3 Simple ways to harness concept of the Free Offer for internet marketing

One of the reason why the concept of free stuff online works really well has a lot to do with the nature of the internet where people go online to find free information and share music online. Many good internet marketers have learnt that offering free things to their website visitors can help make them more money online and this article highlights three simple strategies that successful internet marketers have used.

Free Ebooks
Giving away a free ebook to visitors to your website can help establish you as an expert and help you increase the number of subscribers to your newsletters. Ebook software today allows the creator of the ebook to get the email address and name of the person reading the ebook and build his mailing list.

Another way people use these free ebooks is to embed their affiliate links and product links into them so that readers of the ebooks will click on them and thus get more website traffic to their websites and make money when these get converted into sales. Other ebooks writers today allow readers to access the first three chapters free so as to whet their appetite and then make the reader pay for the rest of the information.


Free services
Most people are quite unaware of this business model online. Add lots of resources to your website and let it become an advertising portal where other advertisers pay to place ads on your website. Simple things that you can provide for your website visitors can go a long way in getting them to come back. For instance, adding rss feeds related to the content of the website also increases the chances of people returning to your website.


Another way that most people are doing today is starting online forums and allowing people to join them for free. By helping others, you get paid from contextual advertising on your website.


Free information and pre-selling
This concept amount internet marketers was first made popular in a large way when Ken Evoy started talking about pre-selling in the area of affiliate marketing. The idea behind this concept is simple. Simple focus on a keyword rich niche and just give your website visitors information on the niche without any trace of sales copy and embed your affiliate links in the webpage. You make money from visitors that purchase from your merchants from your links.

In conclusion, the concept of the free offer is here to stay on the internet and internet marketers have used it to great success. Learn from them and use these strategies to increase your online profits today!

The Fundamental Aspects of Internet Marketing

Internet marketing is quickly growing in importance. It can benefit almost any business. But to use it efficiently, one must be prepared to study and learn more about it before attempting to use it as a marketing tactic. In almost all cases, trying to use Internet marketing without first increasing one's basic knowledge of the tactics results in sub par results. Luckily all is not lost because like many other sciences, resources are available to those who have a desire to increase their knowledge. First completing the needed research into what the necessary steps are to create a successful Internet marketing campaign. Then plans can safely be made to include it in the overall marketing mix.
Like any field of study, Internet marketing can be learned by researching data from books, studying information online and by investigating the ways and methods of competitors who are already using Internet marketing.
Studying Internet marketing online can be both constructive and destructive without exercising great care in selecting the materials to be reviewed. This is because there are both good and bad sources of information available online. The providers of good information can give valuable insights and as much knowledge as needed to allow the researcher to plan and implement a great Internet marketing campaign. However, the providers of inaccurate information can lead the uninformed researcher down the wrong path, thus almost guaranteeing undesirable results if their incomplete and sometimes erroneous information is used in future work. Hence a successful end result can only be had by verifying the accuracy of the material being used in education process and in planning the outcome.
Books provide another good source of information for the researcher. They often provide clues in advance by showing via their popularity as to which ones to select to study. If the contained information is worthwhile, more readers will have chosen to study its contents. Also more reviewers will be attracted to write reviews about popular and important books.They will have given the book a positive review. But make sure the books contain recent information on the ever-changing Internet scene. Don't waste your time studying outdated information. Good informative books can be a lasting reference in your future work.
Researchers can also gather useful information by carefully studying what is happening in their chosen market. Who is the dominating player? What are they doing well? What are their marketing tactics? What does their website look like? Google and other search engines can provide an abundance of information which can be assimilated and, if desirable,replicated in your own campaigns. Just enter the competitor's name into a search engine box as starters. The top ranking competitors will be shown on the resulting list. Note their website design, their use of all forms of marketing to attract customers such as affiliate marketing, banner ads and any other forms of advertising. Do they use any SEO strategies? After jotting down this information, try entering the name of your market niche to get more useful information. Next enter the exact name of the product or field of your chosen niche to get more great information. The same tactic can be used to locate popular blogs on the subject. Select a few to read and possibly visit. Search for forums on your subject to find out what items or topics are being discussed as being currently important. By doing all this research you will be armed with real solid, current information as opposed to theoretical data. You now can act with much more confidence in tweaking your own website and Internet marketing campaign to yield the successful results you desire.
Finally, be sure to do an analysis of the time and effort that will be needed to carry out any of the above suggested methods of getting a successful Internet marketing campaign. As of now, you are an important person in your company's current success. If you or some of your co-workers supplies the time and effort needed for research, will your or their contribution to current responsibilities suffer? Should you choose "to go it alone", what are the odds of achieving a successful campaign? At what total cost? Think over these.

