Discover how your business can make more money using proven web strategies.
Name Email

Recent Post

tr

Small Business Taxes Gone Wild In California

I estimate that 99% of Californians do not understand the implications of the new small business tax that Governor Jerry Brown signed into law yesterday. This law would mandates online sellers like Amazon.com and Overstock.com to start collecting sales taxes on items shipped to California if they have some sort of relationship with an affiliate. [...]

Post1

You Got the Opt-in, Now What? Here Are Some Top Email Strategies

The first part of email marketing is to get your visitor to opt-in your email list. Once they opt-in, the visitor becomes a prospect. The second part of email marketing is to move the prospect along your marketing funnel towards them becoming a customer. An important element of that is relationship marketing done via trust. [...]

Post2

Linkedin Company Page Follows the Leaders Facebook and Yelp

There was a time when Linkedin was cool. Well, maybe “cool” is too strong of a word for this early social networking site. Let’s just say that Linkedin was *the* place to network as a business professional. You sign up for Linkedin, you make connections with people you work with, you ask for a recommendation, [...]

facebookevents

A Way to Promote Your Business with Facebook Events

Let’s assume you’ve already set up your own Facebook profile and a separate Facebook Page for your business. Maybe you’ve also created a Facebook Group that relates to a type of product or service that your business provides. What are some ways that you can promote the special events your business sponsors? One way is [...]

Featured Post

Post4

How to Remove Antispyware Soft

Marketing online is fraught with risks. One category is business risk. The other category is technical risk. Business risk is when you try to execute a digital marketing strategy and it fails. Technical risk includes the risk of not implementing your websites and/or scripts correctly. But technical risk also includes the risk from cyber-attacks. One of the most common form is viruses pretending to be a friendly program ... like a trojan horse. This blog is about how to remove Antispyware Soft. … Read More...

Featured Video

A Proper Press Release Format

April 17, 2009 By Alex Leave a Comment

Got news? The correct press release format gets your message on the wires!

Want a high quality back-link to your website? The proper press release format that includes anchor text achieves this.

You’ve got a website. You need to use every available forum to get your website noticed. One avenue of publicity that’s often neglected is the press release. A well written press release can work wonders in driving traffic to your site. All you need to get your website on the map is a few carefully crafted words in the correct press release format. Let’s take a look at how to format a press release that grabs the attention of the media and thus, your audience.

The press release is much like a newspaper story, in that you are conveying information about your company that’s newsworthy. So what’s newsworthy? Your press release should contain information that draws attention to your organization’s products or services, without a hard sell element. This requires finesse. Use the press release format to your advantage. The formatting requirements are simple, but must be strictly adhered to, if you want the right people to pick it up. Let’s take a step-by-step look at how to write a press release that works.

1. Begin with a simple text file. At the top left, in all caps, type: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Alternatively, if you want your press release to be published in future, type HOLD FOR RELEASE UNTIL (DATE).

2. On the line immediately following, type your headline. Keep it short and sweet, concisely describing the content. For example, when introducing a new product, a good headline might read as follows:

Flutter.com Announces Ground-breaking Platform That Allows ADD Users to Mini-Micro-Blog in 26 Characters

This headline is the “hook” which should spur the reader to want to know more. Keep it to one line and never use exclamation points in any portion of the press release. Also try to use your target keyword in the headline.

3. On the next line, insert your location and date of the release as follows:

City, State, Country – Month Day, Year

4. Now, insert a line to separate location and date from the body of your story.

Here are the important rules on your content. Your whole story should be no longer than 500 words. Write at least a few paragraphs, consisting of just 3-4 sentences. Your first paragraph should tell the whole story. As applicable, address the “five W’s”: who, what, where, when and why.

Details are contained in the subsequent paragraphs. The most effective press releases captures the reader’s interest in the opening paragraph.

Always use third-person in your press release format. For example, if you’re John Adams, write “According to CEO John Adams, Flutter.com …”, not “I’m John Adams, creator of the …”. Quotes from experts enhance the impact of your press release.

Incorrect spelling and grammar errors may well kill your chances of having your story picked up. Your content must be factual and accurate, while incorporating an angle. Your angle is where you do your promotional work, albeit subtly.

Your last paragraph should reiterate in summary your key points.

Include appropriate contact information.

Finally, don’t forget to sprinkle your target keyword phrase through-out the text. Just don’t overdo it or the search engine and/or your readers will object. If the press release site allows it, use your keyword as anchor text and hyperlink back to your website. If you can’t add links in the body, you’ll need to add your link at the end.

