Give Your Customers What They Want: The Importance of Product Development, Front-Ends and Back-Ends

Whether you're launching a new business or you're established, product development should be an active part of your strategic business plan.

However, many companies - large and small - oftentimes neglect product development due to internalized myths such as:

·We don't need extra products
·We don't have the time to develop extra products
·We don't have the money to develop extra products

First, let me say if your products are relevant and useful, I believe you can never have too many products. One thing you need to constantly do is "ask" your list (i.e. subscribers/customers/clients) what they want. You can do this in many ways, such as simple and brief surveys or questioners. You can also take the 'idea' of a product and test offer it to your list.

For instance, if you're thinking about offering a copywriting coaching service, start out by measuring internal sentiment. Create a simplified version of this product which has the "essence", like an eBook called, "50 Hot Copywriting Tips". Price it attractively, and promote it to your file. If your file responds well to the eBook, they'll likely respond well to a more comprehensive version of the eBook, whether it involves multi-media components (such as workbook, DVD, CDs) or a personal coaching element. So your eBook would be your "front-end" product (low price point), your kit would be your "mid priced" product, and your personal coaching would be your "back-end" product.

This leads me to my next point - pricing levels. Many companies make the mistake of either having many front-ends products, and no back-end, or visa versa. Here's my belief: Front-ends are relatively easy to create and involve little cost. So there's the myth-buster of "not having time" or "not having money". If it's an eBook, there's little overhead, outside of the gathering of information (editorial time), production and graphics design. And you're saving money by fulfilling it digitally to customers.

However, the product line shouldn't end there. Your customers are going to look for more comprehensive information. And that level of detail will mean a higher price - which they'll be willing to pay for. So if you're not offering them a mid or back-end product - you're actually doing a disservice to your list. They will go to your competitors to buy that information. So why not make sure you have a well-rounded product list with varied price points?

Here's a sample of pricing levels:
1. First level - free newsletter

2. Second level - paid reports, paid newsletters ($1 - $99). Front-End

3. Third level - Bundled products, kits, membership sites ($100 - $499). Mid-Priced

4. Fourth level - Conferences and events ($500 - 999). Back-End

5. Fifth level - Premium service, upscale events ($1000 - $2,999). Back-End

6. Sixth level - Lifetime value clubs, VIP products ($3,000+). Ultra Back-End. This is ideal for your true multi-buyer, loyal, advocate customers ... the Golden Goose!

Now, keep in mind, the aforementioned may not be your business model. You may sell a service or retail item, as opposed to contextual-based infoproducts. But it still gives you an idea about pricing structure and product variety.

Also, if you read last week's issue, you'll know that content is king. So recycle it. Repurpose it. And repackage it. You can take articles, blog posts, webinars, bonus materials, conference transcripts, etc. There's many sources of content that can be re-used for creating product.

What About Going Outside Your List?

If you have a product and not sure how viable it is on the global platform, you can do a few things to test product viability...

1. Use PPC ads to see if there's general market interest. That is, use a "quick and dirty", watered down version of your "real" product. For example, a free or paid (i.e. under $10) eBook. Create up to 5 ads on Google Ad Words. Run them for about 2-3 weeks. Each ad should be different in tone and pitch. Because you don't want poor copy to influence your results. Based on ad clicks and conversions (i.e. leads or sales), you'll have a good idea if there's general interest in your product/idea.

2. Go to eBook market places like ClickBank.com and see what's hot, what's in demand. You can search topics to see what's the most popular.

3. Do your research in related blogs, chat rooms, forums. See what people are talking about within your niche or product genre.

4. Do keyword research. Using Google's free external keyword search tool, check and see what the actual keyword search volume is on your relevant, targeted keywords related to your audience and product.

My suggestion is start out with the 3-2-1 approach. That is, 3 front-end products, 2 mid-priced products, and 1 back-end product. From there, you will define and refine your product development based mostly on demand.

If you're in need of assistance in product development or testing your product's viability, you can contact me at wendy@precisionmarketingmedia.com .

Find Out The Secrets For Buying Online Ads For Less

Any online marketer will tell you, the key to successful Internet marketing is having a balanced marketing mix, that is, having a variety of tactics that fit your budget and business objectives ... from no cost SEO and SEM ... to paid advertising with banner ads, PPC, blogs, newsletter sponsorships, email marketing and more.