Internet Marketing Mentor: Your Secret Weapon to Success Online

This article is to inform you of the importance of having an Internet Marketing Mentor. An internet marketing mentor is crucial for internet marketers who are struggling, barely making money or altogether failing at internet marketing. Here's the story:
You've decided to take a leap into Internet Marketing. You've decided that a home based business will be ideal. What better than an Internet business... more specifically, Internet Marketing. It gives you accessibility to your kids, their activities, no commute, you'll save a fortune on gas, no moody boss, no expensive wardrobe, if the weather is bad... no big deal, you'll be working at home in your pajamas! How hard can it be anyway, all I need is a computer and some products right? Besides, it seems like everyone is doing it and making mega bucks! Sounds perfect right? So you get right on it.
You've gone online searching for "how to start a Internet Marketing business". You come up with a massive amount of information. There are so many options and products to choose from. Where do you begin? You've taken some online training here and there and even purchased some affiliate marketing products to market. Now what? You mean there's more to this? No one told you there is a vast array of marketing strategies you had to learn. So again, you go online and purchase software teaching you a few marketing strategies and quick turnkey solutions which as a novice you can't tell that half the stuff is junk and outdated. To add to it, your email is getting bombarded with spam emails for the next great internet marketing product & turnkey solutions that will get you that $1000 a day income. Against your better judgment you give it one last go on the hopes that this may be the one that will be that golden nugget... only to realize it's just another bogus solution.
A few months and hundreds (maybe thousands) of dollars later you haven't made a dime. Even if you have made some money, you haven't broken even with what you've spent so far and realize something is wrong here. It makes you want to give up, cut your losses and just walk away. But you don't. At this point, you've invested so much time and effort and you're barely hanging on by a thread of hope... why? because despite your experiences you know that money is being made out there, lots of it! It's being made by other people pursuing your same dreams.. Sounds familiar?
It seems that starting an internet marketing business isn't as simple as we thought. Like many others, we jump into it grossly unprepared. The intention was never to set ourselves up to fail or to be considered a "fly by night" business. Like many, we under-estimated what it really takes to put ourselves in the position to be a successful entrepreneur. At the onset we have been oblivious to how crucial it is to be knowledgeable, skillful and PREPARED when it comes to internet marketing. This is where the expertise of an internet marketing mentor is vital.
Top 3 Reasons you need an Internet Marketing Mentor
1. There are many different marketing strategies available to help target your audience. Choosing the right strategy angle will make all the difference and ensure you are reaching the customers who NEED what you are selling. If you go about this the wrong way you would have already set yourself up for failure. You would have wasted a lot of time and effort chasing a deaf audience that has no interest in what you are trying to sell. Internet marketing failure is usually not about the product but how you go about the marketing. Internet Marketing Mentors are usually very skillful in this approach and will ensure you fine tune your marketing strategy to help you develop a laser focus angle on your audience giving them what they want and need.
2. More often as a Marketing Entrepreneur you may get discouraged when things aren't happening the way they should within the time it should. For example, leads may not be coming in fast enough and if they are then a good percentage of them may be useless. Better yet, the distraction of LIFE can get us off our path of success and we lose focus of the big picture. Your Marketing Mentor will keep you focused on your goals and remind you of why you started this journey. Remember, they have been where you are going and have overcome challenges you will face. They have valuable insight on the distractions that can kill your dreams of success.
3. Keywords, keywords, keywords! Have you heard it enough? Frankly, internet marketing should be called "Keyword Marketing" because at the end of the day that is what matters most and what will drive your success. Marketing Mentors knows how vital keyword research is and that is the bloodline of internet marketing. It is their bread and butter and that's what I mean when I say they can help you with the "angle" of connecting with your audience because it is all about keyword research. If you have not mastered the art of keyword research or not familiar with the process and strategy of keyword research then point made. There is a desperate need for help or FAIL!
Since discovering the value of an Internet Marketing Mentor, I realized it's not common that one will drop in your lap (a good one anyway). It is known that a lot of wannabee internet marketing mentors prey on the Google searchers and haven't been in the business for more than a year. As it's critical to have a mentor who is an "expert" in his field (six figures plus) it is also critical not to get involved with ones that are fake and useless. Unfortunately, they are very well disguised in the field and if you can't decipher between the two it can be detrimental to your business.
There is a solution to avoiding these mistakes and partnering with a mentor that will help you take your business off the ground and to the next level.
Think for a moment of your business and how far you've come on your own...If you feel you haven't gotten very far it's not your fault. You were doing everything you thought you should be doing. The good thing about trial and error is it gives us the opportunity to learn from our mistakes.The good news is this doesn't have to be "The End" to your story of success.

