Step Aside, Internet Marketing Expert Coming Through.

I have to plead ignorance. With my 30+ years of a business background, considered by some to be somewhat of a marketing specialist, I never realized that our marketing industry has managed to capture so many internet marketing experts. Wow. What a tremendous feat accomplished in such a short time.

Imagine how impressed any prospective account would be to see Internet Marketing Genius after your name. And, as part of your pitch to him/her you might casually drop the line that he/she could also be considered an Internet Marketing Genius just by becoming your customer. Didn’t you know that the marketing expertness was highly contagious and transmitted that way. Why someone never infected me when I started my marketing journey over three decades ago is beyond me.

I had the pleasure of chatting with one of these Internet Marketing Gurus recently. Not to shortchange him, his full title was Network Marketing Internet Marketing Expert. His email to me reeked of “I’m a network marketing newbie”. Turns out this Network Marketing Internet Mastermind was going to show me how to make a monthly six figure income. Like in $100,000 or more, I asked. He said that it sure was doable. I pressed on, so your monthly earnings are in the six figure plus range. His response, I’m on my way. (He was well trained.) Okay, I had to ask this one, how long have you been a rep with the company? Three weeks was the answer. Interesting…my network marketing Internet Marketing Guru must have been a rapid learner to achieve such a vaulted position as an expert internet marketer in only three weeks.

Funny thing is, I bet he will attract some people into his group not based upon his knowledge of the internet or his truthfulness but his moxie. And, of course, his appeal to a person’s sense of greed and laziness: I want to make six figures a month just as fast as he did.

Can you relate to this?

If you currently use the term Internet Marketing Expert, I really don’t mean to offend you. You very well may be. However, with so many brand spankin’ new entrants crowning themselves into Expert-hood, the word has lost its luster not just with me but with the many people seeking a legitimate online marketer to do business with: your potential customers.

Using words like internet marketing coach or consultant projects how you can assist a customer with a term that is more at the level they feel that they can relate to. Trying to fill those Internet Marketing Big Kahuna shoes is way beyond most of our shoe sizes.

This is Andy “Acci”, Internet Network Marketing King signing off.

Andy “Acci” Acciaioli

AndyAcci.com

401/484-5526

7 Invaluable Tips For A Successful Email Marketing Blast

I received a call today from someone in one of our Southern states asking for some marketing advice. Specifically he wanted to know about participating in a blast email program. He said he wanted to join a service that would email 5,000 opportunity seekers once a month.

My first question to him was whether or not the email list was his or one that the emailing company was providing to him. He said that it was part of their service to provide him with the email addresses. I wanted to know if he had access to the email list or do they claim that it was proprietary information and only they would have access to it. He told me that only they would have access to it. My final question to him dealt with how the list was compiled. He did not know.

Here are the problems with participating in such a program. If he was using an email list that did not belong to him, how much did he actually know about the list…how long ago was it gathered or, for that matter, how was it gathered? Was it gathered from some capture page that the person was hood-winked into giving their first name and email address? These are common…perhaps you have filled one of these forms out and then you were inundated with email offers from people/companies you did not even know.

If you want to operate a successful email blast campaign, here are 7 tips for you:

1. Build your own list of targeted email addresses, this is GOLD. It will take time to build your own list BUT once you do you will be an email blasting domino. And since you have a relationship with those on your list, you will not be considered a spammer.

2. Set up YOUR OWN email account with an email service you can trust. (Any questions as to which one I found to be secure and reliable, click on the Constant Contact link in the Marketing Tool Box on the right. I have used them for my B2B emailings for years!) Do not let anyone else have access to your email addresses. Remember there is GOLD in that list…you just do not know which ones will be your superstars, if any.

3. You have to be sure your email gets into your recipients Inbox rather than their Spam folder. Do not use words like opportunity, instead use op.portunity or if you reference income, use in.come. This work-around is helpful to prevent your email being banished as spam.

4. Subject line wisdom. In order to get your email opened write a dynamic subject line which grabs their attention within a second or two. If you are trying to sell travel, please do not send me an email with something like Travel Bargains or Travel Update in the subject line. However you would get my curiosity going if you were to say “Got Soaked Again?” and then promote cruises in your email. I recently used Stop Your Belly Aching and had a tremendous open rate…oh, and I did receive one email condemning me for using profanity.

5. Do not let them down. Once they open your email with your creative subject line, keep the creativity going. The death to your email will be if you try to be all business-as-usual-like. Come on, you got them in, now tell them about your offer in a light and lively fashion…do not rattle off a laundry list of items why you and your business are the best thing since sliced bread…talk to them in an entertaining fashion as though your email recipient was sitting right in front of you.

6. Use plain type like Times Roman. Do not use some fancy type because you like the way it looks. It will turn some people off…me included. And, NEVER USE HTML or a prepared emailer. This just reeks of “I’m trying to sell you something. I’m trying to sell you something.” Plain type, you are talking to a friend. A “canned” emailer, you are talking to me as a customer...and I am not buying anything.

7. SPARINGLY use links to where you want your reader to go. For a shorter email, use one link. For a medium length email, use two links. For a lengthy email, use three or four links. Always have the links for a single product or URL destination. Do not try to include multiple links for different products or destinations as this will only confuse your readers. And, always express your links as the full address including the http…http://www.YourSite.com.