If you're a newbie to online media buying then do I have great news for you!

Discover the best ways to get the most bang for your buck when buying online advertising. Check out my new .pdf eBook -- Muscle Media: The Complete Guide to Buying Online Ads for Less. It’s jam packed with 25-pages of proven, powerful, money saving ideas to buy online media and boost ad performance.

It also contains "must know" insider tips and tricks including:

-Creating a high-peforming (low cost!) media plan
-Proven techniques for developing powerful online ads
-Best online ad networks (based on my personal, unbiased, hands on experience!)
-Suggested media allocations
-Reporting tips
-Media ‘cheat sheet’ with must ask questions for your next media buy
-Business negotiations 101
-Free web tools
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Special Limited Time Offer

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Building Revenues with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has been a viable way to help build ancillary revenues by having someone else market your products. It's generally cost effective and could involve little work.

You can go about this through affiliate networks, such as Commission Junction or LinkShare, or simply start an Affiliate program on your website and track sales and commissions with affiliate software, such as DirectTrack. Software costs could range any where from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars ... depending on how robust you'd like your features.

But before you start, make sure you know the critical elements to help grow your Affiliate 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 web traffic rank or web traffic (visits). 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. So make sure to deploy SEO/SEM tactics to improve your site's presence before you start your Affiliate program.

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 setting up your affiliate marketing plan, you can contact me at support@precisionmarketingmedia.com.

What's after your website launch?

You've finally got your website up and running...now what?

Mastering natural search ranking has proven to be a fundamental part of the online marketing mix. And it's critical in getting targeted, organic traffic to your website.

Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) - the ability to increase your site's visibility in organic search listings and refine the content structure on the site itself - are critical for market awareness and customer acquisition. According to WebProNews, 66.3 percent of searchers click on organic listings before they click on a sponsored link. Even more important, a recent study by CreativeWebsiteMarketing.com indicates that most people who buy online start with a search engine.

Don't let your site get lost on the World Wide Web. Here are five simple ways to help boost your website's traffic and optimization...for free:

1. Create online buzz about your site, product, or service.
You can do this by generating online press releases. There are services on the Web, such as PRWeb.com or Free-press-release.com, that do this for free or at a nominal cost. Another idea is to post comments to high-traffic blogs, bulletin boards, chat rooms, or forums.

Do a Web search for top blogs or news forums that are related to whatever it is that you're selling. Go to each site, one by one, and post a comment. (Start a new topic or reply to an existing one.) This helps in two ways: One, you create buzz in the marketplace. Depending on your tactics, your message can even go viral. Two, you get a "back-link" to your site that helps when the site is indexed by search engine spiders.

An important note: Your post should be relevant and genuine. Your comment should be relevant to the question you're replying to, have some sort of value to the readers that view it, and be in the proper area/subject matter on the forum you're posting to. Stay away from posts that are blatantly self-serving. These posts are viewed as spam by forum webmasters and could get you banned from the forum, or at least be deleted.

2. Quality inbound link program.
Set up a reciprocal link page or blog roll (a listing of URLs on a blog, as opposed to a website) that can house links from industry sites. Contact these sites to see if they'd be willing to swap links with you - a link to your site for a link to theirs. Again, relevance is key. Search engines shun link harvesting (collecting links from random websites that have no relevance to your site), so these links should be from sites that are similar in nature to your business.

3. Give Web searchers great content and a link back to your site.
Upload relevant, useful content to sites that make such information available to other sites that want to publish it, such as eZinearticles.com, ArticlesBase.com, ArticleDashboard.com or ArticlesFactory.com. These sites should be targeted to your audience. This is a great way to increase market awareness as well as establish an inbound link to your site. There is also a syndication opportunity, as third-party sites may come across your article when doing a Web search and republish your content on their own websites. As long as third-parties give your site editorial attribution and a link, getting them to republish your content is just another distribution channel for you to consider.

4. Website pages should be keyword rich and related to your business.
Make a list of your top keywords and variations of those words, and incorporate them into the copy on your site (avoiding the obvious repetition of words). Your strongest keywords should be heaviest from the top of your webpage to bottom. Make sure your title tags (the descriptions at the top of each page) and meta tags are unique and chock full of keywords.

