What If All Aerus Electrolux Vacuums Customers Wore Bright Orange Tee Shirts?

What If All Aerus Electrolux Vacuums Customers Wore Bright Orange Tee Shirts?

As a consultant to this industry, I sometimes have the privilege of acting as a consultant with Aerus Electrolux Vacuum distributors. No matter how many tips I blog, articles I write, or trainings I teach, I still occassionaly get individuals that say, "pay per click marketing might be the best thing since sliced bread, but paying money everytime somebody clicks scares me to death. Perhaps this is not best marketing strategy for my vacuum cleaners, floor care & air filtration systems."

I'm certain that one of the reasons I hear this is because the "concept" of pay per click marketing is still not understood. Perhaps an analogy will clarify.

Step into a fantasy world for a moment and imagine how interesting it might be if you could secretively place yourself at the front door of a Wal-Mart or Blockbuster and immediately spot customers who were looking for your product? Lets say they wore vividly colored Orange tee shirts announcing what they were at the store looking for. Imagine if these shoppers knew to go straight to you rather than go round and round the store searching out the items on their shopping list?

With Google AdWords, Yahoo's Sponsored Search or a Major Second Tier PPC Player, you connect with people ready to buy immediately, the second they want to hear from you.

The power of this idea gets even more enticing if we augment it a bit more... What if you could have 1000's of advertising agents at the door of every shopping mall in the country. What's more, you'd have to pay them only if they found customers ready to buy and began promoting to them your vacuum cleaners, floor care & air filtration systems.

Now, even if your competition has posted huge billboards, hovering over everyone, it doesn't matter. Few shoppers want to be sold in a generic sense rather, they want to 'find' what it is they came shopping for originally. All the while, your "agents" are constantly interacting with every single customer that passes by.

Deploying a campaign of pay-per-click advertisements in Google, Yahoo, or another PPC search engine is like deploying a team of enthusiastic "agents", except that these search agents won't require breaks and they will work without pay until a customer is delivered to your doorstep. Your "agents" will be waiting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for customers looking for your products or services. As soon as people begin the shopping process, you'll be the first to know.

Search engine marketing will grow by 33% this year, with growth slowing to 10% annually by 2010, when spending will hit $11.6 billion. (Source: Forrester Research 02/2005)

Are you learning valuable ideas? We recommend you check out our previous blog posts for many other marketing ideas. In fact, why not add our RSS feed to your "Feed Reader" so you don't miss future trainings?


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Aerus Electrolux Vacuums | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Yahoo Sponsored Search | Dan Hollings | vacuum cleaners | air filtration
Other recommended blogs:
Herbalife | Home Interiors Gifts | Homemade Gourmet

Aerus Electrolux Vacuums seems like a Mompreneur opportunity?

Aerus Electrolux Vacuums seems like a Mompreneur opportunity?

Source: Direct Sales Association

Perhaps I was bored when I stumbled upon this statistic, but the more I thought about it, the more excited I got... based on numbers available from the Direct Sales Association, 79.9% of people in "direct sales" are female. Guess what that means? Yes, the guys total a paltry 20.1%. Many of the women in our industry (and customers we seek) are current or future moms. It was only a matter of time before a new term has appeared on our horizon known as Mompreneurism.

Yes, you're reading it right. According to authors Patricia Cobe and Ellen Parlapiano, who trademarked the term "mompreneurs" and were recently featured in Time magazine and various other programs like NBC Nightly News; their mompreneurs online site draws millions of visitors each month.

In reading through the Mompreneurs Online web site you'll enjoy reading that they've interviewed hundreds of moms running their own business from home. Their interviews revealed that these goal directed women share certain secrets for success on the wild, wild web. I borrowed a few points about mompreneurs from their site... below is a sampling of why and how mom-owned businesses are surviving and thriving on the web according to Ellen and Pat:

• A Natural Niche. Cyberspace opens up a wealth of business ideas, allowing moms to tap into their talents, skills and passions to create products and services for highly targeted audiences.
• Team Work. Mompreneurs® forge powerful alliances--both online and off! Together they harness technology to build an instant network of personal and professional support through online communities and marketing cooperatives.
• Web Wisdom. Work-at-home moms understand that a dot.com name alone is not enough to power success. But the Internet can be a very valuable tool when used in conjunction with more traditional business strategies.

It's possible you think Aerus Electrolux Vacuums is a good place for moms? Maybe you're hoping to attract moms running their own business from home to your site, blog, product or business? Or, maybe you already have lots of moms and a true mompreneurial ground swell in the works?

Whatever the case, work-from-home mothers are an important niche and your pay-per-click marketing strategies can target these moms. Moms are both a consumer and a business force to be understood and admired.

