Fulfillment Power: Using collateral for sales

It never ceases to amaze me just how many businesses forget to leverage their fulfillment package, whether it’s print or electronic, to help bond with customers and gain continued sales.

Here’s my viewpoint:

I’ve just ordered a widget. I can’t wait for it to come. I’m soooo excited. Finally, that nice brown box comes in the mail and anticipation builds up. I open the box and see…

…a packing slip and my widget.

Just like Debbie Downer on Saturday Night Live…"whaa, whaa, whaaaaa."

Wow, talk about letting the air out of my excitment balloon.

Now, what I would have liked to see and actually expected to see (maybe it’s because of my direct marketing background) would have been a nice, warm and fuzzy "thank you" or "welcome letter." Something from someone of importance…the CEO, the Director of Client Services, whomever. And a simple, personable note letting me know they appreciate my purchase and my continued business.

What’s also nice is getting a special new customer appreciation offer, such as a special discount or coupon certificate or code to use online. I’d also like if the widget company threw in a catalog of all their widgets. Since I’ve ordered one, I may need to order again and they’d be right there to help me out.

Doesn’t that just make good business sense?

Here are some simple ideas, when applicable, for print and electronic fulfillment that helps encourage sales and customer lifetime value:

1. Personal Welcome or Thank You letter
2. Catalog (whether it’s for newsletters, products, or services. It could highlight all products OR current top sellers).
3. Cross-marketing flyer (a flyer highlighting a current hot product OR a natural, synergistic up-sell from the product ordered).
4. Coupon or special discount offer (or if electronic, coupon/promo code for online ordering).
5. Free sample (Women may remember Avon used to include tiny little lipsticks or perfume with their order. This approach is similar, could be a small, economy/sample size product OR bonus report or download access. Customers love, love, love freebies!).
6. Renewal (in publishing, this is called "renewal at birth". If you’re selling a subscription service, include a renewal order form with your first issue).
7. Friends and family savings (another coupon for customer to pass on to friends or family. This encourages viral/word of mouth marketing).
8. Packing slip with product return label/instructions

As most marketers know, the first 0-30 days is when a client is red hot. Don’t leave them cold. Leverage this time frame with your correspondence and turn your fulfillment pieces into another way to monetize sales and relationship build with your customers.

Tweeting for Leads: Building your Twitter Presence

Unless you’ve been in a cave the last year or so, you’ve likely heard of Twitter.

Twitter, or "Tweeting", is a way to connect with like-minded people by broadcasting short, headline oriented messages into the Twittospher. Then, those interested in what you have to say and want to hear more will "follow" you.

Twitter is a great outlet for information as well as a way to promote your business, newsletter or blog and build your prospect database. Many companies, publishers, entrepreneurs and others have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon to leverage this hot social networking outlet. But unless you’re a celebrity or someone that already has universal name recognition … and groupies … getting individuals to opt in and "follow" your messages could be challenging.

So here are some tips to start building your presence on Twitter:

1. Promote the heck out of your Twitter URL (http://twitter.com/youraccountname). Remember, at this point, if you don’t have a notable name and a built-in audience the goal is to drive targeted traffic to your Twitter home page so people can follow you. Remember to include your Twitter link in your emails (as an autosignature). Cross-market it in your newsletters and other correspondence. Mention it in your bio, bylines or editorial notes (whether you’re a public speaker, on your PowerPoint slides, in press releases, article directory postings – virtually any place your name is). Link to it on other social networking sites from your Linked In, Facebook, and MySpace accounts. Add it at the closing in all your business proposals. Have it printed on your business cards. And of course, have it some where prominent on your website or blog. The mention is simple, "Follow me on http://twitter.com/youraccountname."
   
2. Make sure you have a keyword rich and relevant Twitter bio so the right people can read about you and follow you. Text is limited, so pick your descriptive keywords carefully.
   
3. As far as content, keep your Tweets frequent, useful, relevant and entertaining. Don’t just spam messages. It’s transparent and will have a negative effect. Make people want to hear from you. Your headlines should be engaging and provoking, linking to the full article on your website or blog.
   
4. Follow the right people yourself. Many Tweeters have the mentality, you follow me, I’ll follow you … it’s reciprocated. So as you’re following other like minded individuals to expand your interest and knowledge base, they’ll typically return the favor and follow you, thereby helping you build your presence.

You'll see, with a combination of the above and a little time, you'll build your Twitter following. My clients have been implementing these tips and are enjoying steady growth on Twitter.

Oh, and by the way, I too just started Tweeting...you can follow me at http://twitter.com/PrecisionMktg !

Happy Tweeting!

Affiliate Marketing Must Have's

Affiliate marketing has been a viable way to help build anciallary revenues by having someone else marke your products.

You can go about this through affiliate networks, such as Commission Junction or LinkShare, or simply start an affiliate program on your site and track with affiliate software like DirectTrack.

