Wendy Montes de Oca | Free Newsletter

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Read Wendy Montes de Oca's previous newsletter articles below:

Muscle Media Buying

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

If you’ve got have a strong e-mail campaign going but you’re looking to expand your direct-response tactics to include online ads, chances are you will do some media buying. Why? Because purchasing banner, text or other display ads can be a very cost effective way to attract customers.

As a multi-channel marketer, many of my responsibilities over the years have required me to buy ad space in magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, and the Web. Along the way, I’ve become an expert (especially with online media), and picked up a few techniques that could save you hundreds, maybe even thousands, of dollars

But before I explain further, I’d like to point out that there are differences in online advertising.

You can focus your ad to be direct-response-oriented, which includes lead generation (acquiring e-mail names) and product sales. Or you can focus your ad on branding. Branding isn’t direct-response marketing – meaning it doesn’t require an immediate action from the consumer. Its goal, rather, is to build awareness and name recognition of a product over time and help it stay in the minds of prospects. In the offline world, think the battle of the cola giants. In the online world, it’s typically video ads like the ones you see for a new car or truck.

Because results are harder to measure with branding, many online marketers lean toward the direct-response model.

Your job as a media buyer is simply to try to get the best bang for the buck when purchasing media units. It involves allocating money for advertising in various outlets, print or online, and negotiating the actual advertising agreement with the publisher. This agreement is known as an IO (insertion order), and will cover the ad unit cost, size, placement, and other critical components (which I’ll address shortly).

Here are some helpful hints to keep in mind when buying media for your sales campaigns.

Hint #1: Keep up with the industry.

Sign up for free industry trade papers, such as DM News, Response Magazine, and Target Marketing, and as many free e-letters as you can read. One of my favorite e-letters is Clickz.com, because it covers the online marketing world in a comprehensive and dynamic way. I also like mediabuyerplanner.com, which keeps you abreast of the latest media-buying news, and DoubleClick.com, which provides some of the marketing industry’s best practices, trends, and forecast reports.

One current trend is flash banners. These ad units support audio/video use (which engages the viewer and is great for branding), but they are more costly than standard flat (no animation) or animated banners.

Hint #2: Know the ad units.

There are many types of banner ads to choose from: leader boards, skyscrapers, buttons, micro banners, and more. You can find a full list of types of ads, as well as industry guidelines for how and when to use them, at iab.net. All of these ad units are available on most websites, but not every type is effective.

For instance, it has been my experience that leader boards (ads that run horizontally across the top of a Web page) or skyscrapers (ads that run vertically along the side of a Web page) are the least effective. The best placements are typically LRECs – large rectangles, such as 300 x 250 IMUs, at the top or middle of a page or within the content. (IMU stands for Internet Marketing Unit.) Putting an ad inside the body of an article is a great placement, since the reader must breeze over the ad while absorbing the content. A recent eyetracking study by The Poynter Institute supported this observation, indicating that banner ads at the top left of the page, as well as ads close in proximity to the body of an article, garnered the most attention from viewers.

This is where you want your message to be!

Hint #3: Master the art of negotiation.

You will be required to analyze many proposals when you’re looking for the right ad space. You’ll need to determine if the prices are cost effective and comparable to industry rates. If you’re looking into buying ad space on CNN.com, for instance, check out the prices for that same ad unit and timeframe on similarly ranked news websites. Also, check out various ad networks to see if any include CNN.com in their coverage. (For more on ad networks, see Hint #7.)

Since many variables can affect ad prices, I recommend starting an “ad unit matrix” to keep track of rates. Break down a spreadsheet into columns for ad unit type, size, placement, website, impressions (how many times the ad unit appears on the website), and CPM (cost per thousand impressions). Click here to se a great tool that easily calculates the CPM for you.

Another factor that can affect pricing is seasonality. Internet traffic typically drops during July and August (because so many people are on summer vacation) and, depending on the industry you’re in, can be slower around the holidays as well. So, when you’re negotiating your media buy, try to get lower rates during those times. If you’re running near a typically slow time, let’s say around Thanksgiving, you may want to pause your ad unit the day before the holiday and the day after so you don’t waste impressions.

To help ensure that you’re getting a comparable rate, check out each site’s traffic ranking and page views to see where it stands in relation to its competitors in terms of popularity and reach. It’s best to get this information from a subscription ranking service, like Nielsen//NetRatings or ComScore – but if you don’t have access to such services, consider the free Alexa ranking website (Alexa.com).

Hint #4: Reporting rules.

Make sure, especially if you buy media from an online ad network, that you have full access to the OAS (online ad server) reporting system. Look for key performance indicators, such as impressions served (ad units that ran), and click-thru rate (the percentage of people who saw your ad and clicked on a link in it). If you are testing various ad units and sizes, each one should have a unique tracking code. If your advertiser doesn’t give you access to their OAS, ask about getting daily or weekly reports from your account executive. These reports will be critical in refining your ad to get maximum results.

As a general guideline, the average click-thru rate for a banner ad/text ad is 0.5 to 2 percent, and the average click-thru rate for a dedicated e-mail (an e-mail ad that a third party sends to their subscribers on your behalf) is 7.5 percent.

Hint #5: Know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.

In your insertion order, have a clause that allows you to terminate your advertising commitment without penalty at a given time (an “out clause” or “termination right”). For instance, most online campaigns can be optimized in about a week. If you’re watching your reporting daily (which I suggest you do for the first two weeks) and notice that not many viewers are clicking on your ad, then you should switch to a different ad. If the second ad is not working, you may want to initiate your termination right, end the campaign, and pay only for the impressions you were served.

Not all advertisers will offer this option, but you should certainly ask for it.

Hint #6: There are no stupid questions.

If you’re buying banner ads or other advertising spots on a website, it’s key to find out a few things from your account executive:

Will your ad be ROS (run of site)? Typically, this means your ad will randomly appear on a site’s home page and most (if not all) subpages within the site. This is more cost effective than a targeted ad in a specific section of the site.
Will your ad position be fixed or rotated (shared) with anyone else’s ad? If shared, what percentage of impressions will your ad receive?
If you’re considering buying a dedicated e-mail from a third-party, find out the size of their e-mail list, how often the list gets mailed, the AUS (average unit sale) per subscriber, and whether or not there will be an introduction or implied endorsement by the list owner. (According to copywriting genius John Forde, this can often help boost response rates by 25 percent or more.) All of these factors will help determine the value of the list and, ultimately, the cost you’re willing to pay to access the people on it.

Hint #7: Be on the lookout for low-cost options.

If you’re targeting a specific audience or a niche buyer, go directly to the website’s publisher for an advertising quote. Cutting out the middleman (ad broker) may get you a better rate. PLUS, it will help you build a relationship with the publisher – which can be advantageous for you down the road.

If your goal is to reach the biggest, broadest audience possible, and you want to run an ad on various websites that have a distinct “channel” or genre (such as entertainment, finance, health, etc.) within the broader subject range of the site, consider an ad network.

Ad networks have an agreement with a variety of popular websites to serve up their ads, and they can sort by website type. Since they typically buy their ad units in bulk from the publishing sites, the networks can pass the savings down to the advertiser and charge a lower CPM rate. Some popular networks include Advertising.com and ValueClick.com. You can find a full list at iwebtool.com.

Just remember to get proposals from more than one network. Some of the lesser-known (Tier 2) networks are looking to make a name for themselves, and may offer better rates. But be wary of “micro” sites, which have little traffic or Web presence. Be sure to ask for a sample of the network’s site listings. I always go for quality over quantity.

Depending on how many impressions you buy from these ad networks, your average cost for an LREC can range from $2 to $5. For blog ads and blog networks, you can often find CPMs lower than $1 or even 50 cents. And if you’re looking to save even more money, ask if remnant inventory is available. Remnant inventory is simply an advertising unit that is not as popular as other ad units on a site and is unsold. Depending on your marketing goal, these ad units may accomplish your objective – and to make them more attractive, networks usually offer them at a lower rate.

Hint #8: Show your poker face.

In this industry, it’s all about confidence and knowledge. If you come across as someone who is savvy to media buying, you’re less likely to be taken advantage of.

Do your homework and follow some of the recommendations above… but your best lessons will happen as you buy.

[Ed. Note: Wendy Montes de Oca, MBA, is ETR's Vice President of Marketing and Business Development. Learn more money-saving, time-saving, business-building Internet marketing techniques at this fall's Info Marketing Bootcamp: Making a Fast Fortune on the "Other Side" of the Internet.]

