Internet marketing tips for Herbalife

Dan Hollings — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 02:02:00 +0000

Google's Froogle? Can you get your personal care & nutritional products displayed there?

As An Herbalife distributor, the first question you need to ask yourself is: "Where do customers shop?"

Consumers frequent places that are familiar
Consumers frequent places that are convenient
Consumers frequent places they trust
Consumers frequent places with fair prices
Consumers frequent places that are well advertised

So what does knowing the habits of a happy shopper have to do with Froogle? Well simply put; many people trust Google's Foogle and they are familiar with Google because it's well promoted, they've been there before and it's always convenient. While Google's Froogle doesn't price or sell anything themself, they do allow shoppers to hunt down good prices. Google has hammered the consumer's nail right on its head.

It's one of the rare exceptions to the old expression, "there's no such thing as a free lunch". At Froogle, if you're hoping to get your stuff in front of shoppers, lunch is on them. It's easy and free.

After some few facts about Froogle, I'll cover the steps for uploading your products or services information.

Froogle, Google's Comparison Shopping Engine

Froogle is on the Google home page.
Millions of people come to Google each day, and many are actively looking for the products you're selling. Froogle connects shoppers with merchants.

At Froogle you control your product information.
Simply upload a new product feed at any time to ensure Froogle displays the most accurate descriptions and promotions for your products.

Froogle provides store ratings and product reviews.
Google's technology scours the web to identify relevant information about listed stores and products. This information is in the form of review 'snippets' from independent ratings sites.

Froogle is forever free to merchants who wish to participate.
Upload your product info (data feed) and you'll be listed overnight. The entire system is supported by 'Sponsored Links' which are paid advertisements Froogle displays along side the regular Froogle listings.

Personal care & nutritional products. How can these be found in Froogle.

What follows are some helpful steps toward getting your personal care & nutritional products found in Froogle using their data feed system:

Go to the Froogle Merchant Center and sign-in
If you do not have an account, open one and enter the merchant area.
Set-up an FTP account
Set up an FTP account so that later you can upload your 'product or service' feeds in the Froogle system.
Adjust your feed's settings
Your feed will have a filename and other parameters. You must set this up as well.
Upload your feed
After you create a feed according to Froogle's instructions you'll upload it by FTP. Check that your feed name matches the filename you chose above in Step 3.

Dan Hollings — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 05:48:00 +0000

Mompreneurs at Herbalife?

Source: Direct Sales Association

Based on statistics available from the Direct Sales Association, 79.9% of people in "direct sales" are women. Guess what that means? Yes, the men total a paltry 20.1%. Many of the women in our industry (and prospects we seek) are current or future moms. It's know wonder 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 Lifetime Television; 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 work at home moms. Their interviews revealed that these women share certain secrets for cyber-success. Don't miss the interesting points they offer. For example, below is a sampling of why and how mom-owned businesses are surviving and thriving on the web according to Ellen H. Parlapiano and Patricia Cobe:

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.
Money Smarts. Moms don't overextend their financial resources and are less likely to use outside funding during start-up. So they don't have to worry about venture capitalists pulling the plug on their businesses.
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.

Do you think Herbalife is a perfect spot 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 team working toward your goals?

Whatever the case, mothers managing kids and a business from home are an important niche and your search engine marketing strategies can target these moms. Moms are both a consumer and a business force to be understood and respected.

With any luck, your personal care & nutritional products will be just the thing these mompreneurs are wanting? 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!

Search engine marketing tips:

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.

Becoming Relevant to Mompreneurs...

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

SOCIAL SYSTEMS: Social system technology is a new and exciting technology comprised of blogs, tags, photos and the sharing of many other things. Find ways to connect like-minded women. Use technology if you can. Being a mompreneur can be isolating, so business owners are eager for information, resources and social connections.

Dan Hollings — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 06:40:00 +0000

Personal care & nutritional products. How can these be sold online via a PPC marketing campaign

Herbalife makes nutrition simple. Want to slim down without feeling hungry? Have more energy? Look and feel younger? With ShapeWorks™ Herbalife helps you design a customized program, with weight-loss, nutritional and personal-care products, to help create a whole new you!

