With a highly optimised site comes a quicker process in optimising your site and moving it up the search engine results pages, so that it’s not only on page 1 but in the first position, the holy grail of online marketing when this is for a highly searched keyword on Google.

This creates both problematic issues and opportunities for a business that has an established brand and is looking to gain the most out of ranking their site online.

The first issue comes with the obvious point that you need to start a whole new site, under a URL that is not your brand and try and attract customers to it. The solution to this is to either brand this new site i.e. plumberinsydney.com.au with your branded logo of joesplumbing.com.au so that the built up trust and credibility that comes with your brand is shown to browsers looking at the new site.

Or alternatively use the new website plumberinsydney.com.au as a gateway to joesplumbing.com.au, whereby you use it as a minisite ‘sales-funnel’ that has links back to your branded website, under strong call-to-actions.

However onto the positives; there is a great opportunity for those that are able to register within their industry highly searched keyword-rich-domains that are optimised towards people that are looking to purchase your product/service via keyword searches on Google.

Take for example plumberinsydney.com.au – this keyword search ‘plumber in sydney’ is far more likely to be a potential customer looking for your service than ‘plumbers union sydney’ which is obviously a union association for plumbers. Therefore registering plumbersinsydney.com.au would be a highly searched ‘buying-keyword’.

Important tips to remember is that for local searches within a specified country, Google and the other search engines place far more authority in URL’s that have the country code top level domain extension, and for Australia this is .au – therefore a .com.au or .net.au or .org.au URL will have more authority with local searches (i.e. searches that contain local identifiers such as ‘Sydney), than purely a .com .net or .org URL.

Another important tip is to only optimise these mini-sites around one specific keyword, to ensure quick, dominate results. For example, plumberinsydney.com.au should only be optimised for “plumber in Sydney” and not for other terms like “plumbing Sydney” or “plumbing supplies Sydney”. This will require that there is effective optimisation for this keyword with Title Tags, H1, H2, content and keyword optimisation, internal linking structure, image optimisation, permalink structure and page structure optimisation.

Finally for keyword research, make use of Google’s Keyword Tool that will show you highly searched keywords for your industry. And whether or not you desire to utilise mini-sites at this present time, it’s always a wise option to purchase these domains now, while they are available and before your competition does. If a .com.au version of the domain you are looking for is already taken, then purchase the .net.au or .org.au version as these are a sufficient substitute.
 

The shining light on the situation is the fact that there is a strong correlation between writing good quality content for your audience and this in turn having reciprocated benefits on your rankings in the search engines.

Too often content is created in a manner that is designed to please the search engines rather than trying to please the audience, and in doing so can present 2 major problems:

1. Keyword stuffing (i.e. too many of the same keywords are picked up by Google and seen as ‘spam’ content) causing ranking penalties in the search results
2. Poor conversion rates as your audience is reading repetitive content that is designed for search engines rather than audience engagement and interest.

However as mentioned, if the copywriting is focused upon providing engaging, interesting content than it will have overlapping benefits in terms of its optimisation for the search engines.

Google have stated that this year high quality engaging content is the key and that 2011 will see significant updates to the search algorithm to weed out sites that produce poor content. This has occurred already as stated on the Google Blog; however it will continue to occur on a periodic basis as they make continual improvements to their algorithm.

Google has stated that their algorithm penalises “sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.”

So how do you ensure that your content is high value for your users? The following 5 steps will help as a guide when writing content to ensure you please both your audience as well as Google.

1. Write highly engaging, interesting content – Do so by providing value first. Find out what your audience wants to read and provide them with this content. Make sure it’s actionable and something that they would want to share with others who might have the same interest. Take for example this blog; it contains a heap of actionable information that is useful to businesses looking to attract and retain more customers online.
2. Write emotionally engaging content – This is especially the case if you are trying to sell a product online. Buyers purchase on emotions and then justify their decisions. Therefore if you can write in a way that appeals to their emotional needs you will have a greater chance of turning the prospect into a buyer.
3. Write longer content that is keyword rich – articles on webpages should be at least 400 words long and should contain your primary keywords. Don’t stuff your keywords into your articles numerous times so that it looks unnatural, that will only get you penalised by Google, however ensure that it is easy for both readers and the search engines to identify what your article is about.
4. Include your keywords in your title tags and tags in your blog posts – By doing so your readers will quickly identify the purpose of your article, as well as indicating to search engines your articles theme. This is an important step for SEO since search engines place a lot of ‘rankings weight’ on the keywords that are in your title tags.
5. Write fresh content on a regular basis and put it on your website – Fresh updated content has been declared as the key to ongoing strong rankings and it’s a big reason why Web 2.0 properties, blogs and news sites rank so well.  By doing so you encourage further user engagement, and will see search engine spiders crawl your site and index new content far more regularly. Your site will continue to have regular visitor and therefore will help your rankings.