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Measuring Social Media

Friday, January 9th, 2009

If you’re an online marketer or publisher, chances are you’re well aware of the power of social media optimization (SMO). If you’re new to the world of Internet marketing, you’ll be interested to know that this breakthrough method is a truly inexpensive (practically free) way to create buzz about your products, increase traffic to your site, build trust about your company, and boost your sales.

Today, I’m going to show you a simple way to get started in social media marketing – and an easy three-step process you can use to measure how well it’s working.

In a nutshell, social media is an interactive platform where people can correspond – via chat rooms, forums, bulletin boards, networks (as in MySpace, Facebook, Classmates, LinkedIn, Bebo), user-generated content sharing (as in Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit), wikis (interactive online encyclopedias), and blogs – with like minded individuals who share similar interests, whatever those interests may be.

Cutting-edge businesses and marketing-centric companies have jumped on the social media bandwagon to leverage the increased popularity of this phenomenon. Companies large and small got their marketers to create MySpace, FaceBook, or LinkedIn profiles in order to have their fingers on the pulse of the market, correspond with consumers, and create buzz about their products.

Here at ETR, we’ve been on the Web for some time now, dabbling in all sorts of social media activities with content syndication, viral marketing, and online PR efforts.

Recently, we started leveraging the presence of our individual team members on LinkedIn. If you’re not familiar with this site, it’s a network community for business professionals. Users can set up profiles highlighting their corporate experience and areas of expertise.

Edwin Huertas, one of ETR’s search engine marketing specialists, answers select questions on LinkedIn that are related to his area of expertise. He also uploads blog posts about a variety of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), pay-per-click (PPC), and social media practices. This helps create buzz about ETR (through Edwin’s profile and position at ETR). Plus, he sometimes supplements his posts with links back to relevant articles on our website – which helps drive traffic to the ETR site.

This is a practice you can emulate easily. Simply register as a member of one of the social media groups. Then begin to participate in the discussions. For instance, if a LinkedIn member posts a specific question about SEO, Edwin will try to find an article on our ETR site that addresses that issue. He then answers the question in his own words, but recommends that the member also read the ETR article, which has more valuable information. By answering questions posed by your fellow members (making sure you add relevant links back to content on your website), your posts will begin to generate “free” traffic.

Another site that works well for us is StumbleUpon.com. This site directs Internet surfers to Web pages based on the surfer’s pre-selected categories every time they click on the “Stumble” icon on their toolbar.

You can install the StumbleUpon toolbar on your own computer and recommend articles on your own site. This allows you to give any page a “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down” rating. It also allows you to include a brief description and category for your submission. If you rate your article, it will appear in the StumbleUpon rotation – which, again, means ‘free’ traffic to your site.

Getting started is super-easy. But the key to making social media work for you is the same with any marketing medium: You need to have a way to find out if it’s working.

Although many marketers have been going all out with their social media efforts, most haven’t a clue as to how to actually measure the campaign’s success or failure.

Let’s say Early to Rise just published an article on goal setting for 2009. The article is followed by a related product ad in the ETR issue, as well as by a separate e-mail promotion for a related goal setting product, like our Total Success Achievement program. Product sales are generated from the e-mail and from the ad. Meanwhile, the social media aspect takes over.

The article content is syndicated via RSS feeds, as well as top article directories (like EzineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleBase, Buzzle, and others) and user-generated content networks (such as Digg and Reddit). Readers may also discuss the article on goal setting and self-improvement blogs, forums, and bulletin boards.

So how could you measure the social media aspect of such an effort?

It’s easy. By using the same metrics that are used to measure a public relations effort: Outputs, outcomes, and objectives – what I like to call the “3 O’s.”

1. Outputs (measures effectiveness and efficiency)

For our example, I’d look at Google Analytics for spikes in traffic to the Early to Rise homepage in the days following the article’s publication. I’d look specifically at traffic sources, visits, unique visits, and visit percentages. I’d also look at referring sites and search engines to see whether the traffic is coming directly from social media platforms. And I’d look for an increase in new ETR subscriber sign-ups (leads) during that same time period.

2. Outcomes (measures behavioral changes)

For this metric, I’d look at feedback from our customers… e-mails, phone calls, comments posted on our ETR member forum. I’d also do some reputation monitoring by searching the Web for keywords like “ETR,” the article title, and the product name to see if others were talking about it in chat rooms, external forums, and bulletin boards.

3. Objectives (measures business objectives/sales)

The most obvious and directly related metric is direct sales of the product that are tied to the editorial. Orders generated from an e-mail link or ad link are coded for tracking, so attributing sales to those sources is definitive. If the sales come from a product page on our website where the true “source” cannot be tracked, I’d look at the sales during the corresponding dates of the campaign for correlations.

Finally, for each of the above, I would compare the current campaign data versus the year-to-date (YTD) average and year-over-year data to clearly illustrate pre- and post- campaign performance. In other words, I’d check out website traffic, unique visits, specific product sales, etc. – all for the same time periods. That way, I’d have an established benchmark against which to measure our current social media efforts.

Social media is a low cost and effective way to spread the word about your company and products, as well as to conduct market research. By understanding the “3 O’s” and how they work, you can actually quantify your efforts with hard data… a critical component for any direct marketer.

[Ed. Note: You don't need a whole lot of money to get an Internet business up and running... or to market to your potential customers. Of course, marketing is only one part of getting your business to start churning out cash. With a membership in ETR's Internet Money Club, our panel of experts will guide you through every business-building step... and keep you energized and motivated.

If you're interested in an automatic income stream that can generate profits for the rest of your life, there's probably NEVER been a better opportunity than this one. Learn more here.]

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Christmas Eve, Italian Style

Saturday, December 20th, 2008

I grew up in an Italian/Irish household. That meant Christmas Eve dinner was usually a mouth-watering feast of seafood delights and culinary delicacies. Antipasto (a wonderful assortment of meats, cheeses, and vegetables), shrimp fra diavolo, fried calamari, breaded flounder, baked scallops, homemade rice balls, and, of course, pasta. Lots and lots of pasta. Dessert was even better with 7-layer rainbow cookies, cannolis, and cappuccino.

All of our extended family would arrive around 7:00 p.m. We’d sit around drinking wine or sparkling cider and eating antipasto while watching a Yule log burn on TV. The air was filled with Dean Martin and Johnny Mathis holiday tunes. And the kids clustered around the tree shaking boxes and trying to figure out what was in them.

Dinner started around 10:00 p.m. – and, as at every family event, we had an adult table and a kids’ table (with the “kids” ranging in age from toddler to 18 years old!). The food and conversation was savored for hours. We’d reminisce about the past, and poke fun at Uncle “Joe” (you know, that quirky relative that every family has). And we’d laugh until our faces turned as red as the wine.

Finally, the magical moment of midnight arrived. The kids moved like a swarm of bees from the table to the tree – waiting for “the word” to start opening their gifts. Then they were off like the start of the Kentucky Derby, ripping open their beautifully wrapped gifts and checking to see who got what. Mom, Dad, aunts and uncles watched with glee as each child seemed to get exactly what they’d wished for.

And then – just when you’d think it was all over – there were the stocking stuffers. We’d run over to the stair rail where we’d hung our stockings and find lots of goodies stuffed neatly inside (usually chocolates, jewelry, and other small trinkets).

Things started to wrap up around 2:00 a.m., and we all went to sleep with full bellies and full hearts.

When we awoke on Christmas morning, there were no stockings to ransack or gifts to open. But there were plenty of new things to play with all day long… with one caveat: We had to wait until we got back from church.

[Ed. Note: What's your favorite holiday tradition? Let us know right here.]

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Let’s Get Reciprocal: Maximizing Ad Swaps, Guest Editorials, and JV Opportunities

Friday, December 12th, 2008

Now is a great time to look to your competition for opportunities to help grow your list and add extra revenues to your bottom line for little or no cost.

For example, here at Early to Rise I just completed media buy (i.e., outside advertising purchasing) recommendations for all of our newsletters – Early to Rise, Total Health Breakthroughs, and Investor’s Daily Edge. My advice was to reduce them to help control costs through the end of 2008, as the tough economy continues to impact everyone. But my number one focus is, instead, for each marketing manager to concentrate on leveraging the marketing and editorial relationships we have with our fellow publishers and aggressively pursuing ad swaps, guest editorials, and joint ventures (JV).

The idea is to develop synergistic relationships that are mutually beneficial – to look for areas of deficiency in your competitors and think of ways your company can fill the void.