5. List your site in online directories by related category or region.
This is an effective way to increase exposure and get found by prospects searching specifically for information on your product or service by keyword topic.

With organic online marketing, since it's free, you're trading expediency's for cost. So it could take weeks to months for your site to be indexed by search engines and for it to start gaining traction in the SERPs.

Profit Partners: Maximizing JV and Affiliate Relationships

The current economic environment is making many marketers look at lost cost ways to drive sales and be a strategic and creative thinker. Now is a great time to look to your competition for opportunities to help grow your list and add extra revenues to your bottom line for little or no cost.

If my clients tell me they want to grow their list or increase revenues WITHOUT spending money on advertising, my advice is focus on leveraging their marketing and editorial relationships with our fellow publishers and aggressively pursuing ad swaps, guest editorials, and joint ventures (JV) or cultivating new relationships. And for the clients that don't have a marketing team, I lead this initiative for them. The idea is to develop synergistic relationships that are mutually beneficial - to look for areas of deficiency in your competitors and think of ways your company can fill the void.

Some tips to keep in mind when looking for potential "profit" partners:
· Do your homework. Find out, in advance, who will be at industry events that you'll be attending. (Check the program for speakers, vendors, and participants.) Sign up for their e-newsletters. Read their promotional e-mails. Maybe even purchase some of their products.
· Look at EVERY opportunity as a way to maximize your company's brand. When you go to industry events, don't eat dinner alone in your hotel room. Go to functions. Mingle. Network. Have a genuine conversation with a potential partner... then, if there's a synergy between your two companies, exchange business cards.
· Before you contact a potential partner, get familiar with his products and target audience and figure out how your company may be able to dovetail with his product line or marketing efforts.
So, once you've made the connection, now what?

Reciprocal Ad Swaps

Assuming you both have e-newsletters, you can test the waters and see how your lists will react by doing an advertising swap. In other words, you run an ad in his e-newsletter and he runs an ad in yours.

To make sense out of the results of that test, you have to know your "opportunity cost" - the "cost" you will incur for running an outside ad to your list instead of your own ad. If you normally sell ad space in your e-newsletter, this cost could simply be the flat rate fee you typically charge. Or, if you know the average revenues an issue brings in, you could calculate the potential "missed opportunity" of letting another ad run to your list on a given day.

You should also agree to share important information with your partner. Before his ad runs in your e-newsletter, point out any creative issues. (Perhaps the copy is too inflammatory for your list. Perhaps it's too competitive.) Provide your partner with your e-newsletter's sent and deliverability sizes, open rate, and ad click rate. Exchanging performance data is critical to a long and mutually beneficial relationship. It has to be a win/win situation for the partnership to work.

Whether your goal is to attract names for your e-list (lead generation) or to make sales, reciprocate in kind. If your partner is letting you do a name collection ad to his list, for example, let him run the same kind of ad to your list. But first make sure his list is approximately the same size as yours. If it's substantially smaller, you may want to hold off on an ad swap with that publisher until he builds his subscriber base. You don't want the initiative to be one-sided.

Guest Editorials

You can also look into doing guest editorials in other publishers' e-newsletters - with an editorial note or byline that links to your offer. This is a great way to get introduced to a new list with the "implied" endorsement of the publisher. His endorsement gives you credibility. And if you provide his readers with good, solid, useful information, they will bond with you quickly.

This is a soft-sell approach that may or may not yield results on its own. But when coordinated with either a dedicated e-mail (if your partner is on board with a revenue split) or an e-newsletter ad the same week, your conversion rate (the number of people who go on to buy your product) will dramatically improve.

Joint Ventures (JVs)

JVs are a quick and cost-effective way to make money with your list even if you have not yet developed any products. With a JV, you have an instant product line with no overhead costs. Your partner will supply the products, fulfill orders, and provide customer support. All you have to do is promote the products to your list and split the net revenues with them. For an even a more turnkey approach, you can sell e-reports through sites like Clickbank.com, where everything is automated.

