgroup, and cause lowered
keyword quality scores, landing page scores etc. Keep your adgroups,
and the keywords inside them, TIGHT. Add only the BEST keywords
that google suggests you add.
Advertising on the adwords content network requires you to design ads to
distract from the content – you have to be more whimsical, bold and
attention-getting with your ads. With ads on the search network, go more
conservative, and assume that the searcher is ready to buy something.
Google looks for conceptual similarity in adgroups – and on the content network
it looks to put your ads on pages that match your landing page, ad, keywords, and
OTHER ads in that group! If your keyword list is too big when aiming at the content
network, google may have trouble finding a common theme and have trouble
showing your ad in the right places, or at all. Keep it tight!
How do you get people to start the buying process? You help to solve some
of their problems, for FREE, without hesitation. Then they like you, and then
some of them buy from you.
DIFFERENT is much better than BETTER.
USE prweb. How many people actually use it? Not many.
Cycle through these 4 styles of discourse continuously, when writing
ad copy, web pages, autoresponders etc. about your offering:
1) why – pleasure and pain
2) what – theory etc., history
3) how – action steps, procedure, exercise
4) what if – what if I did it right now, here’s what would happen RIGHT NOW
Small initial purchases “train” people to buy things from you.
Study the CONVERSATIONS surrounding your keywords – on blogs and twitter,
and by studing human response to your advertising.
STORYTELLING SELLS.
“Add to cart” gets better response than a “Buy” button – and “Paypal orange” is a great button color.
Give videos and jpgs long relevant filenames. For your irrelevant images, just name them
1.jpg, 2.jpg etc. and DON’T use alt tags! For relevant images, the file name, image, and alt
text MUST all match. No keyword stuffing or deception!
There is good reason to buy PPC even if you dominate natural search – there are people,
probably people looking to BUY SOON, who DO look over at the ads on the right,
which they deem to be “businesses who can sell to me right now” rather than organic
results which contain wiki, info, confusing (word-salad-google-bait) sites, out-dated sites etc.
On these blogs, if you post comments with a link back to your own site, you’ll actually get credit for the link when google etc. spider the blog. Most of these are about Internet marketing:
http://affiliateprofitcenter.com
http://andybeard.eu
http://www.articlesnatch.com/blog/
http://www.bigfootwebmarketing.com
http://diydollars.com
http://www.expressmarketingmemo.com
http://www.tipscollections.com
http://www.scopeformoney.com/
http://www.onlinemarketingperformance.com
http://raven-seo-tools.com/blog/
http://smartwealthyrich.com/
http://marketsecrets.biz
http://redstaplerchronicles.com
http://www.yackyack.co.uk/
terrydean.org
www.seo-writer.com/blog/
raven-seo-tools.com/blog/
www.gregboser.com/
www.seocopywriting.com/
www.darin.cc/
seo2.0.onreact.com/top-7-ways-to-use-twitter-for-marketing-purposes-correctly
www.sitelogicmarketing.com/blog/05-searchengineoptimization-basics
www.searchenginepeople.com/…/the-6-spheres-of-social-media-marketing.html
www.neilshearing.com/
www.sitelogicmarketing.com/blog/01-social-media-under-microscope
www.smallbusinessbranding.com/
www.lonelymarketer.com/
www.michellemacphearson.com/
www.marketingblagger.com/
www.amplify-interactive.com/blog/
www.joedolson.com/articles/2007/…/search-marketing-standard-subscription/
www.outofmygord.com/category/2.aspx
www.affordable-internet-marketing.com/
emoneymarketing.com/
www.meandmydrum.com/
www.thedigeratilife.com/blog/index.php/category/web-marketingtraffic/
services.performancing.com/
seosnack.com/marketing/3-of-the-easiest-steps-to-make-money-online/ – 4 hours ago
www.seo-writer.com/blog
www.ezbusinessneeds.com/learn/tag/Internet-Marketing/
www.marketingblagger.com/264/kick-starting-2009/
www.seocopywriting.com
robcubbon.com/
www.seowebtips.com/roi-on-social-media-marketing/
dmiracle.com/tag/seo/
thoushallblog.com/
www.gregboser.com/about/
www.lonelymarketer.com/tag/SEO
www.ezbusinessneeds.com/…/Relationship-Between-Offline-and-Online-Marketing/
www.sme-blog.com/small…/small-business-start-up-idea-website-reviews
dmiracle.com/marketing…/business-ownerstry-making-it-a-conversation/
blog.cre8asite.net
www.searchenginepeople.com/blog
www.ezbusinessneeds.com
www.thebuffaloriver.com/external.php
www.chrishoyt.com/chplaces.php
www.pagetrafficblog.com/alexa-traffic-rank-numbers-updated/198/
www.seodiva.net
www.freyer.com/small-business-marketing-how-to-do-your-marketing-successfully-in-the-coming-recession/
My dear old friend, Frank Kern (who has never met or talked to me in any form, and does not know what I look like or what I do), has posted a “State Of The Internet” video for 2009 and 2010 and what is coming up in the next decade.