Maybe your vacuum cleaners, floor care & air filtration systems will be just the thing these mompreneurs are seeking? Now, let's continue (below) with more tips in our series on techniques to assure a successful PPC search engine campaign. Maybe you can get some moms clicking!

Tricks of the trade for the successful PPC campaign...

• When cooking-up your keyword phrase list, use an extended "keyword discovery" phase. Your competition, like you, will do basic keyword research. You can only beat them if you take it to the next level, and that won't happen in the first day. Having a large number of targeted keywords in your campaign is a side effect of an extended period of brainstorming, discovery, research, or whatever you want to call it.
• Not very wood with gords? There is a hidden target market of quality visitors who type in incorrect spellings of what they are looking for. Site owners often overlook this. In a recent 30 day period on a major search engine at least 108 people where searching for a 'buisness'? Hundreds more were searching for: 'vitiamins', 'vitimans' and even 'vitamens'... You can bid on misspellings and have very little competition on the search results page.
• Assume that at least half your keywords will be rotten eggs, that is, no one will ever look for them and end up at your site. Because there is no extra cost to add as many keyword phrases as you can think up, treat them like biscuits and bake-up as many as you can... 100 or more keyword phrases for each destination page you list in any PPC search engine.

How to Reach Out to Mompreneurs

Here's one way you can be very appealing in reaching out to moms running their own business from home:

MAKE IT VIRAL: Viral marketing is huge among mompreneurs. Easy-to-forward articles, mini-ebooks and cards are perfect. But low-tech solutions can be equally effective. For example, Clorox offers a new mop which includes several postcard-style coupons that let happy customers share the handy product with their friends.

For additional marketing help visit:
Internet Marketing Tips for Aerus Electrolux Vacuums

Check back next week for the next in this series of pay per click marketing tips...


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Aerus Electrolux Vacuums | mompreneur | mompreneurs | mompreneurism | entrepreneur | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Dan Hollings | vacuum cleaners | air filtration
Other recommended blogs:
FreeLife | Global Health Trax | Gold Canyon Candles

Really! You're saying vacuum cleaners, floor care & air filtration systems can be marketed via search engine marketing

Really! You're saying vacuum cleaners, floor care & air filtration systems can be marketed via search engine marketing

After being inside millions of homes and talking with millions of people, Aerus learned quite a bit about how cleaner air stimulates a healthy living environment. Aerus is a company that isn't just about making homes cleaner, it's about making lives better. We help people take better care of their families. We are creating home environments that are safer, healthier and more inviting. Aerus believes in living life well.

As An Aerus Electrolux Vacuum distributor you know your product and you've set your goals. Your web page, site, or blog is up and you're pondering methods to get search engine traffic.

Can your vacuum cleaners, floor care & air filtration systems be sold via search engine marketing or not? That's question #1, right? But equally important, can you orchestrate a strategy that generates more results or profits than campaign costs?

Guess what, the answer is: "definitely yes."

More Pay Per Click Marketing Tips Below:

• Remember that with PPC campaigns, you are not sending search visitors to a site, you are sending them to a web page (called: a destination or landing page). You must discover keywords and set-up ONE page at a time.
• Remember that people search by typing in more than one word:
• The 7 most used word phrases in search engines according to OneStat.com:
• 2 word phrases 32.58%
• 3 word phrase 25.61%
• 1 word phrases 19.02%
• 4 word phrases 12.83%
• 5 word phrases 5.64%
• 6 word phrases 2.32%
• 7 word phrases 0.98%
• Start your "keyword discovery" process by visiting the destination page you intend to send your search engine visitors to. Put on the 'reading glasses' of a customer and look at your page through their eyes.
• Ask yourself this: "What keywords might a person type in a search box where when they arrived at this destination page, they'd say 'BINGO' this is what I was looking for?" Find these keywords and you've discovered your best keywords.

Are you learning valuable ideas? We recommend you check out our previous blog posts for many other marketing ideas. In fact, why not add our RSS feed to your "Feed Reader" so you don't miss future trainings?


Technorati:
Aerus Electrolux Vacuums | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Network Marketing | Yahoo Ads | Dan Hollings | AdWords | vacuum cleaners | air filtration

Pay-per-click Tips. Google and Yahoo for Aerus Electrolux Vacuums.

Pay-per-click Tips. Google and Yahoo for Aerus Electrolux Vacuums.

Sometimes you feel like flipping a coin when choosing a pay per click search engine. Which one is really best for you? The top two are Yahoo and Google. It's a good idea to start your PPC traffic generation strategy with a small budget, spreading it out over a few different search engines to experiment and see where your target market may be lurking.

