Money Word Matrix- An internet marketing idea you should steal.

Normally, I focus this blog on internet marketing tools that can be adapted by offline businesses. Last Friday, I came across a new approach to finding relevant keywords that amazed me in terms of its simplicity and power.  The technique is called the Money words matrix.  Two very successful young marketers discovered and refined the technique.  It has ton’s of applicability to many offline businesses.

They gave the idea away for free as part of a series of promotional videos for a new membership site they have opened.  The site is designed for folk who are looking to build an internet business, and in today’s economy that’s a lot of people.

On the strength of their free promotional videos, they had their new membership site explode.  They initially hoped to attract 250 people, within a 2 weeks they had 1500. I am one.

They just plain have a solid approach to internet marketing that will work for a lot of people. But whether you are interested in finding a new way to make money online or not, you have to check out their Money Word Matrix.  It will transform the way you think about keywords and keyword advertising. Whether you are primarily an on or offline business.

Now that is covered in the second of their promotional videos, so you will need to sit through the first as well. But I think you will find that interesting too.  (Even if you’ve never met a Beta Fish before.)

Click on the banner below and relax, listen and learn. Be sure to sign up for the second video, and be blown away.  I was.  You may even decide to join the Niche Marketing Classroom.  Like I said, I did.

How Do You Create Your Own Ethical Bribes?

Creating your own ethical bribes to use on your web site as gifts for people who leave their email seems like a big thing for some people.  Others are afraid to create even simple reports for sale to the public.  It seems as though many people are frozen in their tracks when it comes to creating reports.

This need not be.

Joel Osborne has just released a three report package on product creation.  And while getting over the hump and creating your own internet information product is probably the most valuable thing you can do, he is all but giving these away. All three books for just $17, plus he is giving you resale rights so you can turn around and sell all three reports to others while you are writing your first report.

You Get All Three Reports!
You Get All Three Reports!

– If you have ever wanted to create your own product but was unsure of how to do it, the “Product Creation Success Package” has the information that you are looking for!

– The package contains 3 informative reports which cover virtually all areas of product creation.

– At the price that Joel is offering this package for, I don’t think he will keep it live for too long.

Product Creation Success Package

If you haven’t already created a half dozen or more of your own products, you will find these to be well worth your time and a no brainer from the investment side.


Targeted Lead Generation

Listen to this post on Targeted Lead Generation on MP3

Targeted Lead Generation

Many sales people lust after good targeted leads.

Like a fisherman who traps their own minnows or digs/farms their own worms, it’s possible to set up your own targeted lead generation system. The advantage, in addition to cost savings, is your own exclusive access to your targeted leads, and the ability to build a positive business relationship with them from the start.

Targeted lead generation is not too difficult to do on your own, if you are clear about what your potential targeted lead wants. Understanding your customer is key to any sales process.

The first step is to set up a simple web page or blog site.  If you want your leads to be targeted, your site needs to be targeted as well.

Generate a list of the ten most frequently asked questions your customers raise during the sales process.  Add to it the five things you wish they knew about your product before they made a buying decision. Then write out the three things that make your particular product unique.  If you can come up with more than ten, five and three do so.

This list of questions, features and benefits will be the basis of your web page or blog.  Examine your list through the eyes of the targeted lead you wish to generate. Of the topics on you list, which 3-5 would generate the most interest from a casual prospect not actively searching for your product at the moment?

What ever they are, design a 3-7 page report discussing them in reasonable detail.  These you are going to make into a free report that you will give away to anyone who comes to your web site and requests it.

To make it even more appealing, it would be a good idea to come up with a sexy title, and a nice graphical image to catch your prospective targeted leads attention.  But if the creative juices aren’t flowing you can go with something like the “The Top Three Things You Need To Know Before Buying an X”

The rest of the topics you have come up with should then be turned into individual articles.  The best 6-10 should be used to create separate pages on your web site if you go the web site route, or if you go with the blog approach, all of them should be turned into blog posts.

The combination of multiple web pages on a narrowly defined topic that focuses on the key issues and questions a prospective buyer may have will attract just the people you are hoping to find.

By creating a free report, that answers their most burning remaining questions, you have a giveaway you can offer them in exchange for their email address.

