Online marketing solutions

Website Optimization is the process in which you specifically design and fine tune your website content to receive a high ranking in the Search Engines.   E-mail and internet marketers know, that this is no longer an option if you are seriously marketing your business online.  It is an absolute must.

Whether you are starting a new site, or re-evaluating the old, you need to know the building blocks of success.  You are building an Internet presence and becoming a worthy competitor in this savvy, hi-tech world.

Where to Begin? Keywords, phrases, title, images, and text  all play an important and integral role in determining website rank.  Your content needs to be keyword rich.  What are keywords?  Simply put, keywords and keyword phrases are the words you want to be found under when people search.  Don’t make them up in your head!  If you want to see how people search for your product or service, there is a free and powerful tool called “Keyword Tool” by Google.

Another way to be “keyword creative” is to list the brand or model name, as well as the keyword.  If you sell telephones, you should also list the brand names like V-Tech, Panasonic, and Uniden.

Placement of Keywords: Place your keywords throughout: header tags, titles, first paragraph of your body text, and the ALT Attribute of image tags.  The ALT attributes help get your images ranked higher for image searches.

How many Keywords/Phrases per Page? There is no right or wrong answer.  After researching this specific question for myself, the general consensus seems to be one keyword and phrase per page.  Others have suggested several more.  You will need to research your niche and see what others are saying and what their experiences have been.  You can also use the Google Keyword Tool to extract the main keywords of your competitor’s sites.  This will help determine what words they are using for a higher ranking.

Creating a Site Map: Site maps provide search engine spiders an easy access to site pages, as well as giving easy access to your site visitors.  Because search engines and visitors access your site map differently, different methods need to be applied that are friendly for both engines and search spiders. Google’s Tutorials on Creating and submitting site maps.

Search Engine Friendly: JavaScript and Flash navigation menus are cool, but  search engines don’t read JavaScript and Flash very well. Therefore, a workaround would be to have simple HTML links at the bottom of the page.  This guarantees a friendlier search engine page.

Submission to the major Search Engines and Directories. For a list of free directories, please visit:  Free Web Submissions.

Submission to Social Media: Social Media Sites are growing daily with thousands of new participants.  Submitting articles to these free sites, increases your Search Engine exposure.  Do you have a blog on your website?  It is time to create one.  Reaching out to clients and prospects with your personal voice puts a name and face on someone they can contact and respond to.  This is the age for personal communication.

Content is Still King: Nothing but nothing takes the place of  relevant and interesting content.  What good is it to have people find your site, and then click off out of boredom or frustration.  Is your content self serving?  No one cares if you think your company or product is the best thing since sliced bread.  People want to know, what’s in it for me?  Make sure your call to actions are clear and your text is to the point.  I personally hate going to someone’s site and having to keep scrolling and clicking to find out what I need to know.  Your most important information and capture leads, should be on your home page – standing out – easy to find.

Website Appearance:  I have been to many websites where the background was too distracting.  Make your site clean, use web safe colors.  Too many graphics and textures within your site make it hard to read and parse.

Lead Links: The most important links for any prospect to click on should be on your homepage.  Try to have your main links in plain sight.  I have seen websites that are literally over linked, if that is a real expression. Remember, most surfers have short attention spans and if they cannot see what they want quickly, they will most definitely find it somewhere else.

Promoting Your Business Online.  Today, many people search for local businesses on the Internet. Make sure they find you.  There are several ways to put your business and services online.  Please see our article entitled: Google and Yahoo Local Maps for Online Marketing.

Having done all, visit Google Webmaster Central and learn all you can directly, from the masters themselves.

Why Use Market Segmentation?

Segmentation helps guide us as we focus on the prospects that will be a good candidate to purchase our offer, service, or product.  As an arrow is carefully aimed at a target, positioned strategically to hit the mark, so must our campaigns be accurately focused and targeted for the greatest receptivity and results.