A good place to start is by viewing the wonderful tutorials and flash overviews offered by Google and Yahoo. Below are samples, you'll find others at Google and Yahoo:

Pay-per-click Yahoo Search: Overview
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/tu_srch.php
Flash presentation explains Yahoo sponsored search.

Google AdWords: Getting Started
http://services.google.com/marketing/links/awsignup_tutorial
How to fast-start a Google AdWords account.

Understanding PPC Conversion Tracking
http://services.google.com/marketing/links/cvt_tutorial
Learn which pay per click ads work and which do not.

Comparing Keyword Bidding Options at Google Vs. Yahoo:

Sponsored ads at Yahoo

• Yahoo sets your keyword bid only 1 penny over your next lowest competitor. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per click, and the next highest bid is $1.95 per click, you will only pay $1.96 per click.
• Yahoo allows you to see who you are bidding against and what they are bidding, so you know exactly where you will rank, and how much you will pay.
• Yahoo's maximum bid is $999.99
• Yahoo's minimum bid is $0.10

Google AdWords

• Believe it or not, Google never reveals what you will pay per click. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per click, you will pay anywhere from $0.05 to $3.00 per click.
• Google does not allow you to know how much your competitors are bidding per click.
• An advantage with Google is that you will rank higher if your click-through rate (CT rate) is better (a CT rate is the ratio of clicks on your ad to the number of times your ad is shown). Thus, you may have a better rank than your competitor, even if he or she bids more than you (because of your CT rate).
• Google's maximum bid is $100.00
• Google's minimum bid is $0.05

New Google AdWords keyword status changes: Simplified keyword states and quality-based minimum bids.

NEWS: Google announced in early August 2005 that they will simplify their keyword status system and introduce quality-based minimum bids, giving us more control to run all keywords we find important.

Google' New Policy

Each keyword will now be assigned a minimum bid that is based on the quality (also called Quality Score) of your keyword in your account. If your keyword or Ad Group's maximum cost-per-click (CPC) meets the minimum bid, your keyword will be active and trigger ads. If it doesn't, your keyword will be inactive and will not trigger ads.

Previosly, keyword statuses were called normal, in trial, on hold, and disabled. Under the new rules, this will be replaced with active (triggering ads) or inactive (not triggering ads). No more slowed or disabled keywords if no do not have a minimum clickthrough rate (CTR) threshold.

PPC Tips list continued from previous weeks:

Pay-per-click advertising tips for the Aerus Electrolux Vacuum distributor continue below:

• Forget stupid characters. We are talking search engine listings (not eBay) so cool the clever punctuation it L@@KS stupid!!!!!!!! Don't make SOME words CAPITALIZED; it looks like you're shouting desperately for business. Respect the people who read your search engine listings.
• People are by nature often interested in things like 'saving money', 'making money', 'curing something', 'striking a deal', and getting anything of value that is 'free'... but be careful. The addition of such self-interest phrases in your ad copy may skew your clicks upwards while leaving your sales flat. If you're tempted to try such phrases... test, test, test... while keeping an eye on your bottom-line.
• Bluntness works: 'Refinance 4.5%', 'Viagra $39', 'No Interest VISA', etc
• These are the type words that appeal to searchers: more information, complimentary, love, youthful, safe, new, benefit, gain, money, happy, glad, proven, guarantee, resource, fast, results, discover, how you, how to, your, yours, you'll, healthy, natural, magic, secret, comfortable, save, proud, secure, solution.

Last week I posted the another round of search engine marketing tips and yet more in the weeks before that. Check previous weeks for more ideas.


Check back next week for the next in this series of PPC tips...


Technorati:
Aerus Electrolux Vacuums | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Network Marketing | Yahoo Ads | Dan Hollings | Sponsored Ads | Contextual Ads | AdWords

Aerus Electrolux Vacuums? What lurks in those consumers' heads?

Aerus Electrolux Vacuums? What lurks in those consumers' heads?

Have you ever thought about the public's perception of what you do?

Aerus Electrolux Vacuums

After being inside millions of homes and talking with millions of people, Aerus learned quite a bit about how cleaner air stimulates a healthy living environment. Aerus is a company that isn't just about making homes cleaner, it's about making lives better. We help people take better care of their families. We are creating home environments that are safer, healthier and more inviting. Aerus believes in living life well.

Do you guess that people visiting your web page have already heard this about Aerus Electrolux Vacuums?