By providing ongoing quality content you will differentiate yourself from the competition in the eyes of your target market as well as the search engines. This ongoing user engagement will see new and returned visitors to your site, and subsequently Google will pick up on this.

Google will then see your site as more credible, authoritative and trustworthy among your competition and will therefore continue to rank your site higher than your competition in the results pages.

So therefore make user engagement and interest the focal point in your copywriting online and with this you will see ongoing improvements in targeted website traffic as well as in the search engine results pages under your targeted keywords.

In this clip we look at examples of how business' have built effective Fan Pages on Facebook, that not only generate new prospects into their sales funnel but also encourage the development of a long-term relationship with their present and potential customers.

The clip looks at acquiring new prospects to the fan page as well as maintaining the relationship through interactive elements.

The first question that needs to be answered when it comes to advertising is where will be the most effective place to set up an advertising campaign. Here are some factors that need to be weighed up in the choice of an online ad network.

• Will your target market be accessible through the ad networks distribution channels?
• What is the volume available? Will you get enough impressions?
• What is the cost? Are your keywords, site targeting or demographics saturated with competition? Will you therefore be paying a higher price per impression or click?
• What degree of competition will you be competing against? This is particularly important on pay per click (ppc) and pay per impression (cpm) campaigns. Is there room for your business to advertise while remaining profitable?
• How will you be bidding? Will it be ppc, cpm or Cost per Acquisition (CPA)?
• What demographics and audience will be most effective in regards to targeting? Will they be in search mode (e.g. Google Adwords) or browsing mode (Facebook Ads)? NOTE: Search mode bids will naturally be more expensive than the less targeted browsing mode bids.
• What will be the quality of my leads? Will the cost of conversions (cost/conversion) be acceptable?

In terms of your advertising reach there are a number of options you can take, however generally the more well known the network the more likely the leads will be of a higher quality standard. This is particularly the case when you are advertising on paid search and paid social advertising.
Here are the networks worth looking at:

Search Engine Marketing (Paid Search):

• Google Adwords + Display Network
• Yahoo Search Marketing
• Bing Ad Network (formerly Microsoft AdCenter)
• 7 Search

Social Marketing:

• Facebook Ads
• Plenty of Fish

The difference between Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Social Marketing is simple; with SEM, advertising is based on keyword data on the search engine results page and ad placements on the display network. With social based marketing, advertising is based on demographics targeting and user interests, in a non-targeted manner. In other words with SEM, browsers are searching for your product, however with social prospects are in browsing mode and are not looking for your product or service directly.

First mover advantage (FMA) gained online allows businesses to attract followers and gain brand recognition and when done right, brand loyalty. Let’s take FMA on YouTube. Red Bull was one of the first movers to take advantage of the potential with social media, in particular YouTube. With almost daily uploads of new YouTube clips, Red Bull were able to position itself online as a ‘market value based expert’ in the energy drinks market.

What do I mean by ‘market value based expert’? Simply, they consistently provide valuable film clips to their YouTube subscribers that interest them. They know their market, and they know what would interest their demographic the most online. By doing this their brand loyalty increased, they dominated their market and most importantly positioned themselves in a way that attracted their target market to their brand before any of their competitors.

By taking the first steps before your competition, or most importantly before the majority of your market has, your business’s online marketing communications won’t be diluted by the bombardment of additional noise from your competition. Your business’s established following will be more likely to listen to you than anyone else and you will have more receptive followers that will see your business as the expert and subsequently want to buy from you.

