Chapter 6
Reaching Out
to your Prospects
Okay, so you’ve figured out your business model(s), explored the competition, determined your
marketing strategy, automated your site, and now, you’re ready to make money.
Again, it’s all about driving traffic to your site.
How do you attract quality traffic quickly, cheaply, and easily? Well, hang on, and we’ll review the
top tactics you need to employ in order to get visitors that will convert to cash.
Here is an overview of the marketing tactics we will cover:
• Online Public Relations
• Email Newsletters
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
• Offline Promotions
Online Public Relations
If you had a choice between getting a full-page story written about your company or paying for a
full-page advertisement for your products/services in a publication, which would you choose?
Any marketer will tell you to go with the story that someone else writes (or seems to write) about
your company because it’s more credible in the eyes of prospects than if you buy an ad, which is
seen as blatant self-promotion.
Just as with marketing in the offline world, you should spend a significant amount of time on
public relations, no matter what your product is.
There are plenty of books out there on how to write good press releases. For some we suggest,
click here or visit our Books and Other Publications section at www.WhatWeSuggest.com.
Basically, you want to make sure that your press release is newsworthy, interesting, not too
sales-oriented, and controversial, if possible, so that you can cut through the clutter and get
some attention.
For the best way to distribute your press releases online so that they have the best shot at
getting picked up by a journalist or a blogger and written about, click here or check out the Online
Public Relations Solution at www.WhatWeSuggest.com.
In addition to using an online press release service, you will also want to blast out press releases
directly to media contacts (publications, radio stations, TV stations). The best way to do this is to
invest in an electronic fax service, which allows you to email press releases quickly and easily.
For our recommended solution, click here or visit www.WhatWeSuggest.com and look under
Electronic Fax Solution.
Email Newsletter Solutions
You might want to use the tactic of email marketing to keep in constant contact with your
prospects and customers. As any good marketer knows, repetition is the key to maximizing
sales. We’re not just saying you should send out sales pitches all the time, but rather send out
email newsletters with good helpful advice to your prospects that helps you build credibility
among your prospects.
Many marketing studies point to The Rule of Seven, meaning that you must hit your prospects
on average with seven communications before you get them to buy. Remember, we live in a
cluttered world with lots of advertising messages battering your prospects every minute of every
day. To cut through that clutter, you should look into sending email newsletters.
- We recommend using an Email Newsletter Solution that is:
- Simple for you to manage;
- Helps you stay out of trouble with the law by avoiding breaking the rules of the CAN-SPAM
Act, which is legislation that protects consumers from spam (unwanted email);
- Enables you to customize the design of your newsletters; and,
- Lets you track all communication and consumer click-through behavior so that you can
maximize the return on your investment for your marketing investments of money, time and
effort.
For the Email Newsletter Solution we recommend, click here or check out www.WhatWeSuggest.
com.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
As we discussed in the Advertising Model section above, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising [or
search engine marketing (SEM) as it is sometime known] is a popular way to buy visitors (traffic)
to your site.
The popularity of PPC advertising has skyrocketed in the past several years in part because you
can easily track the return on your marketing investment and also due to awareness created by
the success of Google and Yahoo!, which run the two largest PPC advertising networks, which
link traffic buyers (advertisers) to traffic sellers (sites that want to make money via the Advertising
Model.)
We’ve already discussed how you can use the Advertising Model to make money as a Web site
owner. Again, if you have a Web site with considerable traffic, you may be able to get advertisers
to buy advertising space on your site. But in this section, let’s look at it from the other side of the
fence. If you want to drive traffic to your site, you are the advertiser, paying to attract visitors to
your site.
Think Like Your Customer
You learned in your Marketing 101 class that you have to focus on the customer and meet their
needs, solve their problems, ease their pain.
When people enter keywords into a search box like the one at Google.com, Yahoo.com or any
other search engine, they have a pain. They have a need. They have a question that they want
answered. They want to be served the solution in the form of information as to how they can
resolve their problem. They are saying: “I’m searching for….” or simply “I need….”
Your job as a marketer is to put yourself in their shoes. You must ask yourself: What keywords
are my ideal prospects going to type into their search boxes?
As we already explained, marketing strategy is about targeting and positioning. In the section on
Automating Your Site, we discussed positioning your product or service to maximize the number
of visitors that actually buy from you. But first, you must get the right kinds of visitors to your site.
Visitors who are most likely to buy the product/service you are offering. How do you get such
“qualified” visitors to your site? You have to select the right keywords.
If you don’t select the right keywords, you simply won’t get the traffic you want to your Web site.
You won’t get a chance to show that brilliant advertising copy that will motivate prospects to click
through to your site, read your unbeatable offer, and then buy your product/service.
Building Your Keyword List
To start building your keyword list, you simply sit down (either alone – or better yet, with a group
of colleagues), start brainstorming about the kinds of keywords that are relevant to your
product/service, and then jot them down on a pad of paper or in a Excel spreadsheet.
Start by thinking about what you are selling and then think of relevant words that people might
search on in order to find your types of products and services.
Think of keywords as the bait that will lure prospective customers to your Web site. The
keywords that you want to bid on are appetizers that you are hoping will whet the appetites of the
right kinds of visitors – either visitors who are ready to buy now – or browsers that you can
quickly convert to customers.
As in any brainstorming, it is best not to limit your thinking at this stage. Include any and all
suggestions. You want to avoid missing any keywords that might prove to be valuable.
Your goals are to maximize visitors that buy from you and minimize visitors that don’t buy from
you. Later, when you start testing your keywords, you will see that the actual results of your
campaign will determine which keywords work and which don’t.
