30 Oct 09 Super Savvy Internet Promotion

What happens if you build a website and no one shows up? You spend hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars on a site that gets a few visitors at best and certainly isn’t selling your books. For the most part, authors assume that Internet promotion stops once their site is up. But the harsh truth is that with all the sites popping up every day, yours will likely get lost in the shuffle unless you promote it.

Some years back, my company began pushing authors out to the ’Net to help increase their exposure and get into markets they might not otherwise have access to. In early 2005 I began pulling together what we’d learned and positioning it in a powerful new promotional program we call The Virtual Author Tour™, a campaign that exists only on the ’Net and one that you can implement too.

If the thought of virtual promotion is confusing, think of it this way: let’s say you build a wonderful store in the middle of an Iowa corn field. The only problem is there are no roads leading to it. A tour on the ’Net is like paving a super highway to your “store” and to tell you the truth, it’s really the only way surfers will find you.

To begin your own tour you need to have a good understanding of who your audience is and where they hang out on the ’Net. For some readers it will be in blogs (also called web logs), for others it might be chat groups, message boards or discussion groups but for most, it’s a combination of all of these.

Whatever it is, you should be able to begin tracking them down by doing a quick Google search on your topic or market. Your first search will bring you back a slew of sites, some of them great and some of them not-so-great. The first portion of the tour will take the most time because you’re going to have to investigate the sites to see how effective they might be in your promotional efforts.

One way to gauge this is to see what their Google page rank is. You can type the site into the following link and get a fairly good idea of where they rank: http://mygooglepagerank.com/ or you can load the Google toolbar into your Internet Explorer and get results each time you land on a page. Few sites will rank 10, but if the sites you’re looking at are 5 and above, you’re generally in the ballpark of sites worthy of a pitch. We will typically toss back anything that’s 4 and below unless the topic is very niche and the sites don’t get lots of hits because of a smaller market.

Once you have your list of sites, you’ll need to begin pitching them. Most often this is the area where authors get stuck. Why? Because they’re focused on selling their books. Regardless of who you’re pitching, you should never, ever sell your book. Always sell what your book can do for the reader and believe me, web sites, blogs, chat groups and discussion forums are always looking for books that will appeal to their demographic.

As you’re pulling together your tour, don’t overlook ezine article banks, these can be powerful too. If you’re unfamiliar with them take a peek at http://www.articlecity.com/ and you’ll see what I mean. This site archives hundreds of thousands of articles just waiting to be selected and placed in ezines. The good thing about this is that you never know the size of the ezine you’ll get placed in. It could have a readership of 500 or 20,000. Another good reason to do article submission is for the incoming links. Most of the main search engines change their algorithms quite frequently, doing this causes sites to go up and down in ranking but incoming links from websites, chats, blogs, and article placement can help give a site more consistent ranking rather than being at the mercy of an algorithm change.

And no virtual tour would be complete without a website, so let’s circle back to where we started, that all important author site. Do you have one? If you don’t you should not begin your virtual tour until you do. If you do have one, take a long, hard look at your site and see if it’s ready for virtual exposure. By this I mean that often times, websites aren’t nearly as “ready” as they could be. Why? Well for one your site design is really driven by your audience. Colors, styles, and wording will all depend on who you’re marketing to. Do you need lots of information or very little? All of this will depend on who your reader is. My site for example: http://www.amarketingexpert.com is packed with information. Why? Because authors and publishers arrive at my site hungry for knowledge so having articles, tips and lots of free information on there is necessary to not only get my audience to the site, but to keep them there.

Getting to know your reader is one of the most important components of any campaign and is especially true when you’re trying to go from a ho-hum site, to one that’s making the grade and converting visitors into customers. Do you know what your site conversion rate is? If you don’t you should; ask your web designer or site host for this information. It’s typically delivered in something called an Urchin report which is fairly easy to read and a wealth of information. If your site isn’t up to par, consider getting it Internet ready before you launch your tour. If you’re spending all this time sending folks to your site, you’ll want them to convert into buyers otherwise your time spent on the ’Net is wasted.

Unlike a real tour around the country, a virtual tour isn’t associated with any timeline per se and it’s certainly not as expensive as the cost of travel and lodging. The impact from a tour, however, can be felt for a long time. The reason for this is that unlike print or broadcast media, every step you take on the ’Net leaves a footprint. And the more footprints you have, the more times you’ll come up in a search and the more hits you’ll get on your site.

