Internet marketing tips for CUTCO

Envision That Potential CUTCO Customers Wore Lo...

Envision That Potential CUTCO Customers Wore Loudly Colored Red Shirts?

In recent months, I have oftentimes had the privilege of consulting with CUTCO sales representatives. Regardless of my blog tips, my trainings, or any number of tutorials I publish, I still often get entrepreneurs that say, "marketing on a per-click basis through the various search engines might be marvelous, but I'm not convinced it's for my cutlery, house and kitchenwares."

Even though these comments surprise me, I'm certain that one of the reasons I hear this is because the "idea" of marketing on a per-click basis through the various search engines is still not understood. Maybe an analogy will help.

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 Target store or JC Penney and immediately spot customers who were looking for your product? Lets say they wore bright Red T-shirts shouting out what they were hoping to find in the store. And what if they knew to go straight to you rather than go up and down the isles looking for what they might have come for?

With Google AdWords, Yahoo's Sponsored Search or other pay per click search engines, you connect with your customers 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 tens of thousands of college students 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 cutlery, house and kitchenwares.

Now, even if other big companies have made montrous 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 continually interacting with every single prospective customer.

Running a pay per click ad is like deploying a team of super sales "agents", except that these search agents won't require breaks and they'll work for free until they deliver a ready-to-buy potential customer. Your "agents" will be waiting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for customers looking for your products or services. As soon as prospects start search, you'll be the first to know.

Search marketing will represent 39% of all online advertising spending this year and will account for 44% of online ad spending in 2010. (Source: Forrester Research 02/2005)

CUTCO and Mompreneurs? Source: DSA.org...

CUTCO and Mompreneurs?

Source: DSA.org

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 women. Figure it another way and the boys total a paltry 20.1%. Many of the women in our industry (and site visitors we seek) are current or future moms. It was only a matter of time before a new term has marched to the forefront: Mompreneurism.

Books by Mompreneur: Ellen H. Parlapiano 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 Lifetime Television; their mompreneurs online site draws millions of visitors each month.

In reading through the Mompreneurs Online web site you'll find that they've interviewed hundreds of work at home moms. Their interviews revealed that these at-home business women share certain secrets for success when doing business online. Of the many things mentioned, below is a sampling of why and how mom-owned businesses are surviving and thriving on the web according to Patricia Cobe and Ellen H. Parlapiano:

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.
The Control Factor. Moms start home businesses for family flexibility, so they grow their enterprises slowly and steadily to retain control over their work/family time. The 24/7 availability of the Internet lets them work when THEY want to.
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.

It's possible you think CUTCO is a ideal place for moms? Maybe you're hoping to attract work at home moms to your site, blog, product or business? Or, maybe you already have lots of moms and a true mompreneurial revolution underway?

Whatever the case, mothers in business at home are an important niche and your marketing campaigns can target these moms. Moms are both a consumer and a business force to be understood and respected.

Perhaps your cutlery, house and kitchenwares will be just the thing these mompreneurs are looking for? Now, let's continue (below) with more tips in our series on how to best implement a successful pay-per-click campaign. Maybe you can get some moms clicking!

PPC Tips:

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.

Can You Be Compelling to a Mompreneur?

Here's one way you can be relevant and attractive in reaching out to work at home moms:

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.

Step-by-step: cutlery, house and kitchenwares c...

Step-by-step: cutlery, house and kitchenwares can be marketed by a PPC campaign

CUTCO is the largest manufacturer and marketer of high-quality kitchen cutlery and accessories in the United States and Canada. More than 100 kitchen cutlery products are sold under the CUTCO name, as well as a variety of kitchen gadgets, utensils and flatware. The company also carries a line of cookware, sporting and pocket knives and garden tools.

As A CUTCO sales representative 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 consumers.

Can your cutlery, house and kitchenwares be sold by a PPC campaign or not? That's your first question, right? But equally important, can you implement a campaign that generates more measurable results than expense?

Exciting news, the answer is: "definitely yes."

More tips for your PPC campaign:

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.

Over 50 tips have been published in this ongoing PPC tips series; please check our archived posts for many more helpful marketing recommendations. OK?

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:
CUTCO | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Network Marketing | Yahoo Ads | Dan Hollings | AdWords | cutlery | kitchenware | cookware

How to Run Ad Campaigns with Yahoo or Google: T...

How to Run Ad Campaigns with Yahoo or Google: Tutorials for CUTCO.

There are many PPC search engines, with some being better than others. The top two are Google and Yahoo. It's a good idea to start your advertising effort with a small budget, spreading it out over a few different search engines to experiment and see where your target market may be lurking.

We recommend you begin by viewing the wonderful tutorials and flash overviews offered by Google and Yahoo. Start your exploration below, 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: Bidding and Ranking
http://services.google.com/tutorial/bpr/bpr.html
How to improve your AdWord rank and manage your PPC costs.

