Active AimA Journey and Destination

Most online marketing “gurus” focus exclusively on getting traffic to your blog or website from sources like Facebook, MySpace, StumbleUpon and Digg. But before you jump into their strategy, consider a few of the following flaws with mass-media user-generated websites like MySpace and Facebook:

* Myspace and Facebook have a huge number of dead pages - So many users have “been there, done that” that they do not login to there accounts anymore. You would basically be marketing to the wall. * Myspace and Facebook has implemented numerous safety guards - They have made changes which are hypersensitive against spam, and they label any outgoing links as spam or potential phishing sites. This puts a scare into people using these services, and causes them to apprehensive to clicking any outgoing links to your site. * Social Networking is about dead - When these services were new, they were great. While you may find some amount of success with these sites, your effectiveness rate would be about 30% of what you would normally expect.

We might not like it, but it’s part of reality. Social media is huge, clunky and often innefficient. Most traffic from social media is very useless, as the visitors are more curious than interested in buying anything or subscribing to future updates. Bored traffic is rarely good traffic.

To respond to the many problems, some focus on SEO. SEO is the attempt to rank highly on search engine results for a keyword. This often results in steady traffic. But SEO can literally take years in competitive niches.

Perhaps the fastest and quickest way to drive traffic to your website using the search engines is through using pay-per-click advertising services, or PPC. PPC allows you to place an ad on the search engines based on the keywords which people search. You only pay for advertising when someone clicks through your ad. Three of the top PPC programs are:

Google –AdWords Yahoo - Search-Marketing MSN - AdCenter

There are other services such as Miva which is used often; and, incidentally, Facebook has an excellent PPC program, which seems to be highly targeted — it laser targets your potential visitors by age, interests, location, and much more. This ensures that the right audience is seeing your ads — maximizing exposure — and providing you with quality, fresh leads.

Rates vary from keyword to keyword, but some terms can be bought for as little as $0.05 cents a click. Pricing really depends on the search engine you advertise on and the amount of users the particular search engine has. It is also dependent on how many people are advertising in the same niche as you.

When a user clicks on your ad after searching what they were looking for, they go to your site. If your landing page is good, and rich in relevant content, more often than not a visitor will buy your product. This shows a considerable profit in ratio to advertising, or return on investment(ROI). With the millions of users around the world using search engines, you can get loads of visitors to your website through PPC advertising, and multiply your sales volume in the process.

If you are looking for a quick way to drive traffic to your website using the search engines, PPC is the most obvious route to take in your marketing endeavors.

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You can almost guarantee results from your advertising; it is as much a science as an art.

Is it possible to guarantee results form advertising? If you approach advertising as a science instead of an art results are fairly predictable.

In any case this is just an inquiry for the goods or service. This is real evidence your advertising is working and generating a return on investment.

But, in either case, it is just an Inquiry for the goods, of one sort or another. It is the first practical evidence that the money spent is earning something tangible in return.

The customer may take direct action and order by phone or online. If the customer visits a store there is three times the chance the she will be influenced by competing products. There may be less expensive alternatives or the salesman may earn a higher commission on other products. The copy must stand up to this influence.

The ad which pulls consumers into retail outlets must be as full of influence as profitable mail order advertising. The consumer must be fortified against substitution.

The ad must sufficiently influence the consumer to buy that product or they may go to the retail store and be convinced by the sales clerk to buy the sale item or one in which there is a sales contest. In this case the competition would benefit from our ads. Many proponents of branding, or name recognition are just drawing people into a store to buy substitutes. When Nike started advertising sports sandals Teva’s sales more than tripled.

The ad must give them a better reason to buy our product or service than he is likely to get from the Salesperson for the competitions goods that Salesman will want to substitute. It must give him this reason in such undeniable form that he can comprehend without effort, so absolutely that he will believe our reasoning Claims. It must accomplish this in spite of his natural distrust of all Ads statements. Therefore not more than 1/4 of those who, out of mere curiosity, buy the first package, through “branding” ever buy the 2nd or 3rd consecutive package of the same product. Because they do not buy on Conviction In the Meantime, it usually takes about all the profit in the first purchase of any “branding campaign” to pay the cost of introducing it to the Consumer through Advertising.