To determine the viability of a potential JV product, there are several strategic marketing variables to consider. I like to think of them as "PPPGS":

P = Product quality
P = Price point
P = Performance (when promoted to your potential partner's house list, as well as to outside lists)
G = General market demand
S = Subscriber interest (when promoted to your list, as determined by feedback, surveys, etc.)

Remember - you're looking for long-term partners, not one-hit-wonders. So carefully select the people you approach, making sure their products make sense relative to your business...and, together, you can reap the unlimited profit potential of reciprocal marketing!

7 Foolproof Ways to Build Your Business This Summer (Or Anytime!)

The written word has the power to educate and inform... as well as create buzz about your website, product, or service. That's why with all my clients one thing is common -- I circulate their e-zine articles through multiple delivery channels also known as content marketing which has been refined and developed into a systematic approach via my SONAR marketing method, http://www.precisionmarketingmedia.com/sonar.html.

Reaching potential subscribers this way helps me increase readership for my clients and, ultimately, revenues. I am a firm believer in leveraging the marketing message too. By circulating it in multiple channels - online, e-mail, print, direct mail, and so forth - I am able to touch prospects through whatever medium they prefer. And for those who like to receive their information through more than one medium, the message is re-enforced every time they see it in another channel. I strongly encourage you to take this multi-channel marketing approach with your own online business.

Here are seven of the best and most cost-effective channels to include in your marketing plan:

1. Paid Search Ads (Pay-Per-Click)
Google and Yahoo are the Titans of the paid-search ad world, with nearly 70 percent of market share. But there are other search engines that have a loyal following, such as Bing (formerly MSN.com) (with 16 percent market share), AOL.com (with 9.6 percent), Ask.com (5.1 percent), Infospace.com (1.1 percent), and Lycos.com (0.9 percent). Pay-per-click (PPC) ads with any of these search engines is a cost-effective way to target prospects looking for your specific product and get broad exposure. You create a text ad, then bid on keywords (the words or phrases your target audience will be searching for) to determine your ad's placement.

PPC paid search ads are perfect for acquiring new customers. That's because leads that come in this way are searching specifically for your information (via targeted keywords). This makes them highly qualified prospects.

2. Organic Search Results (Search Engine Marketing)
Search engine marketing (SEM) has a nominal cost. Annual fees with search engine networks or directories typically range from $25 to $95 per year, but many submissions to top sites like Google, Yahoo, Ask and Bing are free.

Some consumers give organic search results more "credibility" than paid search ads. And because they "trust" the results of an organic search more, they are more likely to click on an organic link. A recent survey by Jupiter Research illustrated that 80 percent of Web users seek organic search results. Their rationale is that organic results are un-biased. The marketer didn't pay for that ad space. So the link's appearance in the search results is based purely on various search algorithms and Web crawlers.

Your goal should be to balance your online presence with both paid ads and organic search results. You should make sure you have keywords in all the right places. That includes your title tags, URLs, and inside the published articles themselves.

3. Banner Ads
Running banner ads on other websites can be another cost-effective part of your online marketing mix. The pricing model for this is typically CPM - a specified price for every 1,000 impressions/views you receive (usually between $3 and $10). Since contextual space is limited in banner ads, your headline and visual elements are critical for success. And of course, your landing page should have strong, persuasive copy.

Your media budget for banner ads will vary by:

-the website you're running (the higher the traffic, typically the higher the banner advertising rate) ad unit size/type (300 x 250 typically performs best, so those are priced higher than other ad units)
-location on website (home page, inside pages) whether the ad is targeted to a specific page or is on every page of the site (a/k/a run of site)
-the time of year the ad is running

Blogs and online ad networks are a cheaper alternative. Their CPMs (cost per thousand) usually ranges between $2 and $6, and they have a wider reach, although some networks may offer a universe of, lets say 20 websites, when only 5 websites are really considered "top tier".

Networks to consider: Advertising.com, ValueClick.com, and FastClick.com.

You can find a full list of sites here: ttp://www.imediaconnection.com/resourceconnection/adnetwork.asp.

Editor's Note: If you'd like to learn more about how to buy online media for less...I just finished writing a 25-page comprehensive eBook where I go into all the tips and tricks to conduct high performance, low cost media buys. If you're interested in purchasing a copy, please email support@precisionmarketingmedia.com and mention "muscle marketing" in subject line.