Luckily for you, he talks a LOT about working with REAL businesses, instead of making a $27 ebook about growing herbs or training dogs and selling it on clickbank and ending up insane.
Frank’s Video
http://masscontrolsite.com/blog/?p=65
I think that later, I’ll start posting long lists of tidbits I’ve made notes about since March, when I re-immersed myself into the (life-giving ocean)/(cess-pool) of Internet marketing “how-to”.
December 15th, 2009 in
Articles |
No Comments
I just wanted to make sure you all knew that.
How much fun?
I remember the good old days when you could put up some ads on google and take a few days to figure out for yourself what works, so that you could then use your own brain to eliminate or change most of the ads and keywords, and maybe some adgroups, and maybe add some new, more specific adgroups where warranted.
But with a new account I finally activated 2 days ago, after months of suspense, Google decided that my landing page sucked, that every keyword in all 6 adgroups was irrelevant (except for a couple), and that virtually all my ads are unacceptable.
Now what? Assume a new identity and start with a new domain name, and roll the dice again?
Or just limit myself to MSN and Yahoo where I won’t have a sock stuffed down my throat the minute I want to do some advertising?
I understand Google’s visitor quality experience values, however the account that I turned on is laser-focussed on a very specific software consulting marketplace. So are the keywords I chose, and the ads I designed.
I get the feeling that I’m going to become a “go-to guy for graphic advertising” again, within a couple of years, much like I was around the turn of the millennium.
Back then, it was all about “banner ads”, and it was simple enough to adapt my strategies to skyscrapers, leaderboards, rectangle ads etc.
Right now, everyone gushes over the pure-text adwords system. It’s always the first thing I try for any business. It works on a relentless and monstrous scale for tens of thousands of advertisers.
The world is still full of useless and unproductive graphic ads of every size. Some of them you see thousands of times (eg., broker ads if you visit stock trading sites regularly).
In the past I discovered profitable and cheap banner advertising at quality sites. I still maintain most of those relationships.
BUT, most of the Big Media graphic advertising buys have to be done personally, through an Agent, for example with a newspaper or magazine’s web site. Not only is this AN IMMENSE PAIN IN THE ASS, but they also usually want you to spend THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS before anything even happens.
Meanwhile they’re ignoring the fact that Google is a multi-billion dollar juggernaut that has made most of its money by giving their clients FULL CONTROL over the pricing and placement of their own ads. You don’t have to wire somebody $5000 every time you have a new ad campaign to try. You can spend $5 a day if you want.
Sooner or later there has to be a waking-up from today’s sorry state of graphic advertising. Big Media tells you that you have to pay $20,000 – $50,000 for your banner ad to show up 1,000,000 times. Meanwhile, there’s NO WAY they’re selling out their inventory at that rate. They are dumping it, almost free, onto conglomerates who will fill that space with dancing monkey banners, and the like. They are dumped into the inventory of media companies that form out of nothingness and then buy each other out, in a never-ending cycle that’s been going on for 15 years.
