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Quality or quantity in email marketing

November 6th, 2009 | By Simon In Building Your Business, Lead Generation, List Building, Traffic Generation | No Comments »

As I have alluded to in previous posts, email marketing is a great tool for effective internet marketing. By sending out emails to prospective customers, whom you have pre-qualified and educated about your products or services, there is a decent chance that a good percentage will consider buying or using your product or services.

So obviously, the idea would be to have a list of prospective customers to send your emails to, right?

It’s an old adage in the internet marketing world that “the money is in the list”. This is most certainly true to a degree, but a word of warning in that a large list is not necessarily best.

That may shock a few people. Surely a large list is better than a small list? Well yes, but it all boils down to the quality of that list. It can be quite easy to build a large list but what I opt for is a list of educated, highly targeted prospects, not a list comprising of dozens of ‘tire kickers’ who are not really interested in your business, or your emails for that matter.

I have learned this over the years, and so I can now pass my knowledge on to you.

What the professionals do

The art is in ensuring that people that opt in to your email list have a valid reason for doing so. Sure, you’re always going to get some time wasters and ‘tire kickers’ as they’re called, but it is very possible to minimize that.

Having a quality, valuable call to action that your prospect is genuinely interested in is a great way to get them to opt in to your list. Once you’ve got them, you need to give them more quality, valuable content – not too much, but just enough.

You don’t want to bombard them with emails, but educate them on your products and services and let them get to know you better. This develops trust, credibility and rapport.

Ok, well I think that should keep you motivated until my next post, so see you all soon.

How to write a killer press release

October 26th, 2009 | By Simon In Building Your Business, Lead Generation, List Building | No Comments »

Here are some additional tips that will help you in creating a great offline press release. With the help of these tips, you will hopefully have calls ringing in response to your press release or visitors coming into your business wondering what it is all about!

1.    First and foremost, you have to ensure that your press release is a catchy and newsworthy one. This can be best done with a tie-in, so this means that the press release should be written in such a way that it triggers the reader’s curiosity through headings that attract human interest, has novelty in it, is inspirational or has something extremely newsworthy.

2.    The second rule is to ensure that it is short and sweet. If the press release does not fit onto an A4 page, then it is too long for a press release.

3.    This is because of the third rule of an effective press release, which is that the press release is meant to be a prologue to an actual story. You should never be telling the whole story through the press release, as it should have sufficient content to make readers call on you for the continuation of the ‘story’.

4.    The best way to do this is by using ‘teaser’ types of questions and statement in your copy. These should be constructed in such a way that the reader’s curiosity drives them to want to know the answer to the questions.

5.    Also, when having a press release done for you, it’s a good idea to ensure that you use some sound bytes or good one liners. This makes the press release more interesting and memorable to the reader, as well as keeping it short and snappy. And this all contributes to having an interested and intriguing piece of writing that readers will want to read, and importantly, want to know more about.

Tips for effective press release copywriting

October 22nd, 2009 | By Simon In Building Your Business, Lead Generation, List Building | No Comments »

The success of a press release lies in its construction and its words, as the intention is to get it as many views as possible. As I have experience in writing several press releases I thought today that I’d give you a few tips for the effective copywriting of press releases.

If you are writing offline press releases, make sure you write them in such a way that they don’t tell its readers absolutely everything. One of the purposes of a press release is to tease its reader, and have them curious to find out more.

This is why you should write a short press release that has lots of white space, plenty of paragraphs so it just isn’t big blocks of text, and perhaps most important of all, it should have a great headline that pulls the attention of readers.

Offline and online press releases are different

Creating the right story for the press release is the key to distribution of the press release, as well as its readership. If the press release doesn’t look worthy for the front page of a newspaper, then don’t expect too much of a response from it.

Bear it in mind that offline and online press releases are different entities. While the objective of an offline press release is generally to get media coverage, in case of an online press release, its objective lies in search engine optimization. So never expect much media coverage from an online press release, as they tend to be written to promote a business in the search engines.