Measurement eliminates argument. Keywords that you might think are ridiculously irrelevant at
this stage might prove to be winners later and vice versa.
Err on the side of having more keywords rather than less. And, as we will discuss in more depth
later, don’t just think in terms of one-word or even two-word keywords. You want to “own” niches,
so you want to think in terms of “keyword phrases” so that you can dominate when a searcher
looks for something very specific that is relevant to what you have to sell.
You might find that “red leashes for German shepherds” doesn’t get any clicks, but don’t make
that determination yourself. Don’t assume anything. That’s what’s great about the search
engines. They’ll tell you in a very cold and calculated manner if you don’t get any clicks or
conversions.
So assume nothing and test everything. The more keywords, the merrier.
Also, you will find that general keywords will probably be high-priced. You are looking for relatively
low-cost keywords that convert well, and by testing, you will be able to home in on that subset of
keywords where you should be spending the lion’s share of your PPC budget.
So it’s okay to test general terms, but spend more time looking for highly niched keyword
phrases. Remember, you want to get rich in a niche. A general rule is that browsers are more
likely to search with general terms, whereas people closer to the buying stage tend to be more
specific in the terms they search on.
By choosing more specific keywords, you are more likely to attract higher-quality prospects at a
relatively lower cost. You might not get much traffic on these more specific keyword phrases, but
the visitors you do get are more likely to be ready to buy.
Remember, when building your initial keyword list, you are doing little more than guessing. Later
on, by using the right online tools and performing the right analysis, science will replace
guesswork.
Expanding Your List with Keyword Suggestion Tools
Choosing the terms that make up your initial keyword list is easy. And because it is so easy, it is
often the downfall of many inexperienced marketers.
Many of our clients have had initial success with PPC advertising but then they get lulled into a
comfort zone in which they think that they’ve covered all of their keyword bases. Usually, they
make a big push to create a list without ever revisiting it. After creating the initial list, laziness or
busyness usually takes over. This is a big mistake.
Most search engines provide keyword suggestion tools, which will generate related terms for any
keyword you type in. So, after you brainstorm in order to come up with a list of common-sense,
obvious terms that you should be bidding on, then use free tools – like Yahoo! Search Marketing’
s Keyword Selector Tool, which you can find at www.Overture.com, then click “Visit The
Resource Center” and then Keyword Selector Tool. Or go directly to http://searchmarketing.yahoo.
com/rc/srch/ and click on the Keyword Selector Tool to expand your list a bit more by typing in a
relevant keyword you have thought of yourself, and then let the engine provide you with a list of
related words for you to try.
Take advantage of Yahoo!’s free tool but you might also want to check out paid keyword tools,
which will probably give you more - and more relevant - keywords to use in your campaign. For
our suggestion on a Keyword Selection Tool, click here or check out www.WhatWeSuggest.com.
Summary of Keyword Lists
Generating your keyword list is the first crucial step in launching your pay-per-click advertising
campaign. Once you have an initial list, you must constantly monitor and modify it to keep up
with the ever-changing search landscape.
When generating your list, keep in mind that you want to err on the side of testing more keywords
rather than less. Also, you want to make sure to focus on multi-word keywords (keyword
phrases), which are more likely to attract qualified searchers to your site.
Although you will start by generate an initial list through brainstorming on your own, you also
should take advantage of the many free and paid keyword expansion tools available through the
search engines and third-party vendors.
Buying Keywords on Google and Yahoo!
So you might be asking what you do with all these keywords in your keyword list. Well, you want
to bid on them and buy them.
What does that mean? Well, just say you are selling children’s books. You might want to buy the
term “children’s books” so that when someone types that phrase into a search engine like Google
or Yahoo!, your ad comes up on the right column (Google) or elsewhere (Yahoo!) on the search
engine results page.
You only pay whatever you agreed to pay per click when you sign up on Google, Yahoo! or other
search engines like MIVA, Ask.com, and others.
If you are new to pay-per-click advertising, we recommend that you visit the advertiser sections of
Google and Yahoo! and read about how to participate in these programs.
For the best deals on PPC advertising, enter Google by clicking here and Yahoo! by clicking
here, or visit Pay-Per-Click Advertising Networks on our recommendation page at www.
WhatWeSuggest.com.
Offline Marketing Tactics
You are starting a business online, but don’t forget that many of your prospects will never find you
on the Web, and many of them might not even be on the Web. So you have to do offline
marketing promotions as well.
Just think traditional marketing. You want to make sure that you have a good professional logo
(again, visit our recommendations page at www.WhatWeSuggest.com to see the Logo Creator
Solution we suggest).
Once you have your logo, which includes your Web address and email address so that people
can easily contact you, plaster it everywhere. Make business cards, postcards, bumperstickers,
T-shirts, whatever you can think of.
For our recommended Promotional Items Provider, that can create coffee mugs, pens,
sweatshirts and other clothing with your logo on it, click here or check out the provider we
suggest on our recommendations page at www.WhatWeSuggest.com.
For our recommended printer, click here or check out Print Provider on our recommendation page
at www.WhatWeSuggest.com.
Put your Web address and email everywhere – in your email signature file at the bottom of every
email you send out, at the end of articles you write, on signs that you put in the windows of your
car.
Think like an advertiser. Get your brand out into the world to drive people to your site. You never
know who might see your logo, visit your site, and buy something from you.
Go to the next chapter.
Chapter 7 - Recommended Online Marketing Solutions
| eMarketing In-a-Box: How to Attract, Retain and Monetize Your Website Customers Copyright 2007 All Rights Reserved emarketinginabox.com All Rights Reserved paul@emarketinginabox.com I matthew@emarketinginabox.com |
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