By linking this system to an auto-responder you can follow-up with your new targeted lead automatically.

Your follow-up messages can repeat in a reworded manner the exact information you have already posted on your web page or in your blog. But with each message you make sure to indicate your willingness to personally answer any additional questions they may have and invite them to contact you when they are ready to make a buying decision.

The best part of this system, is that they will call you when they are ready to buy.

This method of targeted lead generation does take some effort to set up and to refine. But once it is set up, it can operate on auto-pilot and generate targeted leads for you for years to come.

It’s the equivalent of teaching someone to fish.  But there’s nothing fishy about it.

Article Writing is the Key to Building Google Ranking

If you are in a competitive field, and are unable to use my geographical long tail keyword approach to gain top ranking on Google, you need to bring out the big guns. And the best way to do that is with Article marketing.

There is an art to article marketing. You need to focus on your keywords in your article title and in the body of your article. But as important, you need to write a worthwhile article that a blog or ezine editor will want to share with their readership.

You also need to pay attention to your resource box. This is particularly important to you, for this is where your payoff rests.

Finally, you need to get your article launched on as many article directories as you can with a special effort to get it to targeted directories that serve your niche.

I have just acquired rights to a new eBook called Winning the Article Marketing Game. In addition to the eBook, I have acquired master resale rights, which means that not only can I sell you a copy of the eBook, I can transfer to you the rights to sell it yourself.

If you decide to buy it, you will not only get the download, but also a sales page you can use to market the book as well.

This is a great way to get good information that you can profit from and the ability to profit from reselling the book.

To See the Sales Page, Click on the Image of the Book Below!


It’s Alive! Putting Life Into a Dead Web Site

The “It’s Aliiive!” line from the scene in which Dr Frankenstein’s monster comes alive has been parodied thousands of times. I am borrowing it for an upcoming speech to my Toastmaster’s Group.

In my speech I will be discussing the alchemy necessary to turn a dead web site into a living marketing machine capable of generating tens of thousands of dollars worth of effective advertising at a fraction of the normal expense.

Unfortunately most business web pages are deadly dull one way communications. Many are little more than an electronic brochures. Retailers will maybe have their hours posted, and maybe a help wanted form to recruit entry level clerks. Professional sites tend to read like resumes. And neither offers much of a chance for interaction with the person browsing. Oh, they may offer an email address or even an email form to ask questions, but surprisingly often these email go to an email account that only gets checked intermittently since so few people use it.

If your web page is to be more than a stale brochure taking up cyberspace you need to add a little chemistry to the equation. You need to add something. In this case it will take more than adding vinegar to baking soda to get your web site to fizz. You need three ingredients, added in combination to bring your web site to life, to turn it from a dead brochure into a powerful living marketing machine.

And those three things are an ethical bribe to capture your viewers interest and email address. A double opt-in autoresponder system that can build a data base of your opt-ins respond to them. And a series of follow-up messages that can drip on your visitors over time.

These three elements when properly combined make up the magical molecule that is the sorcerer’s stone that can transform a dead web page into a marketing marvel.

The ethical bribe must be relevant to your business and appeal to your browser, its content will vary depending on your business type. A retailer may offer coupons, a business with a longer sales funnel will want to offer information the buyer needs to understand the issues surrounding their buying decision.

The auto-responder itself is the heartbeat of the system. I recommend www.BuildRelationships.aweber.com

The follow-up is then critical. The purpose of bringing your web site to life is to be better able to converse with your prospect. They came to your web site originally for some purpose. They were intrigued by your ethical bribe. This suggests that they are at least potentially customers. Now you need to followup with them. Tell them what they need to know and/or make them an offer they can’t refuse.

But don’t do it once. Instead think about the life time value of this person who like your web site has been transformed. Before they were a browser, now they are a prospect. Treat them to relevant information and treat them well.

Any web site can be set up to take simple orders or list the hours you are open. It takes an auto-responder system to convert a dull lifeless internet brochure into a living and breathing marketing machine. Do you want your web site to be dead and dull, or do you want it to be alive?

Listen to the Podcast of “It’s Alive.”
[display_podcast]
It\'s Alive!

