If you did know that then you may want to read my previous post about the importance of headlines.

It never ceases to amaze me how many websites and advertisements I see that don’t have headlines. Does yours?

All adverts should have a headline. And a website, flier, brochure – anything you use to market your business is effectively an advert.

So let me show you 5 rules you can follow when writing headlines. You’ll also learn some different types of headlines you can use, and some proven words to use in headlines.

Rules to follow when writing headlines:

1. Your headline must appeal to your reader’s self interest. You should communicate the strongest benefit (or benefits) of your product/service.

Everyone’s favourite radio station is “WIIFM” – What’s In It For Me? Your headline should answer this important question.

2. You must attract the attention of your prospect. If your headline doesn’t it has failed. Your headline must reach out to them and want them to find out more about you. Don’t forget we’re all bombarded by hundreds of messages every day, and YOU need to stand out amongst your competition (and everyone else too).

3. Your headline must deliver a clear message to your audience. Think of how people read newspapers – most only read the headlines.  That’s because we’re all short on time. Because of this, your headline must make a complete statement and compel your prospect to continue reading the rest of your message – the body copy.

4. Including words such as “quick”, “easy”, “guaranteed” can increase readership. People react to emotional words that have a benefit to a problem or challenge that they have. You need to tap in to that.

5. You should use specifics in your headlines, not generalities. For example, “Grow your investment by at least 12.75% in 12 months” is a better headline than “Make Money Fast”. Specifics are more believable. Of course, your body copy can then add an caveats or terms and conditions.

So this is somewhat of a whistle stop tour about how you can use headlines to increase the readership of your message. Of course your body copy also needs to have a similar affect on your audience, but I’ll cover this for you in future posts.

Testing is the keystone of successful marketing. Those that do it properly will flourish and those that don’t do it often lose a lot of money.

So why is it that almost no one does it?

Well, it may not at first glance appear to be the most ’sexy’ of things. It takes time, and often as business owners we’re looking for that quick fix, that ’silver bullet’ aren’t we?

Do you implement a marketing strategy (it could be your website, a direct mailing, some Google Adwords perhaps) and wonder to yourself  “is this going to work?”.

You’re not alone.

Even I Do Not Have A Crystal Ball

In fact I have business owners that ask me “Do you think this will work?” and “What about Google Adwords, should I do it?” and “What do you think about Direct Mail, does it work?”

And the short answer is “I don’t know – I cannot predict the future”.  I can often tell you if you’ve done something really stupid with an advert or a website or a Direct Mail piece..

But as far as predicting how your target market is going to react to your strategy then neither me or anyone else can tell you. This is why you need to test.

This Could Cost YOU Thousands…

So, why don’t more business owners do it then?

Well, in my experience it’s because they don’t know that they should be. They also don’t understand the implications of NOT testing either, which is scary.

I’ve also come across businesses that worry if they test a Direct Mail piece or a headline on their website and it fails miserably that they’ll do their business some damage, or will have wasted a load of cash.

This is utter rubbish.

Even if a strategy doesn’t work, all you’ll do is lose a few potential clients. But then that is why you TEST, because another Direct Mail piece (for example) may get those that didn’t buy before, to buy this time around.

Testing is NOT like changing the direction of your business FOREVER: you CAN change your mind, you can tweak it and possibly revert to how things were.

If You Want to be Successful

When you look at businesses with successful marketing systems you may just assume that they struck it lucky, or that they got some system “out of a box”.

I can tell you they didn’t.

Their systems were put together over a period of time, with plenty of effort and trials and tribulations, and there would have been mistakes along the way, no doubt about it.

But the scary truth is, if you aren’t testing ALL of your marketing, you are potentially throwing money down the drain, as well as limiting your income.

In Part Two of this article I am going to go in to more detail as to the benefits of article marketing, why every business should be using it and why the ones who are not will lose out to those who do.

As you have already read in Part One, information can travel very quickly across the internet and this is one reason why the strategy of article marketing works so well. As well as spreading your company’s name and credentials across the internet, there is another massive advantage to your business to using this form of marketing.

The Lifeblood Of A Website

By distributing articles about your business across the internet, you are providing your business website with something that the search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing) consider to be a huge online vote of confidence. It is so valuable because it acts as confirmation that your website is authentic, valuable to readers and worthy of being considered an authority in your particular area of expertise.

So what is it?

Well, what article marketing can do is provide valuable links back to your website, and this is considered a huge ‘thumbs up’ as far as the search engines are concerned.