Here’s 7 ways to get a head start on your competition and develop a following online:

1. Create a Facebook Fan Page for your business and start communicating with your audience. Don’t bombard them with messages, 1 a day is sufficient, however make sure it’s worth reading. Provide value, tell them how they can profit or succeed by using your product. However don’t try to sell to them. Your followers aren’t interested in your sales pitch! Engage with them, provide them with information, humour or links that will benefit them, or make their day a more positive one. Then watch as your followers start to listen. Don’t forget to ask them to engage back.
2. Create a YouTube Account – The same applies with YouTube as it does for Facebook. Provide them with valuable content and information. YouTube is a place where you can focus more on your products and services. However it’s not a sales pitch! Tell your audience how they can profit and succeed by using your products/services, and then they will listen!
3. Create a Twitter Account – Start interacting with customers on Twitter. Retweet valuable information and don’t become mundane. You don’t have to talk about your business the whole time. Provide quotes, links and interesting content that will make people want to listen.
4. Join Flickr if it's appropriate for your business model – Pictures are at the top of the list when it comes to viral sharing. Join and interact. Cross promote your pictures on all the other social media sites to ensure a strong promotional coverage. Here you should focus on showcasing your products and services.
5. Find advertising solutions online – Whether it’s pay per click advertising on Google Adwords or a media buy through an ad network it is important to note that prices and volume are advantageous to those that move before the competition. Remember you will be advertising under the same keywords and networks as your competition, so the earlier you get in the better price and volume you will receive.
6. Start Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) immediately! – SEO is the process of ranking your website under keywords relevant to your products and services on the search engines. The major search engines including Google, Yahoo and Bing place major importance on age related optimisation, as the older a website, generally the more trusted it is seen by the search engines. Optimisation that occurs under keywords for a longer period of time will always bring in higher rankings than the same amount of optimisation over the shorter period. This is especially important when a keyword search engine ranking of #4 rather than #1 could mean thousands of dollars of lost sales and hence profits.
7. Develop an email newsletter and start providing content to subscribers. The life time value of a customer is significant for almost all industries. Therefore once you attract a customer it is important to provide a means to keep that customer over the long term. An email newsletter that provides value will keep your brand at the forefront of your subscribers mind. When it comes to the time of purchase that means more sales for you and greater profits.

To sum up, the main point that you should take from this article is simple. Start IMMEDIATELY! Don’t let your competition run you over online because they took action first. Unexploited marketing and communication channels are there, waiting for a business in your market to take advantage of them. Take action now and continue to reap the rewards into the future. Or else your competition will.

Although viral promotional campaigns come in all shapes and sizes, the key ingredients and foundational concepts remain relatively the same. Creating a buzz around an advert involves developing relevancy. Target markets, particularly those that are reached online are only interested in promotions that are pertinent to their needs. Simply banner blindness is an example of this.

Viral marketing allows a level playing field. In fact aside from corporations, ordinary people are creating viral videos that allow them to get in front of a worldwide audience for only a matter of dollars. The now famous ‘thelonelyplanet’ went from a small YouTube cult status to international recording artist through their humorous and topical music videos. The point being, with the right approach and a bit of luck, there is nothing stopping a small business from achieving the same success around their brand.

Here are the 5 key elements that make an online viral marketing campaign a success:

1. They aren’t ‘selly’ – a promotional campaign turns viral through other people proactively sharing the message with others. If a promotional message is seen as ‘selly’ in any shape or form then it’s going to drastically reduce the likelihood of a person sharing it with their friends, or better put their ‘reference groups.’ Messages that are ‘selly’ are rarely innovative, interesting, humorous, questioning, and certainly don’t have the ‘wow’ factor, and therefore won’t be shared with others. At least not in a positive manner…

Note: This does not mean you can’t integrate an indirect promotion through your viral campaigns – take for example ‘willitblend’ by Blendtec on YouTube. They blend interesting and topical objects and in doing so promote the use of their blenders as professional, quality blenders, without needing to ask their audience to buy their blenders.

2. Controversial or goes against the ‘status quo’ – Take for example StillFree.com in which the brand was able to create a controversial hoax that spread to millions of people worldwide within weeks of launch. The hoax if you don’t already know was tagging the Air Force One jet plane and gave the brand worldwide recognition.

When controversy and originality come together, they create a powerful message that people see as worth sharing with others.