That's a 'guess-work' element in any search engine marketing campaign; you might best think through this issue at the outset (as you are preparing your keywords, your ads, and your landing page) what the majority of visitors already 'think' about you and the vacuum cleaners, floor care & air filtration systems you offer. Not sure? Then If at best you're guessing, then assume they've never heard of you. That's always the safe bet.

If you're selling iPODs or something very well known, you can approach things much differently. Less time explain 'what' you've got and more time explain 'why' they should buy from you.

If your selling something that appears to be a common commodity (vitamins, shoes, cosmetics, telephone services, etc), then you must differentiate your product from the other seemingly similar things the public possibly will associate you with.

Much of these consumer 'mindset' conflicts should be handled on your landing page, that is, the page where they land after clicking your ad; so before you start any PPC campaign, reflect for a bit on how visitors will feel (and what they will think) when they hit your landing page.

PPC Tips list continued from previous weeks:

Below are this weeks tips for better search engine marketing (using pay-per-click):

• On the subject of ad copy (the words which will comprise your numerous different listing titles and descriptions) we can sum it up briefly: RELATE your listing to the keyword the searcher has typed, SPARK curiosity in their minds to encourage a visit, be TRUTHFUL, be BRIEF, be CLEAR, don't HYPE, and FILTER out bad clicks.
• FILTER OUT BAD CLICKS? Yes, if your product is NOT for certain searchers, be clear upfront before they click. Example: If you bid on the keyword 'herbal shampoo' because your product is an herbal dog shampoo, make sure your ad copy reads: for dogs, pets, or animals. If you only fulfill orders in Canada, state this upfront in your listing ad copy. There is no need to pay for a visitor click if you cannot service a particular customer's needs. Use words to filter out bad clicks.
• There are many good resources to help you with ad copy, writing, and knowing what to say about your product. We recommend the eBook by Kim Klaver, "If My Product's So Great, How Come I Can't Sell It". Click here for a complimentary 'Mini-edition' of this eBook.

Check back over my last several blog posts for many more sets in this series of PPC search engine tips.


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Technorati:
Aerus Electrolux Vacuums | PPC | pay per click | Google | Network Marketing | mlm | Dan Hollings | internet marketing | Contextual Ads | AdWords

"Google Trotters?" Yea, get a pair of those FadSense Sneakers and you'll fetch $100,000 on eBay.

"Google Trotters?" Yea, get a pair of those FadSense Sneakers and you'll fetch $100,000 on eBay.

It might sound fantastical, but if you could get your hands on a pair of those "Google Trotters" and sell them on eBay... I'm almost certain you'd fetch over $100,000. But if Google ever gets this FadSense thing really going, I guess everybody would be wearing them.

Go to Google FadSense™

As An Aerus Electrolux Vacuum distributor, you might be wondering why I'm talking about a futuristic contextual AdSense (AdWord) program like FadSense. It's partially because it's funny, but more importantly, it's because I feel the type of advertising we have been discussing here at my "Internet Marketing Tips for Aerus Electrolux Vacuums" blog, is critical to your future. What I'm hoping to teach you are skills and tips that will not only work for Google today, but for any similar type advertising in the future. Google FadSense, real or not!

To summarize the core of our current discussions, we want to know:

• How to find keywords related to your products and services.
• How to determine "tags" that help categorize your content.
• How to prepare your marketing campaign from the ground up.
• How to write effective ads.
• How to manage your advertising budget.
• How to create eye catching headlines for your ads.
• How to use the internet effectively in any marketing campaign.

My Continuing Tips To Help You With Aerus Electrolux Vacuums...

In my previous blog entries (last week and several weeks prior) we have hammered away with dozens of valuable tips. This week we continue.

• Sometimes people type in web addresses in those search boxes! So bid on those if the search engine allows it: 'www.website.com', 'website.com', 'http://website.com' and every combination full or partial you think a searcher might actually type.
• Match up keywords with words in your ad copy. Even though a 'spa', a 'hot tub', and a 'whirlpool' might mean the same thing in your mind, if a searcher types in 'hot tub' and your listing says: "Relax and save in your new Spa", you will miss out on many interested customers.
• Think negative... yes, people search for herbs that can kill, plastic surgery pitfalls, mlm scams and sundry other peculiar things. Invite them to explore your related listing. Do you offer cosmetics or skin car as an alternative to plastic surgery? Is you mlm a beacon of light in a sea of seemingly dubious scams?
• Get creative with interest spikes in the news. 'Mad Cow' might be a great keyword for your all vegetarian product line. The 'SARS' outbreak might have generated millions of searches that your 'immunity booster' could have benefited from (just don't make any false claims). And where were all the bra ads when a gazillion people typed in 'Janet Jackson' after the 2004 Super Bowl surprise?