But before you start, make sure you know the critical elements to help grow your program:

1) Promotion. This is where you're promoting your program on targeted locations as well as recruiting affiliates to market your program. You'll want to make sure you list your program on all the top affiliate directories, networks, forums, associations, bulletin boards, websites, listings and blogs. You'll also want to leverage free classified sites such as Craig's List as well as social media sites like LinkedIn. And of course, don't forget to create a powerful news release on the program's launch.

2) Site Awareness. It will be hard to promote your program to a site that doesn't have a decent traffic rank or web traffic. If your site has poor traffic, a professional affiliate marketer will look at it as a lost opportunity. It will only make his job harder.

3) Online Store. Make sure you know which are your best selling and most universally appealing products. Those are the ones you'd want to have in your affiliate program. You should also have varied price points. You don't want to pick prices too low, as after the affiliate split, there won't be anything left. And you don't want to pick prices too high, as since most of these leads are cold, it will be a harder sell. A good range is $69 - $300.

4) Affiliate Rewards. Decide if you're going to pay out per lead (CPL) or per sale. Decide if you're going to have a flat commission rate OR a tiered system. Do your competitive research and see what other, similar affiliate programs are paying out. Some of the best performing programs on the Web are offering 25% of the product price.

5) Analytics. Make sure you have a robust reporting system. You'll want the ability to track underperformers and super affiliates, and reward OR incent accordingly. You'll also want to know which creatives are performing the best and worst, and of course, how many sales and leads are coming in as well as how long the lead is staying on the file and their life time value (sales).

6) Keeping In Touch. Top affiliate programs often have a newsletter or ongoing communication to keep their affiliates engaged...up to date on latest products being offered, special sales incentives, updates to program terms, and other newsworthy notes.

Affiliate marketing can help with most all of your online marketing objectives ... lead gen, sales conversions, web traffic, branding and buzz. Not having one could be detrimental to your business.

If you need assistance with your affiliate marketing plan, visit http://www.precisionmarketingmedia.com/.

SEO for PDFs...here's what you need to know!

There's a misconception out there that search engines don't read (spider) PDFs.

They do. Of course, HTML pages are faster to index than a PDF, but they can be indexed. The trick is to know how to set up the PDF to make sure you get maximum pick up by the search engines.

Here are the top 5 tips to help make sure your PDFs on your website are optimized for search engines...

1. Make sure each PDF file is text based and has the correct document properties set up. When the search engines spider a PDF, they extrapolate the text from the information fields within the PDF ... so it's critical what meta data and keywords you have in these fields. The important fileds are: author, document title, description, file size and modificaiton date.
2. Remember to tag the PDF and use anchor text and links within the file. Just as SEO best practices tells us for a website, this method is also viable for PDFs. In addition, make sure your links are not burried deep within the PDF file. Have them at the root level ... easy to find for search engines.
3. If you have a large PDF file, consider breaking it into smaller relevant groups, sections, chapters, etc. These sections should be tagged accordingly with accurate, relevant keywords. This is not only reader friendly for humans, but also for search engines, since as I mentioned, it takes longer to spider a PDF than HTML.
4. Check the PDF file format version number and make sure it's readble by search engines. Typically, the version to use is Acrobat 5/Adobe XMP (PDF V. 1.4 or 1.5).
5. Finally, make sure the reading order in your PDF is logical and flows. Again, this is user friendly for humans and search engines. However, your reading order, for a search engine perspective, will give you an idea of what will be displayed in organic search results. To do this, when your PDF is open, select Advanced-Accessibility-Add Tags to Document. Then select Advanced-Accessibility-Touch Up Reading Order. After you do this, the reading order of the PDF will be displayed.

So if you have PDFs on your site already, it's a good idea to review them to make sure they were originally set up correctly for search engines.

Don't let your PDF content get overlooked ... optimize it today!

Tips for developing free reports and infoproducts

If you're a publisher, then I don't have to tell you there is no shortage of content in your world.

But do you truly know how to leverage all the content you have? Repurposing, repackaging, refreshing, bundling, and republishing your content for sales, leads, bonding, and more!

Remember, content comes from a variety of sources: text, audio, and video.

You can leverage existing content and repurpose it from:
--Old newsletter issues or articles
--Bonus Materials
--Teleseminars
--Webinars
--Interviews
--Conference calls
--Event audio or video
--Old products

At least two times per year, to get the most of your products, you should go through your entire product line and see if you can bundle existing products together to create an entirely new product and price point. Bundled products are a great mid-point or back end. Look through the content to see if the information is still valuable and fresh. You may need to update dates or references to specific points in time. But good content is good content. There's no need for it to collect dust. Repackage and reprice!

Also, consider taking a transcript from a conference call or video event and making it either a free report for your list (bonding) or low cost paid report (as a front end product). This is a great way to fully utilize all the content opportunities you have.