4. Reciprocal Ad Swaps
Some of your best resources will be your fellow publishers. This channel often gets overlooked by marketers who don't give it the respect it deserves. In the work I do for my clients, I spend a good portion of my time researching publishers and websites in related, synergisic industries. I look for relevant connections between their publications (print and online) and my clients.

Let's say I come across a natural health e-letter about that has a list of readers similar in size to one of my clients, who is a supplement manufacturer. Since many of their audience share similar interests, cross marketing each other products (or even lead gen efforts) can be mutually rewarding.

Swapping ads will save you money on lead-generation initiatives. Since you won't be paying for access to the other publisher's list of subscribers, you can get new customers for free. The only "cost" is allowing the other publisher to access your own list. It's a win-win situation. This technique also opens the door to potential joint-venture opportunities.

5. Co-Registration
Co-registration or co-reg is basically a method of acquiring leads or sales on another publishers' website after another transaction or registration process occurs.
Co-reg ads use a CPL (cost per lead) payment model. You pay for the leads you capture. Your text ad and a small image of your publication appear on a webpage on another publisher's website after a primary transaction occurs. Your ad shares the page with other publishers looking to build their own e-mail lists with free subscriptions to their e-letters or free e-reports.

To make this work, I've found that you need to send special introductory "bonding" e-mails to the people who sign up for your newsletter before they get added to the general circulation. This helps them remember that they signed up for your e-letter. (So when it shows up in their inbox they won't think it's spam.) And it helps increase the potential that those subscribers will convert to paying customers.For more about this channel, check out Andrew Palmer's ETR article about using co-reg to attract customers.

6. Direct MailDirect mail is still a consumer favorite - and another good way to get your sales message out. It can be especially effective used in concert with another effort, such as an e-mail campaign. A recent survey published in DM News indicated that 70 percent of respondents preferred receiving unsolicited correspondence via mail vs. e-mail.

As with any marketing medium, though, you can end up paying a lot between production costs, list rental costs, and mail shop/postage costs. The most costly direct-mail packages are magalogs and tabloids (four-color mailers that look like magazines). However, 6 x 9 postcards, tri-fold self-mailers, and simple sales letters are three low-cost ways of taking advantage of this channel. Note that copy, list selection and geo-targeting an be crucial for direct mail success no matter which cost-effective mail format you pick.

Although 100 percent ROI (return on investment) is what you should aim for, many direct mailers are content with 80 percent. This lower figure takes into consideration the lifetime value of the names that come in from this channel, because they are typically reliable buyers in the future.

7. Print ads
This is another channel that's gets a raw deal. One reason is because it can be costly. To place an ad in a high-circulation magazine or newspaper, you could shell out serious money. But you don't need a big budget to take advantage of print ads. If you don't have deep pockets, consider targeted newspapers and periodicals.

Let's say you're selling an investment report. Try using the Internet to research the wealthiest cities in America. Once you get that list, look online for local newspapers in those communities. These smaller newspapers hit your target audience... and offer a much cheaper ad rate than some of the larger, broad-circulation publications. You end up getting quality rather than quantity.

I once paid for an ad in a local newspaper in Aspen, CO that had a flat rate of less than $500. My ROI on this effort turned out to be more than 1,000 percent. How's that for a positive response rate!

The seven marketing channels I've just described can help you reach more customers... and eventually add dollar signs to your bottom line. So start the New Year off with a marketing bang. By leveraging the seven channels of multi-channel marketing, I'm confident you will be amazed by the results.

Is Your Business Leaving Money On The Table?

Don't Forget Search Engine Marketing and Optimization!

Many marketers and business owners think they're doing everything they can to get the word out about their company. They allocate their marketing dollars to direct mail, e-mail, banner ads, print ads, and pay-per-click (PPC). They spend much of their time, effort, and money on getting those methods to produce a positive ROI (return on investment). But they're ignoring a major source of potential traffic... which means they are losing loads of potential new customers ... and to me that's leaving money on the table: A HUGE mistake.