In earlier blog posts you'll find the first, second, third and fourth installments of my PPC tips.


To make certain you don't miss this series of PPC tips, you might consider subscribing to my RSS feed.


Technorati:
Aerus Electrolux Vacuums | PPC | pay per click | Google | FadSense | AdSense | Sneakers | Dan Hollings | internet marketing | Fashion | Contextual Ads | AdWords

It Happened Today... Google Inc. Closed Its Doors, After 118 Years Searching for Answers.

It Happened Today... Google Inc. Closed Its Doors, After 118 Years Searching for Answers.

www.flickr.com

This is a Flickr badge showing photos in a set called Woolworth. Make your own badge here.

What started as a collaboration between Larry and Sergey and initially lead to a search engine called BackRub (named for its unique ability to analyze the "back links" pointing to a given website) and grew to become the "five-and-dime" of pay-per-click search engines, pulled the plug on the last server on this date in Mountain View, California. It's a story of a future time that could be soon, or beyond our horizon.

If anyone back in the late 1800's or early 1900's had been thinking ahead to the future of Woolworth Corp., it's unlikely they would have ever predicted that the famous five-and-dime would be a line item on a "Today in History" script published to millions of readers across this thing we call the internet.

Yet today, has I opened my RSS News Reader, there it was. I can recall shopping at the five-and-dime as a kid. It was the "best" store in town. Just like Google; the best. Now, its history. Perhaps the best is not good enough?

As Google co-founder Larry Page puts it, "Never settle for the best, the perfect search engine, would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want."

What a day (historically speaking)...

Remember "five and dime" stores? The nickname referred, for a time (until the prices went up, of course), to the price of items in some of the United States' most popular retail outlets. On this day in 1997 - After 118 years, the Woolworth Corp. closed its last 400 five-and-dime stores.

Could this happen to Google? Well, yes. If the thought of Bill Gates over throwing Google interests you, read this Fortune Magazine article: Search and Destroy. For now however, it's all fantasy thinking as the titans of search (Google, Yahoo, & Microsoft) battle it out in cyberspace.

Global search advertising revenue, which was $369 million in 2001, is expected to hit $7.9 billion this year, according to research from Piper Jaffray & Co. Those who work in and cover the industry see further expansion as paid search grows overseas and is embraced by ever- larger companies following audiences to the Web. (Source: Reuters 2005)

Good news for the Aerus Electrolux Vacuum distributor

The Cost Per Lead using Pay-per-click is Cheap Compared To Other Ads

In a news story from Reuters (2005) there were some interesting stats comparing search to other forms of advertising using a cost per lead comparison. Citing Piper Jaffray, he says the cost to acquire a lead is $8.50 for search, $20 for yellow pages, $50 for online display ads, $60 for e-mail and $70 for direct mail. Cost for television leads were not covered. There's little wonder why search is gaining so much attention from advertisers.

According to Jeff Saville, "It's a marketer's dream tool because we can monitor it in so many different ways and watch the effectiveness of it." Jeff is a marketing manager with Deckers Outdoor Corp. (Nasdaq:DECK - news)

Are there dangers or flaws in search advertising?

• According to WebTrends the data suggests that 60 percent of marketers do not measure sales, leads or key actions resulting from campaigns. [This is a dangerous number because that means you are competing with people who don't know what things are truly costing them. You need to be extra analytical when going head to head with this guy.]
• At times, advertisers and their online business affiliates find they are competing with each other in auction-style bidding for key words and pushing up their own costs.
• Certain campaigns fail because they are ill-conceived or unsuited to the medium.

Adding all this up, we come to two conclusions: 1) It pays to get good at pay-per-click advertising if you plan to do business online and 2) we may only have 118 years left with Google :-)

Search engine marketing strategies:

• When thinking up keywords, use examples of specific things your product is used for: 'clean floors', clean countertops', 'wash floors', 'mop floors', 'polish stove top', 'remove grime', 'shine appliances', 'disinfect bacteria', 'hide furniture flaws' etc.
• Explore variations: 'soy milk', 'soymilk', 'soy-milk'
• Add plurals: 'protein bar' and 'protein bars'
• Use abbreviations and acronyms
• Use US and UK spellings
• Keyword phrases may be questions: 'how to repair bad credit', 'when should I diet', 'how do I lose weight', 'where are discount cosmetics', etc.

Last week I posted the another round of search engine marketing tips and yet more in the weeks before that. Check there for more ideas.


Check back next week for the next in this series of PPC tips... Until next week, happy PPC campaigning...


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Aerus Electrolux Vacuums | PPC | pay per click | Google | marketing tips | search | Woolworth | Today in history | online advertising