MLM Online Training Resource

Internet Marketing Secrets To Effective Marketing

Posted on 20. Mar, 2010 by admin.

If you are still struggling to reach financial independence and make a nice living from your home, then you must realize that the only reason why you are failing is because you don’t have a good marketing strategy.

Having an the internet marketing secrets to effective marketing in place is the first step towards reaching your goal to financial freedom.

There are many ways in which to use internet marketing to market a business online.  Methods to attain visibility on the internet include building websites, blogs, submitting articles, to name a few.  Running a business on the internet can be complicated, but it does not have to be.  There is a process by which anyone can do extremely well without attempting to learn more about the subject of internet marketing.

Business owners who do not know a great deal about marketing but who want to implement internet marketing strategies into their overall marketing plan should first study the basic principles of internet marketing.

Although starting an online business is not difficult, there is a high failure rate amongst entrepreneurs who do not have a good marketing plan to follow.  To improve the chances of having a successful marketing plan, here are a list of some effective marketing strategies a business owner can use.

First, when starting a business, there are two things to consider.  Who is your customer and what it is you have to offer them.  In other words: who is your customer?  What is he or she looking for?  You must have some kind of understanding of their problems and desires.  Put yourself in their shoes and find out what it is that you have to offer them that would make them feel better.

What is your offer?  Why should they buy from you?  What makes you and/or your products stand out from the rest.  Are you offering a product you own or someone else’s product?

Before you start creating an internet marketing strategy, you need to do some research.  Like any business, you have to understand where you are and what you can do.

1. Online Research: Who are your main competitors?  What are they doing online?  PPC, SEO, or press releases.  Do they develop their own products? What are their weaknesses? Do they offer a guarantee? What are the product reviews?

Who is your favorite customer? Where do they hangout?  Do they hangout in YouTube, MySpace, Facebook? Are they paying customers or looking for free products? Read reviews, forums, testimonials to find out as much as you can about your target market.

2. Data Analysis: During this phase, start writing down what your competitors main strengths and weaknesses are.

What are the places your target market usually visits?  What are their main concerns? Can you make a better offer or include a bonus offer?

3. Strategy Development: During this phase, think about who you are and what you have to offer your target market.

This stage involves a little bit of planning.  Your focus will be on marketing methods you will use and which ones you can afford.  PPC, email, blogging, pod casting video marketing, webinars, viral traffic generation, link building, banner exchange, or others? You must prioritize your web marketing tactics. Find out what will bring you a positive Return On Investment (ROI) in the shortest amount of time.

4. Monitoring Performance: When you have an internet marketing plan, implement it immediately. Find out which keywords people typed into the search engines to find your site? Which keywords brought the most money in PPC marketing?  Are you satisfied with your SEO rankings? Do the majority of your visitors leave your site without spending 30 seconds?

By closely monitoring your internet marketing strategies, you can discover what is working and what is not working. Test landing pages, test adwords ads using split testing.  You never know for sure until you test!

Internet marketing has become a very popular way to earn money. It is a worthwhile to engage in implement an internet marketing strategy, but it must be well done. The affordability of internet marketing is one of many reasons many business owners are turning to the internet to market and advertise their business.

Aspiring entrepreneurs can start an online business with very little capital.  Individuals interested in making money online can take a look at: http://www.GenerateOnlineProsperity.com to gain more knowledge about internet marketing.

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Discover Article Marketing Secrets

Posted on 17. Mar, 2010 by admin.

From the Google Keyword Tool, which is a keyword suggestion tool, you will see millions of searches done on a specific keyword.  When keywords are typed into the search engine, indexed websites that contain articles related to those keywords will be displayed.  This is what leads traffic to your website.  Keyword-rich articles can generate massive traffic to your websites.

It has been said that “Content is King”. This is why article writing is one of the most used internet marketing method applied today.  Internet surfers do not seem to get enough information on various topics.  Providing good information through the use of articles is a sure way to drive traffic to your web site.

Why is article marketing so powerful?  Below are the benefits of article writing:

1. It is FREE!

You may pay for an internet provider so it is not totally free, but you would probably be paying for one anyway or at least most people would.  All that is required is a topic and your computer.  The best approach to selecting a topic is to do some research and find what people in your niche want.

Find out what their problems are and then you write about the solution to that problem.  The key here is to know your audience.  Understand their needs, wants and desires.  Once you make a connection with your audience, the leads will start pouring in.

2. Your Website Will Get Noticed.

Once you have completed your article, submit it to various article directories that get the most traffic.  I suggest, if you can afford it, to purchase a tool that will make the job of article submission easier.  With such a tool, you can submit to more directories, thus giving you more presence on the internet.

To get your websites recognized, place your information into the resource box or byline.  This is where individuals will discover, not only who you are, but also what your websites are.

Oh, and by the way, most, if not all, article directories require that the website you mention in your resource box, but your website.  This means it cannot be a replicated website or a company website. It would be advisable to get either a friends or family member to create your website, if you cannot.  Better yet, there are tools that you can get for free that will allow you to create your own websites.  This will be a better avenue to take because you will then have acquired a skill that you can share with others, thus increasing your value.

Increasing your value and sharing your knowledge and skills with others who need your help, is what this business of, network marketing, is about.  Network marketing is about people helping people.

3. Automatically, generate backlinks to your site.

When you submit your articles to directories, other websites will make use of your articles, thus generating backlinks to your website. This will enable more traffic to be directed to your website.

What are backlinks?  They are incoming links to a website or web page.  Their significance lies in search engine optimization (SEO).  The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website or web page.