To All Internet Marketers - How To Get My Business

More and more people are realizing that the Internet offers great potential to set up a healthy business for pennies on the dollar. This is good news for internet marketers - but it also means that they need to lift their game.

Why? Because the would-be "netpreneur" has access to way more training than ever before. It's possible to get up to speed very quickly on what is needed to get started online. This, in turn, means that people quickly recognize what offers true value and what does not. They see so many sales letters that they become, to a certain degree, immune to the typical hype. They're willing to spend - but they want value for money. They want to be treated like intelligent and discerning adults.

So here's a message to all 'gurus' (and aspiring gurus) who are keen to get their share of the dollars waiting to be sent flying their way via cyberspace.

1) What does it take to make people want to buy "you" rather than some other internet marketer?

2) What might make people want to unsubscribe from your list?

3) And what pushes them into asking for a refund?

What Makes People Want to Buy?

- They buy if they can see that a product will give them new knowledge and understanding.

- They buy if the purchase will speed up business growth.

- They buy if a product will automate a task that eats into their time. (People quickly learn to spend their time on marketing and product creation, rather than repetitive tasks.)

Tip: Once newbies have been exposed to a few sales pages, it's not long before they learn to look beyond the sales hype. They study a sales letter carefully to work out what the product will "really" offer them. (Do they need this? Or will it duplicate something else they own?)

They also learn to look for value for money. Some higher-priced products are worth every cent. Some cheaper products add very little to what they already know.

(Note: Savvy internet marketers already realize that if they put together online interviews offering truly valuable information, they are far more likely to attract and keep new customers. A quick example: Jane Smith listens to a one-hour audio interview on search engine optimization and traffic. She finds out some really useful information she has not so far heard anywhere else. She decides that this guy knows what he's talking about and shells out a couple of hundred dollars for his products.)

What Makes People Want to Unsubscribe from a List?

- Getting four identical emails trying to sell them the same product, because the sender hasn't figured out how to move them from one list to another after they buy.

- Getting a 'canned' email sounding full of excitement about a new product or service - which turns out to be a duplicate of the email they get from six other marketers who are affiliates for the same product.

- Getting email from a product creator about anything under the sun because you bought XXX product from them. If your customers sign up for a newsletter, they expect mailings.

What Makes People Want to Ask for a Refund?

In the past, buyers tended to shrug and write off a bad purchase. But increasingly, people are prepared to stand up for their rights. If they feel they have not received value for money, they will ask for a refund.

So what makes them decide to ask for their money back?

- Software that doesn't work as it is supposed to.

- Physical products (CDs, DVDs) that don't work on their systems.

- An e-book that is full of content easily found in an hour's net-surfing.

- An e-book that has skimped on content or that has been poorly written.

- An e-book that not only skimps on content but is full of links to up-sells to get the 'really valuable' information, or is full of affiliate links.