One potential partner may have a great front-end product (e.g., a low cost e-book) but no up-sell (e.g., a higher-priced related kit containing DVDs, CDs, and workbooks). Another potential partner may have an innovative back-end product but no cost-effective front-end product to bring new customers in the door. Still others may have large, qualified lists but need editorial to bond with their lists. (This frequently happens when marketers collect names through their websites or direct mail, but don’t have a regularly scheduled publication – such as an e-newsletter – to offer people who sign up.)

Some tips to keep in mind when looking for potential partners:

• Do your homework. Find out, in advance, who will be at industry events that you’ll be attending. (Check the program for speakers, vendors, and participants.) Sign up for their e-newsletters. Read their promotional e-mails. Maybe even purchase some of their products.

• Look at EVERY opportunity as a way to maximize your company’s brand. When you go to industry events, don’t eat dinner alone in your hotel room. Go to functions. Mingle. Network. Have a genuine conversation with a potential partner… then, if there’s a synergy between your two companies, exchange business cards.

At this year’s ETR Info Marketing Bootcamp, I noticed that attendees were really taking advantage of all the opportunities to network with each other and the ETR staff…during presentation breaks, lunch time, cocktail parties – whenever and wherever – making the most out of the experience!

• Before you contact a potential partner, get familiar with his products and target audience and figure out how your company may be able to dovetail with his product line or marketing efforts.

So, once you’ve made the connection, now what?

Ad Swaps

Assuming you both have e-newsletters, you can test the waters and see how your lists will react by doing an advertising swap. In other words, you run an ad in his e-newsletter and he runs an ad in yours.

To make sense out of the results of that test, you have to know your “opportunity cost” – the “cost” you will incur for running an outside ad to your list instead of your own ad. If you normally sell ad space in your e-newsletter, this cost could simply be the flat rate fee you typically charge. Or, if you know the average revenues an issue brings in, you could calculate the potential “missed opportunity” of letting another ad run to your list on a given day.

You should also agree to share important information with your partner. Before his ad runs in your e-newsletter, point out any creative issues. (Perhaps the copy is too inflammatory for your list. Perhaps it’s too competitive.) Provide your partner with your e-newsletter’s sent and deliverability sizes, open rate, and ad click rate. Exchanging performance data is critical to a long and mutually beneficial relationship. It has to be a win/win situation for the partnership to work.

Whether your goal is to attract names for your e-list (lead generation) or to make sales, reciprocate in kind. If your partner is letting you do a name collection ad to his list, for example, let him run the same kind of ad to your list. But first make sure his list is approximately the same size as yours. If it’s substantially smaller, you may want to hold off on an ad swap with that publisher until he builds his subscriber base. You don’t want the initiative to be one-sided.

However, on a case-by-case basis, it doesn’t hurt to extend “good will” to a fellow publisher with proven marketing muscle. For example, when Total Health Breakthroughs launched in summer of 2007, I reached out to several industry friends and colleagues, asking if we could run a lead generation ad to their lists to help us build our subscriber base. We had little to offer in return at the time. (We barely had a list of our own.) But, thankfully, many agreed. The THB list grew in no time, and we were soon able to reciprocate.

Guest Editorials

You can also look into doing guest editorials in other publishers’ e-newsletters – with an editorial note or byline that links to your offer. This is a great way to get introduced to a new list with the “implied” endorsement of the publisher. His endorsement gives you credibility. And if you provide his readers with good, solid, useful information, they will bond with you quickly.

This is a soft-sell approach that may or may not yield results on its own. But when coordinated with either a dedicated e-mail (if your partner is on board with a revenue split) or an e-newsletter ad the same week, your conversion rate (the number of people who go on to buy your product) will dramatically improve.

Joint Ventures (JVs)

I’ve got one more idea for you: joint venturing. This is a quick and cost-effective way to make money with your list even if you have not yet developed any products.

With a JV, you have an instant product line with no overhead costs. Your partner will supply the products, fulfill orders, and provide customer support. All you have to do is promote the products to your list and split the net revenues with them. For an even a more turnkey approach, you can sell e-reports through sites like Clickbank.com, where everything is automated.

To determine the viability of a potential JV product, there are several strategic marketing variables to consider. I like to think of them as “PPPGS”:

P = Product quality

P = Price point

P = Performance (when promoted to your potential partner’s house list, as well as to outside lists)

G = General market demand

S = Subscriber interest (when promoted to your list, as determined by feedback, surveys, etc.)

Remember – you’re looking for long-term partners, not one-hit-wonders. So carefully select the people you approach, making sure their products make sense relative to your business…and, together, you can reap the unlimited profit potential of reciprocal marketing!

[Ed. Note: You don't need a whole lot of money to get an Internet business up and running...or to market to your potential customers. Of course, marketing is only one aspect of getting your business to start churning out cash. With a membership in ETR's Internet Money Club, our panel of experts will guide you through every business-building step... and keep you energized and motivated the whole year long.

If you're interested in an automatic income stream that can generate profits for the rest of your life, there's probably NEVER been a better opportunity than this one. Learn more here.]

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My Favorite Thanksgiving Tradition: The Best of Two Worlds

Thursday, November 27th, 2008

For my husband and me, Thanksgiving is an international delight. My family is Italian and Irish. His is Latin American. When he was growing up, my husband and his family did not celebrate our American holiday. But since they’ve moved to the United States, they have embraced it wholeheartedly.

Dinner at our house is a culinary tour de force with the best traditional American, Italian, and Latin American foods you can imagine. Of course, we have turkey with stuffing (pavo con pan relleno), mashed potatoes (pure de papas), and veggies. We also have my Uncle Joe’s famous antipasto with the sharpest of provolone cheese, pepperoni, and artichokes, as well as my mother-in-law’s mouthwatering lechon and ensalada Russa. Lechon, a holiday dish in South America, is a whole or quarter roasted pig. And ensalada Russa, or “Russia salad,” is simply potato salad with peas, carrots, and hard-boiled eggs.

After hours of eating, chatting, drinking sidra (apple cider), and listening to Uruguayan folk music, the meal is topped off with good ole American apple pie… and a game of soccer. Truly the best of both worlds.

[Ed. Note: What is your #1 favorite Thanksgiving tradition? Let us know right here.]

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The 5 Faces of Your Customer

Friday, November 21st, 2008

One of the most profound business books I ever read was Permission Marketing by Seth Godin.

The ideas in the book were very innovative at the time. The Internet and e-mail marketing were still young, and, like the Wild Wild West, most marketers and business owners were still trying to “wrangle it in” and figure out how to leverage the Web’s possibilities… and, more important, turn those possibilities into profits.

In a nutshell, the book explained “how to turn strangers into friends and friends into customers.” The principle behind this is to first understand the difference between cold (or interruption) marketing - like those annoying phone calls you always seem to get during dinner asking you to subscribe to the local newspaper… and permission marketing – where the prospect is actually giving you permission to contact them by “opting in” to receive your messages.

To help you get the most out of your Internet marketing, I have expanded on Mr. Godin’s “stranger/friend/customer” concept and added two key components: multi-buyer and advocate. And I’ll show you how you can leverage each of these segments to help grow your business.

Leveraging Your Customers Throughout Their Life Cycle

You may think that a customer is someone who buys from you – period. But that’s a very limited view. From the instant you “meet” your customer… until he’s become a VIP buyer who’s spent hundreds or thousands of dollars with your company… you should be interacting with him in different ways. Treating him properly every step of the way will create a true win/win situation. Your customer will continue to enjoy satisfying experiences with your company, and your company will enjoy the positive effect this relationship will have on its bottom line.

Here are the five stages a customer can go through during his life cycle, and how you can make the most of each one…

Stage 1: Stranger

The stranger or “prospect” doesn’t know you. Your job is to get her attention. You have only a few seconds to get her to react – whether it’s by asking her to click on your ad or open your e-mail message. Which means that your copy for the ad headline or e-mail subject line is critical.

Once you’ve captured her attention, your #1 goal is to have this stranger “opt in” to receive your messages, giving you a chance to continue to bond with her. This is also the time to start to build trust. Show your creditability. And explain what you can do for her (fill a desire, answer a need).

Stage 2: Friend

The friend has demonstrated an interest in your initial promotion and has opted in to receive more information from you. This gives you an outstanding opportunity to introduce him to your philosophy, your company, and your mission, and to re-enforce how you can help him.