4.  Position you as a leader:

As an internet marketer, if you just display your products or services on your website or web pages, you will not generate a very high conversion rate.  A conversion rate is when your traffic converts to sales or into a lead in your autoresponder.  You have to show your audience that you are knowledgeable about whatever niche you are marketing to.  Remember, earlier I mentioned increasing your value.  What this means is investing in yourself by acquiring as many skills and knowledge in internet marketing, as you can.  Once you have learned a skill or acquired knowledge that is going to solve the problems for many of the people in your audience, share it with them.  Let your audience know that you have the skills and knowledge that can help them, thus positioning you as a leader.  If you can do this, you should have no problem at having a higher conversion rate.

In your written article, be sure that you jot down the key ideas that pertain to your audience.  These will quickly jump start your article writing momentum.  With the benefits I just mentioned above, experiencing a writer’s block is the last thing you want.  Jotting down ideas and understanding your audience and their issues will help you overcome the problem of ever experiencing a writer’s block.

This Online Training System Has Taught Me Internet Marketing Success. Find Out How!

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Discover Some Residual Income Ideas For Network Marketing Success

Posted on 16. Mar, 2010 by admin.

In the MLM industry, attrition rate can run as high as 70%. This means that the majority of the people who try a network marketing company don’t survive the first few months.  The upside of this is that 9 out of 10 of those survive through ten years become very wealthy.  This industry has produced more self-made millionaires than any other single industry in America.

Ninety percent of conquering a problem is to identify the problem.  Even addicts have to first agree that they have a problem before they can be helped.  So, if in order to overcome the major reasons why people fail, we just avoid those pitfalls. Looking at some residual income ideas for network marketing success:

1. Be prepared to handle rejection.

Who said that any kind of selling was easy.  But it all comes down to attitude.  If you can understand that a rejection of the opportunity that you are so excited about is not a rejection of you, as a person, then you are on your way.  “No” must be interpreted as “next”.  This is easier said than done, but it’s the price of success. The internet and other new technologies allow some rejection proof approaches, such as using lead capture pages and autoresponder messages.  These methods serve to “pre-qualify” your prospects.  However, there still must come a time when you will have to be in personal contact with your downline members.

Part of preparing your mind for these “negative” people is to fill your mind with positive messages.  There are many MLM and “positive thinking” speakers that will help you keep your spirits up.  You will be surprised to know that motivational tapes and books can give to your attitude a boost, in general. This is one of the benefits of being in this industry.  It teaches you to have a brighter outlook on life.

2. Be realistic in your expectations.

To expect too much too soon will only set you up for a possible let down.  Accept that this is a legitimate business that would require investment of time and effort and you must be prepared to sow the seeds before you can reap the benefits.  Who builds a house without first considering the cost?

When you are quoted, the salaries of big recruiters, be sure to ask how much time and money they spent to get to that level.  This information will give you a clearer picture.

3. Once you find a reputable company, be prepared to stay the long haul.

This goes without saying, but if you expect to succeed, you must stay the course.  The most successful people in life have gone through very trying times but they have stuck with it and left a legacy behind.  It is often said that tough times don’t last but tough people do.  The same holds true for those seeing to build a solid residual income.  You should commit yourself to at least 3 years before making a decision either way.

Jumping from one opportunity to the next only shows a lack of decision and stability in your planning.

4. Do not make the business more complicated than it needs to be. Stick with what works.

There is always the temptation to improve on the methods that experienced network marketers have shown to work. Go with what works, not with what should work.  If you find a system that has been working, just plug into it and squeeze the last drop of success you can get from it.  This means that you must show yourself to be teachable to your upline and be willing to teach your downline members the same system.  Residual income success comes from doing what works repeatedly until it becomes second nature.

Another note of caution is that you should not expect from your recruits what you are not doing yourself.  There are many network marketers who will give advice that they are not willing to follow.  In other words, they get their team members to “do the dirty work” for them.  This practice takes away from the real meaning of duplication.  I am doing the same thing that I am teaching you.

5. Train and then let loose!

The real power of network marketing is the power of leverage.  Rather than using 100% of your own effort, you are using 1% of the effort of a hundred.  If your downline members become too dependent upon you, then they will be using 110% of your effort.  This can easily lead to instant burnout.

So the key is to train your frontline members, then train them to train their frontline members.  As you gain leadership experience in the business, then you can occasionally pick up the slack for a colleague.  The important thing is that your team members understand that effort is required on their part or they cannot expect your support.

There are some additional insider tips on really hitting the ground running.  These residual income ideas for network marketers are learned from the study of those who have millions in this industry.

Final Note: If you have multiple streams of income, you should take a look at your income sources and evaluate them to see how many are residual and how many are linear.  The key is that you may want to “balance your portfolio” so you can have income coming in even if, for some reason, you are not able to work.  Especially as a small business owner, this can be critical to your survival.

Even one of your fat monthly checks tucked away on a fixed deposit account will provide you with residual income…accrued income.

Think about it.  How long do you think it will take Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world, to make billions, if all his bank accounts were presently frozen and taken away? That is the power of residual income!

Discover How You Can Start Generating A Residual Income

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Pay Per Click Optimization Tactics

Posted on 14. Mar, 2010 by admin.

At this point, we are no longer just gathering data, but we are attempting to gather some insight into our pay per click campaigns.  There is only a small percentage of data that really matters.  It is the insights you gain and now it is the actions that you take.  Actions are only possible when you have very clear measurements.  What you can’t measure, you can’t improve and what you can’t measure, you can’t act upon.

The reports and data are not going to be enough.  There is no shortage of data in the average program.  There are dozens of reports that you can run in the Google report center. There are also tools like Google Analytics.  There are software and keyword tools.  Despite all that is available, you still have to understand the difference between data and a measurable action.  You have to be sure that every action you take, that you are gauging what is increasing your campaign performance or bringing you forward or backwards.