In contrast to branding “Reason-Why Advertising” or Salesmanship-on-Paper, results are insured and far more predictable. Consumers need only be convinced one time, through “Reason why advertising” or “Salesmanship- on-paper,” the product or service is best for them and their use.

Because, through General Publicity, his attention had only been “attracted,” not compelled and enduringly impressed with a logical understanding of these qualities. But, when once convinced in advance of purchase, through “Reason-Why” Salesmanship-in- Type, that the qualities claimed for the article do exist in them, he starts using that article with a mental acceptance of these qualities.

Conviction qualities in copy are shown, by test, to be just as necessary in Advertising design to sell goods profitably today, through Retailers to Consumers, as they are to sell goods direct by mail to Consumers. That is why every Advertisement for goods to be sold through Retailers (against substitution, and “Don’t keep-it” influences), should have as much positive selling force, “Reason-why” and conviction in it, as would be necessary to sell the goods by mail direct to Consumers.

Any Advertiser who uses mere “General Publicity” when he might have all that and, in addition, a positive Selling force combined with it is losing 50 percent to 80 per cent of the results he might have had from the same identical appropriation.

The difference in Results from Space in which this direct selling force of “Reason-Why” has been used, and in results from similar space filled with “General Publicity,” is often more than 60 per cent. Conclusive tests on Copy have clearly proved this, and preceding article cites a vivid example of it from actual experience

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Promotional Pens are a commonly used form of advertising. They can be imprinted with a single or multiple lines.

Pens are cost efficient whether purchased in large or small qualities. It is the perfect item for a new company since they are a basic form of advertising and not expensive.

A pen, is one of those items that no matter how many someone has they always pick them up, if they are free. Another great thing about promotional pens is that if someone losses your pen, chances are someone else will pock it up, therefore increasing your audience.

Pens are available in an array of shapes, sizes, and colors. They can be click point, straight, or designer. There are pens that are made into a keychain or laser pointer - the choices are endless.

Because of the low cost they are the first idea brought to the table joining advertising talks. Promotional pens have been used for advertising purposes for over a century in the US.

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At the surface level, ‘purpose’ and ‘goal’ seem to be very similar. In fact, my thesaurus tells me they’re synonyms. It might appear that we can use them interchangeably. But in parsing the definitions of these words, we discover they’re as different as night and day.

Goals are the specific objectives we strive to achieve, usually within well-defined parameters of space, time and resources. On the other hand, purpose is abstract. It’s the ‘why’ behind any thought or deed. Purpose is not about achieving an objective it is more of a way of life. Purpose is enduring, whereas goals can be created, adjusted and discarded as needed.

Going beyond mere semantics, you can see the variation between purpose and goals in what you do at work. Goals can be the targets you set regarding the recruitment, retention, development and progression of your organization’s workforce.

In contrast, purpose should be what the goals serve. You establish those targets to achieve a greater overarching aim, one that benefits the business and its shareholders.

For instance, you wouldn’t bring in 1,000 employees just for the purpose of making your workforce larger, would you? Of course not. (At least I hope not.)

On the other hand, you might set a goal of bringing in these employees to prepare your organization to support its purpose and to ensure the success of an exciting new growth opportunity.

We often get lost and confuse our goals with our purpose, both with our companies and our families. I will never forget teaching a leadership development session in a Fortune 500 company that not only involved executives - it involved the spouses or partners of the executives. As part of the session, executives received feedback from their partners.

Many executives learned that their partners felt ignored or put in ’second place’ compared with work. When the executives were asked, ‘Why are you working so hard?’ they invariably said, ‘Because I want my family to have a great life.’ Their partners almost always replied, ‘We have more money than we will ever spend. We would just like to see you more!’

Many executives had clearly let their goal (make a lot of money) become more important than their purpose (create a great life for themselves and their families).

I bring this up because the distinction between a goal and a purpose sometimes can be lost on talent management professionals - we can get so absorbed in our own limited objectives, thinking that these are our raison d’etre.