Also, consider this: the impact of going directly to your audience cannot be overstated. Rarely are you given the opportunity to gain direct access to your readers as you are on the ’Net. You can’t accomplish this in a bookstore or even in the best news piece. And while traditional media and bookstore placement offer great promotional leverage, the ’Net offers something that no other marketing programs do: a direct pipeline to your readers. So if you haven’t “gone virtual” you should consider it. No campaign is complete without it.

Wishing you virtual success!

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29 Oct 09 Six Tips On How You Can Create Joint Ventures With A Competitor

The first step to developing profitable Joint Ventures is to identify and develop relationships with other business owners who can help you reach your target market.

Business competition has been viewed with a wary eye for far too long. The internet is a big, big place. There really is room for everybody – everybody that knows how to properly market themselves that is.

Who better to partner with but those who are already serving your target market? They have mailing lists subscribers, website visitors, podcast listeners, membership sites members, partners, affiliates and friends who you would love to be introduced to and who better to make the introduction?

Look around the internet marketing world and you’ll observe many strategic JV relationships between business owners who would seem to be in direct competition with each other, yet they are cooperating on projects all the time.

Imagine your main competitor emailing his list and inviting them to check out what you have to offer.

It can happen. So here are six easy tips to help you increase your website traffic through joint venturing with a competitor.

1. Co-author a two part article.
Article marketing continues to be an important activity for online business owners. Whether you are crafting articles for distribution or writing them to keep on your own site as exclusive original content, you do need to be writing on a regular basis.

Approach a competitor with an email like this:

Hi ,

I think my web visitors would be pretty interested in your products and I have an idea for us to co-promote our websites. I hope you’ll be interested.

Let’s come up with a topic to write a two part article about. I’ll write part one and publish it on my website and I’ll tell readers that they can find part two on your website. You write part two and publish it on your website, letting your readers know that part one can be found on my website.

We both have added some original content to our site and we’re sending each other some fresh traffic. Sounds easy enough to me. I have a few ideas for article topics too.

Want to give it a try?

Regards,

2. Co-author a two part report.
This can be as simple as the article idea only kicking it up a notch by asking for some more cooperation from the partners. You’ll work together in creating the report; giving both of you credit and links back to your websites.

The resulting small report can then be given away by both partners on their website. You can even turn it into a viral tool and allow others to freely give it away with the understanding that they cannot remove your author info or links.

Alternatively, if you wish to sell the small report you can jointly purchase a domain and set up a mini site, work on the sales letter together, co-sign it and split the profits. This may be a lot to chew for a young JV relationship – you don’t want to start mixing money too soon.

3. Conduct an interview of each other for your lists.
If you both have an area of expertise you can put a twist on a plain old ad swap and take turns interviewing each other email interview style.

You’ll send a list of questions to the other person, collect their answers and then share this email interview with your mailing list.

Be sure to ask them questions that lead them into sharing about their products and services but don’t make it too promotional in nature. Get them to share some really useful information with your readers.

Now they can do the same for you. This takes the exposure trade to a great new level. Your readers will know that you really respect the person you interviewed why else would you take the time to do it? There’s a lot of implied trust that will go a long ways towards encouraging list members to check out what the interviewee has to offer.

You could also crank it up another notch and make it an audio interview and offer the mp3 link for your members to download or create a page where they can listen online and access links to the resources mentioned.

Both of you get valuable content to offer your list with no strings attached and that is a good thing.

4. Give away bonus products
Let’s explore some great ideas in this area. The first examples that come to mind are information products. Imagine that you and your potential JV partner are both in the weight loss field. Your competitor is releasing a new ebook about exercise. You can offer her a complimentary free special report bonus to give away with the product that is all about gentle stretching techniques.

Another example would be for physical product sellers. You sell food mixes and your JV partner sells kitchen tools. You can prepare some sample packets and send her a bundle, allowing her to give one away with each order.

In both cases you are giving them something to promote and emphasize on their website in a way that helps them get more sales. And at the same time, you and your products get extra exposure.

Other bonus ideas would include audios, videos, email coaching, etc.

5. Co-operate on an event.
Have you ever had a conversation with someone from your field and found that you love the same topics? Take that synergy and turn it into a Teleseminar or web conference.

In much the same way that you would have cooperated on an article or small report, work out an outline of content together and plan out who will cover what aspects of your topic developing a rough script.