During this stage, it’s best to send a series of introduction e-mails (anywhere from 5 to 7) and withhold your new friends from your general mailing list. You don’t want them (the newest names on your list) to start receiving promotional messages BEFORE they receive some of your editorial messages.

We send six introductory e-mails to new Early to Rise subscribers. Each e-mail is a special issue of ETR that’s composed of articles that present our core philosophies. This gives our new subscribers a chance to “warm up” to our expert contributors, the format of our newsletter, and the topics we typically address. Only after they are warmed up do we start sending them ETR as usual – including our promotional e-mails.

Stage 3: Customer/Client

The customer (or client) is someone who has bought into your philosophy and purchased a product (or service) from you.

Many companies make the mistake of ending the customer relationship at this point. But after reading this article, you’ll know better… you’ll know that getting the customer is only the beginning. Keeping him is another story.

You don’t want to put all your eggs into one acquisition basket while having few or no retention efforts. Good retention strategies entail ongoing communication (both promotional and editorial), outstanding customer service, quality products, and fulfilling your promises. Of course there will always be things outside of your control (like losing customers to market conditions). But the idea is to be proactive and not reactive. Keep the “80/20 rule” in mind – which states that 80 percent of your sales come from 20 percent of your customers.

Stage 4: Multi-Buyer

The multi-buyer is a customer who is tied into your brand and demonstrates product loyalty with your company. Multi-buyers have purchased several products from you, and are not afraid to spend money. These folks are your best list to roll out new products to or test higher price points. If you are thinking about creating a “VIP” or “Lifetime” product, you’re going to want to advertise to this list. Multi-buyers will have a high lifetime value (LTV) for you, and will likely purchase cross-channel. In other words, they will buy from you no matter how you contact them – whether via banner ads, e-mail marketing, direct mail, or telemarketing.

Stage 5: Advocate

This segment of your customer database is your holy grail. Your list of advocates is made up of the most satisfied and loyal of your customers – and contains your best “unpaid” employees. Advocates will do your advertising for you by telling friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances about your products and services. And in today’s Net-based environment, advocates are a major force in getting your name in the blogsphere and social communities… and spreading your marketing message virally.

So how do you create advocates? Well, advocates are not created, they’re cultivated over time. The advocate must, of course, believe in your products and services. But for this special group, the customer experience goes deeper… to an emotional level. The advocate feels personally touched by your service, product, or guru. Because of you, her life is changed – and she’s busting at the seams to help others as she has been helped.

Your advocates are people you want testimonials from. People you can invite to be in BETA test or focus groups. And people to get feedback from to help develop future products. Even better, this group can help you make more money in the future. At ETR, some of our best JV (joint venture) partnerships have been with our advocates – people who understand our core values, respect our business, and have a company or product that’s synergistic to our own.

You want to treat these folks like the VIPs they are and invite them to special events or let them be the first to receive discounted offers. You may even consider creating affiliate marketing or referral programs to “formalize” this group’s verbal recommendations.

Always keep in mind that the effort does not stop at the sale. Since it costs more to obtain new leads than to retain existing customers – now, more than ever – you have to know how to optimize the five stages of the customer life cycle.

[Ed. Note: Treating your customers right - no matter where they are in their life cycle - will ensure that your business prospers.

To get a clear and easy-to-follow model for building your own information marketing powerhouse, order ETR's 2008 Info Marketing Bootcamp DVD Library. It's your chance to learn dozens of additional strategies for treating your customers well, marketing your products, and helping your business grow. Get your copy today.]

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Rescue Me?

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

Have you ever been in the middle of an online purchase and, for whatever reason – pre-buyer’s remorse, second thoughts – decided not to continue with it and backed out of the sales page?

If you did, I’m sure you’ve seen those little windows that magically appear on your computer screen.

They’re known as “rescue pop-ups,” and many successful e-tailers use them in a last-minute attempt to save the sale. Some of these pop-ups ask you if you’re sure you want to end the purchase (in case you backed out of the page by accident). Others offer you an incentive to continue with the purchase, perhaps free shipping or a discount.

Recently, some sites have taken a multi-channel approach that encourages the user to “click here to speak to a live person.” In essence, you’re crossing from one marketing channel to another – going from click to call. This is especially attractive to customers who feel hesitant about doing an online transaction… or who simply need that extra human interaction before making the purchase.

Although some find rescue pop-ups intrusive or annoying, they definitely serve a purpose. And if even one sale is saved as a result, it’s worth it for the e-tailer. Hey, if your customers don’t want to see ‘em, they can always enable their pop-up blockers!

[Ed. Note: Using a rescue pop-up is just one marketing strategy you might want to test. Remember, the more channels you involve in your marketing mix, the better your chance of reaching your customer exactly when she wants to buy. Get the comprehensive guide to multi-channel marketing - and learn how it can make you a more valuable employee and a better businessperson - right here.]

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A Must-Have for Your Business-Building Arsenal

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

Over the course of the last 8.5 months, various members of the Early to Rise team have been involved – in one way or another – with the whirlwind simply known around our office as “CTC.”

CTC, or Changing the Channel, is the new book co-written by Michael Masterson and MaryEllen Tribby. Whether you’re a marketer, entrepreneur, expert, or novice – if you’re looking to increase revenues and start or grow your business through breakthrough multi-channel marketing techniques, this is a “must-have” for your business-building arsenal. Changing the Channel has cost-effective, powerful, and easily executable real-world solutions to common business problems.

I’ve been in direct marketing for almost 15 years, and before I read the galley (a pre-publication version of the book) I figured, “What else is there to learn? I’ve practically seen and done it all.”

However, I still took away some very useful tactics from Changing the Channel. It took me less than a day to read the entire book. And if you’re like me – passionate about marketing and business – you won’t be able to put this book down.

What I like best about Changing the Channel is that it not only gives theory but also practical, hands-on examples that anyone – from a stay-at-home mom looking to start a home-based business, to a struggling entrepreneur, to a marketing director at a Fortune 500 company – can use to make money. And that the tactics are not wallet-busting either, which is ideal in today’s current economic environment.

Some of my favorite parts of the book include:

1. The “putting it all together” section of the Direct Mail chapter, which clearly illustrates a comprehensive mail plan spreadsheet.

2. Chapter 15, “The Incredible Power of a Multi-Channel Campaign,” which includes what NOT to do in a new product launch.

3. The Appendix. Yes, the Appendix. I know that appendices in books are usually wasted space, containing useless, boring addendums. But this Appendix is chock full of real multi-channel marketing examples you can study and emulate.

Plain and simple, if you’re looking to excel at business… ANY business… you’ve got to pick up a copy of Changing the Channel.

[Ed. Note: The more marketing channels you use, the more money you stand to make. But before you jump into any new form of marketing, you should know a little about it. You can get the details behind channels like Internet marketing, television, magazines, and much more in the brand-new book by MaryEllen Tribby and Michael Masterson. Learn how to get your copy right here.]

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Don’t Overlook Organic Search Efforts in Your Online Marketing Mix

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Many Internet entrepreneurs think they’re doing everything they can to get the word out about their businesses. They allocate their marketing budgets to direct mail, e-mail, banner ads, print ads, co-registration, and pay-per-click (PPC). They spend much of their time, effort, and money on getting those channels to produce a positive ROI (return on investment). But they’re ignoring a major source of potential traffic… which means they are losing hordes of potential new customers. Big mistake.

I’m talking about organic search via search engine marketing and optimization (SEM/SEO).

Many marketers think focusing on organic search is "a waste of time." Some think there’s no way to monitor, measure, and monetize the results. But they’re either clueless or misinformed. For instance, according to a recent survey by Jupiter Research, 80 percent of Web users get information from organic search results. And measuring sources of traffic and visitors is easy with the free Web tool Google Analytics.

Search engines like diversity in relevant back links to your website. And one of the best ways to get lots of relevant back links – as I said in my article about the SONAR Method of Content Distribution – is with a synchronized distribution of your content to a variety of sources.

So in addition to having optimized website pages, having a variety of news aggregators, social networks, blogs, and directories linking to your site helps give you a heavier weight in organic listings. This helps build your organic market presence for little or no cost. And, let’s face it, low cost is a good thing.

Using organic search strategies helped increase traffic rank and visits to ETR’s sister publication, Total Health Breakthroughs, by 3,160 percent and 81.5 percent, respectively, in only three months. In that same time period, Total Health Breakthroughs had a 62.01 percent rate of converting that organic search traffic into subscribers. That’s about 16,000 organic names in three months at virtually no cost!

Now tell me… does that seem like a waste of time to you?