3. Humorous – Laughter is arguably the single greatest quality a promotional message should have if it is to go viral. Whether it’s an email chain message with funny pictures, a funny video about a baby, or ongoing cliché Facebook fan page names. Random and original content always wins when it’s humorous. In the case of the Facebook Fan Page examples, revisiting an old idea with a new, interesting and funny twist is always a recipe for success.

4. Relevancy – online relevancy is king. Without it no one will care what you are talking about, and you’ll be playing by the old cliché of “selling ice to eskimo’s”. There are 2 points to relevancy that you must consider. First your message must be relevant to your brand, product or service (or at least tied back to your product or service in some way). Without this people will not be able to see a link between the viral video and your brand.

A viral campaign that does not produce more sales, leads or brand recognition is as about as useful as an untargeted online sales promotion. Therefore make sure you create this link between message and your brand.

Secondly your message must contain relevancy to the target market that you are promoting the campaign to. Without such relevancy no one in your target market will pay attention, and although your brand recognition might increase you won’t produce any sales as you are promoting it to the wrong target market. A simple question you must ask yourself before creating any promotional material online is, “would our target market be interested in this, and will they want to share this with their friends?”

5. Advertising or other means of creating traction – particularly for a large organisation with a large budget advertising your viral campaign could be the easiest method to ensure traction of the message and the subsequent spreading of the brand’s message. A great method to achieve this is to promote an online message via offline methods, including print, TV and radio. Take for example Cadbury’s highly successful offline/online viral campaign.

However even if you are a small business with a small marketing budget, there are still means of spreading your message out there in hope of gaining viral traction. Here are some quick suggestions:

• Promote it through your existing network – for example your customer/client database.
• Promote it via social networking – e.g. your Facebook Fan Page via a status update
• Promote it through email marketing – send out a broadcast of the new campaign, and proactively ask your subscribers to forward it on to their friends through email or social networking if they enjoyed it (hopefully they did, or you shouldn’t be sending it out to them in the first place!)
• Promote it through your store front and ask people to check it out online (this is a good way to gain more Facebook Fans if you ask them to check it out on your Facebook Page).
• Incentivised ‘tell-a-friend’ website scripts. You could provide a free incentive if people share your promotional message with others online via email or social media. Here’s a free script you can use. However it might be worth investing in a paid ‘tell-a-friend’ script for added functionality and security.

The great thing about viral marketing is once it gains traction and starts to hit critical mass, there isn’t anything that can stop it. It’s a pandemic of promotional power. And with the somewhat level playing field that online marketing presents it’s a promotional tool that every business should look at undertaking.

‘Doing it well’ is a combination of a clear strategic online direction and habitual daily routines that consistently engage your target market through interaction and providing value. Too many companies see social media for instance as a tool to bombard the masses with their sales presentations and literary garbage. There is minimal engagement, minimal discussion, minimal two way communication, minimal interaction and minimal value.

To really have people listen to you online it’s imperative that value is given from the beginning. Unfortunately many businesses have not come to the realisation that their target market are just not interested in you trying to get their attention while at the same time trying to sell them stuff online. To really stand out from the crowd and be noticed businesses must provide their prospects with useful and engaging information that is about them, not about you!

They won’t read information about your new product or service that you are trying to sell them. However, if you provide them with information and stuff that will satisfy a need or desire specific to your product, you will have a much greater chance at making them ‘want to buy’ rather than what the majority of businesses do online, which is ‘trying to sell’ to them.

Here are some great examples of companies providing value through social media marketing:

Facebook:

• Red Bull – Provide games all geared towards extreme sports on their Facebook page that users can play. They know that their target market, a demographic made up largely by young males, are into extreme sports and computer games. A perfect example of providing your target market with what they want. On top of this Red Bull also has ‘Red Bull TV’ a 24/7 TV station that is accessible to watch straight from Facebook. All this and they haven’t even asked their customers to buy their energy drinks yet.
• Starbucks – Posts regular value based information to their wall and asks for engagement back. This information is shown up on the news feed of its entire fan-base. Therefore with their engaging statuses they have 2 way communication with their fans and because of this show up more often on fans news feeds. They post statuses that include information on coffee creation, drink recipes that you can try yourself and interesting facts about their product lines that benefit their customers.