When direct bulk email campaigns are carried out properly, it helps insure the highest return for our marketing sales and expenditure expectations.  Whatever the service or product you are selling, who you sell it to, will define the design, content, and message.  Each segment has its own unique demographical makeup.

Segmentation strategies have traditionally been used by email marketers for years…Clients or prospective customers are classified according to different demographic criteria and are then selected for different types of marketing activities or communications. Models can be used and tested to predict which segments are most likely to respond to which types of e-campaigns based on their previous histories.  Identifying profitable segments to be targeted, results in a much higher return on marketing investments (ROI).

Defining the Main Areas of Segmentation

Depending on whether you are selling to individual consumers or a business, there are definite differences in what you will consider doing, when defining market segments for your e-campaigns. To apply this knowledge accurately, you need to devise a specific segmentation strategy, designed and crafted around your message according to your subscribers’ preferences and action history.

Each Segmentation Focuses on a Different Aspect of the Targeted Client

Demographic Segmentation: The focus is on who they are:

• Gender
• Marital Status
• Age
• Profession
• Income
• Location
• Education
• Family Size

Using demographic segmentation research to determine subscribers within a particular age range and income is a real eye opener.

According to the Boston Consulting Group, “women drive the world economy. They control $20 trillion in consumer spending, and that figure could reach $28 trillion in the next five years. Women make the decisions in the purchases of 92% of vacations.”

These stats alone might cause you to modify your next campaign and its focus.

Behavioral Segmentation: The focus is on what they do. For example, how to people purchase?  What are their criteria?

• Benefit Preferences
• Brand Loyalty
• Readiness to Buy
• Impulse Shopper
• Price
• Time Constraints
• Need

When studying the stats from your last email campaign, following the behavior of your recipients is crucial to improving the future effectiveness of your next strategy.  What link did they click on in your newsletter?  What links did they visit on your website?  Did they click on the call to action?  Did they visit your landing page?  Each site experience is different.  With the help of behavioral segmentation, you can personalize their experience.

Attitudinal Segmentation – The focus here is on what they think.  Attitudinal Segmentation categorizes target customers, grouped together by a shared set of attitudes.  How someone responds to the world they live in, the things that they buy, and the services they desire, is what makes a person tick.  This is the most interesting segmentation, because it crosses over every other segmentation profile.

How a person reacts or what their goals and drives are, helps create a persona.  Personas cross all industries, markets, and culture.  Personas are created as a guide to help the seller or service better understand how to relate and understand that individual.  Whether you are a restaurant owner, designer, technical writer or developer, you need to create personas to market the right tools, and services, to the right audience.

In Conclusion:  No matter how much data we may collect, it takes time to get insight into our customers, visitors, and prospects.  Using surveys online along with customer feedback, we can begin to understand our prospects and clients on all levels.  With the right understanding, we can continue to create and modify successfully targeted campaigns.  So what is the right segmentation to use?  The right segmentation is the one that works for you.



We are living in a tech savvy existence.  Our day-to-day activities revolve and depend upon our ever-growing digital world.  This is a perfect setting for increasing our email campaigns.

From the very onset of the first email campaign, email marketing is and continues to be one of the most important tools for B2B and B2C email marketers in the arena today.  It is still the fastest and most cost effective strategy, sending out hundreds of messages to our lead databases in today’s global market.

The Internet is a main source of survival, not only for the seller, but for the consumer, as well.  Worldwide communication, for the most part, emanates from the Internet.  Our correspondence, conversations, and documentation seem to be headed towards a paperless society.  Every area of our life is affected.  The digital innovators of this age continue creating more tools and applications, with a focused dependency upon technology, not only for business, but for our pleasures and enjoyments, as well.

One Size Does Not Fit All

I am sure you have seen this famous tag (One Size Fits All) on many items of clothing.  Whether you are a size 4, 6, 8 or 12, they are telling you, one size fits all.  It denies our physical uniqueness, size, and preference in one’s appearance and choices.