The links to your website simply come from the article that you have submitted, and so there is no mystical force at work here, it is not magic. You are merely using leverage once again, something that many businesses fail to do at their peril.

What enables you to have a link (or links) back to your website is this: At the end of your article you are generally asked to write a short biography about you and your company. Within this biography you are often able to include a link (more than one in some cases) back to your company’s website, and it is this that can be like gold dust for your website.

Quality Over Quantity

Of course, the idea is to have good quality and interested articles to submit, as opposed to thinking that submitting hundreds of poor articles will still benefit your website. Believe me they won’t, so do not do it under any circumstances.

The links that your site receives are known as ‘back links’ – a term that you may or may not be familiar with. These back links can have an massive effect on your company’s website and its ranking within the search engines.

In fact it is something that all experts agree can improve your business’ online visibility, and in the highly competitive internet arena, being on the first page of searches can be hugely profitable for a business.

The whole concept of article marketing is considered to be one of the most efficient modes for generating traffic to your website. One reason for this is that once your articles have been submitted to the relevant directories, they are normally visible very quickly.

In fact, I have actually had some articles visible in a matter of hours in some cases.

What Will Your Competitors Think?

It is unlikely that many (if any) of your competitors will be using this highly effective strategy. You’ll also be pleasantly surprised at how quickly this strategy can be implemented.

It really is not a difficult as you might think, because you’ve no doubt got reams of relevant, quality information sitting somewhere in your business that could be put to great use. It might be on your work’s computer, or a member of your staff’s computer, or in a file somewhere.

Wherever it is hiding, this information can be used to good effect, and it would seem pointless for it to not be used to your benefit. As long as an article is your work and has not just been blatantly copied or plagiarised from another source, there is no reason why it cannot be used.

So that concludes Part Two of this article. In Part Three, I am going to reveal some of the key strategies and tactics that will have people wanting to read your articles and find out more about your business.

In fact in terms of subject matter, articles can be literally written about anything relevant to you and your business.

You Might Think It Is Too Complicated

And before you start thinking that you do not have any time during your busy day to sit down, think about what you want to have written in these articles, and then either do them yourself or have them written, think again.

I say this because you more than likely have good, relevant information and material stored everywhere in your office. Perhaps you have previously had an article written about your company and its products or services for a trade publication or a local newspaper.

Equally you may have been featured in a local magazine or even on local radio, and been able to highlight your business and its features and benefits. Failing all of that, you will certainly have plenty of material available in the filing cabinets of your office, or on your works computers, that can be used in order to help promote your business’ products or services.

Use This To Your Advantage

So what article marketing can do is to harness the power of the internet, where news and information can be transmitted virtually instantly. This is therefore worth utilising in order to help your business, and means that its impact is somewhat different to its ‘offline’ cousin – traditional printed articles in newspapers and magazines, because it can hit the headlines a lot quicker. One thing that the internet can give you is speed.

I suppose the one similarity between online and offline printed articles is that they need to be worth reading. There needs to be some interest for your reader, whether its in educating them about what your company does, or running them through a trouble shooting exercise, or answering their top ten questions about issues that they encounter.

So they need to be relevant, interesting and written so that they can be understood. It generally helps to try and minimise jargon and to explain any acronyms that you use. Do not assume that everyone will know what you’re talking about.

What Do You Do Next?

So once you have gotten some articles written to be used to increase the online visibility of your business, what do you do with them?

Well, unlike printed articles, instead of submitting your article to a traditional offline publication, it can be submitted to the many article directories that exist on the World Wide Web.

Each article directory site is similar to a huge, online library of articles. The articles that these directories house cover practically every subject and topic known to man, and therefore if you’re thinking that this type of strategy doesn’t apply to your business, you really should think again.

It benefits all businesses.

Increase Your Company’s Visibility

The principal benefit for you and your business is that the majority of the main article directories are well respected by the search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing). This very fact enables you to leverage your business on the back of their authority, and this can improve your chances of your article (and therefore your business) being seen by a targeted prospect.

One way of looking at this is that it is like being able to post a notice of your business or its products and services on ten (or as many as you’d like to use) of the best and most viewed notice boards in cities around the country, or indeed the world, as anyone globally will have the ability to view your article online.

This is one of the biggest advantages of using this particular strategy. You are in effect, scattering your company’s name across a variety of quality locations, a little bit like sewing seeds. And in doing so, you are increasing the chances of your company’s name being found online.

There is a lot more to article marketing too, as it has what I call a ‘double-edged sword’ effect that can benefit your business substantially. This is something that I will talk about in Part Two of this article.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.