Set a date, arrange for a bridge phone line or web conference room and create some promotional materials.

Both of you will promote the event inviting your friends to do the same of course.

At the event you both get an opportunity to let your expertise shine to each other’s followers. Participants will see both of you as having the “know how” they need so you should be sure to include an invitation to subscribe to your respective mailing lists and feel free to make a pitch for a complimentary product.

As always you can add some spice and do a multi-date event, inviting other speakers to join you. With you and your partner at the top of the list as event hosts you’re setting yourselves up as leaders in your community.

The options in this arena are wide you can make attendance free or charge for admission. You can sell recordings and transcripts later or give them away to your lists as a gift.

6. Share Affiliate Programs
If you’re really serious about finding ways to cooperate and partner with your competition, you have to have something that answers the “What’s in it for me?” questions that you’ll be getting.

If I’m going to tell my list about you I’d love to get a commission on any sales I send your way. Sure, I may do it even without the financial incentive but we are in business here right?

It definitely sweetens the pot for that first contact as well, when you can tell them that any new customers they refer to you will result in lifetime residual commissions for them.

If you don’t have an affiliate program now, what’s holding you back? How you can start a co-operation with your competitor?

Give them the spotlight first.

A potential JV will always be a little warmer to someone who has already showed themselves willing to share the love with others particularly them.

Mention them in your newsletter tell your list something you really like about what he/she does or offers.

Blog about their products or services. Mention them in your podcast. If they are like most internet business owners, they’ll have Google Alerts or Technorati Tags set up to alert whenever anyone publishes their business name so they’ll probably know right away that you’ve been giving them some buzz. But just in case they aren’t aware, don’t hesitate to send a short email linking to your mention of them saying something like Just wanted you to know I think you’re great.

Ask if they’d be interested.
Like the example I shared above in the article partnering section you simply need to ask the person for what you want.

Give them all of the information they need but don’t make the email a mile long.

Be personable. If your email sounds too business like, they may think it’s a form letter. Address them by name.

Compliment them. Tell them what you like about what they do and why you are interested in partnering with them. Ask for their suggestions. Be open to their counter offer.

Make it as easy for them to say yes.

You are asking them to act in some way so you can’t make it effortless, but you can offer to do any necessary footwork.

Further followup.
When you’ve successfully partnered on something small and both parties have enjoyed the experience and benefit, you have laid the foundation of a potentially long term fruitful partnership.

Let your partner know that you’re open to new ideas and invite them to contact you anytime.

If you truly trust them, let them in on some of your future plans and ask them if they have interest in partnering on one or several of the projects.

When partnerships begin to involve money over the long term, you are delving into a whole new level of trust and accountability. Make sure that you have all of the legal and financial points covered and don’t hesitate to seek out the advice of professionals in this area.

There are some great resources out there when you’re ready to dig deeper and you have a partner willing to work with you on a big project.

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28 Oct 09 Keyword Research – A Necessary But Worthy Evil

If you want to rank well in search engines, then you absolutely must understand how to do market research and build your keyword lists. Why? Because keyword research determines your market’s profitability and competition.

If you skip this stage, you could wind up doing a lot of work following dead ends. There are some markets that just are not worth pursuing. You don’t want to end up chasing a market that isn’t profitable.

You need to decide what the market is looking for and bring yourself to the market. Many small business owners do just the opposite. They come up with a product or service they think the market needs and then try to go after and convince the market of their product value.

There are plenty of markets available that will suit your tastes. Once you find the market that you want to reach, then you will build your keyword or key phrase lists.

In this article, I assume that you already have a target market in mind. Therefore, I will give you a high level overview on how to do proper keyword research. I’ll start with the benefits of keyword research.

The Benefits of Keyword Research

What are the benefits of doing proper keyword research? Listed are four benefits of the power of keyword research:

1. It drives traffic to your site; just by simply using the words your target audience uses in their searches.

2. It helps you write more effective copy (sales copy) for your website; knowing what terms to incorporate into your copy helps your target audiences identify with your side immediately.

3. It helps with content development; it helps you create content that your target audience needs and avoids wasting your time on irrelevant topics.

4. It helps you understand your target audience better: you will know how and what your target audience is searching for.

5. It helps you measure the size of your market: just by determining the number of searches, you can target huge pools of untapped potential and avoid many pits.

