What If "Ready-to-buy" Princess House Customers Wore Bright Green Jerseys?

What If "Ready-to-buy" Princess House Customers Wore Bright Green Jerseys?

For years, I've often had the honor to acting as a consultant directly with Princess House lifestyle consultants. Regardless of my blog tips, my trainings, or any number of tutorials I publish, I still sometimes get people that say, "promoting with a pay per click strategy might be the best thing since sliced bread, but perhaps it's not for my cookware, crystal and china."

Even though these comments surprise me, I'm certain that one of the reasons I hear this is because the "idea" of promoting with a pay per click strategy is still not understood.

I'll attempt a little analogy to see if I can get everyone confortable with the concept...

Maybe it's a marketer's dream, but think for a second how advantagious it would be if you could secretively place yourself at the front door of a Target store or Best Buy and immediately spot customers who were looking for your product? Lets say they wore vividly colored Green shirts stating what they were there for and what they had plans on buying.. And what if they knew to go straight to you rather than wander the isles hoping to find their shopping list items?

With Yahoo's Sponsored Search, Google AdWords, or other PPC search engines, you connect with interested site visitors immediately, the second they want to hear from you.

It gets even more interesting if we take it a step further. What if you could have hundreds and hundreds of little helpers at the door of every market center in the country. What's more, you'd have to pay them only if they located an intersted customer and began marketing to them your cookware, crystal and china.

Now, even if your competition has posted montrous advertisements, hovering over everyone, it doesn't matter. Few shoppers care for a general ad when something more targeted to their wants and needs is more readily available. All the while, your "agents" are actively reaching out to every single potential shopper.

Managing a pay-per-click ad campaign is like deploying a team of non-stop "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 they start looking, 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)

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Princess House | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Yahoo Sponsored Search | Dan Hollings | cookware | crystal | chinaware
Other recommended blogs:
Stanley Home Products | Sunrider | Tahitian Noni

Princess House and Mompreneurs?

Princess House 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. Guess what that means? Yes, the guys total a paltry 20.1%. Many of the women in our industry (and customers we seek) are current or future moms. It's know wonder 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 Fox News Channel; their mompreneurs online website draws millions of visitors each month.

In reading through the Mompreneurs Online web site you'll discover that they've interviewed hundreds of mothers in business at home. Their interviews revealed that these 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 Pat and Ellen:

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

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

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

With any luck, your cookware, crystal and china will be just the thing these mompreneurs are wanting? 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!

Search engine marketing tips:

• 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.

How to Appeal to Mompreneurs

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

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

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



For additional tips visit:
Internet Marketing Tips for Princess House

Until next week, happy pay per click campaigning...


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Princess House | mompreneur | mompreneurs | mompreneurism | entrepreneur | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Dan Hollings | cookware | crystal | chinaware
Other recommended blogs:
Silpada Designs | Southern Living Home | Stampin Up

Are products like cookware, crystal and china successful if sold online by PPC

Are products like cookware, crystal and china successful if sold online by PPC

Princess House is a company that helps customers cook with confidence, entertain with ease and dine with distinction. The Princess House product line also includes handblown and lead crystal, tableware, cookware, bakeware, serveware and fine collectibles.

As A Princess House lifestyle consultant 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 cookware, crystal and china be sold by PPC or not? That's your first question, right? But equally important, can you put together a search engine campaign that creates more solid customers than campaign costs?

Promising news, the answer is: "probably yes."

Pay per click tips for this week:

• 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.

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


Until next week, happy pay per click campaigning...


Technorati:
Princess House | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Network Marketing | Yahoo Ads | Dan Hollings | AdWords | cookware | crystal | chinaware

Google or Yahoo or Both? PPC Advertising for Princess House.

Google or Yahoo or Both? PPC Advertising for Princess House.

When comparing the primary pay-per-click search engines, you might be challenged to figure out which is best for you. The top two are Google and Yahoo. It's a good idea to start your pay per click ads with a small budget, spreading it out over a few different search engines to experiment and see where your target market may be lurking.

There's no better way to begin than by viewing the wonderful tutorials and flash overviews offered by Google and Yahoo. View the sample tutorials below, you'll find others at Google and Yahoo:

Yahoo Sponsored Search: Flash Introduction
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/tu_srch.php
Learn advantages of Yahoo's PPC program.

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

AdWords Optimization Tips
http://services.google.com/tutorial/opt_tips/google_opt.html
Attract more prospects by editing your Google ads.

Let's compare how Yahoo and Google handle keyword bidding:

Yahoo Ad Sponsoring Rules (bidding)

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

AdWords by Google

• 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.

Google's New Rule

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 Princess House lifestyle consultant continue below:

• 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.

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

Princess House? Ever wonder what people really think about it?

Princess House? Ever wonder what people really think about it?

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

Princess House

Princess House is a company that helps customers cook with confidence, entertain with ease and dine with distinction. The Princess House product line also includes handblown and lead crystal, tableware, cookware, bakeware, serveware and fine collectibles.

Do you know if visitors already have a mindset like this about Princess House?

That's perhaps the first challenge in any search engine marketing campaign; you should factor in from the start (as you are preparing your keywords, your ads, and your landing page) what the majority of visitors already 'have learned' about you and the cookware, crystal and china you offer. If you're not sure, 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 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 contextual ad program, think like a customer and look at your landing page.

More Pay Per Click Marketing Tips Below:

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

• 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 in the weeks before that. Check previous weeks for more ideas.


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


Technorati:
Princess House | 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.

You gotta love it! Google FadSense™

As A Princess House lifestyle consultant, 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 Princess House" 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!

Before we continue with this week's tips, let's look at what we must concentrate on:

• 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 create a destination or landing page that works.
• How to write effective ads.
• 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 Princess House...

Over the past few weeks we have hammered away with dozens of valuable tips. This week we continue.

• 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.

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


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Technorati:
Princess House | PPC | pay per click | Google | FadSense | AdSense | Sneakers | Dan Hollings | internet marketing | Fashion | Contextual Ads | AdWords

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

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

What started as a search engine using a unique approach to link analysis (initially called BackRub) and grew to become the "five-and-dime" of pay-per-click search engines, pulled the plug on the last server on this date in Mountain View, California. It's a story of a future time that could be soon, or beyond our horizon.

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

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

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

On this date...

By 1997, only a little over 400 Woolworth stores remained in the U. S. (and a few hundred more overseas). It was announced that the stores would be closed and the remaining 9,200 employees terminated. That was on this day.

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.

Research shows global Web search advertising revenue, which is big business for the Internet giants, will be almost $8 billion in 2005 -- more than 20 times what it was four years ago. (Source: Reuters 2005)

Good news for the Princess House lifestyle consultant

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

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. The choice for advertisers is clear.

Jeffrey Herzog, chairman and chief executive of iCrossing says, "When someone conducts a search, only two things can happen. They'll either find your business or a competitor's business. Game over"

Are there dangers or flaws in search advertising?

• 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.
• According to WebTrends the data suggests that 60 percent of marketers do not measure sales, leads or key actions resulting from campaigns. [This is a dangerous number because that means you are competing with people who don't know what things are truly costing them. You need to be extra analytical when going head to head with this guy.]
• Some worry that new advertisers are rushing blindly into paid search and inflating key word prices -- a concern underscored by WebTrends data.

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:

• 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.

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Princess House | PPC | pay per click | Google | marketing tips | search | Woolworth | Today in history | online advertising