This type of thinking may have crept into our email marketing campaigns.  Demographic studies show this just can’t be true.  Our target segments are constantly changing in age, marital status, preferences, physical locations, and professions.  Sending out generic mass emails is ineffective and may cause the loss of subscribers in the process.

I remember joining a cable company.  Spoke to and met the representative.  Long conversations and then we closed the sale.  Many times after that, I kept receiving mass  notifications under my door to buy their plan and get better deals.   They were generic advertisements absolutely nullifying my being a client and having met with and reached out to their client representative.  It really made me angry.

Generic Emails do not Differentiate between Clients and Prospects

•    Generic emails give a strong disconnect message to the recipient of any prior buying or contact history.  It is as if it never happened.  They are impersonal.
•    Generic emails discount the tracking history and stat results of prior campaigns.  You are shooting in the dark.
•    Generic emails fail to create value and interest, since they are not based on demographics or history.
•    Generic emails do not create, nurture or encourage a personal dialogue or feedback.
•    Generic emails show a lack of appreciation and value to your clients.
•    Generic emails make everyone a prospect, never acknowledging the client.
•    Generic emails create irrelevant messages which can lead to unsubscribers, spam, complaints or inactivity.

As smart marketers, we need to follow the formulas that work – sending the right message to the right subscriber at the right time.  Our clients are the reason we exist.  They need to feel special, and more importantly, acknowledged and appreciated.

This type of parsing can only come from demographics, stats, and history.  Without careful segmentation, you can push away good customers, who just might take their purchase potential with them somewhere else.

Remember: Prospects and clients need different email campaign strategies.  Generic email campaigns tend to make everyone a prospect, resulting in ineffective and irrelevant messages and unwanted results.

BizReport: Mobile Marketing: March 17, 2009

A chain of fashion clothing stores in the U.S. used mobile coupons to bolster sales.

The coupon campaign was promoted online via the store’s website, blog and on various mall websites where the store was featured. Offline, the campaign was promoted via signage in all Planet Funk stores that displayed the shortcode and corresponding keyword.

The results were phenomenal. Planet Funk created over 20% of their total December revenue via the mobile campaign. Nearly 2,000 coupons were generated and 91% were redeemed. In addition, 15% of those that redeemed coupons opted-in to receive future mobile campaigns.

According to BrandWeek: A new study finds that 72% of consumers are using more coupons than they did six months ago.   While newspapers and magazines were the primary source of coupons for 51% of consumers, 39% said they wanted to receive their future coupons via direct mail, while 26% said e-mail, either direct or through newsletters, would work. Another 16% preferred Web sites.

We all love a bargain – and so do our prospects and clients!

Coupons are highly effective and should be added to your marketing mix and coupon strategies.

Why Use Coupons?

• Coupons can reactivate your old customers. Give them a good reason to start buying from you again, rather then going to your competitors.

• Coupons can be a catalyst to other sales.  Offering a bargin or discount on one product, gives you opportunities to sell something else.

• Customer Feedback.  Reach out to your customers and prospects.  Ask them for honest feedback.  See what they want and are looking for in a sale or discount.

Make your Coupon Campaign a Success

1. Customers want to know exactly how much money they will be savings.  Do not be ambiguous.  Specify the dollar amount.
2. If you are using a discount in percentages, use the higher percentages as in 25%.  Lower percentages give a cheap display.
3. You can offer the buy one, get one free or buy one get half off on your second purchase.
4. Make sure you are clear in your advertisement.  We all want to know exactly what are the discounted items.
5. Use graphics and pictures  of the item on sale – this will help support the text and leave no room for confusion.
6. A strong call to action.  Have an urgency with an expiration date.  You want them to act immediately.
7. Use coupons to obtain subscribers to your newsletter.  Give them a small discount for signing up.
8. Put your campaign on your company blog.
9. Use social media.  Advertisement on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.  You can assume your targets are already using these tools.  This will enhance your Web exposure.  Create a strong buzz.