6. It helps you to develop and diversify revenue streams: by using keyword research that exposes and employs popular keywords, you can be inspired to innovate and create new product and service ideas.

7. The bottom line: the results of keyword research are that your website copy, business strategies, and online marketing will be successful a great majority of the time.

Keyword research is the foundation to proper linking. Why is this important? Sometimes we assume we know what our audience is searching for. This is a common mistake many professionals make. They assume that since they are an authority on a topic they should know what their audience is searching for.

The only correct way to know what your audience is searching for is to do proper keyword research. What you think your audience needs or is looking for may be completely incorrect. I can guarantee that you will be surprised by the keywords your audience searches on to find your topic.

95% of websites are caught in the trap of bad keyword selection. High correlations of the keywords you use on your website and the words your target audience uses in their searches actually moves the website toward the audience and attracts many more targeted visitors.

Keyword links + keyword content on your site + keyword searches = solid search engine traffic.

Building Your Keyword Lists

Step One: Understand Your Target Audience

To start an effective keyword list, consider your potential customers’ motivations and intentions.

What kind of questions will they ask? What are they trying to accomplish? What problems do they need solutions to?

Step Two. You Must Understand the Types of Buyers and Your Target Audience

There are two types of buyers. The first type of buyer is the logical buyer. They will normally ask “how” and “what” questions when considering purchases.

However, 70% of all buyers are emotional buyers. These types of buyers are normally more spontaneous and concerned with the user experience and end results when considering a purchase. They asked the typical question, what’s in it for me?

Step Three. Think Like Your Target Audience

Remember, most of your buyers are emotional buyers. So, use the emotional slant to convince this type of buyer. Use emotional keyword anchors in your text. For example, if you had a website about running shoes, an emotional buyer is interested in the “best” running shoe or the “healthiest” running regime. They wouldn’t necessarily want to know the benefits of running shoes. They want to know what’s in it for them.

Step Four. Think Broad and Wide for Your Target Audience

Start with a broad list of keywords around your topic. Make sure they are specific enough to fit your target audience. Include terms that match closely with your visitors’ intent in relation to what you sell.

Note: traffic costs money! Think about quality not quantity. Your conversion rate is the most important factor. You don’t just want traffic, you want converting traffic!

Step Five. Prioritize Your Keywords Based on Conversion

If you don’t have conversion data, you’ll have to make your best guess as to which search terms you think will convert the best.

Consider these points:

1. Make your product or services’ intention clear. Don’t hide what you’re trying to sell.

2. If your keyword phrase is “blue high top basketball shoes”, make sure a visitor can buy “blue high top basketball shoes” on your site. Better yet, make sure you link to a page about those shoes.

3. Consider your ability to present value. How does your product present value?

4. Consider the amount of traffic you will generate using your keywords. If you’re using a cheap hosting provider, you may want to switch to something that can handle higher traffic counts. It’s frustrating to have a website go down because you can’t handle the traffic. This is something that you have complete control over. Make sure you don’t ruin your first impression by having a website crashes more often than not.

5. Consider the probability of conversion. If you are highly niched and know precisely what keywords or keyword phrases your target audience searches for, then use your highly niched keywords.

If you don’t know what the probability of your conversions will be, then you need to track this metric. There are several analytical tools that you can use to track this information. Don’t skimp. Make sure you know this information.

Keyword Research is the Most Important Step

The most important step you can take in marketing your website is keyword research. You not only need to know the keywords you want to get ranked for but also which keywords are converting the best for your website.

It makes no sense to drive a large amount of traffic to your site and not be able to stay in business because the conversions just aren’t there.

So, focus on quality NOT quantity. Start with your best keyword/phrase and begin your linking campaigns. Move down your keyword list, each time promoting and linking with the next keyword phrase.

In time, your site will not only move up in search rankings but move up based on the keywords that YOU chose. Don’t fall for the myth that more traffic you get the better.

Take control of your traffic and get ranked well for the keywords and phrases that are most profitable your business.

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28 Oct 09 Making Sense Of Website Statistics

Every website owner wants lots of traffic directed to their website, but this can sometimes involve spending a lot of time and money. Fortunately, most website owners can increase their return on investment simply by paying closer attention to their website log files. Most website hosting companies have special software installed that will process these website log files and display the information in an easy to read format. From this information website owners can get an understanding as to how many people are visiting the website, where the visitors are coming from, where they are entering and exiting the website, the average number of page views per visit, and many more interesting facts. These statistics will allow you to better analyze the effectiveness of promotional campaigns and give you some insight as to how you can tweak your website to increase your return on investment.