The last case, an e-book full of affiliate links or links to an up-sell...is something you should be giving away free as part of your viral marketing campaign. Charge for it and you risk your reputation for being a source of quality information.

Other things that bite into your customer's valuable time.

- MP3's that are streamed from a website rather than being downloadable.

- e-books that are in ".exe" format only, so the customer can't print them out in one 'hit' (and can't access them on a Mac computer).

Give your clients anything that they can listen to or read away from the computer. Most of them spend enough hours a day at the keyboard already. They'd rather load an audio interview
into their MP3 players and listen while they go for a walk or relax in the sun. They'd prefer to print out an e-book and read it or mark it up while sitting in an easy chair.

Please, please don't tether them to the computer!

And finally, about those "name squeeze" pages. People are very quickly getting tired of having to give up their email addresses just to get to a sales page. Do you want them to buy or not? These days, unless there's a huge buzz around the Net and they want to see what it's all about, prospective customers are just as likely to click the 'back' button on their browser, or close the window and leave.

After all, there's always another internet marketer waiting to sell them a product. Probably one very similar to yours. Marketers who respect their client's time and intelligence are the ones who will get their loyalty - and their cash.

The Most Overlooked Internet Marketing Strategy

Avoid selfishness. It causes problems everywhere, and the e-biz world is no exception. To succeed, you must know your audience, care about them, and go the extra mile to meet them where they’re at.

Maybe you’re brainstorming a new website: “My website is about me, my services, and my products.”

Maybe you don’t go around saying that explicitly, but it still might your subconscious attitude. Most of us can identify with the joke, “I’m not much, but I’m all I think about.”

Yes, you should think about your services and products – their benefits and limits. Think about yourself - your own limits as an entrepreneur. And if you want people to buy, think about these things in terms of your prospects.

§ Who are they?
§ What are they expecting?
§ What are they searching for?
§ How do they perceive your products, your niche, your approach?
§ How might you be confusing or disappointing them?

Our pervasive selfishness, also known as bias, is hard to escape- a big blind spot to see around. The best way to get around it is to survey your prospects, and, if you can, watch their behavior around whatever you sell or do or make.

For example, I’ve been planning to write an ebook about public speaking for six months now, but haven’t gotten to it yet. I knew it was further down my priority list, so I put an offer on my most popular public speaking webpages: “Answer this survey and I’ll send you a free copy of this $25 ebook when it comes out!” – I’ve got about 50 responses already. When it comes time to plan the book’s contents, I’ll already know what’s most interesting to my target market.

Likewise, I did a survey when it was time to title my first alternative medicine book- I brainstormed about 100 of them, chose my 10 favorites, and let my online health readers choose their favorite. The one they preferred was the winner by far. It wasn’t even close. It also was NOT the one I liked. See?

Maybe you’re writing copy: “I'm going to describe my offerings in the language most natural to me.”

Sometimes that works. If they’re looking to grab them with a particular flavor, you might use, for example, folksy language or tech-speak. But that doesn’t always work. What if they don't know your jargon? What if they don't know your favorite words and concepts?

We get so comfortable with the words, phrases, and metaphors from our business and social circles, we forget not everyone knows them. You can keep your jargon if you define it. Otherwise, translate it into everyday language. Even better, find out what the most popular keyword equivalents are, and use those.

Trust me as an experienced writer and public speaker. Too many times, I’ve been surprised to reap confusion where I swear I had sown clarity. I no longer underestimate how much my audience will misunderstand my meaning. The burden of clarity is upon me, not them.

Maybe you’re building a website: “I'm organizing my website around my ideas about my business.”

That may work out just fine, but if when doesn’t, visitors get confused, don’t find what they're looking for, and leave without regret. On a website that’s new to them, there are only so many times they’ll click before they’re gone.

What you think about your offerings doesn’t matter if you don't know what your prospects need, what they care about, and what their problems are...

§ How do your offerings meet their needs and solve their problems?
§ What words are in their minds when they come looking for solutions?
§ What referral search terms are showing up in your web statistic logs?
§ Are you using those terms in your navigation?

