Devour The Web

The web site marketing you use to promote your Internet location tells a lot about you in general. Everyone that shops wants a pleasurable experience. The same is true in Internet shopping. You want to make your site as easy as possible for people to navigate and operate without much trouble. Also, you make your advertising and promotion to not be too aggressive. Otherwise, your web site marketing might be running customers off rather than making them stay.

Web site marketing in general has to be genuine to be effective. Your business reputation is at stake in every move that you do. By promoting faulty merchandise or advertising with questionable companies, you run the risk of obtaining a bad reputation with the general public. Currently, there are many watchdog websites that report shady and harassing marketers. Make sure that all your web site marketing programs are on the up-and-up and don’t associate your business with poor marketing companies.

Here are some Web site marketing tips you can use.

-Use search engine optimization techniques to help your web site gain higher search engine rankings. By incorporate several keywords or phases in your site’s script; you can help jump up in the rankings after a few months.

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Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a fondue pot. Stir in 3 tablespoons of flour and cook on low for 2 minutes. Mix in 1 1/2 cups of dry white wine and stir until thick. Slowly stir in 1 1/2 cups grated Swiss Cheese. Beat 4 egg yolks and 2 tablespoons of thick cream and add to mixture. Season with 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg and white pepper. Add a dash of Kirschwasser. Serve with cubes of your favorite breads and diced vegetables.

If copywriting were only as simple as this tasty cheese fondue, writing sales copy would be easy.

Alas, it’s not.

Copywriting is a craft. And those who excel at it do so only after years of study and practice. But once top copywriters attain a high level of skill, they often formulate their own secret recipes to add a kick to their results.

So here are 11 of the best copywriting recipes from some of the world’s greatest salesmen. It’s possible you’ve heard of the first. But it’s doubtful if you’ve ever heard of the other 10.

CBS became the second network to sign up for TiVo’s Stop||Watch service. The broadcaster will have access to second-by-second measurement of program and commercial ratings for live and time-shifted viewing. NBC partnered with TiVo in December around the time of the DVR provider’s earnings call. Networks are looking for more measurability in both broadcast and online formats as capabilities arise. The online counterpart of tracking viewing behavior, VisibleSuite was discussed at DEMO this week.

Employees at Tokyo-based Hime & Company have a few new perks making the news. Reuters reports the marketing agency offers “heartbreak leave” so its staff can take time to get over a break-up. Staff under 24 are eligible for one day per year, two days for those between 25 and 29, and three for older workers. Agency employees also get two mornings per year off to go shopping.

Everything being equal, more traffic to your website translates into more sales. Hence you read a lot lately about ways to generate more traffic to your website.

I’d like to begin by saying that more traffic does not necessarily equal more sales. Your website can attract tons of traffic for the freebies and if it is not conducive to making sales, you will probably not make more sales. Being conducive to more sales means offering quality, needed products at a good price, and making it easy to order these products. This point must always be kept in mind.

Everything is not usually equal - especially if you are offering the same affiliate products as everyone else. The one thing that distinguishes your site from all the others is the relationship you have with your site visitors. Given the chance to buy the same product from hundreds of sites, most people will buy from someone they know, trust, and feel some type of connection with. This is true for me and I am sure it is true for most of you. So part of your focus everyday must be on being responsive to customers reaching out to you. They reach out with questions, comments, requests for help, and other notes. If you are not responding promptly to these little notes you are missing a very big part of the picture.

Free directory assistance service 1-800-FREE411 has sold out its 2008 “sponsorships,” which are its national ad placements, a testament to both how targeted and limited inventory is for the Jingle-owned service.

Marketers, both national and regional, like the audio sponsor placements for a few reasons. First, they’re completely intrusive (therefore more effective), yet users are by and large Ok with that since putting up with the inconvenience saves them two bucks or so per call. Second, available data for targeting include geography, business category or a combination of the two, qualifying consumers in a manner similar to a search or or Web directory buy. Three, metrics are simple. Ingenio struck a deal with Jingle last year to let advertisers place campaigns with 1-800-FREE411 on a pay-per-call basis.