You can also take like-minded, or themed content from several issues and create a "best of" report. This is a great way to repurpose content. And even better, you can offer it to your "new to file" names that likely didn't see the articles the first time they were published. This type of report could be used for bonding, as a holiday "thank you" to your list, or as a low cost paid report.

If you decide to reuse some of your content for lead generation (free reports), here are some tips:

--Keep the content at a "macro" level. You want to save the details ... the recos, if you will, for the "paid" version. Paid reports have information on a "micro" level ... the "how to," details, or recommendations.
--Free reports have general information. Again, you don't give away valuable specifics on your area of expertise. For instance, if your a financial publisher, you can talk about general market conditions, trends, or forecasts, but save the specifics on sectors or certain stocks for the paid version.
--Free reports should also not be too long or not too short. I've seen some free reports at 3 pages. Even though it was free, I felt gipped and new the publisher was just after my name (email address). For credbility, bonding and life time value, I recommend offering around 5-10 pages. Even though it's free, still provide valuable content. Then the reader will not resent giving you his email address. If your content is good, he'll welcome that opportunity and even want to receive more information from you OR buy your products.
--Free reports are also a great way to gauge market interest or sentiment. Let's say you're thinking of a new product. Before you spend time,money and resources on something your customers may not even find appealing. Offer value-added, yet watered down version. Start a PPC campaign and see if the general public has interest. You can also do the same to your own list as a low cost paid report (let's say $9.95). Then if your list responds to the basic content, you'll have an idea if a more comprehensive product or service is worth your time.

Content is king ... so leverage it as much as you can!

Listbuilding Secret From the Experts: Polls! (part 2)

Last week I mentioned some fundamental criteria for successful polls for lead generation / list building efforts.

This week, I'm going to continue with powerful pointers to make sure your polls are the most interactive and engaging polls on the web and that the names you bring in are valuable and qualified.

Here we go...

6. Follow Up. To help reiterate to prospects the connection between the poll they just took and your incentive, it’s important to make sure that each name that comes in gets an immediate "thank you page" (for taking the poll) and then an auto responder email containing the free eReport or eLetter. Also consider sending a series of bonding emails that basically "warm up" the new subscriber to your company – letting them get to know who you are, what you do, and how it will benefit them. This will help improve the life time value (LTV) of the lead.

7. Results. Don’t just leave 'em hanging … make sure you tell prospects on your poll page that "results will be published" and they should check your site regularly. This will help readership and website traffic.

8. Reader Participation. Mention on your poll landing page that some comments may be published (anonymously) when the results are released. Pick the very best, most powerful and provoking responses and publish those on your website. This tactic has been extremely successful with social networking communities and blogs. It also helps with reader engagement as viewers can connect with the realism of the comments.

As I mentioned last week, polls are a viable way to build you list. So try it out...I know you won't be dissapointed with the outcome. To success and new leads! Good luck.

Listbuilding Secret From the Experts: Polls! (part 1)

Polls ... one of the best marketing vehicles I've used to gauge consumer interest or collect qualified emails. Underestimated by those that don't truly know it's value and how to leverage them. But a completely viable and reliable way to build your prospect database.

Polls can be used on your own website as well as placed on other websites/blogs via banner or text ads through a media buy.

Variables for success will include the poll question, media placement, amount of media (impressions) purchased, and your overall budget.

However, unless you have an up-sell landing page that comes up immediately after completion of the poll, the leads will not be initially monetized. To some, initial monetization is important. To others, having those names convert organically in the normal sales cycle of 30 - 90 days is fine.

If that’s the case, it’s important to email these names soon after you collect them with a dedicated email for a low priced offer and try and convert leads for revenues to offset the media cost.

Here are some other important things to consider when using polls for lead generation:

1. Interactivity. Your question should engage the reader, encourage participation, peak interest, and tie into a current event. Also, have a "comments" field for additional remarks. Sample proven poll topics include: Politics, economy, health, consumer breakthroughs, the stock market, foreign affairs. It's great to weave current events and hot topics into your poll. Some websites that highlight the most talked about (and searched) topics on the web include: buzz.yahoo.com/, 50.lycos.com/, and google.com/press/zeitgeist.html.

2. Relevance. Your poll question should be related to your product, free eLetter topic, or free bonus report topic. This will greatly improve your conversion rate and up-sell rate.

3. Incentive. If you're a publisher, after people take your poll or survey, mention that to thank them for their participation you’re automatically signing them up for your free eLetter, which they can opt out at any time. If you don't have an eLetter, you can offer a "must read" eReport and mention the reports value. This can be any useful "macro" level report that is anywhere from 3-10 pages. Emailing the report will reduce the number of bogus emails you get. Keep in mind, if it’s part of your privacy policy not to sell or rent email names to third parties (and as a best practice, it should be), mention this by sign up button. This will help reassure users that their email addresses are safe with you.