Demographics

When designing your coupon campaign, you need to know:

• Who your target audience is?  Prospects, clients, or wanting to reconnect with old and inactive clients.
• What is the focus and goal of your campaign?  A clearing house special, a new product, an upgrade?

Don’t forget to track your campaign results. Tracking campaigns results is the only way to measure success.

As Internet marketers we know that the only way to have a successful campaign is to target the right message to the right people.  How is that done?  By obtaining cutting edge demographics, we track our e-campaign results, as we continue to fine tune and modify them, for the best optimal results.

The Internet and Worldwide Web have not only broadened our markets, but have made them international as we market to totally different cultures that are unique and not our own.  That changes everything.  How?

Well, I can give you a small personal example.  I moved from the United States to Israel.  Both countries have two totally different cultures with their own individual languages and ways of living their lives.  Some things are just not as important to them as it is in the US.

Their buying habits, clothes, and culture, is dissimilar in so many ways from my own.  Using generic internet marketing will never cut it when striving to reach a global international audience.

Tracking Online Behavior

As marketers we need to personalize our messages and campaigns to the right segment and market.  We need to understand a person’s personality and makeup – not just push a product or service they might need.  So the goal and challenge is how to market a global brand, making it relevant to each culture and individual.

Another factor to consider are the differences in the decision making process.  Each group may base their decisions to purchase on totally different factors. For those of you who send out email campaigns, the use of technology in tracking a recipient’s click through rate and purchase response to a call to action, is not new.

Today, with just an ISP address, we can access a great amount of detailed information on what people do, where they go,  and where they click when they visit a website.  We use this information to give  ourselves a better direct marketing advantage helping us target their choices and buying habits.

Know What Might Offend

Not only are the words we use responded to differently by another culture, but the images and symbols we project for our brand or services can affect our market as well.  I remember when I was taking a technical writing course, we were shown how an innocent symbol used in a United States technical user manual, when translated into another language, could greatly offend a different country and culture using the same product, graphic, text and symbols.

We learned when translating technical documents from one language to another, we had to research the words, graphics, and symbols that might offend the target country and replace them.  An entire marketing niche could be lost by one misunderstood symbol or graphic.

Whether we market internationally or not, at the end of the day, our marketing strategies have one and only one basic objective.  Our goal is to reach out and connect with our target audience on a personal, relevant, and meaningful level.

As we learn how to develop a broader marketing base, with the inclusion of culturally informed strategies, this will not only engage a more accurate recipient, but further enhance and develop our global market niche.

Email Marketing is on the Rise

E-Mail Marketing is still the fasted and most cost effective method of sending large amounts of e-mail communications anywhere in the world.  E-mail campaigns seamlessly work with and harness the power of this successful and highly effective Worldwide Web Internet market.

But it doesn’t stop there.  Supporting statistics and facts are constantly mounting, leaving no room for doubt of its role and influence in the lifeblood of any business.  So we thought we would share some with you.  Calling all email marketers, your future looks very bright – very bright indeed.  Let the facts speak for themselves:

Forrester Forecast:  US Email Marketing Spending To Reach $2 Billion In 2014

Forrester Research explains that falling CPMs (cost per thousands), higher ROI (return on investment) and growing consumer use of social email accounts will all contribute to the use of email by direct marketing professionals. The firm says that in five years consumers will opt-in to receive over 9,000 email marketing messages annually.  The following information below will be the key grown for the future of email marketing.

Forrester’s research cites the following as key growth areas for shaping the future of email marketing:  We quote:

-” Retention email — email that recipients have blessed with their permission — will continue to replace paper communications and will make up the largest share of marketing messages. Retention emails will account for more than a one-third of all marketing messages in consumers’ inboxes by 2014, representing increased competition for marketers.

