The Hook
The hook is the first thing you say about your company. It’s the first thing you put on your marketing message. The best hook is a company name that, sorry, HOOKS people. A hard-c sound – carrot, cucumber – is not bad advice.
Zeer-ROCKS. Klee-NECKS. These hard-c sounds affect us. It’s been tested. They are remembered. When your hook is sharp and specific, there’s nothing left for your audience to do but take the action you offer. One hook. One action. That’s the best a marketing message can cause.
Marketing messages are not advertisements. Advertisements can explain and persuade. They often make the sale. Marketing messages, on the other hand, don’t make the sale. They don’t close the deal. They inspire one action. They fit on billboards or the sides of a bus. They have one headline. It is visceral and compelling.
“Death of a Salesman” opened in the 1940s. Many people warned Arthur Miller, the playwright, that death would not sell in a title. But it did not keep people away. The power of the product did the work, obviously, compelling people to recommend the play to their friends, but the title now seems powerful and profound. In our hyper-hype culture, bottom line hooks are startling and refreshing. We trust candor. It can seem so rare.
Say it like it is. Then tell them what to do. Knee-JERK. (There’s that hard-c again.) That would be quite an effective marketing event. You knee. They jerk.
The best hook is someone’s name. You’re trying to hook some particular person, aren’t you? Or category of people. A specific word, idea, or question makes a great hook. “Where’s the beef?” Remember that cranky old grandma? The 80s weren’t that long ago. But we are more spread out now. We all don’t watch the same channels or networks. Companies used to be able to reach their markets. Now our markets search for us.
Which is why the best hook is a keyword that people are searching on the internet. The traffic is out there. We must not only stand in it. We must hold up a sign that they’re looking for.
“Just do it.” You know the company. One simple phrase and, perhaps, some athlete doing something – doing one specific thing. If a picture is worth a thousand words, why not one picture with the fewest words possible? “Brevity is the soul of wit.” In the loud avalanche of marketing messages, your specific and almost silent message is perhaps best heard. Think strategic. (Another hard-c.) What grabs your attention? On stage it is said “Less is more.” Less from you gives room for more from them, your audience. More thought. More feeling. More response. More action.
And that, I assume, is what you want to cause with your marketing. So be clear and concise. Sharpen your hook and offer them only one action. Test and measure and improve. Adapt. Soon you’ll have a relationship with your customers. Remember to always hook them with every message. Good communication is a skill you can practice. You don’t have communication until you get a response.
Internet Marketing - It’s All In The Keywords
Though you may think that choosing a killer domain, a great web host, and getting your Internet marketing site up and running is step number one. But here’s the thing… choosing the right keywords might even trump that. Of course, you can always go back and change your page later on, but you really need to be thinking about keywords in the copy of your page as well as in the META tags. The better your keyword usage, the easier it will be for search engines to find you and the more traffic your Internet marketing business will get over time.
We used to run to Overture’s keyword suggestion tool when trying to decide on keywords. It was just convenient and simple. But sad to say, it’s heyday has passed. We heard it was closing and the evidence is in that the site hasn’t updated since January 2007. It’s just not doing the job anymore. We need a new go-to site for keyword discovery.
What would you say, if I told you here’s another site that works just as well, if not better? SEOBook.com’s keyword suggestion tool is very comprehensive. It not only comes back with search results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN, it includes information on traffic estimation, trends, and it will even link you into Word Tracker, the paid professional search tool, providing you’re a member. The drawback with SEOBook is that it’s become very popular, and like Overture used to seize up when it was overused, SEOBook’s tool does the same thing. If you put in a general term and you get 0 results, it probably means that the tool is just too busy.
Begin by using a very general term, though, for whatever niche you’re in. Let’s say it’s birds. You sell bird cages, exotic birds, and special bird foods. So, you go over to SEOBook and plug in “birds.” The top word comes back “bird” with 829,227 searches for the month. That’s competitive! So, you probably want to go for a less competitive term, especially if you’re just starting out and your page has no page rank from Google. If you move down the list a bit, you’ll find “bird supply,” with a search volume of 23,611. That’s a term you can compete for. Keep moving down the list and find words that apply to your niche with a search volume of 10,000 or more and you’ll probably have some pretty good keywords for your Internet marketing business. Use them in everything you do.