Especially garbage-y is advertising for sale on teenage-targetted video game and ringtone and song lyrics sites. Don’t buy advertising there! “But it’s only .001 cents per impression” is NOT a valid reason.
Even on Google, via Adwords (but only on the content network, mind you), you can make graphic ads … BUT … they will be shown little, and probably get crappy results – because most AdSense vampires only have the text ad codes on their sites.
But I feel the day is coming when all this delicious, quality ad inventory that you and I are currently shut out of, will join the party, becoming rational and accessible.
When that DOES happen, you’ll pay reasonable ad rates, with no minimums, and there might even be a grace period where you are not hammered by Google-like campaign quality scores, landing page quality scores, keyword quality scores etc. You’ll pay per impression, or by click, and be done with it. Unless, of course, the upcoming revolution in graphic advertising is controlled by Google.
When that happens, I will experiment far beyond my years-old strategies, study the results, and make myself available once more as “The Banner Ad Guy”.
Everybody wins!
So I’ve been spending weeks and weeks splitting and subdividing Awords campaigns (for 3 companies) into more and tighter adgroups, complicating the hell out of everything, because that is in fact the right way to do adwords.
But some of the things I want to sell are not being searched for in large numbers (or at all) by my markets.
Then I remembered that I once made my living entirely through banner advertising. (Later, skyscrapers and leaderboards, too.)
Use adwords to find the aspects of your market that go and SEARCH for things, in considerable numbers, on google. And then STOP.
If part or all of the market for what you sell is not a group of identifiable searchers, MOVE ON and look for DIFFERENT kinds of advertising. Look for where that group hangs out online, see if they sell advertising, and if they do, BUY it.
Adwords, plus all the free crap (squidoo, hub pages, social networks, articles, generating 1000s of horrible keyword salad pages), is NOT the only way to promote online.
Just like 10 years ago, the gurus aren’t telling you about graphic advertising. And there are untold thousands of web sites that sell it.
Example: One thing I want to sell is titanium dioxide nano-spray surface coating which, in the presence of UV (ultraviolet light), kills bacteria and viruses and turns the nastiest air pollution compounds into CO2 and water. Neat, huh?
Problem – there is NOT a group of people searching google for “antiviral nanospray” or “antibacterial coating” etc.
Solution:
1) identify the market – private schools, hospitals, office buildings, airports, govt buildings, allergy sufferers’ homes
2) search google for advertising +[keyword] +administrator or manager
Voila. This leads me straight to web sites that sell advertising that reaches decision makers. Even though they are unaware of the product, and therefore are not searching for it, I can simply pay for the privilege of PUTTING IT IN THEIR FACE with some bold pain and pleasure triggers.
And when I buy graphic advertising on a web site, I do not have to be feverishly consumed until 3 am with such topics as campaign quality score, landing page quality score, and ad group quality score.
Due to the nature of this blog, and the fact that you are reading it, this is something that might be of interest …
Local Business Money Machine
Differences Between Me And This Other Site
I’m telling you to work strictly on commission.
I’m telling you to work with businesses that have low competition and the ability to expand beyond their immediate geographic region.
On the other hand …
Kevin at NitroMarketing is telling you to get business owners to sign contracts, preferrably long-term, for $1,000 to $5,000 a month.
And I think Kevin really means “local business” when he termed his product “The Local Business Money Machine”.
What we have in COMMON is … we’re both telling you to work with REAL businesses that sell REAL products or services.
We’re both NOT telling you to go out and slave over keyword generation tools and auto-generate 1000 web pages, even though you have nothing to sell, get someone in Somalia to write 100 articles for you, then do some blackhat squidoo twitter crap.
When you work with a real business, the insanity dries up, and you find yourself, out of necessity, working from the basics – build or fix a site, set up the lead generation (ie. build an email list – just like 15 years ago) and the Adwords account, and get going.
Local Business Money Machine
