Marketing Espresso for 8/28/09

In this Issue:

• Increase Adsense Revenue & Weed Out the Riff-Raff
• A Little Birdie Told Me
• Identify the Adwords Achilles’ Heel for Your Niche
• Last Call – Cash for My Clunker Sale

Do you remember the perennial essays on “What I Did This Summer” when you were a kid? I do.

As I run down the mental laundry list of my activities of the last few months, one common theme emerges — consolidating.

I have dramatically reduced my activities (at one point I managed over 20 of my own blogs, in addition to clients’), and I have transitioned all of my clients over to WordPress.

In doing just these two things, I have conservatively estimated I’ve extended my lifespan by a couple of years, and reduced my Miss Clairol usage exponentially. YAY!

While I still don’t advocate putting all of your eggs in one basket, I think that there is much to be gained by working smarter. That said, I have focused this issue on a few tools that I think will help you accomplish this.

Let’s get to it, shall we?

Increase Adsense Revenue & Weed Out the Riff-Raff

No, I am not talking about the well-known character of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. When I refer to “riff-raff,” I am talking about those MFA (Made for Adsense) sites whose sole purpose is to steal your lunch money.

Don’t worry, though — help is on the way.

I’ve recently learned of a tool (the basic version is free) called Ads Blacklist. It is a project designed to enable you to dramatically reduce the amount of MFA and LCPC (low cost per click) sites which appear through the use of PPC systems like Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network, and Chitika.

Here’s How it Works:
You sign up for your free account at Ads Blacklist, and then enter your URL and keywords. Moments later, it will generate a list of sites that are known MFA and LCPC sites within that niche. Simply highlight and copy the list, and then paste it into the Competitive Ad Filter field within your Adsense control panel. Voila! Those sites will now be blocked from displaying on your site.

Four words — how cool is that?

A Little Birdie Told Me

Building on our theme of working smarter, our next resource was featured this week on the ESB Journal.

Many of you are using article marketing as an affordable promotional tool for your business (and if you aren’t, shame on you!). Ezine Articles has added another cool tool for those who use their service — you can now enable your Ezine Articles profile to auto-tweet your recently approved articles to your tweeps!

Why You Should Use This:

• Your tweeps are already interested in what you have to say. This is a way to give them more content, with no added work.
• You can further demonstrate your expertise in your niche.
• Allows ezine and newsletter publishers instant access to the most recent content you’ve created.
• Allows you to provide education about your products/services, and build trust among your tweeps. We all know that folks buy from those they know, like and trust. Use this tool to accomplish that!

For a quick video tutorial on how to set this up, visit the ESB Journal article. Then, go set this up on your profile — before you forget.

Identifying the Achilles’ Heel for Your Niche

Times are tough — and many of our clients have found themselves facing much lower revenues than in years’ past. In fact, many that have never had to do any PPC advertising have now found themselves considering this option. If you are in a similar situation, this may be a helpful tip to consider.

First, accept that you don’t need all the customers in your niche. This is a common mistake that many new PPC advertisers make. They go crazy with their keyword selection — using words that are too broad or too vague — and end up spending too much for little or no results.

I don’t want that to happen to you.

Here’s what I recommend:

• Make a list of targeted phrases that a consumer would use to find your niche. If you sell hypo-allergenic vacuum filters, then you would certainly want to use that phrase. What you should also consider is adding your local geographic area to that phrase (i.e. Kalamazoo Michigan hypo-allergenic vacuum filters).
• One by one, begin entering your list into the Google Adwords Keyword Selection Tool. You may find that after entering the first one or two, you’ll have plenty of other suggestions to work with.
• Sort the list by clicking on the top of the column marked “Global Monthly Search Volume.” Scroll down through this list, and look for those that have search volumes 20K to 50K.
• From this range, determine if there are any keywords or phrases that fit your niche, and write them down.
• Open a new window, and go to Google.com. Type in one of the phrases you identified from the previous step. How many listings does it say appear in Google for this phrase?

The Goal:
The goal of the exercise outlined above is to identify 5-10 keywords or phrases that have a lower search volume per month (meaning, they will not cost as much), and have a low volume of competition in Google (meaning, it will be easier to appear on the first page for this term).

We combine this information to create a list that has a consistent monthly search volume, and we optimize your site or landing page for those terms. Then, you work to convert that traffic into customers.  As your business increases, you can then go after some of the more competitive search terms.

The point of this exercise is to keep you in the game without going broke doing so. You may even find — as many do — that this strategy could easily become your secret marketing weapon.

Tips:

• Be sure that when you set up specific search phrases in your Adwords control panel that you set them as “exact match” or “phrase match.” This will help control costs, and send more qualified leads your way.
• Don’t forget to use the Negative Keywords tool. Use this to remove any keyword searches that you want to be excluded from. For instance, if someone were looking for “free hypo-allergenic vacuum filters,” you wouldn’t necessarily want them — especially since you are SELLING them, not giving them away.

I hope that you’ll be encouraged to do a bit of keyword research using this method. If you do, I’d love to hear about your results! Drop me a note and let me know.

Last Call – Cash for My Clunker Sale

Wait a minute — didn’t the news announce yesterday that the Cash for Clunkers Program ended Monday?

Yep, they sure did.

You see, I have a “clunker” of my own — one that I planned to hold on to until next year. And, mine is in need of some repair work that I suspect is going to get a bit pricey.

Much as I’d like to, I’m not some highfalutin guru that can go out and plunk down the cash for a new vehicle right now.

So, here’s the bottom line. I decided that I’d slash the prices on my collection of Squidoo lenses to the bone — in fact, you’ll see that most are slashed between 50-75% off.

The sale ends at midnight tonite (August 28th), and the only place you can find them at this price is on this page. Whatever is left I will just hold on to.

This is a great opportunity to snap up aged and indexed lenses that you can use to leverage for traffic, list promotion and sales. Lots of niches still left, so act fast for best selection!

You’ll find all the details here:

http://plrsavvy.com/squidoo-lenses/

Share the Love

As I close out this issue, I’d like to ask you to do me a solid — click on the little green button below, and tweet about the Marketing Espresso to your tweeple. I sure would appreciate it.

Until Next Time — Stay Focused, Positive and Caffeinated!

Traci

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