When you take an action, it is essential that you measure that action to see if it works. This is one of the things people will do.  They are not scared to take the action.  They will take the initial data, look at it and see that it is not meeting their business objectives. They will then take the actions to make improvements, but they neglect to monitor and measure those actions to actually see what is working and what is not working, thus allowing them to continue with their pay per click optimization tactics.

For example, if you are looking at the CTR metrics, that is one thing.  But, if you take action, you are going to write a new ad and create a split test with the intent of increasing that CTR.  This is a great action step.  But, if you just run to split test for the sake of having two ads and you don’t measure which ad is the definitive winner, you are wasting your time.  Pay per click optimization is about taking out all of the guess work and all of the data you are compiling and turning it into known factors so that you can build on it and continue to get more of the good stuff that is known and eliminate the bad stuff that is the unknown.

When you are looking at  your ad copy revisions that you have made and that split test you created within you pay per click campaigns, it is essential that you quickly and efficiently make a decision on the winner. One ad is going to out-perform the other either on the CTR metric or conversion metric or both.  Once you have gathered this information, you need to delete the loser and then retest again.

Again, if you don’t partner that action with measurements, you will fall short in terms of campaign performance.  You will continue to move in this endless cycle of doing things in your account but never knowing exactly what is working and what is not. This can be kind of an emotional roller coaster.  It is a lot easier if you track everything that is happening so that you can continue to understand why the improvements are taking place.  Also, you need to understand even more why things fail.

Tracking your conversions is essential to measuring your results and tracking those campaigns that are generating the most leads; tracking which ad headlines and text ads the highest percentage of leads and have the best conversion rates.

Looking at all of the key metrics in your account and looking to attract those conversions, tracking which components in your account are making those conversions possible; which components are driving those conversions and driving the highest percentage of them, thus allowing you to be very focused on improving elements within your campaign that are generating good results as well as looking at those elements that are causing harm to your campaign.

Pay per click optimization strategies encompasses a process of gathering data, making the decisions based on relationships and recognizing the gaps between your current campaign performance and your goals. Next, you bridge those gaps by continued action and improvements and measure the results of those actions to gain insight into what is working and what is not working.

One thing that is very easy in Google, one of the easiest to do in regards to optimizing your Google campaigns is to notice what isn’t working. You know it is not working if it is not bringing you closer to your goals.  If you are running a campaign and it is not generating a descent amount of leads usually is a good indicator that your ad group, campaign, or ad copy is not working. Is it producing leads at the right conversion rate, meaning are a high number of people taking this keyword in your ad group and going to your landing page and opting in, are they buying? If a high conversion rate is present, this is probably good. But having a keyword with a very low conversion rate; such as 3%, indicates that there is not enough interest there and there is definitely a gap between the keyword and your ad.  What you will find is that either there is a low quality audience or not interested in your offer, or the keyword is not specific enough, whatever the problem, it just is not working.

A low conversion rate, most times, is a very clear indication that something is not working and that there is something wrong there.  The higher conversion rates indicate a higher level of interest.  They are more likely to convert to sales.  The conversion rate is another key metric that can be used to determine whether something in your campaigns is not working.

Another metric for what is not working is the Cost Per Click metric, or CPC.  If you have a set budget and you know that the market value of your lead is around $6.00 and you can afford $6.00 a lead and still make a profit, if the lead is costing you $25.00, it does not matter how good that keyword is converting or how everything looks on paper, a $25.00 CPC shows you that something is off.  Thus, the CPC is another great way for determining what is working and what is not working.

Once you have determined what is not working, you are going to delete those elements. You are either going to pause the ad group or delete the ad group.  Another step is to pause the keyword or delete it completely.  Either way, you are going to need to shut it down as soon as it shows you, after 20 or 30 clicks, that it is just not producing. It is over priced, low traffic, with no conversions, and displays lack of interest, which means little to no sales.

You are always going to want to plug those holes on a constant basis. With Google, everything is going to be a test and a lot of it is not going to work.  This is why it is essential that you see what is not working and quickly act upon it, by taking it out so that it doesn’t continue to bleed your ad dollars. If you don’t act quickly, you can fall behind in the race very quickly.

A key factor for success, which occurs over time, where you can get some industry metrics
starting out in a new market or you may have a market where you don’t know what your metrics are and you are going to have to develop them.  Often this is the case because every business is unique in terms of their goals, their budgets; everything is unique within you business.  In situations like this, you are going to need to set some campaign benchmarks that are measurable that pertain to your business, that are obtainable just for your. You want to set something that is specific to you, not broad.  This will be something that you will need to develop over time.  Again, this is an ongoing process. Therefore, optimization is going to remain there for as long as you manage an advertising online campaign.

Through the optimization and data, when you gain those insights, you want to immediately set some benchmarks for what works. You want to be clear on your benchmarks; such as, what your CTR should look like.  You want to know what it should be in your market.  You know that when you get a certain benchmark, you show up at the top of the page.  This is something you are going to have to watch from your traffic and experience.

Next, what about your CPC? For example, you notice that you make the greatest profits at the end of the month.  This can be determine if you are simply taking your ad spend that you put into Google, the entire amount of ad dollars that you used for your Google advertising and you are just adding up all the sales, revenue, and profit that was generated during that month and compare those two metrics.  When you do this, you are going to find out which months are more profitable, which ones are not as profitable and you know which campaigns.  You may have noticed that based on your numbers, that your CPC, there is a certain Cost Per Click that always tends to produce a profit.   You also know that if you go much over that CPC, you go into negative, no matter how well you do, just based on performance metrics, that there is a certain CPC, that if you pay it, you are certain to lose money whereas if you keep your CPC at or below a specific CPC, you are guaranteed for profit.  So, having a Cost Per Click benchmark is something that you will develop over time.