Your prospect may have the problem you solve but not be looking for your kind of solution, or they may not call the solution or the problem by the same names you do. Jargon again. Find out what they call it and how they think about it. Find out what they actually search for, and call it that on your website.

Make a bridge between your prospects’ minds and your own, and they’ll stream across in droves.

How to Grow Your Affiliate Commissions by Being Different

It doesn't matter if you sell affiliate programs, MLM, or even your own product, how you will benefit is that by being different, you are offering your potential customers something no one else is offering.

This is especially true with affiliate programs and MLM programs.

How can you be different from thousands of others who may be promoting the same program you are?

A few tips:

1. Write articles about your industry, resources that relate to the product or service you are selling, and tips about how to use your product or service.

This is probably the most overlooked way to market affiliate programs and MLM. By providing valuable content, you are offering your readers something new, something different, that makes your product or service more valuable than others selling the same product or service.

2. Build a website and buy a domain or create a simple blog.
This will really help you because not only can you offer your primary product, affiliate program, or MLM, but you can also write reviews about other products or services that compare, as well as complement your current offering.

This is another way of building content and getting buyers to trust you, as well as diversifying your streams of income.

Having your own website can also help you with the search engines.

3. Write a free report to get subscribers.
Offer potential visitors a free report. Again, you can do the same with this report that you do with articles: write about your industry, tips about your product, etc.

Give away your report in exchange for the subscriber's email and name. This allows you to build your own list so that you can recycle your traffic.

What makes the internet so much different from traditional offline advertising is that buyers are looking for information. Traditional advertising doesn't provide the information the buyer needs.

By offering your potential buyers real information, you can build your business and increase your profits online.

The Heart and Soul of Internet Marketing Techniques

Theoretically, let's assume that you are one of the corporate executives of a huge organization. In a board of directors' meeting, it was mentioned that the business earnings together with the volume of sales generated throughout the preceding month is somewhat lower when compared to the ones produced a number of months ago. The decrease is greater than what is anticipated, and current figures indicate that the decreasing pattern may well carry on because of irrepressible market circumstances. The moment the issue is not dealt with, the earnings of the corporation will suffer and it may also end in streamlining the corporate organization, which could have an impact on the majority of the employees.
As a corporate executive, what can you do to resolve the dilemma of the corporation where you are supposed to be? It is actually your obligation to get the business back to normal in addition to guaranteeing the employees that they still have their jobs. At this stage, what you will need to do is to come up with powerful marketing techniques that will target the issue of decreasing profits and sales volume of your corporation.
These kinds of marketing techniques will function as the key cornerstone of your marketing approach. It will have to include particular steps that will be executed to tackle the issue of the corporation. As an example, you could use the tactic of providing low-cost but premium quality products or services to entice more consumers or persuade prospective customers to use your new product. By employing this kind of approach, there is a higher possibility that you will find a way to make up for the past deficits and get the business on its making money position.
In producing well-sound marketing techniques, you don't merely assemble it without the need of a foundation at all. Actually, these kinds of techniques needs to be bundled with your corporation's marketing goals, policies, and practices into a unified whole. Don't forget that you are creating marketing techniques to successfully undertake the corporation's objective of delivering top-quality products or services at a most affordable cost but without having to compromise the productivity of the investment decision.
Marketing tactics are relevant in all kinds of investment, especially in Internet marketing. Given the fact that the Internet is a sector with limitless options of developing your own specific niche market and increase any revenue that you will generate from it, you want to have powerful marketing approaches that will enable you to accomplish your intention of earning more. Remember that there are an incredible number of websites that are fighting for success in this money-making investment. Your Internet marketing business must remain profitable amongst this tight competition.
What are the Internet marketing techniques that will assist you to acquire more possible clients, earning from sales that you will make, and assert your Internet marketing profession to be a profitable one? Examine the following and discover how it will influence your Internet marketing business on a constructive perspective.

• Start with what you have. What are the attainable perimeters of your product or your business in general when compared to others? Would it be noticeable amongst other businesses with identical product? Becoming distinctive will enable you to receive possible clientele and gradually develop a successful business. Absolutely nothing will overcome your skills of creating a product which will fulfill the requirements of your target audience.