I must add this point however, that there are now specific companies out there that I use that CAN promote the press release in order to get additional media coverage. But as a general rule, it is used solely to promote a site.

While writing online press releases, your focus should be on the keyword phrase you want to optimize on. This is the keyword that should be present in the web page that is linked to the online press release.

Give them a reason to click

To ensure readers click on the keyword to your website, you have to give them a reason to do so. This means you should offer a free bonus, a free service, a free e-book or even the completion of the story you had started in the press release, to the reader.

Remember that while offline press releases can often directly lead to sales, online press releases may not necessarily have the same instantaneous effect. They will primarily drive visitors to your website, and so it is the job of your website to convert that visitor into a sale. If you want to learn how to create a killer press release, just wait for my next post!

Copywriting tips for autoresponders

October 15th, 2009 | By Simon In Building Your Business, Lead Generation, List Building, Useful Software or Tools | No Comments »

I discussed in my last post about using autoresponders to provide interested prospects with information about your products and services.

I have always felt that an autoresponder is an often under-utilised piece of software, as they can be used to educate your prospects, pre-qualify them into using your products or services, provide answers to frequently asked questions, provide information to quicken a sales transaction and for building client loyalty by providing quick response.

However, copywriting for an autoresponder series can prove to be difficult for most people, and so I have some advice today for this very subject.

One of the biggest initial challenges is to get your prospect to open your email, and the most effective way of doing this is by using a compelling subject line. Once you have achieved this, you must continue with some useful, compelling content in your email which will coax your prospect into clicking from the email to a site, or to take some course of action.

For either reason, you have to be able to first make your prospect read at least a part of your email instead of sending it to the recycle bin, like other promotional and spam emails. In addition to this, you have to effectively write your email so that it goes past the spam filters and ISPs which just go on dumping emails.

Quality or quantity lists in email marketing

October 8th, 2009 | By Simon In Building Your Business, List Building, Traffic Generation, Viral Marketing | No Comments »

When you think of email marketing, most people are of the impression that the larger is their email list of subscribers, the more successful they are going to be with their email marketing. However this is not necessarily the case, as it is always better to have a list of qualified, quality subscribers and not a large quantity of subscribers who are not really interested in you or your product.

Quite often the email addresses that are entered into forms on web pages and squeeze pages (a form of web page that solely prompts you to give your name and email address) are false, as people provide this information just to gain entrance to sites or to see what comes next. The people who are in this email list will not have any interest in whatever you have to sell. So sending them emails about your company or product proves to be worthless.

At the most, and if you are lucky, you may only find about 1% of them clicking to your site through the link you send in the emails. However, I believe that it is better to have a quality list of people where you are sure that anywhere between 20-80% of them will click to your site when you send them an email.

Factors affecting list quality

When you speak of list quality, you have to realize that this is a trait in email lists that is determined by various factors. This is why to maintain your list quality; you will have to follow an effective and proven strategy when you sell products that lead to subscribers subscribing to your list.

So if you have a product to sell, it is often more effective to send prospective clients two emails that have links which lead to high quality information, or perhaps some audio or some software before you actually send them an email that leads to the page that will be selling your products.

This is because the clients on your list who will be most responsive to your offers will be prepared to wait to see what comes next, and they will hopefully appreciate some quality, free information or audio as a ‘thank you’ for signing up to your email list.

Of course, most autoresponder systems now allow you monitor which emails are opened and which links within that email are clicked, so you can easily and effectively monitor your list to see how responsive it is.

Why you have to use autoresponders

June 18th, 2009 | By Simon In Building Your Business, List Building, Useful Software or Tools | No Comments »

My previous blog entry explained the advantage and necessity of having an autoresponder on your business website.

You’ll now know that they are a means of collecting names and email addresses in order to create a list or lists that you can then keep in contact with, and market to.

What I am going to go through today is what you can do with the names that you have collected, in order to make your business even more profitable than it currently is.

There are basically two ways of sending emails to your prospects and customers using an autoresponder; and these are called ‘broadcast’ and ‘follow-up’.