4. Name Quality. If your poll question and your product are in sync, these names could be extremely qualified for current … or future products. This can help allocate leads for like-minded front end products, such as a paid newsletter. Each name that comes in under a specific topic or product type should be "tagged" accordingly by your database folks for segmentation purposes to help conversion rates.

5. Market sentiment. In addition to name collection, your effort will also gauge general market opinion. The results from your poll could be helpful for product development. You'll be tapping into people's thoughts and behaviors and may consider next steps based on market demand.

Stay tuned, as next week I'll wrap up the "must do" list with how to follow up properly, get the most from the poll results and how to encourage participation!

Caio for now.

Leveraging "Linked In"

For those of you that haven’t established a presence on LinkedIn yet, I strongly recommend that you create a profile and linkaway!

LinkedIn is on of the top 5 social networks on the Web and focuses on linking professionals to one another through networking opportunities, business discussions, information exchanges, Q&A’s, industry news, professional Groups, and more.

It’s easy and free to get started. You simply go to Linkedin.com and create a profile. You can information on your education and career. And through your account settings you can chose what information you’d like private and what you’d liked displayed for others to view.

It’s also helpful to get and give recommendations, as it helps validate your credentials as an expert in whatever field you specialize in.Once you sign up, you can invite colleagues and business partners to join your "network" as well as join various Groups that relates to the industry you’re in. After you join those Groups, you’ll receive weekly messages from the Group leader regarding Group discussion, news, relevant articles and other useful information. You will also be able to view other Group member’s profiles and invite those you feel could be synergistic to your business to join your network.

Joining LinkedIn can help your business…and your website (and company!) in several ways…

• SEO. You can write and upload useful articles or news as well as start discussions regarding information that will benefit your fellow members. Article should be relevant and value-oriented information. When you do this, you also get to upload a backlink to your site. Not only will this reinforce you credentials as an expert, but it’s also information that is truly benefiting you’re peers. This encourages traffic to your site, which if optimized, you can leverage the traffic via lead gen collection boxes or eCommerce platform. And the traffic is easily identified with Google website analytics.
  
• Advertising. You can easily alert members of your special skills, expertise or services by posing a relevant question and offering a benefit-oriented solution. The opportunity is there to network with responders and gain potential business. Again, the key is to be relevant. You can also post a classified-type ad in the Job section. And here’s where good copy writing comes into play, as for best response, your ad should get people to take action quickly. If done right, I guarantee you will also get a handful of qualified leads that will generate new business and added to revenue growth. In my experience, within hours of my initial posts I received nearly 20 leads for potential clients.
  
• Increased Web Presence. If you’re goal is to improve your website’s presence, then being actively involved in LinkedIn is critical. If you spend an hour or less a day and offer expert solutions to relevant Q&A’s, provide commentary to targeted questions and include your name and website URL -- your "brand" will be prominent to site users. This will not only establish you as an expert within LinkedIn, but also have the potential to drive ancillary traffic to your website from members and referrals. And the more traffic your site gets, the more it will help your organic search ranking and visibility.

Now, some may argue that social media is just the latest craze, but it’s not easy to monetize or measure. I wholeheartedly disagree.

I say, if you’re a creative and strategic thinker, you can not only measure social media efforts, like those in LinkedIn, but also increase you’re business’s bottom line.

CoReg tips for better conversion

Co Registration can be a cost effective way to bring in names to your file.

However, if done incorrectly, these names will become worthless as well as be a burden to your file by becoming names you payfor to send your message (email transaction fee) and those names will be unresposive or invalid thereby effecting open rate, bounce rate and deliverability rate.

And you need extra baggage on your email list.

Here are some quick and dirty tips for optimal results:

• These names come in from another website after a transaction and people tend to forget what they opted in to receive.
• For optimum results, flag names that come in (segment) and withhold them from eLetter circulation for approx. 5-7 days.
• Use this time to reconnect with them and let them bond with you, your gurus, your pub, or your philosophy. Let them build that "warm fuzzy feeling" for you. Do this by following up with targeted introduction emails.
• After the email series, where you'll also be giving them fantastic editorial, send them a special offer (such as discount, special new subscriber pricing, etc.) to help monetize the names.
• Avg. cost per lead (CPL) for coreg tends to be between $1- $5.
• Implementing the email intro series also helps the LTV (life time value) of the subscriber. They'll buy more frequently, monetarily, and be more loyal.

Critical Components Of The Free E-Letter

1. Your E-Letter Must Be A Good Read. Make sure the information is value-oriented, useful, and benefits your target audience. Copy should be in simple, lay terms. Pull your reader in by telling a story or using personal events. Your tone should be first person like you are talking to your friend. Offer actional advice or take-a-ways your subscribers can easily implement in whatever niche they're in.
   
2. Remain Informal With Copy. Some tips and tools to help make sure content suits your readers:
   --Flesch–Kincaid Readability Scale.
   --Grade Level of 6-8th grade is ideal.
   --Check out this free tool where you simply drop in the content and you get a readability score http://www.standards-schmandards.com/exhibits/rix/ .
   