- While the bulk of the market will continue to deploy email marketing on a self-service basis, the growing complexity associated with data integration and new tactics to increase relevancy will drive healthy growth in use of email service providers.  Spending on opt-in ad-sponsored or ad-supported newsletters will double over the next five years as traditional print publishers face falling circulation and ad revenue.”

How much greater the proof of the awesome power of email campaign marketing, than the enclosed.

Email Campaigns helped save Circuitcity.com

CircuitCity.com Returns.  “After shutting down operations in January 2009, CircuitCity.com is back.  Much of the surge in traffic can be attributed to an email campaign to reach out to potential. CircuitCity.com customers, since nearly 33% of the upstream traffic, was referred by web-based email services.

The campaign was successful in driving visitors to the website that hopefully were previous customers that wish to re-engage with the brand.”

To carry out successful email marketing campaigns, business marketers must know their market and their competition – plain and simple. Whether your competition is direct or indirect, you need to know what your competition is doing, and why they are successful.  Remember that old saying; keep your friends close, but your enemies closer?  So why do you want to know what your competitors are doing?  Are you being too intrusive?

No.  We are not being intrusive.  Using savvy, strategic internet tools, gives you a picture of your competition’s present and past.

Let’s face it; we are in a race for better SERP ranking, higher sales, and most of all – sustainability.

Attracting new prospects, converting prospects into clients takes time, creativity, research, and strategy.  Oh, did I forget to mention patience and commitment.  This is no overnighter.  Be in it for the long haul.

However, there is good news.  Now, with social media exploding on the web, you can easily follow your market, and your competition, whiling still hearing your targeted consumer’s voice – speaking loud and clear.  Getting the facts enables you to make intelligent and specific decisions on what changes and directions you need to make, and where to make them.  What a fabulous moment in time to be an internet email marketer.  With all the technological tools at your fingertips, we can span the international globe, create accurate analytical reports, never leaving our desk or getting out of our pajamas.

Powerful Free Tools for Internet Marketers

Start creating your reports with some of these free and powerful internet tools.  Sure, there are plenty of brand named monitoring tools that are quite expensive, but in a recession, you need to keep your overhead down.  Listed below are just a few of the tools that you can start with:

1.    Google Alerts:  set up alerts (including blogs, news, web and video) using the names of your competitors and their products.  Be creative.

2.    Twitter Search: similar to Google Alerts, you can use this to find chats between companies, customers, and employees.

3.   Backtype: Set up alerts to find what is happening within your niche whether through new blogs, community forums, or news

4.   Website Grader:  Generate free reports about your site, as well as your competitor’s site including:

•    Website overall grade
•    Google Page rank
•    Google Indexed pages
•    Traffic
•    Inbound links (how many are linking back to you)

5.    The Way Back Machine: Displays the past changes of any website.  Just like a time machine, you can view your competitors’ past – what modifications they have made through the years, and what they have kept.

6.    SpyFu: Lets you check the keyword words and AdWords being used by your competition. (Create a free account to begin)

7.    Technorati – Search the latest new blogs and posts by subjects.

8.    Research Social Bookmarks and Social News: Social bookmarks and news are hot.  Bookmark databases can be searched with keywords, topics, and subjects as you do in Google.  See what people are writing about now.

9.   BoardTracker: Use BoardTracker to read what people are saying about your competitors across 37,000 forums.  BoardTracker also has an Alerts function that you can customize.
Remember to subscribe to your competitor’s newsletter.  Read their blogs and news; while receiving their updates, newsletters, and software information.  If it’s important enough for their clients, then it is crucial for you.

How to Use This Information
For any research and information to be useful, business internet marketers must skillfully and intelligently seek solutions towards greater marketing strategies.  Posing the right questions, helps you apply provable results, with focus, and meaning:

1.    What does my competition know that I need to apply to my business as well?
2.    What keywords and phrases are they using; what are their SERP results?
3.    How are my products and services doing worldwide?
4.    What channels are being used for their marketing tactics?
5.    Are there areas where I need to improve further?
6.    What are they writing and talking about?
7.    What can I learn from their mistakes?
8.    What are their customers saying about them, and about me?