As An Herbalife 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 visitors to your site.

Can your personal care & nutritional products be sold via a PPC marketing campaign or not? That's your first question, right? But equally important, can you come up with a search engine campaign that creates more real customers than promotional expense?

Guess what, the answer is: "without a doubt, YES!"

Search engine marketing strategies:

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.

For additional tips that might improve your pay per click ad campaign review the tips in my previous posts.

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:
Herbalife | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Network Marketing | Yahoo Ads | Dan Hollings | AdWords | personal care | nutritional supplements | nutrition

Dan Hollings — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 02:46:00 +0000

Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsored Search for Herbalife.

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 attempts to generate traffic through search engines 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. Check below for a few examples, 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.

Bidding and Ranking with Google AdWords
http://services.google.com/tutorial/bpr/bpr.html
Improve your AdWord position and control your costs.

Targeting a Local Market with Google AdWords
http://services.google.com/tutorial/adw_loc_target/adw_loc_target.html
Reach local area prospects by region or locale.

Google Vs. Yahoo? Do the bidding policies make a difference?

Yahoo Sponsored Ads

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

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.

NEW: 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.

Understanding Google's New Quality Score

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.

Pay per click tips for this week:

Pay-per-click advertising tips for the Herbalife distributor continue below:

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?

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.

Hopefully you're learning valuable tips. Study previous blog posts for many other marketing ideas. Perhaps you should add our RSS feed to your "Feed Reader" so you don't miss future trainings?

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

Dan Hollings — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 22:34:00 +0000

Herbalife? OK, I'm stumped...

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

Herbalife

Do you know if people already have a mindset like this about Herbalife?

That's an often overlooked part in any search engine marketing campaign; you must decide upfront (as you are preparing your keywords, your ads, and your landing page) what the majority of visitors already 'know' about you and the personal care & nutritional products you offer. In most cases you are best to 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 might be considered 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' concerns should be addressed the moment they hit your first web page after clicking your ad; so before you start any PPC campaign, think like a customer and look at 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):

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.

Dan Hollings — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 01:02:00 +0000

Google FadSense: I bet Batman or Johnny Depp will don one of these in their next movie!

And I bet the sequel to "You've Got Mail" will be "You got clicked!" Google FadSense (if real) with it's new wearable computer material would have a far-reaching impact on how society receives its information. I think people would "bend over backwards" to read some ads!

Check it out now: Google FadSense™

As An Herbalife 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 Herbalife" 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 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 track your traffic, results, and advertising ROI (return on investment).
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 Herbalife...

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

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.

Dan Hollings — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 22:28:00 +0000

On this date... Google Inc. Closed Its Doors, After 118 Years Searching for Answers.

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?

"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...

After 118 years, the Woolworth Corp. closed its last 400 five-and-dime stores. Most of today's successful discount retailers began life as five and dime stores. In 1962: Kresge's opened its Kmart stores, Sam Walton turned his five and dime into the first Wal-mart, Woolworth's opened Woolco and Dayton Hudson opened Target stores.

Could this happen to Google? Well, yes. Bill Gates is on a mission to build a Google killer. What got him so riled? Google, the darling of search is moving into software and that's Microsoft's turf. Fortune story here. For now however, it's all fantasy thinking as the titans of search (Google, Yahoo, & Microsoft) battle it out in cyberspace.

People searching for information on the Internet are driving some of the fastest-growing profits on the Web, whetting advertisers' appetites by signaling what they want.

By typing in search terms, users are also sending advertisers a clear message about merchandise they might be interested in buying, and search providers like Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG - news), Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) and Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) MSN are cashing in. (Source: Reuters 2005)

Good news for the Herbalife distributor

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

The choice for advertisers is clear. Pay-per-click search listings appear to out perform other methods when it comes to delivering a cost-effective way to get customers. According to Piper Jaffray & Co., the cost to acquire a customer is approximately $8.50 for search, $20 for Yellow Pages, $50 for online display ads, $60 for e-mail and $70 for direct mail. Television data was not mentioned.

