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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Marketing Espresso for 7/23/09

In This Issue:

• Is this a Hobby, or a Business?
• Online Video Ads
• Excellent Resource for Video Marketing
• New Social Networking Platform for Publicity Seekers
• TweetMeme
• Coffee Break: Free Coffee Giveaway

Is this a Hobby, or a Business?
For those who straddle the line between business and hobby, this helpful guide from the IRS will help provide some much-needed clarification.

Before you fluff this off as one of those topics that you’ll “deal with later,” consider this rather stern sounding message taken directly from the guide:

“In general, if a taxpayer has hobby income and expenses, the expense deduction should be limited to the hobby income amount. About 1.5 million taxpayers, many with significant income from other sources, filed form 1040 Schedules C showing no profits, only losses, over consecutive Tax Years 2002 – 2005 (4 years); 73 percent of these taxpayers were assisted by tax practitioners. By claiming these losses to reduce their taxable incomes, about 1.2 million of the 1.5 million taxpayers potentially avoided paying $2.8 billion in taxes in Tax Year 2005. Changes are needed to prevent taxpayers from continually deducting losses in potentially not-for-profit activities to reduce their tax liabilities.”

To read the entire guide online, visit this link.

Online Video Ads
Reaching new customers can be challenging for most businesses. While tried-and-true methods such as newspaper advertising remain popular, a new ad medium has also taken the business world by storm.

Online video ads–short-form commercials that run on Web sites–are proving to be one of the most effective ways to advertise online, with some video ads generating twice the clicks of banner ads. In fact, advertisers report planning to allocate about 35 percent of their budget on the ads by 2012, according to Borrell Associates.

Small businesses are looking to follow this trend, and do-it-yourself Web sites such as Jivox are helping to fill that need. Jivox offers inexpensive, locally targeted, online video ad programs — enabling advertisers to get started for as little as a few hundred dollars per campaign and make developing an online commercial simple and fun.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when it comes time to produce your own ad:

• Keep It Simple–Viewers don’t want to read large volumes of text on their computer screen. To stand out, your ad needs to be short and sweet.
• Call Out The Benefits–Research shows that people decide if they want to read more about a topic on a Web site in eight seconds or less. Ads that contain specific, immediate benefits, such as a promotion or discount, can be highly effective.
• Be Smart About Type Size–Use no more than two type sizes in one ad, with the largest type size on top. Also, never use more than two fonts and avoid using all capital letters.
• Use Relevant Visuals–The visuals in a video ad should communicate a relevant message. Clean, simple graphics are more likely to catch the eye of the viewer.
• Test And Retest–Set aside a portion of your budget to test different approaches so that you can see how response rates fluctuate when you change the visuals, call-to-action or price points, or add a promotional offer.

Excellent Resource for Video Marketing
We’ve already established that video marketing is both popular and lucrative. Suppose you’d like to create your own videos, but don’t have the startup funds to work with an outside firm — does that mean you have to be stuck on the sidelines while your competition scores the touchdown?

Absolutely not.

In fact, if you are ready to get off the bench and get in the game, I’d like to share a super resource with you that can help you kick your marketing efforts into high gear — in less than the time it takes to watch a halftime show.

Featuring (6) instructional videos and (2) companion audios, you can listen and watch at your leisure, and quickly refer to these materials if questions arise. They are helpful, step-by-step instruction designed to help you create effective video promotions for your own promotions, affiliate products, list building, and more.

And the best part?
This little gem will cost you less than (1) of those fancy coffeehouse drinks — you know I never joke about caffeine!

New Social Networking site for Publicity Seekers
Sourceables.com is a free social networking platform that allows its members to share their viewpoints, expertise, and insights through short text posts and links. Journalists can search for and connect with the expert sources they need for the stories, features, blogs, or programming they produce.

Featuring an advanced search function and follow capabilities, Sourceables has positioned itself to be an extremely useful tool for media seeking experts, professionals, or anyone who can offer insights or commentary. Read full story here…

Increase Site Traffic & Twitter Followers with TweetMeme
TweetMeme is a service which aggregates all the popular links on twitter to determine which links are popular. TweetMeme is able to categorize these links into categories and subcategories, making it easy to filter out the noise to find what you’re interested in.

The TweetMeme retweet button is for website and blog publishers who want to encourage their audience to tweet their content on twitter. The button shows a live count of the number of times your webpage or blog post has been tweeted. This is something I have just added myself, and I will be anxious to see if it impacts my retweets. Will keep you posted.

Visit the site to get more information, or to obtain a button for your site.

Coffee Break: Free Coffee Giveaway through August 3rd
In support of the launch of McDonald’s new McCafe line, they are offering US consumers the chance to sample a free Hot Mocha or Iced Mocha at any participating McDonald’s restaurant.

The offer is available on any Monday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Aug. 3, and the complimentary drinks come in special, promotional sizes: 7 oz. for the iced version, or 8 oz. for the hot variety.

McDonald’s anticipates that it will likely give away some 10 million samples during its Free Mocha Mondays campaign, making it “one of the largest sampling initiatives we’ve taken on as a company,” said Neil Golden, chief marketing officer for McDonald’s USA. Guess where I am headed next Monday?

Until Next Time — Stay Focused, Positive and Caffeinated!

Traci

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