I hope this helps you to build your business with successful email blasts.

Can Banner Advertising Work For You Or Is It Just For Big Companies?

Banner advertising, if done correctly, can work for anyone. You see more and more small online and offline businesses funneling banner traffic to their websites.

As you have noticed, online banner ads vary in size and content. Although the common size is still 468 pixels wide and 60 pixels in depth.

Assuming that you already have a banner, can you purchase space at an affordable rate? Yes, especially in our present economy when many of the big guys are pulling back on their marketing budgets leaving an opportunity for smaller companies.

There are basically three ways to purchase banner advertising space:

1. On a cost per thousand (CPM) impression rate. Usually once you make this type of purchase, your banner will go out through an advertising network to a group of small websites who would get a slice of the banner ad revenue. Of course, you could also purchase this space on a CPM basis from a heavily trafficked website. CPM rates may vary but suppose you pay $50 for 10,000 impressions (or showings of your banner) and you have a click-through-rate (CTR) of ½ of 1% or 50 clicks. Your cost per click is: $1

2. On a pay for performance (cost per click / CPC) basis. Here is where you pay nothing unless someone clicks through to your website (i.e. guaranteed traffic or you pay nothing). Suppose you agree to pay .75/click. Now if 50 visitors click through to your site, you will pay $37.50 for that traffic. In this example, buying banner space on the CPC basis would be more cost effective than on the CPM basis.

3. On a “term” placement basis. A smaller website, getting very little traffic may offer you a deal to keep your banner on their site for a week, month or longer term but their rates are usually considerably more than the two other programs. The benefit of this would be if you were targeting a local market and you knew they drew local traffic. For example, if you were a dealer of photocopy machines and wanted to reach the local businesses in your immediate area, you could contact your local Chamber of Commerce and ask if they sold banner advertising on their website. Usually their website would have less traffic and banner advertising would cost more however the traffic that it did have was the exact match for those most likely to purchase your photocopiers.

In the CPM example above (#1), you might be concerned over such a low click-through rate. Well, that is the nature of the beast. I would always refer to this as the spillover rate. Were you to advertise on television, not everyone would pay attention or take action once your commercial airs. Or look at the percentage of people who respond to a newspaper ad. In each of these cases they also have a huge spillover rate. (I remember a quote from William Black, founder of Chock full o’Nuts coffee that when he was told by his ad agency that he had to realize that fifty cents out of every dollar he spent on advertising would be wasted. Black responded that he only wanted them to spend the fifty cents that would not be wasted.)

You might be wondering who will put your banner ad together for you? For a snazzy, animated ad look to your supplier. You can also place an ad for a banner ad designer on one of the freelance websites such as elance.com. For a basic banner ad, use a search engine and search for something like: online banner ad generator and do it yourself.

You might find banner advertising a useful traffic building tool. Or you might find it not as cost effective as other forms of advertising for your website. In either case, you will not know unless you try.

Here is a tip for you. I learned this years ago while writing advertising copy for billboards that works as well for banners. Keep your word count to 4 – 7 words. Those few words should be powerful enough to get attention and increase the click through rate to your website.

Can you describe what you do in 10 words or less?

If I were to ask you what you do for a living or what is your business, how would you respond?  Would it be a lengthy dissertation?  Or would it be a succinct response that gives me an exact idea of what you do?

We rarely think of formulating an answer to a question as to what we do.  Perhaps that is why we tend to drone on and on grasping for the best way to explain what we do or how we do it.

I like the elevator chat style of an answer.  Picture this.   You are on an elevator when it stops at a floor to take on another person.  That person looks at you, nods and asks: “So, what do you do?” Five seconds later the elevator door opens and that person gets out.  Were you able to respond to that person’s question during your brief encounter?

Let me try it.  I am in an elevator when it stops at a floor and picks up a person.  The person enters, nods at me and asks: “So, what do you do?”  I respond: “I market financial education products to business owners and professionals.”  The elevator stops, the door opens and the person starts to leave, turns and hands me his business card telling me that he owns a court reporting business on that floor and would like to know more about my business.

Bottom line is you have no more than ten words to market yourself and/or your business.  Give those ten precious words a lot of thought as they can open doors of opportunity for you.  

Think about the ten words I chose for my “elevator chat” (which, by the way, I use many times a day to describe what I do):

“I market”…I did not say “I sell”.  People do not want to be “sold” anything.  People love to “buy”.

“financial education products”…this phrase tells potential buyers that I offer products that will educate or teach them about financial matters.

“to business owners and professionals”…I identify who the typical buyers of my products are.  These market segments tend to be high earners who would want to know more about how to make their money work harder for them.

I once attended a church service were a sermon consisted of only eight words.  Out of all of the times I attended church (every Sunday all of my life) no other sermon has impacted me as have those eight words: “Pray for your enemies because you made them.”  Compare this to a sermon that goes on and on and on.  

We are living in a world dominated by brevity.  (No one has time to listen to what the other person has to say.  Just ask my wife about my listening skills.) A classic, current example of “elevator chat” is the popularity of limiting conversations to 140 character messages on Twitter. 

Can you describe what you do in an “elevator chat”?  As a matter of fact, leave a comment and  convincingly tell us what you do in ten words or less.  Good luck.