[Ed. Note: Wendy Montes de Oca is ETR's Vice President of Marketing & Business Development. For step-by-step instructions on starting your own Internet business, get ETR's Magic Button program. Click here to learn more.]

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See It and Achieve It: The Power of Visualization

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Years ago, very early in my career, I attended a two-day training session on the power of visualization and goal setting. I believe it changed my life.

I was working for a financial division of General Electric in New York City. GE was very big on continuing education for their employees at every level of the organization.

Most everyone in the training session that day, including me, was in their early twenties and had administrative positions. A few of my co-workers were skeptical about the session. They thought it was hokey and would have no real, tangible benefit for them. They looked at it as two easy days out of the office.

The session started with a series of mental exercises. Then the facilitator asked us to close our eyes and see ourselves in 10-15 years.

We went around the room, listening to each person’s visualization, one by one. Most of the participants weren’t very enthusiastic. They had little to say and just a vague idea of where they saw themselves in the future.

Finally, it was my turn. I announced to the room that I saw myself in a professional office environment, wearing a red "power" suit. I was confident and respected. I seemed busy, but in control. I was knowledgeable and successful. I described a complete scenario, right down to the wood my desk was made of (mahogany).

Now I wasn’t sure what my actual job was in that scenario. (At the time, I was an administrative assistant in the company’s marketing department and was going to college, majoring in pre-law.) Yet, I could see myself as an accomplished, corporate professional.

Until then, I’d never envisioned with such clarity what I wanted to do with my life. However, after seeing in my mind’s eye where I wanted to be, I was inspired to put in the time and education needed to get there.

As with any journey, having a map helps you get to your destination quicker than if you try to go it alone. And that’s what visualization is: a mental blueprint or personal roadmap for success. The image I had of myself and my future made it easier for me to take the actions I had to take.

In two years, I advanced from an administrative to a directorial position. And because I was so eager to achieve my "vision," I continued to work full-time while going to school full-time to complete my Bachelor’s degree. The fire within me continued to burn, and I went on to graduate school, completing my Master’s degree several years ago.

So for those who say the power of visualization is baloney, I say "It works." And I’m not the only one.

Bob Cox, the "voice" of ETR’s Total Success Achievement program, is a big believer in the power of visualization. "It helps you reconnect to the ‘why’ behind your goals," he says. "Why do you want additional income? If the reason is to buy a new car, visualize what your new car looks like and what features it has. If you want to take your family on vacation, visualize in detail where you’re going and what you’re doing. Visualizing in detail will keep your goals real and motivate you to take action."

Robert Ringer has been an advocate of visualization for many years. He uses "active visualization" to handle obstacles in the boardroom and on the baseball field. Michael Masterson has used visualization to help reduce the anxiety of facing a challenge. And Brian Tracy recommends using visualization to transform bad habits into good ones.

You can apply the technique of visualization to attract success, money, love, health, power, and more.

What do you want? Where do you want to be in five or 10 or 15 years? Get a mental snapshot of the "big picture," then let your mind fill in the specifics. You may even find a picture in a magazine – a beautiful house, a sports car, or a person with a super-fit body – that will be your motivation for success.

Once you have a concrete vision in your head, you’ll be much more excited about doing what’s necessary to turn it into reality.

See what the power of visualization can do for you… and put yourself in control of your own destiny. You won’t be disappointed.

[Ed Note: Wendy Montes de Oca is ETR's Vice President of Marketing & Business Development. People from all over the country have already experienced the power of managing their destinies through motivation, determination, and goal setting. Discover the secrets that have made them successful. Click here now to learn more.]

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How to Find Customers in a Web 2.0 World

Friday, February 22nd, 2008

You’ve probably heard about Web 2.0. It’s all the rage these days. But do you really know what it is? More important, do you know how to use it to your advantage?

Today, I’m going to reveal one Web 2.0 technique you can use to help attract targeted, qualified prospective customers to your website. But first, here’s the 411.

Web 2.0 isn’t a newfangled Internet technology or software. And it’s not a marketing tactic, per se. It’s simply the evolution of the Internet into an environment of interactivity, reader participation, and usability. This, in effect, changes users’ Web behavior. As Tim O’Reilly – founder of O’Reilly Media and the guy who coined the term "Web 2.0" – puts it… it’s "harnessing collective intelligence" through user-generated content.

Web 2.0 opens up the dialog between user and website or blog. This connection can help generate traffic and a viral buzz. Patrick Coffey pointed out in a recent ETR article that not all Web 2.0 traffic is a good thing. But from a search engine marketing (SEM) standpoint, the benefits are clear and measurable: More traffic and frequent interactivity (or posts) equal better organic (free) rankings in search engine results.

Getting good organic rankings is a powerful way to find qualified prospective customers. A recent eye-tracking survey of people doing an Internet search showed that 70 percent of the time their eyes go to the upper-left side of the search results (the organic listings). Their eyes go to the right side of the search results (the paid listings) only 30 percent of the time.

One way to increase your organic rankings – and take advantage of Web 2.0 user behavior – is with targeted online acquisition polls.

Online polls can help you collect names and e-mail addresses, gauge general market (or subscriber) sentiment, and generate sales via a redirect to a promotional page. They also allow for interactivity, where a user can sound off about a hot topic. I’ve been including polls in my online marketing strategy for at least six years now, and have rarely been disappointed with the results.

Some websites, like surveymonkey.com, allow members to set up free or low-cost surveys and polls. However, they may not allow you to include a name-collection component or a redirect to a promotional offer. If that’s the case, either ask your Webmaster to build you a proprietary poll platform or use a poll script. (You’ll find examples at hotscripts.com, bgpoll.com/, ballot-box.net/faq.php, micropoll.com, and 2enetworx.com.)

Here are eight ways to help make your Web 2.0 poll a success:

1. Make it engaging.

Your poll question should engage the reader, encourage participation, pique interest, and tie into a current event. And be sure to have a "comments" field where people can make additional remarks. Sample topics: politics, the economy, health, consumer breakthroughs, the stock market, foreign affairs. Sites that highlight the most talked-about (and searched) topics on the Web include buzz.yahoo.com/, 50.lycos.com/, and google.com/press/zeitgeist.html.

2. Be relevant.

Your poll question should also be related to your product, free e-zine topic, or free bonus report topic. This will greatly improve your conversion rate (the number of people who actually participate in your poll) and your up-sell rate. Let’s say your free offer is a sign-up for an investment e-zine and your up-sell is a redirect landing page promotion for a paid investment newsletter. In that case, your poll question should be something like "Do you think the Dow will rise or fall in 2008?"

3. Offer an incentive.

After people take your poll, tell them that to thank them for their participation you’re automatically signing them up for your free e-zine or e-alerts… which they can opt out of at any time. To reduce the number of bogus e-mail addresses you get, offer a free "must-read" e-report too. And assuming it’s your policy not to sell or rent e-mail names to third parties (and it should be), indicate that next to the sign-up button. This will reassure people that it’s safe to give you their e-mail address.

4. Tag the responses.

Having your poll question somehow tie into your product line makes the names you collect extremely qualified for future offers. Each name should be "tagged" by your database folks according to the answer they gave. Segmenting the names into such categories will make it easier for you to send targeted offers to them later.

Let’s say your product line includes an investment e-zine on equities. In that case, your poll question might ask people which investment product they think has the best returns: money market, gold, equities, or options. Those who answer "equities" will be prime candidates for a promotion for the e-zine.

5. Use the results for new initiatives.

In addition to collecting names, online polls will help you gauge general market opinion – and could help you come up with new products. Keeping with our above example, you would flag all of the responses that come in. Then, if an overwhelming number of responders indicate an interest in an investment product you don’t have – maybe one on gold – you should consider developing one. Because you now have an instant market of people to sell that product to.

6. Strengthen your new relationships.

You need to reinforce the connection between the poll people just participated in and your e-zine or e-alerts. So make sure each name that comes in gets an immediate "thank you" (for taking the poll). Then send an automatically generated e-mail with the link for the downloadable free e-report you promised. Consider sending a series of "bonding" e-mails to them too – to help them get to know who you are, what you do, and how it will benefit them. This will help improve their lifetime customer value.

7. Gratify participants with the results.

Don’t just leave poll participants hanging. Make sure you tell them that the results will be published in your free e-zine or on your website (to encourage them to check it regularly). This will help increase readership and website traffic.