YouTube:

• Google Business Channel – Run specifically for the many business tools and applications that Google provides for business owners, this channel provides clear value messages directed at providing information to businesses on how they can maximise their use of Google’s business products. Through this information businesses are better equipped to profit and succeed. Is it therefore any wonder why this channel is paid attention to, by the masses?

Email Marketing:

• BuyGitomer.com – Jeffery is a world leader in value driven marketing. Just one of his many value based approaches is his weekly ezine (electronic magazine) that he distributes via email. Being a sales training expert he provides his prospects and customer base with weekly information that will help them profit, produce and succeed in the world of sales. Through this he positions both himself and his brand as a leader among his competition and allows his brand to be continuously in the minds of his target market. His target market pays attention to him because he provides them with value, and in return they buy from him.
• Kayak.com – This travel company delivers a newsletter to subscribers that provide them with up to date information on the hottest places and trends. They don’t try to make any hard sell in terms of flights and packages, but rather sell you on the idea of travelling and adventure. They get you excited about the destinations by providing information that is relevant to their market and through this yet again make their prospects want to buy.

So what can we gather from these examples? Each one of these companies provides value based information and resources to their target market. They provide their customers with what they want online and don’t try to make any hard sells during the process. They give insightful, meaningful information that will benefit their market, first. Once they demonstrate the lifetime value of their products and services, they create a sense of desire to buy, and significant profits are realised.

Yes these examples are all from companies with large budgets, but the fantastic thing about relationship development online is that it is a much more even playing field. If you provide value, word of mouth quickly spreads and your brand is seen in a leadership position within its market.

Your target market will always pay attention to those businesses that provide them with what they want, and through the autonomous nature of social media and email marketing, you can quickly and cost effectively reach the masses, keeping your brand in front of the eyes of your prospective customers.

There’s more involved in a call to action than what meets the eye, and since it is the direct link between your website and your end outcome, it’s important to make it pretty darn good!

Here are a few key points to follow when designing an effective call to action on your website:

1. Have your call to action above the fold

‘Above the fold’ or otherwise known as ‘above the scroll’ refers to the area of the webpage that is seen before a browser scrolls further down the page. As you only have a few key seconds to grab a user’s attention and show them how you are able to provide them with a solution to their need(s), your call to action must be above the fold where they are able to see it straight away.

2. Clearly illustrate the incentives/outcomes

Whether it be a clickable button by itself or as a short spiel, you must clearly illustrate the incentives/outcomes that the browser will gain from making the purchase, subscription, follow, enquiry etc. The incentives could include a button that says “book now” for a ticketing company or both a call to action and an accompanying spiel such as Google Chrome’s website. Notice how the call to action states the specific incentive/outcome “Download Google Chrome” and has an accompanying spiel including “it’s free and installs in seconds”, “fast start-up…fast loading…fast search”.

When it comes to a call to action, everything comes down to the incentive. The browser is weighing up the value of the incentive vs. the cost involved (whether it is their time, putting in their email address to subscribe, or even money). Make sure your incentive is strong enough and holds enough value to ensure that the prospect is compelled to follow your call to action.

3. Use compelling, actionable language

No matter what you are selling you must create an actionable and immediate desire for your browser to take the next step, whether it is a purchase, enquiry etc.

To do this you must use compelling language that makes your prospect desire to take action right at that moment. To do so, state your end outcome (i.e. buy, enquire, book, subscribe, register) and use alongside it time sensitive words that elicit urgency. Here’s some examples:

• Buy Now
• Enquire Today
• Book Now For Our Special Offer
• Subscribe On This Page For Our VIP Bonus
• Register Your Details Now Before It’s Too Late

If it fits your business model you can also use javascript to place a countdown on your page before the offer expires. Adjusting this countdown so that it runs for only 5 minutes is the perfect way to develop urgency. Infomercials use this technique all the time with “Ring in the next 10 minutes to try our product for free”.

Here is a link to Download a Countdown Timer Script

4. Don’t include too many options

When you are developing a sales funnel process you don’t want the browser to be distracted by too many other options. This is more so relevant when you are running from a paid advertising source or from a source that is specifically preselling the prospect for a certain outcome. For example if you are running a social media or paid advertising campaign for car insurance you would not want to complicate the issue by having other insurance options on the landing page, if all that you have presold is the car insurance.