Google AdWords: How to Optimize
http://services.google.com/tutorial/opt_tips/google_opt.html
Edit your Google ads to attract more qualified visitors

Comparing Keyword Bidding Options at Google Vs. Yahoo:

Sponsored ads at Yahoo

Yahoo adjusts your bid to 1 cent 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 Ad Bidding Policy

Google doesn't tell you how much 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.

Let's See How This Works

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.

More Pay Per Click Marketing Tips Below:

Pay-per-click advertising tips for the CUTCO sales representative continue below:

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.

CUTCO? What do people really think about it? ...

CUTCO? What do people really think about it?

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

CUTCO

Do you know if visitors arriving at your site already know this about CUTCO?

That's an 'unknown' in any search engine marketing campaign; you should consider upfront (as you are preparing your keywords, your ads, and your landing page) what the majority of visitors already 'know' about you and the cutlery, house and kitchenwares 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 could be clasified as a common commodity (vitamins, shoes, cosmetics, telephone services, etc), then you must differentiate your product from the other seemingly similar items visitors could 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 search engine advertising, reflect for a bit on how visitors will feel (and what they will think) when they hit your landing page.

Search engine marketing tips:

Ready or not, here they come. This weeks PPC tips to make you rich and famous (well perhaps that's stretching it a bit):

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?

Google FadSense. One question... can I select...

Google FadSense. One question... can I select where my ads will be displayed? PLEASE!

I'll bid $100 a click for Jessica Alba and $95 a click for Jessica Simpson. Where do I go to place my FadSense keyword bids?

Make sure you're sitting down before you click... Google FadSense™

As A CUTCO sales representative, 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 CUTCO" 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!

Some of it turns out to be as basic as:

How to determine "tags" that help categorize your content.
How to prepare your marketing campaign from the ground up.
How to track your traffic, results, and advertising ROI (return on investment).
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 CUTCO...

This week I shall continue with my PPC search engine recommendations. If you have been following (or subscribing by RSS feed) to these tips, you are aware that over the past few weeks we have hammered away with dozens of valuable tips. This week we continue.

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.

Today in History... After 118 Years, Google Inc...

Today in History... After 118 Years, Google Inc. Closed Its Doors.

www.flickr.com

What started as a collaboration between two Stanford University graduate students in computer science in 1995 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?

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

On this date...

The Woolworth story begins when Frank Winfield Woolworth, son of a potato farmer, decided farming wasn't for him and just before turning 21 in 1873, he started work as an employee at Augsbury and Moore's Drygoods store in Watertown, New York. The experience wasn't the best in the world for him, according to this book, as Frank soon was called "the worst salesman in the world." Because he was "eager and polite," though, the store's owners took a liking to him and kept him on. F.W. Woolworth went on to become one of retail's most successful pioneers and his empire of department stores defined the shopping experience for millions over the course of its 118-year existence. On this day in 1997 Woolworth closed its doors.

Could this happen to Google? Well, yes. In the Fortune story, "Search and Destroy" It states that Bill Gates is leading a charge against Google. Forced to watch Google's stock soar the way Microsoft's used to, while Google's Brin and Page enjoy new roles as tech's rock stars, Gates brings to the fight a ferocity that nobody has seen since the Netscape war a decade ago. Google's popularity gets under his skin. 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 CUTCO sales representative

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.

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

Are there dangers or flaws in search advertising?

Certain campaigns fail because they are ill-conceived or unsuited to the medium.
Some worry that new advertisers are rushing blindly into paid search and inflating key word prices -- a concern underscored by WebTrends data.
An estimated 5 percent to 20 percent of clicks are believed to be fraudulent -- the result of people clicking on ads to drive up advertiser costs or to make a profit for Web site publishers who get a cut of revenue.

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 :-)

More Pay Per Click Marketing Tips Below:

If your product or service is something that can be related to a locale, like a city, state or region you may be able to find some ripe tomatoes in phrases like: 'retirement homes in Florida', 'Mississippi flat rate phone service', 'herbal sunscreen for southwestern sun', 'indoor air filters for Los Angeles'.
Discover more keywords by narrowing down to extreme specifics. People can be VERY specific when they search. Use names of months and years like '2004 tax savings', 'May flowers', 'Christmas of 2005' or 'September back to school supplies'.

Let's say you are marketing a broad line of herbal products... why not get a list of all herbs (there may be thousands) and use that list as a keyword list. Maybe your product doesn't contain every herb on the list, but people searching for any ONE herb specifically may be interested in others. Try specific model numbers, makes and designs if your products are sometimes referred to this way: 'Epson stylus CX6400', 'Apple G5', etc.
Add adjectives to your keywords like: big, purple, new, cheap, affordable, soft, aromatic, healthy, etc.