Which is Worse no Meta Tag Keywords or the Wrong Ones?

This afternoon I am giving my short version of my “trade show as web pages” talk to the board of a local business group. My goal is to find additional speaking opportunities where I can present to larger audiences of business people. Because as my report says, I think most small business web pages stink!

In preparation for the meeting, I checked the web site of the host location as well as the associations meta tags. I offer businesses a free worthwhile tip just for listening to my pitches and felt I should offer the same to these good people as well.

It turns out the association had no keywords or site description in their meta tags at all.

But perhaps even worse was the host locations web site. It is a private housing facility offering student housing. Its meta tag keywords were totally irrelevant to its web site and mission. It included keywords of voting, survey, course evaluations, census, segmentation, and others that clearly were intended for a totally different site.

Presumably someone copied a desirable format as a template and plunked the residence halls content on someone else’s framework.

I’m not sure which is worse to have no keywords or bad ones. What do you think. I’d appreciate any comments you might have as I will probably use it as a bad example in future presentations. I will of course keep the people involved secret so as not to embarrass anyone.

As I spend more and more time looking at local business web sites, I find such omissions and or errors are not uncommon. Usually, people just plain have ineffective keywords.

Some will argue that meta tags don’t matter, but they would be wrong. While Google may spend less attention to them than in the past, a good 40% of all computer searches still use other search engines that do.

Outside the internet marketing niche’s internal wars, most main street businesses are too busy getting product out the door and struggling to meet payroll to worry about meta tags. Their web pages are built by their son’s or nephews of techies who may know how to put a page together but are clueless about how to market.

No wonder most small businesses are disappointed with their web pages. They don’t get the traffic they should, and then when they do get traffic, most people don’t seem to do anything.

In the resources section of this blog, I offer a report for sale called HTML in Simple Terms. It’s only $9.97 and well worth the price if only to get the information on pages 16-18 on Using Meta Tags.

My guess is that over 80% of all small business web sites need work in this area alone.

Blank Billboard for Sale: What will you pay?

Have you ever passed by a blank billboard on a backwater highway with a 1-800 number on it? Or perhaps one saying, “Your message here?” I have, but it’s been a while since the last time. Mostly I suspect, because I seldom venture off the main freeways in my normal travels these days.

In past years, I did a bit more traveling to smaller towns in out-state Minnesota and Wisconsin and I would see a fair number of them. Mostly on roads that used to be the main thoroughfare in the pre-freeway era. I suspect a good many of them still exist.

In those traveling days I used to consult with towns and counties on how to attract businesses to their communities. Today, I consult with businesses on how to attract customers. Same business, different focus.

A billboard is a marketing device some businesses use to attract customers. It’s like a display ad in a newspaper or magazine. It provides a graphic image and perhaps some keywords to people who happen to be passing by. On the highway, in their cars. In the newspaper or magazine as one’s eyes pass from one article or story to the next, one page to the next.

They have a hard job to do. They need to make an impression on your conscious or sub conscious mind quickly. It must be the sub conscious the advertiser is aiming for because there are very few such images that ever really capture my conscious mind’s attention.

Now as a kid, I remember the old Burma Shave signs because they were different and funny. I remember a number of teaser campaigns over the years that had me guessing as to what was coming next, but I can’t remember what any of them were about at the moment. I admit that I do notice some of the new billboard campaigns from time to time when they change along one of my regular routes. But I don’t remember ever buying something because I saw a billboard, do you?

My uncle Urban had a billboard on the highway from the Minneapolis to St. Cloud where he had a butcher shop. The sign read, “Gaida’s Meats” with a sausage on on fork that protruded above the sign. It was a clever enough visual effect, breaking out of the box. I suspect he got at least occasional comments from customers in the store about it. Particularly when it was new. But I doubt it brought in any new customers. It may have, however, brought in a few more existing customers. Not because it made his product any more valuable, but because it created status. A sense of importance because everyone who lived in St Cloud saw it whenever they returned home from a trip to the cities.

In my uncle Urban’s eyes the sign wasn’t meant for people from Minneapolis that happened to be going to St Cloud, it was for people from St Cloud who happened to have traveled to the Twin Cities. They would be coming back on this road. And that’s where he placed his sign.