• Convey your product and provide it with a one of a kind impression on the Internet. Make use of the power of words and graphics in conveying whatever you are seriously supplying to the public. Make the explanation of your product as basic as you possibly can but clear and concise.


• The "click through" tactic, where you'll entice a client to click on your advert and get through your product, is considered as one of the keys to internet marketing. The product that you are going to supply should be important to the customer searching for it, therefore the utilization of online surveys will make it easier to identify the products that are "in" and "out".

These are simply a few of the Internet marketing techniques that you can make use of in your online business. There are still a great deal of approaches that you may use, but the above mentioned versions are the simplest.

Choosing An Affiliate Marketing Program

If you are new to affiliate marketing, you are probably overwhelmed with the number of programs available out there for you to join and promote. This article will provide a guideline to help you choose the right affiliate program for yourself.

In deciding what affiliate marketing program you would like to join, you should choose a product that you are interested in. The success of how well you do in this program will
depend on how good you are at marketing the product. If the product is something you have no interest in or know nothing about, this will be reflected.

Also in regards to choosing the right program, you should pick one that can be easily marketed. If you become the affiliate of a product that only you and the product owner is interested in , you will not make any money and have a hard time getting people to sign up.

After you have chosen a product that you like and can market, if would be a good idea to investigate more closely the affiliate program that is being offered. If the product has a successful number of affiliates who are generally happy with things, then you can consider joining this program. However, if the affiliates of a particular program are disgruntled have many complaints about the company, then you should stay away from this company. This is why it is important to receive feedback from other affiliates.

Also this would be a good time to mention that it is not a good idea to choose a program with thousands of affiliates. This is because the market will be saturated with them, and instead of signing up or buying your product; the customer will just ignore one of many hundreds of ads they have seen before. There is one affiliate program that comes to mind! However, it is best to sign up with an affiliate marketing program that is not too saturated but has been stable for
a few months.

Of course the best piece of advice about becoming an affiliate is to market and promote continuously. This could mean either offline or online types of promotion. Many affiliate programs will provide marketing tools to their affiliates such as banners and text links. You can use these everywhere to encourage people to buy the product. How good you are at marketing will determine how successful you are with your affiliate program.

Do's And Don'ts Of Emailing Press Releases

I'm a big believer in EMAILING press releases. Not only is email dirt cheap, email can often get you in front of editors a lot faster than regular mail or fax.

Here's why. Media outlets like radio stations, TV stations, and newspapers get a TON of press releases. During my 20 years working in radio and TV, we got bag loads of mailed press releases every day.

Probably 90 percent of them came from politicians and local college athletic programs. Their publicity people are told to send out a release several times a week--whether they have any real news to tell or not. Consequently, media get a release every time a congress person helps someone or an athletic field house gets a new folding chair.

Are these mailed press releases ignored? You bet they are. Most go straight from the mail bag to the trash. Who has time to open 150 envelopes when most of them are pushing some story you will never be able to use? I know I'll get some notes from a media workers who will say "WE don't do it that way at our place." And you can be sure a few news rooms are very organized about opening, reading, filing, and using releases.

Faxed releases work better, but not that much better given the expense. I worked at one station where the manager got tired of the fax machine burning up cartridges printing releases. Faxed releases were routed to the receptionist's computer where she deleted them.

At another media outlet, faxes, ads, and all the other things that get faxed spilled out on the floor. Some were read, others were used for scratch paper, and most were trampled on until somebody bundled them into the trash.

But wait a minute! If nobody is reading press releases, why do studies claim that 75 f the stories you read in newspapers originate from press releases?

The answer lies in email. Email makes it easy to receive a release, forward it to the staff person who covers that particular topic, then store the release in an email "futures" file where it can be pulled up as needed.

It's incredibly easy for newspaper people to import the email release into their writing program, change the headline, tweak a few things, and run it as a story. Editors don't like to admit they do this, but we've seen big city newspapers run our releases as articles with very few changes.

you can't blame journalists for doing this. Media outlets have cut staffs over and over again during the past 15 years. One person now does the work of three staffers.