Then there is positions.  It is important to know which positions are the sweet spot for your campaigns.  This is going to vary from keyword to keyword and campaign to campaign.  It is never going to be the same. This has a lot to do with behavior.  It has a lot to do with the buying behavior.  Are your prospects buying, are they shopping, are they browsing and how does their behavior relate back from the keyword query.  You need to know which positions are working and which behaviors are producing sales.  Overall, you want to know what is producing you the most profits and sales and good results.

You should also always have some conversion numbers.  You should always try to beat your conversion metrics.  The two metrics you are always going to try to beat ever day, that will make you the number one advertiser in your category or your market, is to increase your CTR (Google ranks everything on this) and your Conversion rates (this is the ratio you bench everything on).  The conversion rate reflect the leads and the sales opportunities in your pipeline. The CTRs reflect for Google, the value in your traffic, the value in giving you those positions.  Every time Google puts you at the top of the page, there is a value in that. Google has to know that if they give you those positions, they are going to get paid in clicks.  If it does, they will continue to put you there over and over again.

In conclusion, you should always be improving the CTR metrics as well as the conversion rate metric, then you will know that you are going to get the most high quality leads for the lowest price over time.  Therefore, be sure you have some conversion rate metrics set in terms of benchmarks.  What is a good conversion rate for you and what is a good cost per conversion (CPC).

Pay Per Click Optimization

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The PPC Optimization Process

Posted on 03. Mar, 2010 by admin.

PPC optimization is an ongoing process.  There are certain things you are going to do in a circular type pattern, meaning you start back over every week refining your ppc campaign, performance, and refining your results as well as testing everything out. Optimization requires setting it up and measuring it against your business objectives. The following week you go back in and refine again.

Optimizing ppc campaigns is circular in its nature; you are looking for what has changed. This is the essence of ppc optimization.  You are only looking for what has changed, at one data range to another and one date range to the next.  You are looking for what has changed because the internet is always changing.  In addition, there are always new competitors entering the market.  Such changes also include new keyword trends that emerge.  For instance, about 25% of all search queries every day are brand new.

The internet is expanding. There is more meaning implied in keywords which can shift at any given moment.  For example, say you have a campaign that you have had for a little while and one of the keywords is “income”.  Initially, this seems pretty obvious; income is income. But, when spring time comes along, suddenly, income is related to taxes.  Thus, most people doing search queries on income or anything related to income, 80% of the results are going to have something related to taxes.  Thus, the meaning of the word “income” has shifted to mean taxes. What this should tell you is, if you are not watching your campaign performance, you will start to receive unqualified traffic and your campaign will no longer be targeted. This damages your ROI and profitability due the attraction of non-targeted traffic to your site.  You have to watch your campaigns so you can catch any shifts.

Even Google’s algorithm changes often.  Everything moves at a lightening pace.  The reason you optimize and the reason you do optimize as a process is because it allows you to stay on top of any changes that take place.  Plus, there is the added benefit that optimization, if done correctly, improves your performance.  You will continue to take advantage of all of the opportunities that are presented to you.

First Step In PPC Optimization:

The first step to optimization is to continually test new markets.  Testing is included as part of the circular pattern in optimization.  Twenty five percent of all keyword queries are new.  Keywrod trends affect the outcome of everything. Thus,  if you are not watching to determine what the market is doing today, you are probably missing new markets or new ways that people are searching for your products or services.  You may even be missing out on  new opportunities and locations of where markets are gathering in online social communities and blogs.  These are areas where you could be doing content advertising.

There is always going to be a new opportunity and the only way to continually get more market share and to get more traffic, more leads, sales, and profits out of Google, is going to require that you test new markets and expand out into these new markets.

In a brand new ppc campaign, you are doing a lot of unknown things; such as, using keywords that you have done some research on, but you are not sure whether they are going to work.  For example, you have a new website and you have no idea how the landing page is going to convert; this is an unknown factor.  This is why it is essential that you are always testing these factors and unknowns to find the knowns and continue with your progress.

A brand new Google campaign is going to require a huge amount of testing, even if it uses branded keywords, because you are still going to have to test all of the measurements we stated above.  You are going to test to see where the traffic spots are. You are going to test to observe your competitors.  You should be testing the whole system.

The second step in optimizing ppc is going to require that you monitor your campaigns on a daily basis.  You especially want to monitor you test campaigns.  Test campaigns are going to be the most prone to bleeding ad dollars.  The reason being that if they are brand new and you are testing, 90% of what you are doing, is not going to work.  This is because with keywords, which is true of any kind of direct response marketing, which Google is, is similar to direct mail.  With direct mail, you are looking for a 3% conversion rate.  This is also very similar on keyword search.  If you put a lot of keywords in, some will drive traffic and sales, while others won’t do anything, some will not have any market, and no one is searching for them.  Others are going to be very competitive.  This could lead to you having to take your time in order to get market share. There are also going to be keywords that will cost too much.

Second Step In PPC Optimization:

Step two is going to require you to be in your campaigns every day, monitoring your campaigns and determining which ones are working; especially in a test campaign.  The newer the campaign, the more frequently you should monitor it. When you are monitoring your campaign, you are looking for action.  You are looking at your campaign to gain some insight so you can take some action.

Now, the question you may have is what type of action is required?  You can’t do much on a daily basis except stop what is bleeding your ad dollars.  So, when you go into your campaign, you are either pausing or killing the keywords and ad groups on a daily basis in a test campaign that has 20 or 30 clicks.  Usually, the keywords or ad groups are  experiencing terrible conversion rates, a high cost per conversion and they are not producing a lot of leads. Quite possibly, they may have a terrible CTR that you should pay attention to where certain keywords are getting a lot of impressions, but not a lot of clicks.  Later, you will need to work on your ad copy, but you could be experiencing a situation where, although you have been optimizing your campaign and you still are not able to get your metrics up. In a situation like this, you have no choice but to shut it down.