3. Building A Community of Loyal Readers
   --It helps the LTV (life time value) of your publication and subscribers as well as related product line
   
4. Quality names. Make sure your prospecting efforts brings in qualified, targeted names to your file. Or else you'll see either high monthly subscriber attrition (over 2% of file size), high email bounce rate (due to bad email addresses), or low open rates.
   Sources include:
   --PPC, newsletter ad swaps, organic search = Excellent acquisition source of names. Typically offers highest LTV
   --Banner ads, polls = Good source of names
   --Co Registration = Mediocre - to - good source of names (if done correctly with immediate launch of introductory email series for bonding)
   --Sweepstakes offers = Bad source of names. Typically, lack of connection between the offer and the front end product. Most leads that come in this way, are bogus OR forget what they signed up for and don't open your ezine.
   
5. Bonus. Offer an incentive for prospecting efforts:
   --Free special report
   --Free white paper
   --Free analysis (via survey, poll, etc.)

Don't forget building your hot list...

So, you're about to launch a new product, service or website.

On your timeline, you're a few months away from your target launch date. What marketing can you do during this time between planning and execution?

Build a hot list. You can start by creating a simple webpage with some strong copy about your product/service/website -- teaser copy that doesn't give too much away -- and have an email sign up form. Also, it's important to include on your page your product/service/site's name, logo and tag line for branding.

This way, you can start seeding forums, blogs, bulliten boards, tweeting...where ever you can spread the word and drive traffic to your sign up page.

What you're doing, in addition to branding, is creating buzz ... you're building anticipation and a pent up demand with your targeted audience.

You can also start using this landing page in media buys or reciprocal ad swaps with industry publications. Then, as you collect these "qualified names" (as they already displayed an interest in your product/service/site before it launched), you can send them updates, do a count down to launch, or even start "soft" cross-promotional messages.

So instead of looking at a pre-launch time as taking care of pre-launch operational issues, start building your hot list and hit the ground running when launch date arrives!

Is Social Networking A Waste Of Time?

My friend and colleague, copywriting expert, Bob Bly, has an intersting discussion about social media going on on his blog. I chimmed in and it occured to me to comment about this topic on my own blog as well.

To check out the full article and discussion, visit: http://bly.com/blog/

However, in a nutshell, one of the commenters mentioned that "...by a direct response marketer’s metrics, social media is a waste of time..." and "...social networking is simply real world interpersonal networking digitized. You wouldn’t try to apply direct marketing practices to a business networking event, and you wouldn’t expect to launch a marketing campaign with a “Chamber of Commerce Business Mixer Strategy...”

Good, valid points, however, I disagree somewhat. And here's why:

Social media, to me, is a hybrid between relationship/network marketing and direct marketing.

It’s relationship marketing if you know how to be a strategic thinker as well as be creative with your marketing messages. In other words, what to say and where to say it. Targeting is key. You have to look at each social media website to see if it, and it's users, are the right fit for your marketing message and business. Then, you need to craft your message accordignly. And that requires good creative, copywriting skills. (I've had tremendous success with LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg and StumbleUpon. But not so much with Facebook. For my business, Facebook users are not necessarily the decision makers I want to get in front of to help build my consulting business. However, I still promote my website on Facebook. I get to enjoy ancillary traffic and the backlink (SEO) from a top ranked website. But I don't count on real, solid leads.)

It’s direct response as you can measure results. Granted, it’s not as cut and dry as some other online marketing methods, like email. Where deliverability, clicks, opens, sales, and ROI is concrete. But, for me (and my business), I can specifically track any leads or sales I get back to specific social media platforms. And I can measure traffic to my website via Google Analytics from those same sites. As a core direct marketer, I don't waste my time on something I can't tie a metric to.

What do you think?

FYI, see these other two related articles I wrote on social media:
http://musclemarketing.blogspot.com/2009_03_15_archive.html
http://www.precisionmarketingmedia.com/publishers.html (article in “Online Marketing” section on “Measuring Social Media”).

Video, SEO and the Top Sites to Be On...

Many marketers are uploading video to YouTube, but they reaaaaallllyyy don't know how to exactly leverage this platform.

First, let's reiterate that video is content. And content should be leveraged and syndicated. This will help (as I wrote in my "SONAR" post) with backlinks, SEO, traffic generation, lead generation and monetization, and buzz.

The best video sharing sites to upload your videos to are:
YouTube, Google Video, MetaCafe, Blip.tv and DailyMotion.

These sites are extremely popular and get the most traffic/visitors.

Also, don't forget you can also syndicate your video content through RSS (if you have RSS on your website).

OK, some quick tips on optimal video for SEO:

1) Clips should be less than 5 minutes (1-3 min.), relevant, benefit oriented and interesting for the users. They could also be teaser snipets that link to a fuller-length video that is housed on your website.