Of course if your visitors and traffic is coming from the organic search listings (i.e. the search engine results pages) and visitors are going to your website then by all means have options to other sections of your website to increase user engagement and usability.

Here’s an example of a SpeedDate landing page that is specifically designed to create a call to action to get visitors to sign up and start chatting to other people now.

5. Include a call to action on every webpage

No matter what webpage they are on, there should always be a call to action to ensure that you can convert a prospect no matter what page of your website they are on.

In most cases, an effective way to achieve this is to have a call to action in the header of every page, whether it is contact details, a booking link, an email subscription form or links to allow visitors to follow you on your social media pages. For example if you were a restaurant owner you would make sure your contact details are in the header of every page on your website, while also having a reservation booking link in your header, and possibly having your social media links and an email subscription form all above the fold. This then would be a direct response website that would work like an effective, automated machine which makes you sales.

Red Emperor Chinese Restaurant is an example of having your contact details and a reservation link above the fold.

6. Use bright colours and white areas

By using bright colours for your call to action as well as including white area around it, you will ensure that your call to action is easily noticed and stands out.

By experimenting with contrasting colours for your buttons and call to actions you will be able to attract attention to them within seconds and provide a clear direction for your website visitors.

Tumblr effectively use a contrasting colour on their “start posting” button as well as using spacing around their call to action to focus attention on these page elements.

Too often advertisers throw money at paid advertising whether it be pay per click (ppc), cost per mille (cpm) or media buys, without paying enough attention at the overall conversion improvements across the whole sales funnel.

A tightly integrated and targeted sales funnel from ad to end outcome (sale, lead, subscriber etc.) will see an increase in your conversion rates, return on investment, click through rates and ultimately a decrease in your bid payment amount if you are running a cost per click (cpc) campaign.

In saying this an ad campaign that is not receiving as many click throughs as another similar ad is by no means performing to any less standard and could, because of a strong integrated sales funnel, be out performing another similar ad that is receiving a larger amount of click throughs. Therefore the moral of the story here is test, track results and test again. Raw data from tracking wins every time.

So here are a few crucial points that must be considered when trying to run a high converting and profitable ad campaign.

• Targeted keywords/demographics to ad group and ad copy

If you’re running either a search based or social media based advertising campaign it is crucial to develop a strongly integrated ad on the ad platform’s end. This requires for search based campaigns tightly focused ad groups that are specific around a certain base keyword.

Take for example an ad campaign on dog products, it would be vital to have separate ad groups for the different products, with specific keywords for each product under each adgroup. To further drill down you might wish to segment these product related keywords into informative based and buying based ad groups i.e. buy dog biscuit – buying keyword and dog biscuit varieties – informative based keyword and so on…). Alongside this would be targeted ads that address the underlying need for each ‘searcher’ that includes the specific keyword base for each adgroup and a strong call to action to click on the ad.

With demographics targeting you will want a strong ad that applies to the demographics major buying motive. Take for example a dating company and their ads. When targeting to a younger male demographic their ad copy will be more suited towards having fun and meeting lots of hot girls. An older targeted demographic will have ad copy that suggests this dating agency will be the vehicle for them to find the love of their life. Remember test, track and test again to see what works best.

• Targeted Landing Page to Ad Copy

A landing page is the first page that the browser will reach when they click on an ad. This page is one of the most crucial components of ensuring browsers are converted to buyers. And it’s often the most overlooked when it comes to a business improving their advertising. Too often business’s will run their ads straight to a generic product or sales page or even worse straight to their business’s home page without thinking too much on what really a browser will be experiencing when they click on the ad.

When a browser or searcher clicks on an ad they are in the vast majority of cases clicking that ad for that specific need or want. If your initial landing page does not provide this need or benefit with further copy that sells the benefits of purchasing it you are leaving money on the table, plain and simple.

You have roughly 3 seconds to engage a prospect on your landing page, with them making a decision to either read on and potentially lead to a purchase, or click off never to return again. In such a short time frame the only way to ensure your advertising success is to deliver on what the ad states as soon as a browser reaches the page.