Successful campaigns are not achieved by playing a guessing game.   Every business campaign needs to be founded on what works – the stats and the facts.

Not too long ago, shopping online was unique and new.  Now, you get that “strange look” if you don’t.  The Internet and Web, no doubt, are a huge and integral part of our daily lives, as naturally as that cup of coffee or tea.  When you don’t have either, you can get a little cranky.

Email campaign marketing is so highly focused on stats, that; we tend to forget the clicker on the other end is a real live person.  We have let email communication create a false sense of intimacy.  A sort of virtual conversation, but, we never hear a voice, see our client’s faces, nor do we have any idea about their feelings, unless we make a personal contact with them.

Any shopper, whether in a store or online, wants to be noticed and treated as a valued customer.  Well, what about your targeted email marketing subscribers?  Should our direct mail campaigns go out with no thought in which to add that additional human element or personal touch, integrated into our business marketing plans, present and future?

Social Media Raises the Bar for Communication

With the explosion of Social Media, sometimes called “A Cultural Phenomenon,” on the internet scene, business email campaigns can now add that personal and social touch as never before, by integrating social media, instead of just relying on broadcast email campaign messages, and enewsletters.  What worked in the past is no longer relevant and becoming quickly outdated.  With all the technology and communication noise out there, it pays to engage customers in a more personal one-on-one meaningful and relevant way.  If you have not added social media to your campaign strategies, it is time you do.

Social Media initiates relationships in a nonthreatening, casual atmosphere.  It is almost like sitting across from your clients have a thought-provoking conversation.  It is a one-to-one communication tool.  The possibilities are endless and so are the rewards.  When you give a voice and personality to your brand and company, your clients and prospects will engage with you on a deeper level.  Direct conversations are a much better option in comparison to having them fill out a customer survey, form, or email response.

Conversations create trust.  Once trust is built and established, a prospect turns into a client; – a client becomes more steadfast and loyal.  It is a win-win for all.  Here are some of the ways you can add Social Media to your business advantage as you revamp and reassess in the New Year.

1. Start a FAQ Group about your product or company on Facebook, where your clients and prospects can join.  Communication between subscribers may be a catalyst in creating interest in your content without any marketing needed on your end.

2. Engage with your subscribers. Encourage their live feedback.  These conversations are public and may well attract others to read and respond.

3. Remember, you are writing to real live people, not statistics or targets.  Keep your communications warm and friendly, not generic or robotic.

4. Create a Twitter account and link them up together. Use Twitter to broadcast interesting and relevant news about your industry or something personal that can be relevant and valuable.

5. Twitter as a Landing Page. Seriously consider using Twitter to promote your personal or business brand.  Don’t forget to include a link to your blog or website.  See the possibilities using Twitter! http://www.murraynewlands.com/2009/08/twitter-landing-pages-10-elements-of-a-successful-twitter-landing-page/.

6. Create a Blog on your Website. Let people get to know and hear your personal voice.  No one wants to build relationships with companies or departments.  This gives your website more exposure.  Even a modest amount of subscribers can help add and generate considerable traffic.  Don’t forget to link your blog to your Twitter page!

This list is far from exhaustive.  I hope we have piqued your interest.  Do your research – the stats alone will encourage you to cross this bridge, making that decision much clearer to make.  There are tons of articles, blogs, and videos on every subject and thought mentioned here.  The amount of information out there is a bit mind boggling.  Be selective.  See what other business owners have to say about the impact of Social Media on their ROI.

2010 is upon us.  The years fly and most of us feel we have not had enough time to reflect and reassess our marketing campaign strategies, goals, and hindrances to that elusive successful ROI.  Reflection is a good thing.  As online marketers we know that strategic planning is an endless process, filled with changes and adjustments along life’s way.  It is a continuous path of learning, changing, and taking chances.