Keywords are extremely important in Internet marketing, and if you want free search engine traffic, you should choose them wisely. Find keywords that are relevant to your niche and the products you’re selling and stick with the lower search volumes, until your Internet marketing business has some search engine traction. Though search engine optimization isn’t something that works right away, over time, you’ll see the free traffic pick up and make a huge difference in how your Internet marketing business performs.
Source: isname.com
Internet Marketing - Finding A Niche
One hurdle people find difficult to overcome is choosing their first niche. What they’re suffering is that old “paralysis by analysis” feeling. They’re thinking so hard about what will make money via Internet marketing, that they’re totally ignoring one very important rule of business: Do what you love. If you aren’t having fun every day. What’s the point?
So, what can you do? Here are some ways that you can jog yourself into a great Internet marketing niche:
Decide what has fascinated you over the past 10 years. Maybe it’s comic books. I like comic books. Is it a good niche? Perhaps. But you might be into fishing or gardening, or even kite boarding. But whatever it is, it has to excite you. You have to have a desire to want to learn more about the subject or you already have to be very knowledgeable, but you have to enjoy whatever your niche is.
Go to the library and walk up and down the nonfiction aisles, while looking at the book titles. The first book you’re interested enough in to pick up might be a good choice of Internet marketing niche. But maybe not. Keep walking until you find something you can become engrossed in from antiques to zoology, you’ll certainly find something that draws you in.
But if that doesn’t work. Try giving yourself a sleep suggestion. When you close your eyes at night, ask yourself, what should my Internet marketing niche be? In the morning, you’ll probably come up with an answer. No one is sure how this works, but it does. And, it works for solving just about any problem. Your subconscious has the information. You just need to access it.
Don’t just settle on one Internet marketing niche, though. Try to come up with a list of about 5 that might be workable. Then, go over to the keyword selection tool at SEOBook.com and plug your niches in, one at a time. See what kind of traffic the main keyword for your niche is getting. Go to AdWords and see what kind of traffic words are getting. For example, if I plug fishing into the “Google Traffic Estimator” I see that the competition is high, the cost per click for AdWords is $0.69 - $1.01 and that the term gets 8,000 - 10,000 clicks on AdWords ads per day. That’s a great niche to be in! On the other hand, if I plug in “basketweaving,” it’s at the other end of the spectrum. There’s little competition, and there’s only 1 click per day. Not too good. So, go through your list, until you find a term for which people are actively searching for and buying products.
Finding your Internet marketing niche shouldn’t be that hard. Don’t go nuts trying to decide what it is because it will probably change with time. You’re learning, so much of what you do at the start will be changed and modified as you learn more and progress. Just don’t’ freeze up. You’ll accomplish exactly zero, if you don’t start somewhere.
Source: iSnare.com
Online Internet Marketing – 3 Top Tools And Services For An Effective Internet Marketing Solution
Everyone knows the Internet is growing exponentially and continually evolving. The major players in the continual evolution of the Internet are the major search engines and consumer generated media such as blogs. Because of the continual changes, a well rounded Internet marketing strategy must include a variety of proven marketing options to ensure success. I will outline 3 of the most effective Internet marketing solutions available and how they relate to your marketing strategy.
SEO Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the first because the free advertising afforded by the search engines is partly determined by on-page optimization techniques. With thousands of new Websites being created daily, the competition for a listing on the first search result page is increasingly saturated for the popular keywords. Statistics show better than 75% of people only look at the first search result page, and a similar percentage only click on the top search listing.
In order to compete effectively, a Web page must be designed around a keyword or more effectively, a keyword phrase. The keywords should be included in the page’s title, keyword META tag, page’s description, the first heading (using the H1 HTML tag), throughout the body of the page and within the last 25 words on the page. These are just a few of the basic SEO on-page options that although will not guarantee a first page listing, are definitely required as a starting point in an effective Internet marketing strategy.