New national advertisers placing audio ads with Jingle include Allstate, Days Inn, FordDirect and Miller Brewing Company. 2008 renewals include AMC Theaters, McDonald’s, Nationwide and ServiceMagic.

The influx of brands also speaks to the company’s success in recruiting sales staffers over the past year or two, including former Atlas sales veep John Roswech.

The research arm of Missouri-based brokerage and investment banking firm Stifel Financial Corp. has reported that “the staff of DG Competition, the European Commission agency responsible for merger reviews, has prepared its draft ‘Statement of Objection’ (SO) in the planned Google (GOOG) takeover of DoubleClick.”

Privacy advocates already are pouncing on this as a potential roadblock in the European Commission’s approval of the deal.

Let’s make one thing clear: This is a draft. The analyst firm has not reported that an SO has been sent.

I just spoke with Rebecca Arbogast, a principal analyst with Stifel who focuses on legal and regulatory issues. She was not able to tell me who she learned about the draft from, nor even what type of entities the people she’s gathered this information from represent. In other words, even if this draft does indicate something, ClickZ News has no first-hand confirmation that it exists.

Arbogast told me, “If they were sure they were going to clear [the Google/DoubleClick deal], they wouldn’t have done it [drafted the SO].”

Web Site Promotion - Are You Requesting Free Backlinks?
 by: Robert Fuess

Everyone who is trying to improve their web site’s ranking wants backlinks. This is an essential ingredient to your web site promotion strategy. Some happen because the right person (a webmaster) stumbled across your web site and likes your content. But you can get many more links on other web sites pointing to yours - if only you ask them. One-way links (where they link to your page but you don’t have to link back) are much more valuable to your web site promotion than link exchanges, and they often take the same amount of effort to obtain. Search engines rate these more heavily when evaluating your web site. These free backlinks can be obtained by politely asking the webmaster to make the addition of your web site resource.

Only if a webmaster requests a link exchange do I consider doing such. The web site promotion strategy I normally use is to start by asking for what I really want.

WHAT NOT TO DO:

Above all, courtesy and personal touch is a must with these emails. Don’t make these requests appear too cold or canned. Don’t be insistent or prideful.

This post is by Mohsin of Blogging Bits.

Want to take your copywriting to the next level?

Avoid clichés like the plague.

OK, so there’s a cliché in the headline, the opening and the picture of this post, and we’re all in on the joke. But outside of irony, are clichés something you want in your writing?

Clichés are the words and phrases that come to your mind when you write your first draft. They are the language you hear and use when gossiping with your pals. Put simply, in writing, clichés are bland and overused phrases that fail to excite, motivate, and impress your readers or prospective buyers.

Two years back, when I read great copy, or compelling writing in general, I was sucked into it and couldn’t pop my head out until I reached the last full-stop. I wondered what was in such a writing that made it so irresistible.

I kept wondering until I became a blogger, and saw writing from a writer’s standpoint. I discovered that it was the clever use of words that hypnotized me. It was the art of presenting routine stories in such ways that left a deep imprint on my mind.
And, yes, it was writing that engaged my attention by avoiding clichés.

In part 1 of this article series on marketing with blogs, I discussed the reasons why blogs are excellent tools for marketing.

In this article I outline some tips on using your blog as a good vehicle for your marketing communications.

Tip # 1: Choose The Topic Of Your Blog Well

Make sure you are targeting the right audience for your products. You might love golf, but you can’t use it to sell your products unless they’re meant for golfers.

You generally wouldn’t write about something like golf on a marketing blog, unless you’re using it as a metaphor.

Pick the topic that will attract the right audience ? people who are looking for your products, but more importantly, people who are willing to actually spend money on them.

If you’re not an expert on your topic, but are learning about it, blog about your learning process. There’s no shame in being a learner, in admitting that you don’t know everything.

In fact your journey could even teach others who are learning and help them relate to your experiences. Products you recommend would then be easy to sell to this group because you’ve established the emotional connection that makes selling easier.