Most of the time engaging the browser is most effectively achieved with a collection of aesthetically pleasing images and simply worded, short paragraphs that stimulate buying motives. In the dating agency example again, an ad that is targeted to young heterosexual males would have a picture of a beautiful women on the landing page with clear dot points on how they will find the women they want through this agency. It would also need a strong call to action, all being above the fold of the page.

• Targeted offers to the right buyer and demographic

So often that the preconceived belief occurs that a generic product or service is sufficient when it comes to a broad target market, that it results in businesses not effectively segmenting their market to deliver the right product or service to the right person.

Indeed not every person who would buy your product is looking for your product at this instant and it is in areas such as this that companies do not recognise that they are throwing away their advertising dollar to attract prospects that have no desire at that present moment to purchase their product, nor are even interested in researching it.

This form of advertising is better suited to automated, mass marketing methods such as email marketing, social media marketing etc. that do not have any variable costs associated with the advertising.

The point here is that if you are going to advertise your products and/or services then do so to the people that have the desire to purchase now (having both the financial ability to do so and the buying motives and drivers behind it to want to). Buying modes of searchers can be picked up in the keywords they use for example searchers who use the words “buy”, “price”, “shipping”, “review” etc. are most likely looking to purchase your product, or are at least a significant way through their decision making process.

The same goes for advertising to those outside of your ideal demographic. Clearly young boys will not be keen to purchase a set of Barbie dolls and young children will not have the financial ability to purchase a swimming pool. However the point being they may well indeed be interested in swimming pools, however it’s not a financially sound choice to be wasting your advertising dollar online, trying to sell to kids. In the end, target the decision maker who has the ability and desire to buy!

So all in all, remember to keep a strong fluency between your target market, their buying motives and needs, your keywords and ad copy and your landing pages. And in all that you do, test, track and test some more and in doing so you will have ongoing improvements with your conversion rates and subsequent ROI.

• Trust
• Cross Promotion

Trust is an interesting concept and its development online in an intangible setting makes it even more of a point of differentiation in the minds of customers between those businesses that successfully do it and those that don’t.

In an email marketing sense trust is closely interconnected with authority. When you provide value you gain subscribers and word of mouth spreads. When this happens you develop your position as an expert and the go-to-person when it comes to information on your industry, products/services and marketplace. And once this starts to occur you gain authority, and an ongoing sense of trust. All this while your competitors watch you with mixed feelings of jealousy and hate.

Along with this, trust is built through an ongoing relationship. A large reason behind why it takes 5-6 contacts online before a sale or purchase is made is because of the trust factor. The intangibility of the internet and the ongoing scams and deceit people unwarily run into makes it little wonder.
When you can maintain consistent, value based contact with your customers through an email marketing campaign you are able to develop credibility and authority all of which create a strong sense of trust between your customers, prospects and your business.

Most importantly, when you show your subscribers that you desire to give first, rather than use every ounce of your online marketing streams to try and hard-sell your prospects, then you will see the trust of your brand increase with your target market and subsequent ongoing sales will occur.

• Cross Promotion

One of the most effective uses of an email newsletter or any other email campaign varieties is the use of cross promotion to increase further engagement, maintain consistent contact and product/service promotions across multiple platforms and to develop further brandable trust and loyalty.

Cross promotion in an email marketing sense refers to the promotion of other online marketing streams within your email newsletter. Button images to your social media pages are a clear and vital example of this. Through proactively asking your subscribers to follow you on your social media pages including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube you will be able to provide further value to these additional subscribers, make further contact with your target market and subsequently make further marketing promotions and sales.

Another great example is including a ‘video of the week’ in your weekly email subscriber newsletter that is embedded via YouTube and allows subscribers to go to YouTube and further engage with your company.

You may also wish to provide an incentive on your newsletter to your Facebook Fan Page whereby liking your company’s page will provide them with further bonus incentives whether that be sought out information on your products/services or industry, or coupons to use at your business’s shop outlet.

Finally it also allows you to promote your products and/or services alongside your value based information. Directing them from your email newsletter back to your product/service page on your website is the perfect way to presell a customer in their purchasing decision making process. These cross promotions provide an interconnected web of highly targeted and sought after value, that subsequently see subscribers engaging with both your company and your products.

So remember to provide value first, engage and interact with your present and future customers, build trust and cross promote, and through this you will build a relationship and your customers will buy, and then buy again.