But, most times on a test campaign, you just want to look at the conversion data daily and plug all of the wholes that are bleeding ad dollars on the keywords and campaigns that are not converting to leads and sales opportunities in your pipeline.

Third Step In PPC Optimization:

So, now when you move past, testing, monitoring, and plugging the holes, the third step in optimizing ppc campaigns is to evaluate what is working and what is not once a week.  This is when we return to the performance metrics.  To get the performance metrics that are meaningful, you need a significant amount of data. This step can not be completed off a couple of clicks, impressions, or conversions.  The more data you have, the more concise you insights are, the more likely that the known is no longer an educated guess.

You can get performance data daily if you have a very high traffic campaign, ad group or keyword.  Improving the performance data is a daily activity.    But if you are looking at overall improvements, which include landing pages, ad copy revisions, and are improving the metrics rapidly, you need to do this once a week.  Again, on high traffic terms, when you trying to burn in a position or do something else aggressively, you should be monitoring your performance on a daily basis. It is only if the data provides you enough insight that helps you to know what to do next.

Your entire account should be optimized once a week.  At the account level, you should be looking for all the key performance indicators mentioned in this article. Of course, you first step should be reviewing you key metrics once a week.  This includes improving your CTR, conversion rates, and finding new keywords and new markets.  These actions should be done every week. The keywords that are converting to the most leads are the ones you should use to find new keywords and new markets.

Once a month, you should be looking at your Return On Investment (ROI).  This is key because your ROI determines your business success. When monitoring your ROI, you are looking for ways to make more profits.  The third ste is a different process.  Like your performance indicators, this step requires that you have a lot of data.  It has to be conclusive data.  Once you see that a campaign has converted to 20 or 30 leads per day, then you have some pretty conclusive data that the campaign is a lead generator. We refer to this step as profit mining.  You mine out the top performing keywords by re restructuring your campaigns to separate you highest converting keywords and placing those high performing keywords into their own campaign, thus allowing you to optimize them to get the most out of them.

Just for the keywords and ad groups that have proven to produce leads, you want to remove the terms, keywords, and ad groups, text ads, and capture pages and place everything into a separate campaign.  Once you move them into a separate campaign, you can then increase the budget and increase the amount of time you spend optimizing.  This allows you to invest your time in the right place, but more importantly, you can put your money into a campaign that is a lead generator or money maker.  These campaigns, which are known to convert, are labeled and assigned a much higher budget.  By increasing your budget on you top performing keywords and ad groups, you are increasing the ability to generate more leads and more money because you have already optimized the key metrics for traffic, cost, and quality.  These are also campaigns where you understand their behavior.  The campaigns could be a buying behavior or converting behavior and with such behaviors, you want to maximize how much money you spend in that campaign. You want as many conversions as possible.   Again, this is a step that should be done once a month.

In essence, by doing this, you are creating different high performing campaigns that are separated based on their behavior.  For example, you could have a high converting campaign for leads  Another one for sales and sales ready leads, who are leads that are calling you and following up with you.  You could have several campaigns in the sales funnel for your introductory sale or low price sale and your top tier sales, which have the highest profit margin.

This way you are tracking which of your campaigns are producing the most results and this is done by separting those key performers into their own campaigns where they can be optimized and maximized.  This is a big part of the overall ppc optimization process.

After this step, you then want to track these high producing campaigns at least once a month.  As you can see, the ppc optimization process does not happen in one day or one week, or one month.  This is why optimization is often referred to as a system of testing, monitoring, and evaluating.  Improving your campaigns is a circular pattern over days, weeks, months and then returning to step one where you compare the two date ranges and look for gains or losses, so you can continue to determine the appropriate actions to either stay on track or get back on track.

Master PPC Optimization

PPC optimization requires study and much practice.

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SEO Keyword Selection Strategies

Posted on 03. Mar, 2010 by admin.

SEO is a vehicle that drives potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination, which is your website, you need to provide them with specific and effective signs that will direct them right to your website.  You do this by creating implement specific seo keyword selection strategies.

Think of the right keywords as the “Open Sesame!” of the internet.  Find the right words or phrases and presto, massive traffic will be pulling up to your front door.  But if your seo keywords are too general or too over-used, the possibility of visitors making it all the way to your site, or seeing any real profits from the visitors that do arrive, decreases dramatically.

Your seo keyword selections serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy.  If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it.  So, your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and key phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words to use for your search phrases.  Unfortunately, if you haven’t followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It is hard to be objective when you are in the center of your business network, which is why you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside.  You need to be able to think like your customers.  And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directlly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search phrases yourself, ask for words from a as many potential customers as you can.  You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers’ understanding is significantly different.

The customer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably never would have considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from outside resources should you add your own keyword selections to the list.  Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your website.  By “quality visitors” I mean those consumers who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just surf around your website and take off for greener pastures.  In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, keep in mind three elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality.  The more popular your seo keyword selection is, the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will bring up your URL.

You can purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and key phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity.  Software; such as, Google Keyword Tool or WordTracker, will even suggest variations of your keywords and key phrases.  The higher the number the software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your website. The only fallacy with this concept is the more popular the keyword, the greater the search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the customer will probably never scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn’t enough to declare a keyword a good choice.  You must move on to the next criteria, which is specificity.  The more specific your keyword is, the greater likelihood that the customer, who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find you.