2) Make sure your video has a powerful, eye-catching title. This is where good copywriting skills come in. Think "headline" or "banner ad" -- something that a user will only see for a few seconds then decide if they will click.

3) Make sure your title and description is chock full of your top keywords, keywords that are in your video and that your target audience will search under.

4) Make sure your video is tagged (meta data) properly with your keywords to get picked up by SE Spiders.

5) Make sure your video has either your company logo or URL for branding.

6) If the video is on your website, encourage other users to "republish" by providing the proper code. This will help with viral marketing.

7) Cross-market your video in your eNewsletters, website, and in your social media accounts (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) to drive traffic and create buzz.

When done right, marketing via video is a cost effective, efficient, and powerful way to get prospects and profits. And best of all...the viral factor could be off the charts!

Social Media: Hype or Hidden Treasure?

For those of you that haven’t established a presence on LinkedIn yet, I strongly recommend that you create a profile and linkaway!

LinkedIn is on of the top 5 social networks on the Web and focuses on linking professionals to one another through networking opportunities, business discussions, information exchanges, Q&A’s, industry news, professional Groups, and. more.

It’s easy and free to get started. You simply go to Linkedin.com and create a profile. You can information on your education and career. And through your account settings you can chose what information you’d like private and what you’d liked displayed for others to view.
It’s also helpful to get and give recommendations, as it helps validate your credentials as an expert in whatever field you specialize in.Once you sign up, you can invite colleagues and business partners to join your "network" as well as join various Groups that relates to the industry you’re in. After you join those Groups, you’ll receive weekly messages from the Group leader regarding Group discussion, news, relevant articles and other useful information. You will also be able to view other Group member’s profiles and invite those you feel could be synergistic to your business to join your network.

Joining LinkedIn can help your business…and your website (and company!) in several ways…

• SEO. You can write and upload a useful articles as news or start discussions using with information that will benefit your fellow members. That’s the key, relevant and value-oriented information. When you do this, you also get to upload a URL, which can backlink to your site. Not only will this reinforce you credentials as an expert, but it’s also information that is truly benefiting you’re peers in whatever niche your in.I’ve executed this tactic frequently with the marketing articles I’ve written and those members wanting more of what they read visited the website link I enclosed, increasing traffic, and the opportunity for sales via eCommerce platform. And the traffic was easily identified with website analytics under "top referring sources."
  
• Networking and Advertising. You can easily alert members of your special skills, expertise or services by posing a relevant question and offering a benefit-oriented solution. The opportunity is there to network with responders and gain potential business. Again, the key is to be subtle and relevant. You can, however, post a classified-type ad in the Group’s Job section. And here’s where good copy writing comes into play, as your ad must get people to take action quickly. If done right, I guarantee you will also get a handful of qualified leads that will generate new business and added to revenue growth. In my experience, within 4 hours of my initial posts I received nearly 20 leads for potential clients.
  
• Increased Web Presence. If you’re goal is to improve your website’s presence, then being actively involved in LinkedIn is critical. If you spend an hour or less a day and offer expert solutions to relevant Q&A’s, provide commentary to targeted questions in your Group messages – and include your name and website URL -- your "brand" will be prominent to site users. This will not only establish you as an expert within LinkedIn, but also have the potential to drive ancillary traffic to your website from members and referrals. And the more traffic your site gets, the more it will help your organic search ranking and visibility.

Now, some may argue that social media is just the latest craze,
but it’s not easy to monetize or measure.

I wholeheartedly disagree.

I say, if you’re a creative and strategic thinker, you can not only
measure social media efforts, like those in LinkedIn,
but also increase you’re business’s bottom line.

And isn’t that what direct marketing is all about?

Launch of "Precision Marketing and Media"

Hi folks,
I just launched my website for my consulting business, Precision Marketing and Media.
We do everything -- online and offline -- including list building, content syndication and distribution, SMO, SEO, SEM, PPC, product launches, online PR, grass-roots marketing, affiliate marketing, business development ...whew, and so much more.

I'm very excited and look forward to a rewarding career.

Check it out: www.precisionmarketingmedia.com!

A Launch Strategy That Works

If you're about to launch a new product, book, website, or whatever and don't know where to begin – then you MUST read this...

After launching multiple products over my career, there's a proven formula that works every time no matter what the actual "thing" is you’re launching. In a nutshell, it’s coordination and synchronization of multi-channel marketing efforts.

These efforts include:
--Staggered emails. These will go to you list and other synergistic lists and aim to build anticipation and a "hot list" of names before your launch. These names will then have potential to be your top buyers.

--Social media. Putting posts on blogs, bulleting boards, forums. Recording a video of yourself and posting it on YouTube. Ultimately, creating messages that have the potential to go viral.

--Pay per click. Bidding on your relevant keywords and having a mechanism and offer to collect names and build your hot list.