The broadcast option is a bit like sending a normal email. You write the email that you want to send – it may be about an upcoming event regarding your business, perhaps a sale or a promotion that you are looking to run.

You only have to write the message once and then it can be sent once to all the people subscribed to your list.You can then relax as the autoresponder sends the email as per your instructions. This is often the preferred method of sending email messages when you have to send time sensitive information like current promotions and upcoming events.

Send personalized messages

In the case of follow-up emails, you have to create one or a series of messages as a sequence within your autoresponder. You could have the messages programmed to be sent every day, every other day or once a week – its entirely up to you.

To make the message look more personal, you can include a few tags or variables in the autoresponder. One tag can be programmed to include the actual name of the person, and you could also use a tag for your signature too.

So the difference with a follow up message is that it is often pre-written, and more commonly it entails a series of emails rather than just one or two. This is designed to gain rapport with the people on your list so that they begin to see you as a trusted figure, and therefore they’ll be more inclined to do business with you.

Legitimate white hat tips for search engine optimization

May 19th, 2009 | By Simon In Lead Generation, List Building, Traffic Generation | No Comments »

The previous post gave you an insight to some of the most common, and effective white hat SEO techniques to use for optimum search engine optimization (SEO). Here are a few more tips you could and should use.

Besides uploading your website files on the server, you can also upload the robot txt file, because this file is effective in telling crawlers which directories to crawl or not to crawl. This way, you can prevent the crawling of pages of your site that you don’t want, such as a “terms of service” page or a “policies” page, or even other pages that don’t actually give value to users from search engines.

The pages you make should be meant for users, and not for search engines. This does not mean you have to try displaying different content to search engines and users. This is considered a form of deceit, and is called ‘cloaking’.

Web spammers are of no use

Though web spammers may have sites with a decent page rank at the moment, it is very short term focused, and therefore not advisable to link up with them. Any alliance with them will only lead to your ranking and PR getting affected by the links.

Similarly, you should not take part in any link schemes that seem to increase your site rankings and PR, these do not work either.

It is always better to submit your website to directories and search engines manually. This way you are sure of where you submit your website, and are sure you are not involved in any black hat techniques.

Never attempt to use hidden text or links on your website as this is a black hat technique. Similarly, don’t attempt using cloaking or any other form of sneaky redirects.

Doorway pages only block your passage

Though it is better to have more web pages in your website, you have to ensure they are unique. Creating various pages, sub domains and domains that lead to duplicate content will only end up with your site getting blacklisted in Google.

In the meantime, don’t create any ‘doorway’ pages that have little or no original content in a bid to increase the number of web pages in your website. This is not entertained by Google.

Don’t attempt sending automated queries to of any form to Google and don’t attempt to use any unethical tricks to improve your search engine rankings. It may create a momentary increase in your page rankings; however you eventually end up blacklisted in Google.

Your signature line can be your anchor text

August 11th, 2008 | By Simon In Building Your Business, Linking, List Building, Traffic Generation | No Comments »

Anchor text is an important part of blog marketing, which is an important keyword that links back to a page of your website. I feel that the best way of using your anchor text is through your signature line. In fact, I advise using a minimum of three links in your signature line where there should be anchor text for the home page of the website, for internal page of website and as a link to the blog home page.

When using your signature line for the home page, its top link should point to your website, with the text being the title of your website. In case of the signature link for the internal page, your website should be keyword rich, and be related to the blog post. And in the case of using your signature line for a link to the blog home page, the final link of your signature line should point to the home page of your blog.

This is because people it is possible for people to find a single post of your blog in their search engine searches or bookmarking sites. So if they get interested in what they read, they will want to read more of your blog, which is made possible and easier, through the signature link.

By following this strategy in your blog posts, you will have three important anchor text links in your blog posts which will be effective in boosting your site in search engines. I advise not to overcrowd your blog with links as this is frowned upon by search engines.

To get the best results of your signature links, it is better to use your text and banner links together so that they are both important anchor text for your web page and help in improving your business and blog.

So why not start improving your business with your signature…….