Let’s look at a hypothetical example.  Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword, “automobile companies.”  However, your company specializes in bodywork only .  The keyword, “automobile body shops” would rank lower on the popularity scale than “automobile companies,” but it would, nevertheless, serve you better.  Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing your oil filters, you will get only those individuals with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site.  I other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will immediately find you.  Not only that, but the greater the specificity of your keyword is, the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation.  Once again, this requires putting yourself inside the mind of the consumer rather than the seller.  You want to determine what motivates a person looking for a service or product, to type in a particular word or phrase.  Let’s look at another example; such as, a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new city.  If you have to choose between a “Seattle Job Listings” and “Seattle IT Recruiters”, which do you think will benefit the consumer more?  It you were looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would you select?  The second one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people who have decided on their career, have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school, who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer parties.  You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until you find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to your site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done.  You must continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends do change. you cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness of our keywords in individual search engines.  There is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic.  This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profits per visitor do.  You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site, who will actually purchase your product, fill out your forms, or download you product.  This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficiency of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits.

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Google Adwords Traffic Performance Metrics

Posted on 01. Mar, 2010 by admin.

Based on your business objectives, when you are building a business it is easy to section your business objectives and to match them with performance metrics that allow you to take action to get closer to those objectives.

The first Google Adwords traffic performance metric and business objective that align well is going to be your traffic performance metrics. Suppose one of your business goals is to increase the volume of leads you are getting, which is an ongoing business process and goal and something that Google does very well, you want to be focused on traffic.  The only way to increase your lead flow is to increase your visibility of your ads and the visitors to your website.

You are going to be able to recognize poor adwords traffic performance in several metrics, especially when you are optimizing.  One such indicator of a poor performance metric is low impressions.  This would indicate that there is not a lot of people interested in your market or you are not getting your impression share.

Low clicks is an indicator that you have decent impressions but your ad copy is weak and you are not drawing people to the website.  Visitors to your website are not clicking on the ad when they see it.  By improving the ad copy and doing a split test and measuring and selecting the top performing ad copy, this will allow you to get a higher performing ad which the leads to you bringing more visitors to your website which will result in better lead flow.

Another thing you will discover is low CTR’s.  Often the low CTR metric, not only does it show you that you are not converting the traffic, you are also not performing well for Google.  A low CTR is going to give you a low quality score, which leads to a low position and very incremental coverage. In essence, a low CTR will end up hitting you from both sides.  One side is on your end, because you are not taking action on those traffic opportunities, but more importantly, you are being hit on Google’s end and this causes them to exclude you from having your ads being seen or seen sparingly.

A low CTR is one of the first metrics you need to pay attention to and start improving aggressively by getting into the game and getting some visibility and getting more traffic.

Often low impressions requires you to do some testing.  This means you should look at the market.  Determine whether it is a weaker market, or your keywords are not correct.  Maybe you can try a different set of keywords to test to see whether you can get higher impressions.  There are many ways to look at the impression metric.  But the best way is to make increasing impressions, part of your process or part of your routine to always continue looking for new keyword opportunities.

If you are not committed to new keyword opportunities, because of so many shifts in the market in terms of competition, market share, and impression share, it is easy for things to quickly go downhill.  But being committed to new keyword opportunities and using tools; such as Google Insights for search, to find those new trends, find what is working, and find out what people are searching, you are never going to be behind the curve.

If your impressions are dropping, it could be the market itself it dropping.  Keep in mind, markets shift. For example, if you were in real estate two years ago, real estate was a great search term.  There were many people looking for real estate two years ago.  But, if you look at the term real estate today from a trend standpoint, the industry is pretty tragic.  Not a lot of people are looking to buy real estate.

The point is, it is important to take into consideration the trends and realize that just because you have great impression share and traffic today, things are always moving and shifting.  Thus, the only way to ensure you have success tomorrow with your keyword selection, is to not only keep your campaign traffic performance high, but also keep those new keyword opportunities coming so that you can manage the traffic flow.

Another way to focus on increasing your traffic is to raise you campaign budget for increased coverage and visibility.  When you start out with a low campaign budget, it should never be static.  This is because budget is not a static metric; it is part of a system, so it is moving constantly.  Many people have a tendency to set a budget static by setting a low budget and then leaving it there, without considering the option of increasing or even decreasing your bid amounts each day.

Keep in mind, Google is a little more organic.  You have to be always allotting the right budget that will produce your leads, sales and profits.  When you are testing a new market, you start the budget low and as the campaign performance improves, you have to consistently increase the budget amount to allow Google to show you more of what they have to offer.

By telling Google that you only have a certain amount to spend, say you only have $50 or even $100 a day to spend on this traffic, Google might be able to give you $10,000 a day of that high converting traffic allowing you to produce sales, but if you don’t open up the budget, letting Google know that you can pay and qualify for that, they are going to spend the budget you allotted within a few seconds, a few minutes or a few hours, which happens in a high traffic market, then the rest of the day, your ads are not going to run. Such action on the part of Google prevents you from seeing what the market has available throughout the entire day, week or month.  What ends up happening is, when Google starts rotating the ads, you don’t get good impression share.

In a competitive market where there is lots of money on the table, Google is going to rotate ads on that first page.  If you don’t have a high budget, they are not going to put you in the rotation as frequently.  This is in part, because they don’t want to max your budget and they are known for keeping those budgets in line.

Your budget is also a key metric.  If you are not seeing the traffic you want, you might have your budget in a place that indicates to Google that you don’t want more traffic which leads to you having to ramp those budgets for increased coverage and visibility.

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Home Business Tax Deduction Benefits

Posted on 01. Mar, 2010 by admin.

Every year, several thousand people develop an interest in “going into business”.  Many of these people have an idea, a product or service they hope to promote into an income producing business which they can operate from their homes.