Now I’m talking about billboards today, because in many ways they are like a business website. The clever ones may catch my attention as I browse through many related sites online. But only if they are on the highway I am traveling. If I am on the freeway, and the web site is on a dusty county road, I will never see it. And no matter how cute, creative or otherwise inspired it may be, it may as well not exist at all. It may as well be blank. In my book, it’s not even worth a toll free call to find out how much someone wants to put my message on it.

When it comes to online advertising, far too many people have spent all their effort coming up with a great image and feel for their sites and not given any thought to whether to put their site on a freeway where it will be seen by thousands or on a dirt road where only the crows and gophers will see it.

On the internet, the way you get in front of the traffic from Minneapolis to St Cloud is to make sure the keywords in your meta tags put you on the right highway. In addition, you need to use those same keywords in your message – in the body of your web pages.

This is particularly easy for local businesses, and a bit more difficult for those who compete on a national scale.

If my uncle still had his butcher shop, I would encourage him to use St Cloud Butcher Shop, St. Cloud Meats, Saint Cloud Butcher Shop, Stearns County Butcher Shop, Benton County Butcher Shop, and Polish Sausage as just a handful of maybe several hundred keywords in his meta tags.

In fact, I would take every conceivable term like meat, sausage, etc., and pair it with every conceivable geographical term that people in the area might use to find what they were looking for in a computer search. I call such terms geographical long tail keywords. And they are designed to mimic the actual phrases people might type into their search engine. While they might type “sausage” the first time, when they see over 20 million responses they will quickly find a geographical term to narrow their search if they are looking for a place like my uncle’s where they can get good Polish sausage.

And yet if you look at most business web pages you will see terms like plumber, attorney, dentist, groceries, resort, bait, or what have you in their meta tags. Such keywords are worthless. But so too is having Minneapolis, or Saint Cloud, or New York.

As my frequent readers know, I have been working with the Home Staging Industry for the past 9 months or so. As I dug deeper into the keywords that people actually use, I have grown a list of 124 terms for the home staging industry. Most were fairly obvious, others less so. I have been offering a service to the industry where I concatenate the various keywords I have researched together with the relevant geographical modifiers for individual home stagers. It gets a bit tedious and time consuming. But the result has been a block of keywords that puts my client’s web pages on the internet freeway, while their competitors are advertising their business on the dusty back roads of the internet where no one goes.

Where do you want your billboard to be? If it’s appropriate for your business, follow my example and create a series of geographical long tail keywords. It will make a difference in how often your potential customers find you. It also will make it far more likely that you get top ranking for a keyword phrase when you are the only person who has taken the time and effort to include in in your keywords.

Don’t forget that you also want to incorporate as many of the major terms into the body of you text as well. So if you are a Homestager in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, make sure to say so in the text of your web page as well as in the meta tags.

This Might Not Be Appropriate for You

This might not be appropriate for you.

But rather than deciding that for you, I feel obligated to share it with you. Then you can decide.

As you know, I am a big believer in the maxim, “Give and you shall receive.”

That’s why I promote Giveaway Events, and products like Jeff Dedrick’s Instant Bonus Pages.

Now while I have benefited from participating in Giveaway events, the organizer of such events does way better.  They end up with everyone on their list.  Contributors and Members. And they know which contributors promoted the events and which sat on their hands.

Think about the power of that.

Now, Imagine you were the promoter. Not in internet marketing where a new Giveaway event launches every other day, but in your niche.  Whether that niche is online or offline, you could take the same free giveaway idea and over night build a massive list of both people interested in the niche and joint venture partners who you can work with to mutual benefit.

Now I said overnight, and the truth is it won’t actually happen overnight. It will take effort and a strategy and follow through.

Frankly, I don’t know if you have the vision and maxi to make it happen.  Now I’m not saying you don’t. I’m saying I don’t know if you do.  Do you?

Well to make it happen, it will take that maxi, some determination and a workable plan. And that’s the reason for today’s post.

Jason James has just released his “Giveaway Riches” Manual.  This is your key to unlocking the locked door that is holding your back.

If you access this material and put the plan into action, you will be able to use the power of the Giveaway to catapult yourself into a dominant position in whatever your niche market is.