5. The last part of the press release format is easy. Space one line and type, END or ###.

You’re done! Now, get it out on the wires!

Here are some good press-release sites.

Paid Sites But Worth It:

* www.prweb.com
* www.prleap.com
* www.webwire.com
* www.prbuzz.com

Free Sites:

* www.24-7pressrelease.com
* www.free-press-release.com
* www.pr9.net
* www.prcompass.com

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

eCommerce Sales 5-Year Forcast

March 7, 2009 By Alex Tran Leave a Comment

$133 billion is the number that you should burn into the marketing side of your brain. $133 billion is the amount of e-commerce sales predicted by eMarketer.com for 2009. Is $133 billion in online retail sales a good number or a bad number? One way to look at this is to compare it to the US GDP. In 2004, the US GDP was $11.75 trillion. So if we take e-commerce sales as a percentage of GDP, we see that it represents about 1%.

From the standpoint of GDP, people are comfortable shopping online. However, if we look at the e-commerce sales number from last year, we see that it is down from $133.6 billion or 0.4%. Keep in mind that we are in a severe recession. Given the down economy, a drop of only 0.4% in e-commerce sales is simply amazing.

What can we expect in the next 4 years? According to eMarketer, we can expect to see double digit increases in online sales until 2012 where this sales channel will mature. Until then, though, people will continue to buy online. “Follow the hungry crowd,” as the late Gary Halbert would say.

My advice is to think creatively about how you can use online marketing to show your target customer your value. Consider forming alliances with complementary businesses and create a bigger offer. This may negate the pricing pressure that you may face because you will offer more value for your customer’s dollar.

Also think about working with your competitors to recycle customers. What I mean is to make a deal with your competitor to place your banner on their exit survey pages. Many times, customers simply want to try something new. If you give your business a chance to be seen as they are leaving one paid site, you will increase your traffic.

Remember that the seeds of great fortunes are planted during economic downturns. The key is to market smarter and to test everything.

DONOTCHANGE

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Have We Forgotten How to Do Marketing?

March 3, 2009 By Alex Tran Leave a Comment

Thousands of people come online everyday hoping to find online riches. They come online to learn how to do marketing. Often times, what they find is information presented in such a way that further bolsters their dream. More to the point, most of the information presented are scams. Here is how it usually works.

An inexperienced “wannapreneur” comes online and does a search on “how to make money with the internet.” She finds pages and pages of “how to do marketing” information. She tries a little bit of this, she tries a little bit of that, she sees another offer showing her the online promise land and pursues yet another path … in the end, nothing works. She doesn’t know how to do marketing … or does she?

Look, marketing is really about generating demand for a product or service that has value to a target customer, that’s it. Let’s take an example like marketing a service.

A service that everyone can relate to is “You.” Even if you work for someone, you instinctively know how to generate demand for your service. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be working. You successfully convinced your target customer — your boss — that you have value. You did a number of things right to generate demand for you in the eyes of your employer. That “number of things” is your marketing mix.

Marketing is about combining these number of things into the right mixture for your target customer. The mix contains the 4 P’s:

1. Product
2. Placement
3. Price
4. Promotion

Continuing with our example, the Product is you. Another useful way to look at the Product is in terms of the “offer.” What do you have to offer to your target customer? It could be your experience, your willingness to work particular hours, your contacts, and anything else that you can combine into a valuable offer for your target customer.

The second P is Placement. Where can you market your service? If you are a dental hygienist, the obvious place to market your product is to dentists.

The third P is Price. How much should you charge for your service? As an employee, a good place to start is the going rate for your type of position. If a dental hygienist gets paid within the range of $30K and $75K per year, you would price yourself accordingly based on your “offer.” In other words, how much value can you offer your target customer? Value determines price.

The fourth P is Promotion. How will you advertise your Product? This is where most people coming online get seduced. They are told that somehow the internet magically creates demand and sales without promotion. This is simply not true. The internet is only one of many sales channels for your product. In fact, it should be a part of your promotion mix, but not necessarily your only way to promote.

Returning to our example, you would not do well if you only promoted the fact that you are offering your dental hygienist services on Craigslist. You would do a better job of promotion if you also included word-of-month, newspapers, referrals, and personal relationships.

So does a new “wannapreneur” know how to do marketing? Of course they do. They just have to remember that they know how.

DONOTCHANGE

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »
To Top