If you are one of these people, here are some practical thoughts to consider before hanging out the “Open-for-Business” sign.

In areas zoned “Residential Only,” your proposed business could be illegal.  In many areas, zoning restrictions rule out home businesses involving the coming and going of many customers, clients or employees.  Many businesses that sell or even store anything for sale on the premises also fall into this category.

Be sure to check with your local zoning office to see how the ordinances in your particular area may affect your business plans.  You may need a special to operate your business from your home, and you may find that making small changes in your plan will put you into the position of meeting zoning standards.

Many communities grant home occupation permits for businesses that involve typing, sewing and teaching, but turn thumbs down or requests for photographers, interior decorators and home-improvement businesses to be run from the home.  And often, even if you are permitted to use your home for a given business, there will be restrictions that you may need to take into consideration.  By all means, work with you zoning people, and save yourself time, trouble and dollars.

One of the requirements imposed might be off-street parking for your customers or patrons.  And, signs are generally forbidden in residential districts.  If you teach, there is almost always a limit on the number of students you may have at any one time.

Obtaining zoning approval for you business, could be as simple as filling out an application, or it could involve a public hearing. The important points the zoning officials will consider will center around how your business will affect the neighborhood.

Will it increase the traffic noticeably on your street?  Will there be a substantial increase in noise?  And how will your neighbors feel about this business alongside their homes?

To repeat, check into the zoning restrictions, and then check again to determine if you will need a city license.  If you are selling something, you may need a vendor’s license, and be required to collect sales taxes on your transactions.  The sales tax requirement would result in the need for careful record keeping.

Licensing can be an involved process, and depending upon the type of business, it could even involve the inspection of your home to determine if it meets with local health and building and fire codes.  Should this be the case, you will need to bring your facilities up to the local standards.  Usually this will involve some simple repairs or adjustments that you can either do personally, or hire out to a handyman at a nominal cost.

Still more items to consider: Will your homeowner’s insurance cover the property and liability involved in you in your new business?  This must be resolved., so be sure to talk it over with your insurance agent.

Tax deductions, which were once one of the beauties of engaging in a home business, are not what they once were.  To be eligible for business related tax deduction today, you have to use that part of your home claimed exclusively and regularly as either the principal location of your business, or the place reserved to meet patients, clients, or customers.

An interesting case in point: If you use your den or a spare bedroom as the principal place of business, working there from 8:00 to 5:00 every day, but permit your children to watch television in that room during the evening hours, the IRS dictates that you cannot claim a tax deduction for that room as your office or place of business.

There are a couple of exceptions to not to the “exclusive use” rule.  One is the storage of inventory in your home, where your home is the location of your trade or business, and approval for your business.  You could then be a trade or business that is selling products at retail or wholesale.  According to the IRS, such storage space must be used on a regular basis, and be a separately identifiable space.

Another exception applies to day care services that are provided for children, the elderly, or physically or mentally handicapped. This exception applies only if the owner of the facility complies with the state laws for licensing.

To be eligible for home business tax deductions, your business must be an activity under taken with the intent of making a profit. It is presumed you meet this requirement if your business makes a profit in any two years of a five year period.

Once you are this far along, you can deduct business expenses; such as, supplies, subscriptions to professional journals, and an allowance for the business use of car or truck.  You can also claim tax deductions for home related business expenses; such as, utilities, and in some cases, even a new paint job for your home.

The IRS is going to treat that part of our home that you use for your business as though it were a separate piece of property.  This means that you will need to keep good records and take care not to mix business and personal matters.  No specific method of record keeping is required, but your records must clearly justify any deductions you claim.

You can begin calculating what percentage of the house is used for your business either by number of rooms or by square footage.  Thus, if you use one of five rooms for your business, the business portion is 20%.  If you run your business out of a room that is 10 by 20 feet, and the total area of your home is 1,200 square feet, the business-space factor is 10%.

An extra computation is required if your business is a home day care center.  This is one of the exempted activities in which the exclusive use rule doesn’t apply.  Check with your tax preparer and the IRS for an exact determination.

If you’re a renter, you can deduct the part of your rent which is attributable to the business share of your house or apartment.  Homeowners can take a deduction based on the depreciation of the business portion of their house.

There is a limit to the amount you can deduct. This is the amount equal to the gross income generated by the business, minus those home expenses you could deduct even if you weren’t operating a business from your home.  As an example, real estate taxes and mortgage interest are deductable regardless of any business activity in your home, so you must subtract from your business’ gross income the percentage that’s belongs to the business portion of your home.  You thus arrive at the maximum amount for home business tax deductions.

If you are self-employed, you can claim your business deductions on Schedule C, Profit (or Loss) for Business or Profession.  The IRS emphasizes that claiming home business tax deductions does not automatically trigger an audit of your tax return.  Although, it is always wise to stay within the proper guidelines, and of course, keep detailed records if you claim business related expenses when you are working out of your home.  You should discuss this aspect of your operation with your tax preparer or person qualified in the field of small business tax requirements.

If your business earnings aren’t subject to withholding tax, and your estimated federal taxes are $100 or more, you will probably be filing a Declaration of Estimated Tax, Form 1040-ES.  To complete this form, you will have to estimate your income for the upcoming year and also make a computation of the income tax and self-employment tax you will owe.  The self-employment taxes pay for Social Security coverage.

If you have a salaried job covered by Social Security, the self-employment tax applies only to the amount of your home business income that, when added to your salary, reaches the current ceiling.  When you file your Form 1040-ES, which is due April 15th, you must make the first of four equal installment payments on your estimated tax bill.

Another good way to trim your taxes is by setting up a Keogh plan or an Individual Retirement Account.  With either of these, you can shelter some of your home business income from taxes by investing it for your retirement.