I'm talking about organic (natural) search engine marketing and optimization (SEM/SEO). Organic search results are those listings you see on the left side of Google after you type in your search term. You know, those little blurbs with links to someone's website. It's not to get confused with "paid" search, which are the small text ads that typically appear on the right side of the Google search results page. There's usually a subtle line separating these ads from the organic results and have a "sponsored links" headline at the top.

Many marketers think focusing on organic search is "a waste of time." Some think there's no way to monitor, measure, and monetize the results. But they're confused. According to a survey by Jupiter Research, 80% of Web users get information from organic search results. And measuring sources of traffic and visitors is easy with the free Web tool Google Analytics.
Search engines like variety in relevant back links to your website. And one of the best ways to get tons of relevant back links is with a systematic method I develop regarding the synchronized distribution of your content (read http://www.precisionmarketingmedia.com/sonar.html for more info.).

So in addition to having optimized website pages -- having a variety of news aggregators (i.e. Google News, Yahoo News), social networks, blogs, and directories linking to your site helps give you a heavier weight in organic listing results. Your company will appear more often and higher in the organic search results ... eventually dominating the critical first three results listings. This helps build your organic market presence for little or no cost. And, let's face it, low cost is a good thing.

Using organic search strategies helped increase traffic rank and visits to a health website I launched by 3,160% and 81.5%, respectively, in only three months. In that same time this websitehad a 62.01% rate of converting that organic search traffic into subscribers. In other words, the traffic was turned into sales (or monetized)! That's about 16,000 organic names in three months at virtually no cost.

So search engine naysayers...do you still think SEM and SEO is a waste of time?

You CAN Measure Social Media (You Just Need To Know How!)

Many people have been using social media because they "think" it's what they should be doing. Afterall, everyone seems to have a Twitter or Facebook account. However, some businesses are putting all this time and effort into SMM (Social Media Marketing) because "everyone else is doing it" and they're not even measuring their efforts to see if all this work is paying off.

Since my background is direct response and PR, I was able to analyze social media goals and apply some fundamental metrics that DR and PR people use.

The Basics
In a nutshell, social media is an interactive platform where people can correspond - via chat rooms, forums, bulletin boards, networks (as in MySpace, Facebook, Classmates, LinkedIn, Bebo), user-generated content sharing (as in Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit), wikis (interactive online encyclopedias), and blogs - with like-minded individuals who share similar interests, whatever those interests may be.

Cutting-edge businesses and marketing-centric companies have jumped on the social media bandwagon to leverage the increased popularity of this phenomenon. Companies large and small got their marketers to create MySpace, FaceBook, or LinkedIn profiles in order to have their fingers on the pulse of the market, correspond with consumers, and create buzz about their products.

I have been on the Web for some time now, dabbling in all sorts of social media activities with content syndication, viral marketing, and online PR efforts.

How have I been measuring my efforts? By using the same metrics that are used to measure a public relations efforts: Outputs, outcomes, and objectives ... or what I like to call the "3 O's."

1. Outputs (measures effectiveness and efficiency)
For our example, I look at Google Analytics for spikes in traffic to the website's I'm doing social media marketing for in the days following the article's publication. I'd look specifically at traffic sources, visits, unique visits, and visit percentages. I'd also look at referring sites and search engines to see whether the traffic is coming directly from social media platforms. And I'd look for an increase in new subscriber sign-ups (leads) during that same time period.

2. Outcomes (measures behavioral changes)
For this metric, I'd look at feedback from customers... e-mails, phone calls, comments posted on my clients' websites member forum. I'd also do some reputation monitoring --by searching the Web for keywords for each of my clients' website, key personnel at their companies, the article title that I may have syndicated, and any top product names associated with their websites -- to see what buzz is going in targeted and relevant chat rooms, external forums, and bulletin boards.

3. Objectives (measures business objectives/sales)
The most obvious and directly related metric is direct sales of the product that are tied to the editorial. Orders generated from an e-mail link or ad link are coded for tracking, so attributing sales to those sources is definitive. If the sales come from a product page on our website where the true "source" cannot be tracked, I'd collaborate with my clients to review the sales that came in during the corresponding dates of the campaign and look for correlations.

Finally, for each of the above, I would compare the current campaign data versus the year-to-date (YTD) average and year-over-year data to clearly illustrate pre- and post- campaign performance. In other words, I'd check out website traffic, unique visits, specific product sales, etc. - all for the same time periods. That way, I'd have an established benchmark against which to measure our current social media efforts.