Here are some tips for making your emailed release the starting point for a media report:

1. Start your subject line with RELEASE. Then follow with the most newsworthy/titillating part of your story.

2. Make your headline the first thing in the body of your email. I like to use two headlines, the second adding more information the first didn't have room to mention. The media person should be able to tell what your release is about just by reading the headlines.

3. Include your contact information after the body of the release. This is becoming the standard way to do things on the Net. Journalists are now used to looking at the bottom for contact info.

4. Keep your release under 400 words. Make sure you have good information the media audience wants, otherwise you don't stand a chance of getting coverage.

5. Take time to send your release to your local media. They are more likely to use your story than out-of-town media. You can find their email addresses by searching for their sites on search engines.

6. Send your release to trade publications covering your field. Even small developments can be of big interest to others in your line of work. One photographer client sent her release to photographic magazines and got coverage in almost every one.

7. Go national. Get the Gebbie Media Guide at Gebbie.com. It's affordable and reliable.

Test Marketing--How to Increase Your Direct Mail Marketing Response by Using the Internet to Test

I’ve discovered a really fantastic way to discover what works best in direct marketing, BEFORE doing traditional direct marketing. Use these internet tools to find what works best, then apply what you’ve learned to your traditional direct marketing, direct mail, etc. It’s fast and less expensive.

How to Find What Works in Your Marketplace?

Overture provides an excellent tool to find what people are looking for on the internet. For all practical purposes, you can use that to apply to other types of marketing.

Go to http://inventory.overture.com. Type in some keywords that apply to your product or service. Overture will provide the number of times that search word was searched in the last month, and it will also provide a list of related words and how many times they were searched. This provides a really excellent tool to research what people are wanting, and how they are looking for them (at least what words they are relating to that search).

Using my business as an example: I provide training (sales, customer service, leadership and several other things).

So, which ones are in demand right now? I can do a search for “training” on Overture.

The results are:
• Training --searched 165,196 times
• Online training, searched 149,418 times
• Management training, searched 133,499
• Sales training, searched 70,496

What can we learn from this?
• It looks like I should focus more online training instead of face-to-face, or local training.
• Management training is being searched for almost 2 times as much as sales training. So, shouldn’t I focus more on management training over sales training? I’ll certainly have a larger market.

This can be applied to almost any kind of marketing, direct mail, cold calling, email, website, etc. Not only can I find the best direction (management training) but I can also find the right words to use in a direct marketing piece before sending it.

Here’s another one.

Use GoogleAdwords, a pay-per-click online marketing campaign to find what works. If you haven’t experienced GoogleAdwords, just go to www.Google.com and search for something. When the listing shows up there will be 2-3 sponsored listings across the top of the page, and 5-6 down the right hand side. These are pay-per-click ads, those companies pay for the ads only when someone clicks on them. You are taken to that site. At that time the sponsoring company pays so much for each time someone clicks on it.

A really fantastic way of using this for a marketing study is that within 1-2 days, there will have been enough clicks to know which search words are working.
Another one of the fantastic benefits of GoogleAdwords is that they allow alternating ads in an Adword campaign. So for any campaign you can have several different ads running. Within just 1-3 days there will have been enough people searching and clicking through that you can see
• Which search words are searched for the most often
• Which one of the ads are producing the most click-thru’s

It isn’t unusual to see a 2 to 1 difference between the ads. So now you know how to say what in an ad and what kind of typical response rates you might have.

You can also take the best ad, tweak it again. Check back in a few days and know if you’ve improved it or not. I’ve seen pay-per-click ads crawl upward to 10-15% response rates in a matter of a week.

Now, it’s time to start using those same words and structure in our next direct mail, or other direct marketing campaign. It’s fast and very economical. Instead of taking weeks and costing a ton of money like a traditional test market would, we know in days what works for a lot less.

Want to know how many people are looking for your product in your small geographical area? Set up a GoogleAdword campaign and set the geographic limitation to your address with a known radius. Come back in a few days and see how many searches you got in that territory. Then go out with your local direct marketing with what you just learned.
Even if you aren’t an e-commerce site you can learn a lot about what works in marketing this way.