--Online PR. Getting your message out quickly and cost effectively. The release will get picked up by blogs, media websites, industry websites, and online news aggregators (such as Yahoo and Google) and not only increase awareness, but also give you backlinks (SEO!) as well as have the potential to go viral.

--Editorial and Article Syndication. Write articles for print and online media about the topic that ties into your launch.

All of these efforts build up slowly and culminate the day of your launch. You’re basically building momentum, that will pay off with traffic and buzz about your product.

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Editor's Note:
I've been getting many emails from readers asking me about social media and how they can measure their activity. Having an Internet marketing, direct response and PR background, I find the following helpful when assessing my efforts:

Look at the "3 O's"—Outputs, Outcomes and Objectives.

Outputs measures effectiveness and efficiency, such as new subscriber sign-ups and spikes in Web site traffic during your campaign. And it measures analytics, such as referring Web site sources, visits, unique visits and visit percentages.

Outcomes measures behavioral changes such as internal customer/subscriber feedback (calls, e-mails, forum postings) on your Web site, as well as external reputation monitoring or visiting targeted chat rooms during your campaign looking to see the "buzz."

Objectives compare direct product sales during the time of the campaign to other sales that occurred before the campaign. So it establishes a baseline, giving room for sales assumptions tied to your effort.

I also use the following tools:

Google Analytics
-Check the “referring sources page” to see how much traffic was generated by LinkedIn.
-Look at overall traffic to website during same time period of your effort.
-If you have a sign up/email form, look for lead spikes during time period of your effort.

Google Alerts
-Set alert for your name, your company name, and keywords in your content. You’ll get notified via Alert if content/your messagegets picked up and goes viral.

Backlink Checkers
-Google Webmaster Tools - Check back links going to site during same time period of your effort.
-Link Popularity Check - Link popularity analysis is one of the best ways to quantifiably and independently measure your website's online awareness.

Sample free tools:
http://seopro.com.au/free-seo-tools/link-checker/ http://www.iwebtool.com/backlink_checker
http://www.backlinkwatch.com/index.php

CRM - The Forgotten Marketing Tactic

Hi Folks!
After a nice summer break, I'm back with important information on customer relationship management (CRM). Most companies, public, private and entrepreneurial typicaly get so caught up in revenue generation and customer acquisition they forget about retention and managing the relationship with current customers.

Is revenue and new customers important? Heck yeh. But don't forget that an effective CRM plan will also positively impact your bottom line and overall profit margin.

A Harvard Business review study on customer profitability and lifetime value revealed that companies can boost their profits by almost 100% by retaining just 5% more of their customers.

A study by CRMGuru found that company’s that successfully implemented retention plans increased customer satisfaction by 51%.

It's important to understand the complete Customer Relationship Cycle and what you should be striving for. The goal should be post-satisfaction stage and include loyalty, and ultimately, advocacy. This is where many companies, big and small, fall short.

Customer Relationship Cycle
--Awareness. Prospect recognizes need for service
--Knowledge. Gained thru PR or promotional presence
--Consideration. Prospect weights needs vs. solution
--Selection. Prospect seeks solution based on ease of information, opinions of others, how your product meets their individual needs
--Satisfaction. Prospect becomes client (many companies stop efforts here -- after the sale)
--Loyalty. Customer demonstrates commitment to firm by repeat purchases
--Advocacy. Customer becomes advocate of your product and actively promotes it. This is the most personal relationship you can have with your customer!

According to permission marketing guru, Seth Godin, the process to move a prospect thru the sales cycle is:
--Stranger to Friend
--Friend to Customer
--Customer to Multi-buyer
--Multi-buyer to Advocate

You see, the "advocate" is the golden goose. This person not only is loyal to your company with repeat purchases, but is your #1 free marketer – they tell their friends, family and business associates about your company's products and services and they're not even on your payroll!

So make sure you include a CRM Plan as part of your overall Marketing Strategy and benchmark meterics before and after plan is implemented...I'm sure you'll see favorable results.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - Don't overlook it's importance!

The following are efforts that can be used for bonding or conversion. For bonding, it can help build relationship and add to LTV (lifetime value) of customer:

--An effort doesn't need to lead to a sale or inquiry to be considered effective
--"Passive" communications, such as a birthday card, a thank you note or a "just because" card assist in CRM efforts
--Freemiums all add value (i.e. eBook, a .pdf of valuable editorial content or white paper emailed to leads and/or subs)
--If all of your communications with someone are about getting something from them, they will tend to tune them out and not be as responsive. But if peppered in that communication you have a genuine peer-to-peer relationship message, they will more open to other messages, and will feel like you are building and investing in a genuine relationship. (insidedirectmail.com)
--During rough times, don't bury your head in the sand, use this opportunity to communicate with your clients. Send a personalized email, audio email (with recording), schedule outbound calls (either live or voice reach), or schedule a teleseminar. You can't control external factors, but you can control how you communicate and reinforce your commitment to your clients.

Subject Lines with better open rates...