A good friend of mine left consulting to become the executive vice president of HR for a huge corporation. He reviewed a study of the company’s employee benefits and found some benefits were costing the company millions of dollars and delivering very little that the employees actually valued.

When he suggested cutting the benefits to save the company money, he was told he was ‘confused’ by his HR staff members. They noted that cutting these benefits would mean a smaller budget for the HR department and less power for them. They had become so interested in ‘building their empires,’ they had forgotten about making a return on investment for their stockholders.

The idea that the purpose of the organization should come before the goals of any one part of the business seems to be simple enough. Yet why do many of the leaders in talent management (and to be fair, in other areas of business, as well) so often fail to get it?

The answer is rather simple: When a goal is designated, it tends to become a fixation for highly motivated people. Add to that the pressures that come with tight deadlines, struggles for finite resources and organizational turf battles, and it’s not hard to see how our own goals can absorb any of us.

The solution to this problem is equally simple, although it isn’t necessarily easy. It requires honest, perhaps even painful, introspection and reflection. Conduct a thorough analysis of your goals. Ask yourself, ‘What goals are consuming my time and energy?’ and ‘What goals are consuming the company’s resources?’ Rank your goals in terms of cost. Then look at the true purpose of your organization. Rank your goals in terms of ‘contribution to the purpose.’

If we are honest in our assessments, most of us will find some clear discrepancies between ‘cost of goal achievement’ and ‘contribution to our purpose.’

When this happens, we can step back, take a breath and realign our goals, successfully completing our ‘to do’ list with our purpose - successfully doing what really matters.

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A good Adword campaign starts with a good headline. A great Adword campaign starts with a great headline. And knowing how to write great headlines is a very valuable skill in any business. The failure to understand how critical this skill can be is a huge mistake that we see from both Adwords newbies and professional Adword management companies.

Good keyword research and bidding skills may get your ad shown in a top ad position when someone does a search, but if you don’t have a compelling headline, you may be wasting a lot of money. On the other hand, you can have poor ad placement, ranking near the bottom of the page, but if your headline sticks out, then you will end up “stealing” clicks from your higher-ranking competitors.

So if you don’t know how to write good headlines, where can you start? Start by looking at some of the ads that appear when you search for your keywords in Google. Now, if you are a student of mine, you already know my philosophy about the top ad position. Hint: “The top ad position is not always the place you want to be, and the company advertising there, does not necessarily know what they are doing.” But there ARE instances when the top ads will have the best headlines. Look at those ads and pay attention.

Another method that I like is to use a research tool, such as Spyfu or Keyword Spy to see which ads of a competitor have consistently been in positions #4-6. Many times you will find that your competitor affords to rank lower because they have strong headlines that out-convert higher-ranking ads. Read those headlines and learn from them as well.

Also, it may be beneficial to look OUTSIDE of your industry for Adword headline ideas. How about a real (at the time of this writing) live example?

Let’s say I am writing an ad for an attorney and need an inspiring headline. I will now search for a babysitter to get ideas. So I just typed “need a babysitter” into Google and here is an incredible idea from an ad whose headline is: “Need a Local Babysitter?” I love the word “local”. I can now use the headline “Need a Local Attorney?” or write another headline that includes the word “local”. At the time of this writing, a quick search on “need an attorney” showed no ads on the first page using the word “local.” My ad would definitely stand out!

You may be wondering, “Can I steal headlines? Is that plagiarism?” There is no rule that says you cannot use the same headline your competitor is using. But you must remember, 99% of the time the advertiser is doing SOMETHING wrong. So if you are going to copy a competitor, I suggest you copy only what works. Sure, I like to look at competitors’ ads and take notes. I even recommend starting a digital “swipe” file, where you take headlines that you really like and copy them to a document and keep adding to that file for future reference.

There are many free resources on the web that can train you to write good headlines and we will cover some great headline-writing techniques in a later article, but the most important thing is that you recognize your return for investing time into learning how to write a great headline. If you can’t afford to invest your time, then hire a copywriter who knows how to write headlines and ad copy for search marketing ads. Many Adwords management companies also have specialists who are experts in writing headlines and ad copy that can turn otherwise so-so advertising into highly successful Google Adwords campaigns.

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