"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?

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.
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 :-)

Pay per click tips for this week:

Expand your keywords by asking your spouse, friends, neighbors, relatives, existing customers and strangers to look at your web page and offer their keyword suggestions. In this phase you cannot have too many cooks in the kitchen.
Put your biscuits in the oven and watch'em rise... That is, use web based 'keyword expanders' and research tools to expand your keywords beyond what you can come up with on your own.
Remember, searchers may type in something that describes your product, but more often than not they will be typing in words describing their problem. If your product or service solves, fixes, heals, masks or even distracts them from their problem, you want those keywords on your list.
"In-house" keywords (those used frequently by others in your industry or business) are often the most costly because lazy business owners don't often think beyond their own nose. The result is these limited keywords get bided-up sky high. Customers on the other hand seldom search using "in-house" keywords. Your goal is to find keyword niches popular with customers but less popular with your competition.

Dan Hollings — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 22:49:00 +0000

An Herbalife distributor strategy for PPC search engine campaigning.

Old man "Time" is rather unforgiving, and I bet he didn't mention to you that 192 days have passed since the beginning of the year?

Yes, 2005 is rapidly marching on, yet for may web entrepreneurs few visitors are marching over to see what's up. Are they marching to a different drummer or is it that your advertising effort is just not keeping the beat?

Are you marketing to women?
It's important to note that the e-commerce gender gap appears to be widening, as more women opened their purse strings than men last quarter: the percentage of online purchases made by women reached 62 percent in the fourth quarter with men accounting for just 38 percent of transactions.
(BizRate 2004)

With 173 days remaining in 2005, imagine how much different your business would be if you could get a marketing plan implemented that dropped dozens of targeted prospects and visitors to your web doorstep each and every week.

If you're asking "Wait a minute, just how can I do this?" Maybe a little internet advertising is in order? Seems that's what a lot of successful online marketers are doing. And of all the methods out there, nothing seems to beat running a really well planned PPC search engine campaign.

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)

From New York to L.A. you'll find stories and statistics that prove "it can be done". Yes, online sales are happening. Reports are continuing, sales are up, and the drum beats on.

The Web is gaining a larger share of the overall retail market. Total online sales in 2004 reached $69.2 billion, just shy of 2 percent of all retail sales in the country. (stats from: U.S. Department of Commerce 02/2005)

But I'm An Herbalife distributor, I think it's a waste of time for me?

Maybe you are thinking that "some things" sell online but not your personal care & nutritional products. Nothing could be further from the truth. In most cases, it is not the product or service that hinders a sale, it boils down to traffic, strategy and page presentation. Whether you advertise using Google's AdWords, or do pay-per-click at Overture, Yahoo or MSN search, it's the campaign strategy that's important.

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 couple of weeks we started our series of PPC search engine tips. These tips will unquestionanly help your marketing campaign and hopefully put some of the statistics on your side. Below are this weeks tips for better search engine marketing (using pay-per-click):

Search engine campaign tips:

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.

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

In addition, I've written a many 'how-to' articles specifically to help get your internet marketing strategy on-track. You might find these internet marketing articles for Herbalife interesting or helpful.

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

Technorati:
Herbalife | PPC | pay per click | AdWords | marketing | search | retail statistics | marketing statistics | sales statistics

Dan Hollings — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 23:38:00 +0000

Astronomers Prepare For Deep Impact, Yet Your Site Or Blog May Have Little Impact. Why?

After 172 days and 268 million miles of deep space stalking, NASA's Deep Impact successfully struck comet Tempel 1. The cosmic collision between the coffee table-sized impactor and city-sized comet occurred at 1:52 a.m. EDT.

"It's an outstanding success for this 4th day of July!"