Article Written by Joe Featherston

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Optimizing PPC Campaign Performance

Posted on 27. Feb, 2010 by admin.

The final metric that everyone wants to optimize for, regarding ppc campaign performance, that will put the most dollars, most revenue, most return on investment, is your lead quality.

Again, lead quality is probably the last metric that you can optimize for the simple reason that your quality is something that is determined over time and is determined by the actions taken within your sales funnel.

So, when it comes to sales driven marketing, what you will find is that it is an ongoing process.  It requires feedback from the sales funnel to be truly effective. It is not as if you can just monitor quality on conversion rates alone within the campaign.

Your conversion rates are a key indicator of what is happening in your sales funnel.  It is also an indicator of interests levels. But, conversion rates are not the end all be all.  If you are trying to improve lead quality, a lot of this happens outside of the Google campaign and within your sales funnel.  Here is when you are talking to people and getting feedback and tracking what is selling and where the profitability lies.

The one thing to keep in mind is that a campaign with a high CTR and a high conversion rate is reflective of a high interest in your offer. These will be the measures that you will always continually optimize at the campaign level.  A person with a high level of interest, both in the ad and the landing page, from the keyword, ad group, or campaign, are always converting both in the click and lead rates. This definitely indicates that you have a really high potential, within the campaign, for sales conversions.

But, you have to be looking at the quality outside of the campaign.  This is going to be the percentage of the leads generated that actually create true sales opportunities; meaning which ones are sales ready?  Which ones want to talk to a sales person, sign up with a sales person, or actually buy a product.

How many of those leads convert on the backend?  How many of them, not only make an initial purchase, but also make repeat visits and repeat purchases?  All of this is going to be determined by optimizing within the campaign.

How do you optimize for improved profitability?  This is a process outside of the campaigns and it does require a level of analytics.  This is the most advanced Google marketing out there, but it is the Google marketing that produces the largest results in regards to profitability.  If you want to improve the quality of your campaigns while engaged in your performance metrics, you can be looking at a lot of different elements.

The main element is keyword quality.  Once you have determined that you have a high quality keyword, everything is going to happen on the back-end.  This is outside of the Google funnel and inside the sales funnel which leads to the interaction of what is happening within the sales funnel. But, if you are over in your account and you want to make some good decisions in regards to profitability and lead quality, ask yourself these kinds of questions:

• Is the keyword specific enough?: This is an important question because if it isn’t, this could be a good indicator that you are catering more towards the browsing behavior and not the buying behavior.  Your keyword is not specific enough to convert into a sale.

• Does it clearly define my product or service?:  Is it an order taking keyword?  Does my keyword query show there is specific demand for my products and services?  Look at this.  Does your keyword query clearly define exactly what you do?  More importantly, are the people searching for this keyword, even though it defines what you do, interested in your offer.  To determine this, look at your competitors business models, their landing pages, and their ad copy and see what offers drive your market.  This is not going to be determined by what is going on in your campaign, but has a lot to do with the offer.  Certain offers people are more responsive in certain keyword categories. Which leads to the third question you should ask yourself.

• Are people searching really interested in what I am offering?  This includes the way your whole thing; such as, pricing to timing, to how your offer is put together.  Then ask yourself the following question.

• Are people searching looking for exactly what I have.  This means are they looking for the exact type of business solution, is your product or service the solution to their problems?  Maybe you need to make the structure of your offer clearer.  Does you landing page make your offer clearer?  If you landing page is making it incredibly clear that you have what they are looking for, but they are still not responding, they may not be looking for exactly what you have.

• Another question to ask yourself is “Is this keyword attracting the right audience?”  There is a right and a wrong audience.  Depending on the price point of your product, which is one thing you will need to check is can your prospects afford your product or service.  Also, check to be sure that it is not a low quality audience.  Low quality audience does not mean a low quality person, it just means that they don’t have everything that they need to move forward with you in the sales funnel.  They can’t become a sales opportunity because they can’t afford your product.

If you can answer those questions honestly, you will gain real insight into your keyword, ad group, and market quality.  Your answers to these questions are going to help you determine whether the campaign performance metric is going to perform at a quality level.  Is there a high likelihood, based on your campaign performance, that those leads are going to produce sales?

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Magnetic Sponsoring Boot Camp Part Two

Posted on 25. Feb, 2010 by admin.

Magnetic Sponsoring was developed by Mike Dillard.  For years, Mike struggled in the network marketing industry.  After finally understanding what it takes to achieve success in this industry, Mike went from waiting on tables to a $250,000 business in just four months.

Lawren Smith, a network marketing entrepreneur, has struggled for almost six years, has been looking for online courses that would help her to overcome her struggles in network marketing and finally find success. She believes that she has found one such course with Magnetic Sponsoring.  “I wanted to find and online course that, not only would help me to learn about marketing, but would allow me to earn income at the same time.  Magnetic Sponsoring is one such course.”  Lawren says.  She adds, “I was introduced to Magnetic Sponsoring through my business relationship with MLMLeadSystemPro (ConquerTheInternetMarketing.com).”

With this course, you learn how to attract people to you.  For network marketing enterpeneurs, Magnetic Sponsoring combines the best of two worlds.  You learn how to generate endless free leads while, at the same time, getting paid.  As you learn, you an get endless free advertising.

“I bought the course 5 months ago. I no longer do cold calling or purchase leads  In fact, in a four month time period, I generated close to 1000 leads and got paid to do it.”, says Lawren.

Since getting the course and studying it, Lawren has become an expert in lead generation.

Lawren comments, “I now have people contacting me!  This has opened up a whole new world for me!”.

To learn more about magnetic sponsoring, you may visit: Become Successful .  To find out more about what Lawren Smith and her business, visit: Generate Solid Wealth

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