Link exchange: Build up your online popularity with links

July 14th, 2008 | By Simon In Linking, List Building, Traffic Generation | No Comments »

Popularity is the key to success for any business; let it be an offline or online business. However when compared to offline businesses, I think that building up your popularity in an online business involves a complex procedure.

There is an effective tool for building your internet popularity, which is link building. This tool is effective in marking your presence on the internet, and can be said to be a give and take popularity building strategy.

Choose links with similar concept and product

With link exchange, you have to be ready to place the link of a website on your home page. Instead of randomly choosing a website, I suggest you choose a website of similar product, content or service as yours on your home page.

In return of your services, that website will also place your link on their website. So if anyone visits their website, they will see your link, and if interested, click on it to visit your website. this leads to an increase of traffic to your website, and this is how link exchange indirectly makes you popular in the internet.

For the best effects through link exchange, the content of your website should consist of keywords and have a description about the website. In fact, if you have an advertisement that is about 200 – 300 words long, it will be sufficient to click off your link exchange program.

Look for dictionaries to place your links

This advertisement should have informative and related information, using the right keywords. I suggest you use capital letters for your keywords as they bring more traffic t o your site.

Also ensure that the title of your website has a good description of the website. Write an effective description for the website, with the right use of keywords, while the URL you choose for the site should have your keyword included in it.

With all this done, you have to look for websites and dictionaries which are ready to exchange links with you. On submitting a link to a dictionary, the dictionary asks for a reciprocal link for placing its link, which is your URL.

Place links in the corresponding categories
Once you have completed the filling of the form of the dictionary, your link is placed in the dictionary. However I suggest that you make sure that you place your link in the right category of the dictionary. This is because there are many categories in link building dictionaries.

On placing the link properly, your link gets uploaded on the dictionary. And pretty soon, you find that your site will draw lots of traffic because of the free marketing a link exchange offers you and your website.

Tips for generating reciprocal links to your site

July 3rd, 2008 | By Simon In List Building, Traffic Generation | No Comments »

Reciprocal links are a form of links where you place your link to another person’s site, so that in return they place a link of their site that leads to your site. This is a very important part of search engine optimization and is usually placed in the links page of a website.

At first, you may find it difficult to first find some partners to reciprocate links with your site. So I will give you a tip, or rather a secret; you have to have inbound links if you wish to attract inbound links!

This is why I suggest that you try to get links from sites having a low page Rank till you reach a page rank of at least 3. It is better to try out the higher ranking sites only after your page gets a decent page rank.

Tips to find link exchange partners

Google is the best place to look for link exchanges. You have to type one keyword phrase with ‘add url’ or ‘add link’. This will give you lists of sites in your niche looking for swap links where you will find the required information to place your link on their sites.

This is usually an easy job. All you have to do is to furnish details about your site on the required fields on the page they provide you. This done, you will have to copy and paste their hyperlink code to your links page.

I suggest you place more than links to your page on the ‘links’ page like content to the page so that the page is more attractive to search engines. Don’t refer to this page as a links page; instead, refer to it as ‘sites of interest’ or some other interesting title.

Make sure that this page links to your home page and also ensure that you divide links into sections having good keyword headings and descriptions. With this done, you will have some great inbound links leading to your site.

The reason you have to optimize your links page

Remember that the link page is the page that will generate links to your site; so it is only by optimizing it will you get a decent page rank, a good ranking and in return, traffic. This will in turn lead to more and more webmasters contacting you to have their links placed on your links page.

In addition to this, with a decent page ranking, you will be able to attract partner with high page ranking for link exchange, and in turn improve your rankings. I then suggest that you place an ‘add URL’ page to your website so that it is easier for other webmasters to exchange links with you.

Don’t forget to add lots of keyword rich text to this page so that you improve page rankings and make it easy for webmasters to find. ‘Add URL’ has to be displayed in the page heading, page title, body of the page with your other keywords and in anchor text for links to the page.

This done, over a period of time, you are sure to receive quite a few reciprocal linking partners who will help in improving inbound links to your site.

So till we meet, keep building on your link partners……..

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