In many homes, a new year means that dreaded spring-cleaning.  We attack those rooms in which we have hidden away so much junk and clutter, too afraid to face it head on.  It has been building up for some time.  Now, it is time to open those areas that have just collected dust, and sweep them clean.  Throw out the junk.  What do we do then?  We make room for change, for newer and better things that will now take their place, improving our quality of life.

So in parallel, we need to clean out our old ways, the ideas that have not worked; and the marketing strategies that are no longer relevant with the age we are living in.  We need to get a transfusion, improving the lifeblood of our business.  Let’s determine to make a new plan which incorporates innovative strategies the blessed internet has provided.  Our goal has not changed, but the path always does.  Our message continually needs to get out in fresher and newer ways.  We are always in search for greener pastures of growth potential.

The world is our oyster, but we must learn to crack its shell.

Vision: Every brand, product, and service, must start with a vision. What is yours?  Having a core goal and voice must be shared by your entire team.  It is your company’s foundation.  Before your next internet marketing campaign, get your team together and make sure you are all on the same page.

Conversation not Dictation: Do you have conversations with your clients or are they constantly listening to you?  Give them a voice. Engage their thoughts and thinking.  As email campaign managers, or internet marketing consultants, you may know your tactics, and know them well, but your clients are the ones using your services and products. Seeing the world view from their end can enlarge and start increasing your market niche simply based on their advice and comments.

Dare to be Different. Think about it.  If you could personally meet with a product manager, or even the owner of a business, isn’t that a good thing?  It gives a personality and voice to the product and brand.  Don’t just be an innovative thinker, live out of the box and take some new and uncomfortable steps that you may have never considered before:

1.   Visit your clients.  Let them know how valuable they are.
2.   Create events and invite them – they can be webinars, physical conferences and seminars
3.   Create a New Year’s survey asking how you can improve.
4.   Gather some testimonials for your next newsletter.

Let your clients know they are dealing with a person, not an impersonal business.

Demonstrate your Values. In this day and age of schemes and gimmicks, it is refreshing to see a company that stands by the values that it preaches.  What gives you the cutting edge in your competition?  Do you deliver what you claim?  What message do you send out in your mass email campaigns and enewsletters?  Your business should represent all you say you stand for.

Be Visible and Reachable – Say Hello to Social Media Marketing. Social Media is and remains the most cost-effective promotional method out there. You now have the ability to attract large numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to your website repeatedly. If you are selling products or services, social media marketing gives you the potential you need to make your site profitable in a fairly short period time.

Statistics show over 17% of internet users spend their time on Social Media sites.  This has tripled in only one year!  According to a recent article from Business.com’s 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study, 83% of U.S. Companies use Facebook and 45% use Twitter. This includes hotels, airlines and travel suppliers. Who would have thought this would be happening just a few years ago?

Establish your Social Media Presence. Become an active listener and follow other bloggers, twitters, and tweet.  See what your competition is up to; create a buzz about your company, product, and service.  Facebook and Twitter are free, but blogger beware!  It is a commitment to start and maintain Facebook and Twitter.  If you cannot do this, you can always find great freelance bloggers at a reasonable rate to do it for you.

Internal Tweets. Twitter can be used for internal purposes, as well, remember intranets?  Twitter some tweets about meetings, employee updates, or you can provide a link for company news and updated documentation.  Appoint an employee to do this for you; they will love it.  Bring the age of technology into your company by being a live example of a business that embraces and uses the latest and greatest.  You will be seen by all as a smart and savvy innovator.

Email Campaign Software. Email marketing campaigns succeed neither by chance nor prayer.  They are planned, strategically targeted, against the tracking results of statistics and demographics.  Only a campaign software can create targeted demographics, analyzing all the results, in detail, for each campaign,   Receiving information such as click-thru-rates, mail opened, discarded, bounced and unopened, along with comparative stats from previous campaigns, can only be achieved with this software.  Why repeat a poorly received campaign in the past.  Email campaign software gives you that cutting edge difference.  Get the facts and stats to help plan your next move.