And you're thinking, "Is this the correct blog?" Yes, this is a blog about improving your business by better implementing your online marketing campaign for Herbalife. The bottom line goal is to get quality destination page "hits"... not a hit like Comet Tempel 1, but a hit none-the-less from a targeted visitor.

Why all the astronomy talk you ask? Well the truth is, I found this news story fascinating from the outset. It got me thinking about the parallels between getting "hits" at a website or blog and this single astronomical "hit" that this one comet was getting.

The media, the attention, the science, and all things 'cosmic' just seemed to flare up in interest as the 4th of July impact got closer and closer. So with an adult beverage by my side (lemonade :-) I felt it was rather topical for this Independence Day.

It just so happens that being "topical" and relating what you do with Herbalife to news and current events is also (should I say it?) an out-of-this-world marketing strategy. Millions of people are on the net today, tomorrow, and at all times, seeking news or details about all sorts of current events. If you're writing about that event or news item, you can increase the odds that searchers will find you. If what you do (or what you market) is related in some way, then "bingo" you'll create some real traffic fireworks at your blog or site.

The increase level of visitors such a campaign can achieve by riding on the comet tail of current events and news stories can be as spectacular as one might imagine. The impact on your business can be equally stellar.

Last week we started our series of PPC search engine tips that can help your campaign for better targeted earthbound visitors. So without further comet (or is it comment?), let's continue...

Search engine campaign 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.

Last week I posted the first round of search engine marketing tips. Check there for more ideas.

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

It happened on the 4th...
1997 - NASA's Mars Pathfinder became the first US spacecraft to land on Mars in more than two decades.

NASA's Deep Impact Mission Projectile Strikes Comet (Update4) (Bloomberg.com)
July 4 (Bloomberg) -- A projectile from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft slammed into the comet Tempel 1, creating a crater that scientists hope will shed light on some of the solar system's most mysterious objects.

Deep Impact Kicks Off Fourth Of July With Deep Space Fireworks (Science Daily)
After 172 days and 431 million kilometers (268 million miles) of deep space stalking, Deep Impact successfully reached out and touched comet Tempel 1. The collision between the coffee table-sized impactor and city-sized comet occurred at 1:52 a.m. EDT. Mission scientists expect the project will answer basic questions about the formation of the solar system, by offering a better look at the nature

Deep Impact Smashes Into Tempel 1 (Universe Today)
NASA's Deep Impact mission completed its primary goal July 1st, when its impactor spacecraft smashed into Comet Tempel 1. NASA scientists are eagerly reviewing the impact data captured by the flyby spacecraft to learn what size crater was excavated, and the kind of material ejected into space. The 373 kg (820 lb) copper impactor crossed paths with Tempel 1 right on schedule, at 0552 UTC (1:52 am

Technorati:
Herbalife | marketing | search | comet | NASA

Dan Hollings — Sun, 26 Jun 2005 21:47:00 +0000

Pay per click. Is it a must, a might or a mess?

While contemplating the deep dark inner essence of my morning coffee, it hit me like a caffeine brick that lot's of people are running pay per click ads (like: Google, Overture, Yahoo, MSN search etc) and are not having the kind of results they might have expected. After several more java jive jolts, I decided to embark on a multi-week PPC tips post. What am I talking about? I plan to share what I consider the best tips for running a successful pay-per-click search engine campaign. I consider a 'successful' campaign one that generates visitors uniquely targeted to your ad offer and visitors whose clicks don't cost you a fortune.

Unless you have very deep pockets, or you're completely nuts, or you have a solid money-making conversion rate, paying big bucks for clicks that don't pan out is busines seppuku .

So how might you structure your PPC campaign to assure results without losing your shirt? What follows here and over the next few weeks are my tried and true techniques that can perhaps put your pay per click campaign on solid footing.

PPC Tips:

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.