8. Publish the best reader comments.

On your poll landing page, mention that some user feedback may be published (anonymously) in your e-zine or on your website. Pick the very best, most powerful responses to use. Republishing user feedback is fundamental to the Web 2.0 concept. And it has been extremely successful for social networking communities and blogs.

Marketers have used polls to collect names for years. However, with the recent surge in (and buzz about) Web 2.0, now – more than ever – polls should be included in your online marketing mix.

Polls aren’t just for finding new customers. They allow you to measure customer sentiment – which, in turn, can impact customer retention and service

[Ed. Note: Wendy Montes de Oca is ETR’s Vice President of Marketing & Business Development. For step-by-step instructions on starting your own Internet business, get ETR’s Magic Button program. Click here to learn more.]

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7 Foolproof Ways to Increase Your Market Presence and Build Your Business

Friday, January 11th, 2008

Whether you’re talking about the articles you include in your e-zine or about your sales message, one thing is certain: Content is king. The written word has the power to educate and inform… as well as create buzz about your website, product, or service. That’s why one of my jobs here at Early to Rise is to circulate our e-zine articles through multiple delivery channels. Reaching potential subscribers this way helps us increase our readership and, ultimately, our revenues.

ETR’s publisher MaryEllen Tribby and I are firm believers in leveraging our marketing message too. By circulating it in multiple channels – online, e-mail, print, direct mail, and so forth – we are able to touch our prospects through whatever medium they prefer. And for those who like to receive their information through more than one medium, our message is re-enforced every time they see it in another channel.

I strongly encourage you to take this multi-channel marketing approach with your own online business. Here are seven of the best and most cost-effective channels to include in your marketing plan:

1. Paid Search Ads (Pay-Per-Click)

Google and Yahoo are the Titans of the paid-search ad world, with nearly 70 percent of market share. But there are other search engines that have a loyal following, such as MSN.com (with 16 percent market share), AOL.com (with 9.6 percent), Ask.com (5.1 percent), Infospace.com (1.1 percent), and Lycos.com (0.9 percent).

Pay-per-click (PPC) ads with any of these search engines is a cost-effective way to target prospects looking for your specific product and get broad exposure. You create a text ad, then bid on keywords (the words or phrases your target audience will be searching for) to determine your ad’s placement.

PPC paid search ads are perfect for acquiring new customers. That’s because leads that come in this way are searching specifically for your information (via targeted keywords). This makes them highly qualified prospects. For ETR’s sister publication, Total Health Breakthroughs,PPC represents more than 30 percent of its online marketing mix.

2. Organic Search Results (Search Engine Marketing)

Search engine marketing (SEM) has a nominal cost. Annual fees with search engine networks or directories typically range from $25 to $95 per year.

Some consumers give organic search results more “credibility” than paid search ads. And because they “trust” the results of an organic search more, they are more likely to click on an organic link. A recent survey by Jupiter Research illustrated that 80 percent of Web users seek organic search results. Their rationale is that organic results are un-biased. The marketer didn’t pay for that ad space. So the link’s appearance in the search results is based purely on various search algorithms and Web crawlers.

Your goal should be to balance your online presence with both paid ads and organic search results. Alexis Siemon, ETR’s Search Engine Marketing Specialist, optimizes our efforts by (among other things) making sure we have keywords in all the right places. That includes our title tags, URLs, and inside the ETR articles themselves.

3. Banner Ads

Running banner ads on other websites can be another cost-effective part of your online marketing mix. The pricing model for this is typically CPM – a specified price for every 1,000 impressions/views you receive (usually between $3 and $10).

Your media budget for banner ads will vary by:

website
ad unit size/type (300 x 250 typically performs best)
location on website (home page, inside pages)
whether the ad is targeted to a specific page or is on every page of the site
the time of year the ad is running

Online ad networks are a cheaper alternative. Their CPM usually ranges between $2 and $6, and they have a wider reach. Some networks to consider: Advertising.com, ValueClick.com, and FastClick.com. You can find a full list of sites here: imediaconnection.com/resourceconnection/adnetwork.asp.

4. Reciprocal Ad Swaps

Some of your best resources will be your fellow publishers. This channel often gets overlooked by marketers who don’t give it the respect it deserves. In the work I do for ETR and Total Health Breakthroughs, I spend a good portion of my time researching publishers and websites in our industry. I look for relevant connections between their publications (print and online) and ours.

Let’s say I come across an e-letter about marketing that has a list of readers similar in size to ETR’s. Since many of ETR’s subscribers are interested in marketing, they might be interested in a product offered by that marketing e-letter. And that publisher’s subscribers might be interested in one of ETR’s marketing products.

Swapping ads will save you money on lead-generation initiatives. Since you won’t be paying for access to the other publisher’s list of subscribers, you can get new customers for free. The only “cost” is allowing the other publisher to access your own list. It’s a win-win situation. This technique also opens the door to potential joint-venture opportunities.

5. Co-Registration

Marketing expert Andrew Palmer defines co-registration – or “co-reg” – as “the practice of referring leads, subscriptions, or memberships in conjunction with another registration process.”

Co-reg ads use a CPL (cost per lead) payment model. You pay for the leads you capture. Your text ad and a small image of your publication appear on a webpage on another publisher’s website after a primary transaction occurs. Your ad shares the page with other publishers looking to build their own e-mail lists with free subscriptions to their e-letters or free e-reports.

To make this work, I’ve found that you need to send special introductory “bonding” e-mails to the people who sign up for your newsletter before they get added to the general circulation. This helps them remember that they signed up for your e-letter. (So when it shows up in their inbox they won’t think it’s spam.) And it helps increase the potential that those subscribers will convert to paying customers.

For more about this channel, check out Andrew Palmer’s ETR article about using co-reg to attract customers.

6. Direct Mail

Direct mail is still a consumer favorite – and another good way to get your sales message out. It can be especially effective used in concert with another effort, such as an e-mail campaign. A recent survey published in DM News indicated that 70 percent of respondents preferred receiving unsolicited correspondence via mail vs. e-mail.

As with any marketing medium, though, you can end up paying a lot. The most costly direct-mail packages are magalogs and tabloids (four-color mailers that look like magazines). However, 6 x 9 postcards, tri-fold self-mailers, and simple sales letters are three low-cost ways of taking advantage of this channel.

Although 100 percent ROI (return on investment) is what you should aim for, many direct mailers are content with 80 percent. This lower figure takes into consideration the lifetime value of the names that come in from this channel, because they are typically reliable buyers in the future.

7. Print ads

This is another channel that’s gets a raw deal. One reason is because it can be costly. To place an ad in a high-circulation magazine or newspaper, you could shell out serious money. But you don’t need a big budget to take advantage of print ads. If you don’t have deep pockets, consider targeted newspapers and periodicals.

Let’s say you’re selling an investment report. Try using the Internet to research the wealthiest cities in America. Once you get that list, look online for local newspapers in those communities. These smaller newspapers hit your target audience… and offer a much cheaper ad rate than some of the larger, broad-circulation publications. You end up getting quality rather than quantity.

I once paid for an ad in a local newspaper in Aspen, CO that had a flat rate of less than $500. My ROI on this effort turned out to be more than 1,000 percent. How’s that for a positive response rate!

The seven marketing channels I’ve just described can help you reach more customers… and eventually add dollar signs to your bottom line. So start the New Year off with a marketing bang. By leveraging the seven channels of multi-channel marketing, I’m confident you will be amazed by the results.

[Ed. Note: Wendy Montes de Oca is ETR’s Vice President of Marketing & Business Development. You can meet all your marketing goals - and achieve all your personal, social, financial, and business dreams - with the help of ETR’s Total Success Achievement Program. Learn more by clicking here.]

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Use the Slice-and-Dice System to Get Your Customers to Buy More

Saturday, December 15th, 2007

One of the best ways to build your online business is to build your house list of potential customers. But you can also do it by changing the way you market to your existing customers. Today, I want to show you how breaking up your existing customer database can boost your sales.

Data mining, or database marketing, is basically the art of slicing and dicing your own in-house list of names. You do this to help increase the response to your online sales promotions.

You see, once you divide your list of names into smaller groups ("segmentation"), you can specialize your product offers. Then, by targeting your offer based on customer needs, you’ll be promoting products to people who are more likely to buy them. You increase your customers’ satisfaction as well as your potential conversion rates. (The conversion rate is the number of people who not only read your offer but actually purchase the product.) And higher conversion rates means more money for your company.

One proven model is the RFM method. It’s practiced by direct-response marketers all over the world, and is a marketing method we use here at ETR.