Website Makeover. How long has it been since you have taken another look at your website?  If it has been over two years, it will definitely not be reflecting your new voice, goals, changes or business directions that you have recently taken.

ZAHave you created a landing page that represents your campaigns?  That page needs your utmost attention.  A properly and thoughtfully customized, well designed landing page increases your conversion rates. Your landing page should convert a prospect to a client, a possibility to a sale. Think of that page as a strategy within itself. Write the content with care, and focus on your goal which is that clickable call to action.

Everything is moving so fast as the internet becomes almost the sole source for international marketing, news, and communication.  To build your ROI, you need to be where the action is.

That is just your first step.  Know your goals, live your message, and shout your brand and product to the world – Be an effective, strategic internet marketer who, like a chameleon, can change colors, spots, and direction when and where it is necessary.  Your survival depends on it.



Every e-marketer knows that their campaigns must present a concise and clear message with specific marketing goals. Whether your campaigns are geared to increasing the subscription to your e-newsletter, a web cast event or special sale; every campaign road hopefully and eventually will lead to a sale. Isn’t that the bottom line? As there is no call to action within the newsletter or email campaign itself, the right landing page must be created to achieve the purchase.

How do people arrive at your website? Normally it is through a series of searches on a specific key word or phrase. That word or phrase brings them to a particular page of your site. Rarely, it is the homepage. They are searching for something specific and if your page content and links are properly SEO optimized, they will land on just the right spot.

Think of sending out an e-campaign offering a 25% discount on one of your products. The link provided would naturally lead them to complete that buy? Correct? So the destination page now becomes your landing page for that email campaign promotion.   How compelling is your page?  Is there a strong call to action in front of their face?  Do you see how crucial the relevance of this page is?

So, when you send out a campaign with a hyperlinked call to action, that hyperlink should not be sending your prospects or customers to your homepage. The call to action must have a compelling landing page, designed specifically to your targeted audience. This page should represent and further clarify your email campaign message. It is a highly focused page telling the prospect their next step, having the final call to action within itself.  It must hold their attention – in other words, it is where the sale is made.

Now you can see why you need a dynamite, customized landing pages for each promotion or sale. This page can mean the difference of someone buying or not buying.  Your bottom line is depending upon it.  The more suitable the page is to the sale and campaign, the greater the chance of having that desired action from your clients and prospects, whether a further click, buy, or download.

Your Customized Landing Page Should:

1. Mirror your message and voice. Design your landing page around that message and sales goal.

2. Be focused. Prevent distractions. Remove what is not necessary. The landing page should focus on the call to action and nothing more.

3. Be simple and clear. Most of us have a short attention span. If they have to search for what they want, they may just click off and not continue.

4. Be easy to read and search. Make your page easy to read and scan. Leave out blinking ads and blinking text, pop up windows, and moving navigation bars.

5. Be user-friendly. If there is a form to fill out, make it short. Too many questions can easily discourage or annoy your prospects, who may decide to just forget it.

6. Be tested. Send your page to colleagues, family, and friends. Ask them to test your landing page and give you their opinion. Have them click on links and fill out any forms required. Get honest feedback.

7. Always have tracking results. All campaigns need to be tracked. Without the stats, you have no clue what happened and if it was successful. Buying email campaign software guarantees obtaining accurate tracking and stat performance.

The goal, clearly defined, is to lead your prospects to a customized and designed landing page that fits your internet marketing and advertising goals. A properly and thoughtfully customized, well designed landing page increases your conversion rates. Your landing page should convert a prospect to a client, a possibility to a sale.

So think of that page as an entire  strategy within itself. Write the content with great care, make the call to action strong, clear, and easy to follow.  Focus on your goal – make that clickable call to action hard to resist!