--After testing long vs. short subject lines, I've found that subject lines of less than 50 characters achieve higher open rates than those of 50 or more characters. Here's a great tool to help see which subject lines fall within email providers' parameters.
http://www.emaillabs.com/tools/from-subject-line-tool.html

Some other lessons learned:
--Contain emotional drivers (i.e. greed, fear, vanity)
--Ask a question
--Specificty rules (specific $ or %)
--Incorporate well known names in your industry
--Tie into timely news or current event
--Use a powerful call to action
--Forecasts
--Rare events

Where Have All the Pop Unders Gone?

Have you noticed that you don't see as many pop ups and pop unders anymore?

That's because many search engines frown on pop ups or pop unders. A matter of fact, if you start a pay-per-click campaign and happen to be redirecting traffic to your website and you have pop ups on your website, the search engines (i.e. Google, Yahoo) will ask you to disable the pop up code BEFORE they approve your PPC campaign.

That’s largely because these forms of marketing are intrusive and annoying to Web surfers. They are also oftentimes similar to ‘online spam’, where you can’t see how to close the pop up (as the publisher made the close button very small or faint in color). And the ones you do finally figure out how to close, miraculously spawn children when you hit ‘x’, and all these boxes seem to cascade out of now where and the only thing you can do is reboot to stop the madness.

It’s the oldest form of ‘interruption marketing’, and it typically doesn’t work.

So next time you’re wondering why these ads aren’t as popular as they used to be, it’s because consumers have gotten savvier and less tolerant. Thank goodness!

Lead gen success: Using online polls

Polls ... one of the best marketing vehicles I've used to gauge consumer interest or collect qualified emails. Underestimated by those that don't truly know it's value and how to leverage them. But a completely viable and reliable way to build your prospect database.

Polls can be used on your own website as well as placed on other websites/blogs via banner or text ads through a media buy. Variables for success will include the poll question, media placement, amount of media (impressions) purchased, and your overall budget.

However, unless you have an up-sell landing page that comes up immediately after completion of the poll, the leads will not be initially monetized. To some, initial monetization is important. To others, having those names convert organically in the normal sales cycle of 30 - 90 days is fine.If that’s the case, it’s important to email these names soon after you collect them with a dedicated email for a low priced offer and try and convert leads for revenues to offset the media cost.

Here are some other important things to consider when using polls for lead generation:

1. Interactivity. Your question should engage the reader, encourage participation, peak interest, and tie into a current event. Also, have a "comments" field for additional remarks. Sample proven poll topics include: Politics, economy, health, consumer breakthroughs, the stock market, foreign affairs. It's great to weave current events and hot topics into your poll. Some websites that highlight the most talked about (and searched) topics on the web include: buzz.yahoo.com/, 50.lycos.com/, and google.com/press/zeitgeist.html.

2. Relevance. Your poll question should be related to your product, free eLetter topic, or free bonus report topic. This will greatly improve your conversion rate and up-sell rate.

3. Incentive. If you're a publisher, after people take your poll or survey, mention that to thank them for their participation you’re automatically signing them up for your free eLetter, which they can opt out at any time. If you don't have an eLetter, you can offer a "must read" eReport and mention the reports value. This can be any useful "macro" level report that is anywhere from 3-10 pages. Emailing the report will reduce the number of bogus emails you get. Keep in mind, if it’s part of your privacy policy not to sell or rent email names to third parties (and as a best practice, it should be), mention this by sign up button. This will help reassure users that their email addresses are safe with you.

4. Name Quality. If your poll question and your product are in sync, these names could be extremely qualified for current … or future products. This can help allocate leads for like-minded front end products, such as a paid newsletter. Each name that comes in under a specific topic or product type should be "tagged" accordingly by your database folks for segmentation purposes to help conversion rates.

5. Market sentiment. In addition to name collection, your effort will also gauge general market opinion. The results from your poll could be helpful for product development. You'll be tapping into people's thoughts and behaviors and may consider next steps based on market demand.

6. Follow Up. To help reiterate to prospects the connection between the poll they just took and your incentive, it’s important to make sure that each name that comes in gets an immediate "thank you page" (for taking the poll) and then an auto responder email containing the free eReport or eLetter. Also consider sending a series of bonding emails that basically "warm up" the new subscriber to your company – letting them get to know who you are, what you do, and how it will benefit them. This will help improve the life time value (LTV) of the lead.

7. Results. Don’t just leave 'em hanging … make sure you tell prospects on your poll page that "results will be published" and they should check your site regularly. This will help readership and website traffic.

8. Reader Participation. Mention on your poll landing page that some comments may be published (anonymously) when the results are released. Pick the very best, most powerful and provoking responses and publish those on your website. This tactic has been extremely successful with social networking communities and blogs. It also helps with reader engagement as viewers can connect with the realism of the comments.

Polls are a viable way to build you list. So try it out...I know you won't be disappointed with the outcome.