"R" stands for Recency, how recently a customer has made a purchase. "F" stands for Frequency, how often the customer makes a purchase. And "M" stands for Monetary, how much the customer spends.

Here’s how you can use the RFM method to help lift your sales.

Recency

Whether your house list is made up of people who signed up to receive your free e-zine or people who paid for a subscription, you can segment your database according to how long your customers have been with you. Let’s say, 0-3 months, 3-6 months, 6-12 months, and 12+ months.

You would look at these groups as your hot subs (newest subscribers), warm subs (mid-point subscribers), and cool subs (those who have been subscribing to your e-zine the longest).

Let’s say your list is made up of subscribers to your free e-zine. Here’s how you use that information…

Because your "cool subs" may have lost their initial enthusiasm for your e-zine, you should cross-reference them with your open rates. If most of them haven’t been opening your e-zine in six, nine, or 12 months, you should consider sending them a special message asking if they still want to receive your e-zine.

But that doesn’t mean you ignore them. These inactive subscribers are a great group on which to test new marketing approaches, new prices, new subject lines, and so on. After all, you have nothing to lose. Your goal for this group is to re-engage them. And since they aren’t responding to your current e-mails, why not use this platform to test?

Your "hot subs" are your newest, most enthusiastic subscribers. They are ripe to learn more about you, your products, and your services. If you handle this group properly, you can cultivate them into paying customers. So you may want to send them targeted offers and messages.

For example, you could send them a special introductory series of e-mails. This special series would introduce them to your e-zine’s contributors and philosophy. It could also tempt them with specially priced offers. Sending an introductory series like this can not only increase the number of subscribers who convert to paying customers, it also increases their lifetime value (LTV) – the amount they spend with you over their lifetime as your customer.

If, instead of subscribers to a free e-zine, your house list is made up of people who paid for their subscription, the same segmentation process applies. You break your active subscribers into hot subs, warm subs, and cool subs. You also break out expirers (those who allowed their subscription to run out) and cancels (those who cancelled their subscription).

Cross-marketing to these lists is usually effective. The expirers often just forgot to renew and simply need a reminder. And just because someone cancelled one subscription doesn’t mean they may not be ideal for another service or product that you provide. If they’re still willing to receive e-mail messages from you, add these folks to your promotional lists.

Once you’ve gotten these otherwise inactive subscribers to open your messages, turning them into paying customers is just a matter of time. Most Internet marketers would have written these people off. So any revenues you get from them are "extra."

Frequency

"It may seem counter-intuitive," says Michael Masterson, "but in the direct-mail world, the best names you can mail to are people who have recently bought products and/or services very similar to what you are selling. The closer you can get to mailing to those who have bought similar products/services, the greater your response rate will be."

This connects to another important way to break down your house list: by how frequently customers have bought from you. So once you’ve divided your list based on recency, you look at it in terms of your customers’ purchase behavior. First, you identify your multi-buyers – customers who’ve purchased more than one product from you. You then split this list further, segmenting out two-time, three-time, four-time (and more) buyers.

Those who have bought from you most often have proven their loyalty and obviously like the products and service they’ve been getting from you. So if, for example, you’re considering launching a new product with a high price point, these would be your best prospects.

Monetary

Finally, you look at your list in terms of money.

One way to do this is to divide your list by the amount of money each customer has spent with you. You might, for example, assign a benchmark dollar amount, such as $5,000, $10,000, or more. Customers at that level make up your "premium buyers." This is the group that has the most favorable LTV for your company. These are your "VIPs."

Once you discover who your VIPs are, you can design products or offers specifically for them. Let’s say you have some kind of exclusive – and expensive – lifetime membership club. You would market this to multi-buyers who also fall into your "premium buyer" category.

If you offer payment options to your customers, another monetary way to divide your list is according to the payment options they have chosen: monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc. This will help you determine the initial purchase tolerance of each group of customers and which ones may respond best to future price points.

As you can see, by looking at your customers’ purchasing habits – recency, frequency, and monetary – you can identify the best customers for certain products. And by offering a product to customers who are likely to want it, you can improve your conversion rates.

By using the RFM model and other data-mining techniques, I’ve seen conversion rates double and triple. I’ve also seen inactive subscribers’ open rates surge from 0 percent to more than 30 percent. That’s quite an accomplishment, considering that the average open rate for the industry is about 20 percent.

I’ll go into more details on how to leverage the power of your own in-house list through segmentation in future issues of Early to Rise. In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about data mining and how to get the most out of your current customer database, I highly recommend an excellent book titled Strategic Database Marketing by Arthur Hughes.

[Ed. Note: Wendy Montes de Oca is ETR's Vice President of Marketing & Business Development. Enjoy the success you've always wanted with ETR's Direct Marketing Quick-Start Kit. This 4-CD program is the most effective, quickest, and least expensive way to move you toward financial independence.]

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The SONAR Content Distribution Method of Getting More Traffic and More Sales

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

Synchronization of your content distribution channels – via online media, PR, and SEM (search engine marketing) – will help maximize and monetize your website traffic.

For any online business, a list of potential customers is your most precious possession and your ticket to selling your products. That’s why two of the first things you need to do is build your e-list and create buzz about whatever it is that you’re selling.

Building an e-list from nothing can be challenging, but the proven method I’m about to explain can help drive traffic to your website and increase your "visibility" on the Web… which, in turn, helps you add hundreds, even thousands, of new prospective customers to your list.

The Internet offers dozens of ways to get your name and ideas out to people who will want to be added to your e-list. You can use pay-per-click ads on Google, you can send out press releases about your latest offers, you can form partnerships with e-letter publishers who write on a subject related to your product line, you can conduct targeted media buys for banner or other display ads, you can optimize your site to get it ranked higher in the major search engines… and much more.

For a new online business, some of these methods are just too expensive to be worthwhile. But one of the best ways to get the attention of as many people as possible – at low or no cost – is to combine some of your marketing efforts into a single, synchronized campaign. And the method I’m about to describe is especially effective for launching a new site and helping an unknown site build traffic quickly.

You see, if you have a website or e-zine, you have editorial content. And by simply distributing this content – in a synchronized manner – to various Internet channels, you can increase your Web presence, grow your database of prospective customers, and create additional sales.

For instance, if you have an article in your e-zine that will be focusing on, let’s say, the latest data and forecast on Widgets, you can repurpose it and distribute it at the same time that article is published in your e-zine (and this is critical) via:

Content syndication networks and syndication partners
Online press releases
Excerpts uploaded to social communities
Article directories and similar websites that allow content submission
Relevant, useful messages posted in related blogs, forums, and bulletin boards

I like to call this technique of leveraging these five combined channels the SONAR Content Distribution Method. Here’s how to do it…

S = Syndicate partners and syndication networks

Many websites encourage article submissions from third parties. One example: a financial site called seekingalpha.com. For additional sites that accept article submissions, search the Web for "content syndication networks" or "article submission websites" (related to your specialty). One content syndication network to consider: Mochila.com.

O = Online press releases

Press releases are often used to get the word out about an important event, but did you ever think you could leverage your editorial content with this medium? Well, you can. Articles from your e-zine can be repurposed to have a press release feel. The most important requirement is for the release to be newsworthy, featuring the latest research data, a forecast, a product breakthrough, a contrarian viewpoint – anything that would be of interest to readers and media professionals. There are several low-cost and free sites that will help you get the most bang for your PR buck.

N = Network communities

Social networks and communities have become a popular way to syndicate content, create buzz, and drive traffic to a website. Communities like Digg.com and LinksMarker.com allow you to upload headlines or snippets of editorial that might get the attention of your prospective customers.

For instance, Alexis Siemon, ETR’s Search Engine Marketing Specialist, might come up with a compelling headline and/or a short description of an article in www.InvestorsDailyEdge.com or www.TotalHealthBreakthroughs.com (ETR’s new alternative health website), and post it on one of those communities. The headline would then be hyperlinked back to the original article. The idea is to make the headlines and descriptions as appealing as possible so more people will click on them. The more people click, the more popular the headline becomes… which leads to even more people clicking on it. This creates interest, buzz, and a potential viral effect.

A = Article directories

If you have a daily or weekly e-zine, sites such as ArticleDashboard.com and AritclesFactory.com allow you to upload your articles to them practically verbatim. Not only does this help with SEO (search engine optimization), but you never know who will be reading those articles and want to republish/syndicate your content on their own sites.

