Internet marketing tips for Seaborne

What If Potential Seaborne Prospects Wore Loudl...

What If Potential Seaborne Prospects Wore Loudly Colored Orange T-shirts?

From the early days of my consulting practice, I sometimes have the pleasure of working directly or indirectly with Seaborne distributors. Despite my many published articles, tips and eBooks on the subject, I still often get folks that say, "online pay-per-click marketing campauigns might be wonderful, but I'm not convinced it's for my nutritional supplements."

While this still shocks me, I'm certain that one of the reasons I hear this is because the "approach" of online pay-per-click marketing campauigns is still not understood.

Let's use our imagination a bit and see if we can get this concept vividly clear in our mind. OK?

Imagine if you could situate yourself at the front door of a Sears or Best Buy and immediately spot customers who were looking for your product? Lets say they wore loudly colored Orange T-shirts stating what they were planning to purchase at the store. And what if they knew to go straight to you rather than go round and round the store searching out the items on their shopping list?

With Google AdWords, Yahoo's Sponsored Search or a Major Second Tier PPC Player, you connect with targeted site visitors almost instantly, just as they want to hear from you.

Now let's dig a bit deeper into this idea. What if you could have 1000's of people working for you at the door of every shopping mall in the country. What's more, you'd have to pay them only if they got customers and began marketing to them your nutritional supplements.

Now, even if your competition has posted huge ad banners, hovering over everyone, it doesn't matter. Few customers are going to pay that any attention. All the while, your "agents" are constantly interacting with every single potential shopper.

Running a pay per click ad is like deploying a team of super sales "agents", except that these search agents won't require breaks and they require no pay unless they produce results. 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.

Of funds budgeted for search engine marketing this year, marketers said they would spend 51% on paid search ads, 6% on paid inclusion, 10% on contextual ads, 12% on search marketing agency fees for paid search, 11% on search marketing agency fees for optimization, and 11% on other areas of search marketing. (Source: Forrester Research 02/2005)

Do Moms find Seaborne a Mompreneurs' Paradise? ...

Do Moms find Seaborne a Mompreneurs' Paradise?

Source: Direct Sales Association

Based on statistics available from the Direct Sales Association, 79.9% of people in "direct sales" are female. Figure it another way and the men 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 come on the scene: 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 website draws millions of visitors each month.

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

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

Maybe you think Seaborne is a good place for moms? Maybe you're hoping to attract these "mompreneurs" working 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, mothers in business at home are an important niche and your promotional campaigns can target these moms. Moms are both a consumer and a business force to be admired and respected.

Think optimistically that your nutritional supplements 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!

More Pay Per Click Marketing Tips Below:

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

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

How to Appeal to Mompreneurs

Here's one way you can be relevant and attractive in reaching out to these "mompreneurs" working from home:

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

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 internet strategies visit:
Internet Marketing Tips for Seaborne

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

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Seaborne | mompreneur | mompreneurs | mompreneurism | entrepreneur | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Dan Hollings | nutritional supplements | nutrition
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My nutritional supplements seem like a perfect ...

My nutritional supplements seem like a perfect internet product. How can they be sold successfully by Sponsored Ads or AdWords

Seaborne is dedicated to educating the American public on why the chitin products are the choice food supplements of over 10,000 physicians in Japan.

As A Seaborne 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 people.

Can your nutritional supplements be sold by Sponsored Ads or AdWords or not? You've got to answer that first, right? But equally important, can you come up with a pay per click campaign that generates more results or profits than lost money?

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

PPC Tips list continued from previous weeks:

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.

Pay-per-click Help. Yahoo and Google for Seabor...

Pay-per-click Help. Yahoo and Google for Seaborne.

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 Yahoo and Google. It's a good idea to start your marketing drive 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. Start your exploration 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.

Bids, ranks, and costs with Google AdWords
http://services.google.com/tutorial/bpr/bpr.html
Tips to improve your AdWord ranking while managing your campaign funds.

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?

Sponsored ads at Yahoo

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

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.

Google Pulls The "Trigger"

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 Seaborne distributor continue below:

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.

Seaborne? Does anybody really know what I offer...

Seaborne? Does anybody really know what I offer?

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

Seaborne

Seaborne is dedicated to educating the American public on why the chitin products are the choice food supplements of over 10,000 physicians in Japan.

Do you guess that consumers already think this about Seaborne?

That's the challenge 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 nutritional supplements 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 has become a common commodity (vitamins, shoes, cosmetics, telephone services, etc), then you must differentiate your product from the other seemingly similar things consumers might 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 contextual ad program, stop and think for a moment about what your potential customer might perceive as they arrive at your landing page.

Search engine marketing tips:

So as promised, below you'll find this weeks installment of search engine 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.

Valentino Garavani, Donatella Versace, Ralph La...

Valentino Garavani, Donatella Versace, Ralph Lauren And Google? What do they have in common?

Fashion, what else! Yes, Google steps into fashion in time and in style... sneakers and all. It's Google FadSense. Your next visit to the mall might be a neck wrenching experience. Be careful, don't click there!

Go to Google FadSense™

As A Seaborne 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 Seaborne" 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!

Much of it boils down to learning a few key things:

How to find keywords related to your products and services.
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 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 Seaborne...

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

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.

On this date... After 118 Years, Google Inc. Clo...

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

What started as a play on the word googol, becoming the search engine everybody loved (or envied) 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."

It Happened Today...

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

Could this happen to Google? Well, yes. 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 Seaborne distributor

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.

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?

According to WebTrends the data suggests that 60 percent of marketers do not measure sales, leads or key actions resulting from campaigns. [This is a dangerous number because that means you are competing with people who don't know what things are truly costing them. You need to be extra analytical when going head to head with this guy.]
At times, advertisers and their online business affiliates find they are competing with each other in auction-style bidding for key words and pushing up their own costs.
An estimated 5 percent to 20 percent of clicks are believed to be fraudulent -- the result of people clicking on ads to drive up advertiser costs or to make a profit for Web site publishers who get a cut of revenue.

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

More tips for your PPC campaign:

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.