In the final analysis, you must understand what your goals are and pay close attention to all aspects of your campaign. It can be safely said that if you run any PPC search engine ad campaign over a few weeks and you get embarrassingly dismal sales or sign-up results, the culprit is most likely NOT the traffic you're generating from your ad, rather it is your site, your landing page, your product, your service, your price or some factor other than your PPC generated traffic . The first thing I'd look at ( to improve your conversion ratio ) is your landing page. Your landing page must be the 'pearl' in your sea of PPC campaign tools. Anything less and you might as well be shucking oysters.

In my previous blog post I included a link for additional marketing tips. You will find lots of help for your PPC campaign there.

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

Best of Luck with Herbalife !

Dan Hollings — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 00:27:00 +0000

Internet marketing tips for the average JOE or JOSEPHINE

Gather round, it's day one of the great blogging adventures at the "Internet Marketing Tips Blog for Herbalife ." All blogs start somewhere and if you're reading this post, you are starting with me at the very beginning of this blog.

First, let's clear up why I started this blog. OK?

Well, after publishing articles, composing ebooks and helping entrepreneurs for about 10 years, my dog "Herbie" came to me recently in one of those 'dog to man moments'. With his piercing yet lovable eyes, Herbie convinced me that I should devote a little time each week barking (blogging, to use the human translation) about all this weird web stuff that he thinks dominates about 50% of my feeble human brain.

So, if you like this blog you can thank my dog. If you don't, I recommend you adopt your own dog (from a local shelter) and seek internet marketing advice from him :-) Note: cats are pretty good at this stuff too.

So, here we are, and you're now wondering about 2 things:

Exactly what will you gain by following my internet marketing tips blog?
-and- What exactly dominates the other 50% of Dan Hollings' brain?

I might can help you on the first item, but even I am a bit foggy on what dominates that other 50% on my brain :-) So let's focus on marketing ideas to help you promote Personal Care & Nutritional Products .

In the beginning all this techno-geek stuff was over my head. Yes, that was about 10 years ago. But now after sucking up internet "how-to" like a vacuum cleaner without an off switch for many years, I've learned a few tricks about making money on the web. I'll cut to the chase and offer you practicle strategies that will increase prospects, customers and visitors to your blogs and sites.

Over the years, I have helped website owners, network marketers, bloggers, internet entrepreneurs, affiliates, and even big companies improve their internet strategies. But what I enjoy most is working with ordinary 'folk'.

I'll be blogging about anything and everything, as long as it works. It is likely that you are doing some things wrong or inefficiently and if you are like most, you're spending far more money than you should on 'stuff' that has questionable results.

Even though this particular blog will focus on strategies for Herbalife and how to market Personal Care & Nutritional Products , I may from time-to-time give examples from other industries or areas to demonstrate a strategy or idea. It's your job to apply the concepts to YOUR particular site, blog, product or service.

A sample of the different concepts we will include follow:

Generating leads
Web page ideas (to increase results)
Landing pages
Building an opt-in list
The why and how of newsletters
How to blog effectively
How to create quality content
Profiting from Contextual ads
Search engines and Pay per click
Tags (the keywords of blogs and...)
"Social systems" for networking
XML and RSS feeds (the new feeding frenzy)
Creating Press Releases
and Generating Revenue on the Web

In addition, I've written a few 'how-to' articles specifically to help get your internet marketing strategy on-track. You might find these internet marketing articles for Herbalife interesting or helpful.

Finally, you may be asking WHY I decided to do a blog specifically for Herbalife ? The truth is, I run separate blogs for many types of of entrepreneurs. This is only one of my blogs!

Rest assured I am not a recruiter, I'm not active in any 'company', and I do not sell or share names on any of my opt-in lists. 100% of my money is made from helping others (like you) manage a successful online marketing campaign. My style is "go cheap" but hang tight with "quality". Doing a little, very consistently over a long period of time is my modus operandi. I'm a teacher first and a web developer and entrepreneur second (close second!). Occasionally I offer classes, sometimes I offer eBooks, and I have web systems that many subscribers use to improve their traffic, content and results online. That's the deal.

All my blog tips are free. I suggest you subscribe to RSS feed (look for the Feed buttons in upper right).

Thanks again for stopping by!