Froogle it! In 24 hours your books, giftware, kitchenwares, plants & toys included?

Froogle it! In 24 hours your books, giftware, kitchenwares, plants & toys included?

As A Innovage representative, the first question you need to ask yourself is: "Where do customers shop?"

• Customers shop at a place that s familiar
• Customers shop at a place that s convenient
• Customers shop at a place they trust
• Customers shop at a place with good prices
• Customers shop at a place that s well promoted

So what does a consumer's shopping preferences have to do with Froogle, the comparison shopping engine? Well simply put; many people are familiar with Google's Foogle and they trust Google because they've been there before, it's well promoted, and as always it is convenient. While Google's Froogle does not sell or price products or services themself, they do allow shoppers to search for good prices.

As comparison shopping engines go, Froogle is hitting a home run for entrepreneurs. We all want our products in front of targeted customers and that's just what Froogle does. Foogle has hit a homerun for merchants and at the same time, they've hit the consumer's nail right on its head.

Perhaps is one of those unusual exceptions to the old expression, "there's no such thing as a free lunch". At Froogle, if you're looking to marketing something, lunch is on them. It's on the house!

Let's start with a few facts about Froogle and then the 'feed' steps for listing your products or services in Froogle.

Froogle, the 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.

Books, giftware, kitchenwares, plants & toys. How can these be ranked in Froogle.

What follows are some helpful instructions toward getting your books, giftware, kitchenwares, plants & toys ranked in Froogle using their data feed system:

1. Go to the Froogle Merchant Center and sign-in
   If you do not have an account, open one and enter the merchant area.
   
2. 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.
   
3. Adjust your feed's settings
   Your feed will have a filename and other parameters. You must set this up as well.
   
4. 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.
   
5. Final content review
   We will review your feed to ensure that its content is consistent with our program policies.

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


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Innovage | Froogle | Dan Hollings | educational toys | kitchenware | giftware
Other recommended blogs:
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Innovative Mompreneurs at Innovage?

Innovative Mompreneurs at Innovage?

Source: DSA.org

I recently checked the "gender stats" available from the Direct Sales Association, 79.9% of people in "direct sales" are women. Do the math and the guys 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 entered our vocabulary... 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 web site (www.mompreneursonline.com) draws millions of visitors each month.

In reading through the Mompreneurs Online web site you'll discover that they've interviewed hundreds of moms running their own business from home. Their interviews revealed that these hard working women share certain secrets for online results. 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 Pat and Ellen:

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Do you think Innovage is a ideal 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 team working toward your goals?

Whatever the case, it's an important niche and your search engine marketing strategies can target these moms. Moms are both a consumer and a business force to be respected and understood.

Think optimistically that your books, giftware, kitchenwares, plants & toys will be just the thing these mompreneurs are looking for? 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!

PPC Tips:

• 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.

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:

STORIES FROM THE HEART: Mompreneurs provide great stories to share in your advertising and promotional campaigns. Millions of moms dream of starting a business or turning their hobbies into profits. By showing successful mompreneurs who are thriving both at home and in business, you can tap into a powerful desire.

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



For additional marketing help visit:
Internet Marketing Tips for Innovage

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Books, giftware, kitchenwares, plants & toys. How can these be successfully marketed by a PPC search engine campaign

Books, giftware, kitchenwares, plants & toys. How can these be successfully marketed by a PPC search engine campaign

Innovage is dedicated to using its unmatched resources to supply high quality merchandise to its customers at the lowest available prices. Through its strategic alliance with industry leader Three Sixty Sourcing Ltd., Innovage has the ability to purchase millions of pieces of merchandise from partners like Disney, Warner Brothers and Vivitar while carefully monitoring the manufacturing process to ensure product quality from start to finish. This combination of immense buying power, manufacturing control and international distribution allows Innovage to supply high quality items at unbeatable, direct-from-factory prices.

As A Innovage 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 visitors.

Can your books, giftware, kitchenwares, plants & toys be sold by a PPC search engine campaign or not? That's question #1, right? But equally important, can you come up with a strategy that creates more profits bottom-line results than expense?

Encouraging news, the answer is: "most likely."

Tips, Tips, Tips... They just keep on coming!

• 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.

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Basics of Yahoo Sponsored Search and Google AdWords for Innovage.

Basics of Yahoo Sponsored Search and Google AdWords for Innovage.

As you consider which PPC seach engine is for you, you might find our tips this week particularly relevant. 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.

Google AdWords Account Navigation
http://services.google.com/tutorial/acct_nav/acct_nav.html
Getting arround in your AdWords account area.

Let's Look at The Google and Yahoo Bidding Rules:

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

• 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.

NOTE: 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.

Search engine marketing tips:

Pay-per-click advertising tips for the Innovage representative continue 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.

In earlier blog posts you'll find several installments of my PPC tips.


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


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

Innovage? What do people really think about it?

Innovage? What do people really think about it?

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

Innovage

Innovage is dedicated to using its unmatched resources to supply high quality merchandise to its customers at the lowest available prices. Through its strategic alliance with industry leader Three Sixty Sourcing Ltd., Innovage has the ability to purchase millions of pieces of merchandise from partners like Disney, Warner Brothers and Vivitar while carefully monitoring the manufacturing process to ensure product quality from start to finish. This combination of immense buying power, manufacturing control and international distribution allows Innovage to supply high quality items at unbeatable, direct-from-factory prices.

Do you assume potential customers already think this about Innovage?

That's perhaps the first challenge 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 'have heard' about you and the books, giftware, kitchenwares, plants & toys you offer. You might consider playing it safe and 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 has become 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' challenges must be worked out by setting up 'mindset adjusters' (fancy phrase for good educational content snippets) on the page they hit immediately after clicking your ad; so before you start any attempts to generate traffic, stop and think for a moment about what your potential customer might perceive as they arrive at your landing page.

PPC Tips list continued from previous weeks:

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

• 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.

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


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


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Innovage | PPC | pay per click | Google | Network Marketing | mlm | Dan Hollings | internet marketing | Contextual Ads | AdWords

Run don't walk, you gotta get those "Google FadSense Sneakers!"

Run don't walk, you gotta get those "Google FadSense Sneakers!"

It's funny, but when I first saw those Google sneakers, I could only picture one person wearing them... Bill Gates! Not sure why that thought flashed in my head, but then again, I'm a Mac user too.

Check it out now: Google FadSense™

As A Innovage 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 Innovage" 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!

When we boil it all down, here's what we must learn:

• How to find keywords related to your products and services.
• How to determine "tags" that help categorize your content.
• 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 Innovage...

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

• 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.

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.


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Innovage | PPC | pay per click | Google | FadSense | AdSense | Sneakers | Dan Hollings | internet marketing | Fashion | Contextual Ads | AdWords

After a Googol of Searches, Google Finally Closed Its Doors; It Took a Mere 118 Years. Fantastical?

After a Googol of Searches, Google Finally Closed Its Doors; It Took a Mere 118 Years. Fantastical?

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?

What a day (historically speaking)...

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. 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.

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 Innovage representative

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

Your cost per click might run you 25 cents or 50 cents or so, but if the research done by Piper Jaffray & Co. is correct, the only thing that counts is the cost-per-customer and those numbers are: $8.50 for search, $20 for Yellow Pages, $50 for online display ads, $60 for e-mail and $70 for direct mail. PPC search wins hands-down.

"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.
• 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 :-)

PPC Tips:

• 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 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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Innovage | PPC | pay per click | Google | marketing tips | search | Woolworth | Today in history | online advertising