“Hits” Explained

There seems to be some confusion regarding the terms used to describe website visitor traffic. We usually hear website owners speak in terms of “hits” to their website. Hits don’t accurately describe the number of visitors viewing the website – but they are actually just any sort of HTTP request made to your server. Not only are requests made for website pages, but also for all the images and other files associated with viewing a single page. Therefore, one page view could actually result in dozens of hits, and if a single user visits many pages on your website, this visit could generate hundreds or even thousands of hits. This can excite some website owners, but this number is not a reliable indictor of how many people have actually visited the website.

The term that website owners want to focus on is the amount of unique impressions that are generated by their website. A unique impression will measure the number of actual people visiting the website based on their IP address, browser, and operating system. No matter how many “hits” a visitor registers on your website, the server will record her session as one unique visit. Thus, the number of unique visits gives us a much better idea of the amount of traffic the website is generating.

What to Look for When Analyzing Website Traffic

Number of Unique Visitors: We’ve already determined that the best measure of true website traffic is the number of unique visitors. What we want to look for is a trend in the average number of unique visitors. On a day to day basis, their may be a good amount of volatility in the number of unique visitors, but we want to pay attention to the trend of the average number of visitors per month. Optimally, we’d like to have the number increase on a monthly basis.

Entry Page Statistics: From these statistics we can learn which page people are entering your website. Most visitors will enter from your home page, but you will notice that up to 50% of your website traffic originates from a page other than your home page. It’s important that your website have an easy to use navigation structure to ensure that visitors can find the information they are looking for, even if they don’t enter through your website’s main page.

Bounce Rate: The bounce rate can be defined as the percentage of people who visit your website and immediately leave. Don’t get worried if your bounce rate is high – most websites have a bounce rate of about 50% or so. If the bounce rate is unusually high, you can experiment with your website to try and retain more visitors. Maybe you need more enticing graphics, less text, faster loading pages, or a more engaging design.

Exit Page Statistics: These statistics will show you where people are leaving your website. When you know which page is losing the bulk of your website’s visitors you can experiment with some changes in an attempt to retain more visitors.

Average Time & Page Views Per Visit: Website visitors are very goal oriented and task driven. Upon visiting your website, most visitors will merely scan the page to quickly determine whether or not it contains the information they are searching for. By analyzing the average amount of time spent on your website and the average number of page views per visit, you can determine how engaging your website’s content is. The key to retaining visitors and increasing the number of page views is to have relevant and interesting information your website. Remember – content is king!

Top Referring URLs: This statistic lets you know where the bulk of your website’s traffic is coming from. This is important if you’re pursuing a website marketing campaign or search engine optimization campaign because you can easily judge the campaign’s effectiveness by looking to see how many visitors each marketing method is generating.

Top Search Words & Phrases: This information will let you know which keywords and phrases visitors are searching for in Google and the other search engines in order to find your website. With this information you can gauge the effectiveness of a search engine optimization campaign, or get an idea of how your website’s keyword density should be altered to position for the keywords and phrases that you’re targeting.

Browsers, Platforms & Screen Sizes: This information gives us some insight as to the type of software and hardware your visitors are using. You should ensure that your website looks the same across all browsers and operating systems. In addition, you must pay attention to the screen size and resolution in which your visitors are viewing your website. The goal is to ensure that no visitor has to resort to the horizontal scrolling bar to view you website – this is a major turnoff for most people.

Country of Origin: A good website stats program will also let you know the geographic region of your website’s visitors. This is important if your website only has appeal in a particular region. For instance, if you own a retail store that caters to Southwestern Ontario and you notice that 90% of your website traffic is coming from the U.S., then it can easily be determined that you need to re-think your online marketing strategy.

The goal of website traffic analysis is to assess how well or how poorly your website is working for your visitors. From these statistics you can figure out what the problem is and try out some possible solutions. The problem often lies in the website’s visual appearance, layout, navigation structure, or keyword optimization. When making modifications to your website in order to remedy these problems, it’s best to only make minor and gradual adjustments, and then assess the progress over the next month or so to truly understand if your changes were for the better. Also, remember that sites with greater number of visitors will have more accurate web statistics. Sites with smaller numbers of visitors are more prone to have their averages thrown off by a few anomalous visitors.

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