The cost of this key is only $37 during launch week, which began today Tuesday February 3, 2009 at noon EST.  The price will be going up next week and then again the following week.

If you have been exploring internet marketing while working in another niche or job, imagine the power of being the first to bring to your field the power of the giveaway.  This is the type of technology – the type of idea – that can take a 1or two person company to the top of the heap.  By passing the established “Old Style” firms virtually overnight.

Do you have the guts to transform your industry?

Those who accept the dare and take action will be winners.

The innovators who lead their sector, their industry, their niche out of the current economic downturn.

They will be the ones others will marvel at and wonder how they managed to become so successful overnight.

And the answer to that question will be, as it always is… you had a plan and you took action.

Now I still don’t know if you are up to this.  Frankly I have my doubts. But if you are go to Giveaway Riches

Do You Need More Than One Web Site?

Within the internet marketing world, people have ten’s and hundreds of web sites. Each with a different URL and each targeted to a specific niche or purpose. That permits each web site to be addressed to a particular audience. And since the site is targeted, so too are the keywords, which means these sites tend to rank higher than if they were attempting to be all things to all people.

Off line businesses and those firms operating online in niche arenas should consider whether or not they too would benefit from multiple web sites.

I will once again use my friends in the Home Staging Industry as an example of a situation where two web sites may make a lot more sense that one.

If you go to most home stagers web sites you will see that they are primarily directed to the home owner. But if you were to survey home stagers as I have done, you will see that most of them market not to home owners but to Realtors, who they hope will refer home sellers to them.

This means the Home Staging company has two different marketing objectives. One is to convince realtors that they can help sell a home faster and for more money, and the second is to convince the home owner that they can help sell a home for more money and faster.   While it appears to be the same objective, it’s not.

For the home stager, the sale to the individual home owner is critically important, but represents just one sale.  The sale to the Realtor, might not in itself win any direct business, but represents a series of prospective future business.

Home stagers offer two primary benefits to their customers,  faster sales and higher price.  While both are important to home sellers and to Realtors, the relative ranking between the two vary.  A home owner is more likely to be impressed with the prospects of a higher price, as any such higher price will help pay for the services they are being asked to cover.  For a Realtor, the higher price may mean a marginal improvement to their commission.  More important to them, is the speed with which a home sells, so they can go on to the next.

Now while both share same objectives their motivations differ.  To be most efective, the sales pitch to either market should lead off with their primary motivation. That in turn calls for two web pages, and two marketing pitches.

This is going to be true for any business that markets to distributors as well as final customers. And probably many more circumstances as well.

How about your business. Do you have multiple audiences you are marketing to?

If so, you really should be thinking in terms of multiple rifle shots rather than a blunderbust shotgun spread.

Most businesses try to accomplish this with multiple pages on one web sie.  And this may be an adequate compromise in some cases, but it is always a compromise, and an opportunity for a competitor to step in and out compete you.

One objection has been the need to buy multiple domain names and hosting accounts. And while this is a pound wise penny foolish objection, the fact is that with the right hosting service there is no need to pay any more to host a second, third, fourth, or even twentieth web site.

It would take me a while to sit down and even count the total number of web sites I have. And they are all on one account. And that account costs me less than $25 a month. I use HostGator

They offer me the opportunity to have an unlimited number of web sites on one account and enough bandwith to cover my needs and that of most small business people. These can be readily stepped up should my increased use of video require a future adjustment.

I mention the hosting problem, as just one barrier to having multiple sites.  A second site, probably means reworking the first and then adding the second. This will take some site design work and of course that entails a one time expense.  But the final result is a more clearly targeted marketing campaign, and better marketing results.

I would have two “ethical bribes,” one each on each of the two new web sites to build a separte email list of prospective home owners and Realtors.  Using my home staging example, I might offer a report on how to de-clutter your home on the web site directed to homeowners, and a different report on how to discuss home staging with your clients on the Realtor Oriented Web Site.

The prepackaged follow-up messages would be distinctly targeted as well.

It’s important to clarify your marketing objectives, and then to develop approriate marketing tools such as web sites and autoresponder porgrams to meet those objectives over time. If you need three web sites, you should have three.

What do you need?