In most cases, there is too much competition for certain keywords such as “golf clubs”. A better strategy would be to use “golf clubs Chicago” or “handcrafted golf clubs”. The more specific you make your keyword phrase the better. A number of free tools are available that will show the popularity of keywords and how often they are used in the search engines on a monthly basis. These will allow you to customize your Web page knowing the keyword phrase’s popularity. If you get the first page listing for a keyword with less than 100 searches per month for instance, then it doesn’t matter because your traffic will be very limited.
Link Exchanges
Once the on-page optimizations are complete, the off-page optimization options need to be addressed. Link exchanges are perhaps the best off-page SEO technique available. Google uses an algorithm to determine a page’s rank, which is determined by the number of other sites linking to it; and the QUALITY of the link is a major consideration. Pages are ranked from 1 to 10. The higher the PageRank of the site linking to yours, the better. Sites with a PR7 and above are considered as authority sites and a back link from them will send Google’s spider to your page on a regular basis.
There are a number of ways to get a back link to your site. You can email a request to the Webmaster for a link exchange. If they agree, you would return the favor by placing a link to their site on your page. You can also purchase the link. A number of sites offer this service for a monthly fee. So if you want to quickly get your site listed by Google and the major search engines, then paying for a PR8 back link for a month or two might be well worth the investment in the long run; as new sites are placed in a “sand box” by Google for several months until they prove their longevity.
One back link from a PR8 site is worth hundreds of back links from PR2 or less sites. As a matter of fact, numerous links from low ranking sites will actually be detrimental to your site. Each back link is like a vote for your site. If you have too many low ranking sites voting for yours, Google will be reluctant to reward your site with a higher PR. You have to do your research on the site that offers to link to yours because if they were blacklisted by Google, your site will receive the same fate and you probably will never recover from this.
A PR 4 or 5 is relatively easy to attain. So your best bet is to limit your back links to PR5 and above for the best results. And by all means avoid link farms. Before Google upgraded its algorithm, just the number of back links was considered. But now the actual PageRank of your back link is considered AND the PageRank of the sites linking to THAT page. Links from link farms are now looked upon as basically spam links. You would be better off purchasing a listing in a major link directory like Yahoo or DMOZ. It’s definitely worth the investment as these are authority sites and are a major vote for your site!
Blogs
As previously indicated, consumer generated media is a major factor in the evolution of the Internet. Case in point is the enormous effect blogs had on the last Presidential campaign. A very large percentage of most searches will include blogs on the first page listing. Over 50% of purchases, online and offline are preceded by an online search for more information. And a large percentage of the information is offered by blogs. People are very interested in the opinions of others on their topic of interest.
The major blogs are updated on a daily basis, which is very important to Google’s algorithm, which uses the frequency of updates (daily, hourly and by minute) as a determining factor in the search result ranking. A powerful marketing method used by the major blogs is to submit articles on a particular topic to the major article hubs such as http://EzineArticles.com. The article hub benefits by having continually updated information (which Google likes) where they can place their money making AdSense ads. The blogger benefits by having a back link to their blog in the resource section of the article.
As numerous other bloggers and Webmasters access the article hubs for fresh information, the article can be syndicated virally to a number of sites on the Internet. This creates a number of back links to your blog or your site; generating an enormous amount of pre-qualified free traffic.
In Summary
These are just a few of the more effective online Internet marketing options available. Other options such as auto-responder email, EZine advertising and pay per click advertising should be included in a well rounded Internet marketing strategy. No matter what options you use, you definitely need to start with your on-page SEO techniques. Your listing in the search results will be enhanced by a properly optimized page.
Further optimization must include the off-page SEO techniques such as generating back links with the major site directories, link exchanges and articles submitted to the major article hubs. Using a blog for a reference in your article can be a good thing as people will be more inclined to visit a blog since it’s not a sales page. Once they have received enough information and you have generated their confidence in your opinions, you can end up with a lifetime customer.