R = Relevant posts to blogs, forums, and bulletin boards

Social networking, online communities, forums, and bulletin boards that encourage reader participation are some of the fastest-growing marketing media online today. And posting on blogs and forums can be a powerful way to increase your market presence, assist in your SEO efforts, and drive traffic to your website.

According to the April 2007 State of the Blogosphere report, there are over 70 million blogs. That’s a mountain of potential customers just waiting to hear what you have to offer. But before you dig in and post your first comments on a blog or forum, you need to know the rules.

For openers, make sure that your posts are relevant, genuine, and serve some purpose for the forum’s readers. A post that says "Blogger231 was right on the money with his observation" does not fit the bill. Nor does a post that merely states your marketing message (and that type of post can get you kicked off many forums). Instead, you want to post a comment that is pertinent to whatever the forum topic is.

For example, if it’s a financial forum about gold stocks, you may want to post your personal opinion about the future of gold prices. Then, subtly mention a great article you read (an article from your website, of course) that substantiates your point, and include the URL so readers can access the article themselves.

Your post should be cohesive, engaging, and encourage response. It also helps your credibility (and that of your message) if you frequent the forum regularly and are an active member… not a random "hit and run" poster. If you do a "hit and run," your hidden motive will become as transparent as cellophane. You will likely be labeled a fake, and no one will pay attention to what you’re saying. Worse, your comments could be labeled spam and banned from the forum. So try to visit several times a week to respond to other people’s posts and interact with fellow members.

Before you try the SONAR Content Distribution Method, make sure you understand this critical point: Synchronization is key. You should distribute content to all five of these channels at the same time. By pummeling the Internet from five directions at once, your company’s name and ideas will suddenly be in multiple places and create an online "snowball" effect.

This synchronized technique helped increase traffic ranking and visits to ETR’s new health website, www.TotalHealthBreakthroughs.com, by 3,160 percent and 81.5 percent, respectively, in only three months. And in four months, we were able to increase traffic to our www.InvestorsDailyEdge.com website by nearly 80 percent, and increase its traffic ranking by nearly 150 percent. Plus, we were able to monetize IDE’s new traffic and get an ROI of 221 percent.

Just think how much new traffic you could drive to your site by applying the SONAR Content Distribution Method to your marketing efforts.

[Ed. Note: Wendy Montes de Oca is ETR's Vice President of Marketing and Business Development. She is a core contributor to our new Internet business-building program, which gives you an all-inclusive, A-to-Z blueprint for starting your own powerhouse Internet business - from learning how to pick a product and set up a website to discovering copywriting secrets from the masters, techniques to help you create an e-mail list, the best ways to market your product, and more. Our hotlist has first access to the 250 spots we've opened up for this breakthrough program, but keep reading ETR to take immediate action when and if we have any spots left.]

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Rescue Your Website From the Internet "Black Hole"

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007

Okay, so you have a website. You’ve spent time and money getting this thing up. You’ve used all your creative juices to get the words just right. And you added some nice graphics to make the site aesthetically pleasing. Now what?

A website is of little use if nobody can find it.

Mastering organic search ranking has proven to be a fundamental part of the online marketing mix. (By "organic," I mean the "natural," as opposed to "paid/PPC," listing that appears when someone conducts a search on Google or other search engines. Optimal placement is typically within the first 20 listings or three pages.)

Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) – the ability to increase your site’s visibility in organic search listings and refine the content structure on the site itself – are critical for market awareness and customer acquisition. According to WebProNews, 66.3 percent of searchers click on organic listings before they click on a sponsored link. Even more important, a recent study by CreativeWebsiteMarketing.com indicates that most people who buy online start with a search engine.

Don’t let your site get lost in Internet obscurity. Here are five simple ways to help boost your website’s traffic and optimization.

1. Create online buzz about your site, product, or service.

You can do this by generating online press releases. There are services on the Web, such as PRWeb.com or Free-press-release.com, that do this for free or at a nominal cost. Another idea is to post comments to high-traffic blogs, bulletin boards, chat rooms, or forums.

Do a Web search for top blogs or news forums that are related to whatever it is that you’re selling. Go to each site, one by one, and post a comment. (Start a new topic or reply to an existing one.) This helps in two ways: One, you create buzz in the marketplace. Depending on your tactics, your message can even go viral. Two, you get a "back-link" to your site that helps when the site is indexed by search engine spiders.

An important note: Your post should be relevant and genuine. Your comment should be relevant to the question you’re replying to, have some sort of value to the readers that view it, and be in the proper area/subject matter on the forum you’re posting to. Stay away from posts that are blatantly self-serving. These posts are viewed as spam by forum webmasters and could get you banned from the forum, or at least be deleted.

For example, MaryEllen Tribby (ETR’s Publisher) had the good fortune to interview Newt Gingrich in March. Immediately after the interview, we posted a press release to several online press distribution services. We also uploaded comments about the interview to news-aggregating services, blogs, and political forums (with a back-link to the release posted in our Investors Daily Edge archive).

Within the weeks following the initial interview, website visits and traffic ranking more than doubled and conversion also showed a spike. Three months later, this release is still being picked up by the media and through syndication… and the Investors Daily Edge website is enjoying residual traffic and back-links from this effort.

Year-to-date, these techniques and the others I’m about to go into have helped increase traffic nearly 80 percent with a monetization of more than 150 percent ROI.

Which leads me to my next strategy…

2. Initiate a relevant inbound link program.

Set up a reciprocal link page or blog roll (a listing of URLs on a blog, as opposed to a website) that can house links from industry sites. Contact these sites to see if they’d be willing to swap links with you – a link to your site for a link to theirs. Again, relevance is key. Search engines shun link harvesting (collecting links from random websites that have no relevance to your site), so these links should be from sites that are similar in nature to your business.

3. Give Web searchers great content and a link back to your site.

Upload relevant content to sites that make such information available to other sites that want to publish it, such as ArticleDashboard.com or ArticlesFactory.com. This is a great way to increase market awareness as well as establish an inbound link to your site. There is also a syndication opportunity, as third-party sites may come across your article when doing a Web search and republish your content on their own websites. As long as third-parties give your site editorial attribution and a link, getting them to republish your content is just another distribution channel for you to consider.

4. Website pages should be keyword rich and related to your business.

Make a list of your top 20 keywords and variations of those words, and incorporate them into the copy on your site (avoiding the obvious repetition of words). Search engine "spiders" crawl Web pages from top to bottom, so your strongest keywords should be in that order on your home page and sub-pages (the most relevant on the top, the least relevant on the bottom).

You’ll want to do the same for your tagging. Make sure your title tags (the descriptions at the top of each page) and meta tags are unique and chock full of keywords. And your alt tags (images) should have relevant descriptions as well.

5. List your site in online directories by related category or region.

This is an effective way to increase exposure and get found by prospects searching specifically for information on your product or service by keyword topic. Popular directories (like Business.com) typically have a nominal fee. But there are many other directories (like Dmoz.org, Info.com, and Superpages.com) that are free.

Most important, before you start your SEO initiatives, don’t forget to establish a baseline for your site so you can measure pre- vs. post-SEO tactics. Upload a site counter (which counts the number of visits to your website), obtain your site’s Alexa traffic ranking at Alexa.com, or get your site’s daily visit average (from Google Analytics or another application) – and then chart your weekly progress in Excel. Understand that it typically takes two to three months for a site to be optimized… so be patient. You will eventually see results.

[Ed. Note: Wendy Montes de Oca, MBA, ETR’s VP of Marketing and Business Development, has over 15 years of experience in law, financial services, and marketing. Enjoy the success you’ve always wanted with ETR’s Direct Marketing Quick Start Kit. This 4-CD program is the most effective, quickest, and least-expensive way to move you toward financial independence.]

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Wendy Montes de Oca's Newsletters

Muscle Media Buying

Measuring Social Media

Christmas Eve, Italian Style

Let’s Get Reciprocal: Maximizing Ad Swaps, Guest Editorials, and JV Opportunities

My Favorite Thanksgiving Tradition: The Best of Two Worlds

The 5 Faces of Your Customer

Rescue Me?

A Must-Have for Your Business-Building Arsenal

Don’t Overlook Organic Search Efforts in Your Online Marketing Mix

See It and Achieve It: The Power of Visualization

How to Find Customers in a Web 2.0 World

7 Foolproof Ways to Increase Your Market Presence and Build Your Business

Use the Slice-and-Dice System to Get Your Customers to Buy More

The SONAR Content Distribution Method of Getting More Traffic and More Sales

Rescue Your Website From the Internet "Black Hole"

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