Tag: marketing tool

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.

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.

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?

Auto Responders: The Magic Pill to Transform Your Web Site

The key component required to transform your current static web site into a marketing tool, is your auto responder. The service I use and recommend is Aweber, www.BuildRelationships.aweber.com . It is by far the preferred service, and is used by most of the internet marketers I know.

While it’s possible to have a programmer develop an auto responder service on your own web site, using a professional service makes a lot more sense in the long run. First, it’s cheap. Rates will vary depending on how much traffic you generate, but as of my writing this, most small businesses will be able to start for well under $25 a month, even less if you take advantage of their annual payment plans.

There are a couple of things you should understand. Aweber uses what’s called a double opt in system. What this means is that when a person signs up to be on your mailing list, they are actually signing up on a form you create at BuildRelationships.aweber.com. Once Aweber gets their initial message, they send out a confirmation message to the email address registered. This asks your new subscriber to confirm that they want to be on your list. Your new list member must confirm, or they will not be included.

This accomplishes two things. First, it keeps people from putting in phony email addresses, just to get your free report. And more importantly, it serves to protect you against spam complaints when people register someone else’s legitimate email address instead of their own.

Aweber is a known entity in the internet marketing world, and it’s well known they use this double opt in system. Thus the folks who monitor and prosecute SPAM complaints are far less likely to raise any issues with you, even when someone forgets they signed up for your list and complains. This avoids problems you don’t need.

In addition to the double opt in feature, they automatically insert both an automatic “opt-out” link and your legal address at the bottom of each of your messages. This means you will always be compliant with the anti Spam laws, and your subscriber knows that they can stop your emails whenever they want. Best yet, if your subscriber decides they want to stop, all they have to do is click the link and it’s done automatically. You don’t need to be involved at all.

These peace of mind features make the monthly fee more than worthwhile by themselves.

But you get a lot more than peace of mind. Aweber offers a lot of features, more than I can cover here now. But lets lay out a few, for the sake of clarity.

First, you can have multiple lists, at no extra charge. You can have a list for those people who sign up on your web site. You can have another list for people who sign up because you add, an invitation to do so on you cash register receipt or invoice forms.

This may make sense as a way to conduct separate conversations with prospective customers who are first finding you online, as opposed to the conversation you want to have with people who are existing customers.

You may also want to use this capability to focus on different product lines. Say you are a restaurant that also does catering. You might have a sub list for the catering business in addition to a primary list that promotes your weekly or monthly specials.

This ability to run multiple lists is a great asset. It allows you to have multiple conversations going on, with multiple people at the same time. All on autopilot.

There is one more basic concept to get across regarding auto responders. There are two types of basic messages. The first is the follow-up message. These are written and stored in the system and are sent automatically once a person signs up for your list. The first one goes out immediately once they have confirmed that they want to be on the list. Then you can pre-schedule any number of additional lists as you wish. Depending on your particular needs, you may want to send a second message three days after they get the first one, and then maybe another in 3-5 days, and then weekly thereafter.

Some people set up mini courses on topics of interest to their customers. A Liquor store may for example create a series of posts on wines, or the characteristics of different beers they sell. A restaurant, may do recipes or cooking tips, etc. The key thing about follow-up messages is that they should be “Evergreen.” With any luck people will be signing up to your list every day from now till the end of time. You want messages that make sense no matter the time of year. So event though it may be Spring, when you are writing you messages, eventually it will be winter when someone joins your list. All of these follow-up messages are sent sequentially based on the number of days since the person signed up on your list. So on any given day you will have message 1 going out to newly signed up people, message 3 going out to people who signed up last week, and message 14 going out to people who maybe signed up four months ago.

The second type of message is the Broadcast. This is sent to all people no matter when they signed up. This type of message is ideal for sending out messages about this week’s specials, of attractions for the coming month, or holiday greetings. If you are a dentist and want to let your patients know to schedule their appointments prior to you upcoming two week vacation cruise, you send them a broadcast message six weeks in advance and then again periodically up until you send them a message on who to contact in case of an emergency.

The best part of this, is that you can pre-schedule broadcast messages. Thus if you want, you can send a Happy New Years message for exactly at midnight next year right now.

If you have a three month advertising plan, you can schedule all your broadcasts for the coming three months at one time, and then forget about it. The messages will be sent automatically, and your customers will get you messages and respond and it won’t cost you any more than the cost of your auto responder and the time to write the messages.

There are other more advanced features available once you have you system up and running. For example you can do split testing to see which of your ads get a better response, and there are ways to tie your blog posts into the process and even pod casts. But such services are beyond the scope of this report.

Again the service I recommend is www.BuildRelationships.aweber.com.

They offer a series of helpful tutorials which should be more than adequate to get you up and running in no time. I am also available to assist you. Contact me at enetwal@gmail.com.