Social media is a low cost and effective way to spread the word about your company and products, as well as to conduct market research. By understanding the "3 O's" and how they work, you can actually quantify your efforts with hard data... a critical component for any online direct marketer.

Quick Tip: Social Media Measurement Tools

Think you can't measure social media marketing? Think again. Here are some quick ways to keep an eye on your social marketing efforts...

Google Analytics

-Check the "referring sources page" to see how much traffic was generated by the social media sites you've been active in.-Look at overall traffic to website during same time period of your efforts. 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.

Check out free backlink checker tools from iwebtool.com and backlinkwatch.com.

Lessons From An Entrepreneur: The 8 Keys To A Thriving vs. Dying Business

The 8 Keys to Profit Acceleration

Many people ask me, "How did you do it?"

That is, how did I leave the comfort of a nice, corporate job (and salary, I might add) as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for the Internet's top online publisher and launch a new business in a tough economy (back in March of 2009).

And, on top of that, launching a new business on the heels of becoming a mom and taking care of my newborn son and busy household.

Launching a new business always lends itself to some apprehension. But now, more than ever, during such a volatile time when many businesses are closing their doors and millions are losing their jobs ... makes it a tad more intimidating.

However, my business didn't only survive, it thrived. And it is still flourishing. I had taken a company with $0 and catapulted it to more than a six figure revenue generator in only 10 short months.

So, back to the original question, "How did I do it?"

Well, timing sure wasn't on my side. The state of our economy over the last few years makes it quite a challenge to get and keep clients. However, I owe the success of my business to a few critical drivers that I'm going to share with you. You can take these principals and apply or adapt them to your own business efforts as you see fit.

1. Market Smarter, Not Harder. This is a no-brainer. Any start up entrepreneur will tell you they have little to no marketing budget. So how do you build your brand and create awareness? It's being a strategic AND creative thinker. And it's also taking something most companies have (that's content) and leveraging it. Using a systematic approach I developed called the SONAR Content Distribution Method TM
http://www.precisionmarketingmedia.com/sonar.html .SONAR is simply taking your content and disseminating the release of it on the Web in a strategic and synchronized manner. The platforms you're releasing it to is targeted, highly visible, and free. This helps create a momentum in traffic, buzz, and then you help monetize that traffic though lead generation (or sales).

2. Relationship Cultivation. Networking, and tapping into your network, is key when launching a new business OR gaining market share with an existing business. I happen to have a very strong Rolodex of friends, colleagues, and professional acquaintances that helped create a good foundation for my launch efforts. They either hired me right off the bat as some of my very first clients OR referred me to their colleagues OR advertised my services to their lists. Always keep relationships open. Touch base with your network regularly. Offer assistance (gratis) if they have questions. People will reciprocate the gesture and it could lead to a multitude of benefits.

3. Strong Work Ethic/Reputation. People that know me ... that I worked for ... or know my experience, know what I bring to the table. They also know that I am committed to any task on my plate. It's a strong work ethic that people remember and helps build your reputation in whatever niche you're in. My reputation speaks for itself in the industry. And that doesn't just help with new business or referrals, but also helps with getting testimonials from those I worked with. Those testimonials are invaluable as a marketing tool on your website and in collateral material. Prospects can get a good idea of what to expect from those few "sound bites" about your work.

4. Leveraging Social Media. I have fully utilized social media. It's cost effective and casts a wide net. Where else can you get your message out to the masses for zero advertising cost? I've had the most success with LinkedIn.com as well as doing free press releases (that get picked up by bloggers and online news aggregators). LinkedIn is a professional networking community. I joined several "groups" where my target client would be and started writing relevant, useful articles. Soon, people started contacting me (on average 5 per week) with requests for proposals. I actually had so much success with LinkedIn I spoke on the subject matter at the SIPA Mid-Year Marketing Event this past December in Miami. If you're interested in a copy of that presentation, please contact me.

5. Contribute Content. I happen to enjoy writing and enjoy sharing my knowledge. In addition to syndicating my blog's content on the Web, I also reached out to relevant marketing newsletters and magazines and asked about being an editorial contributor or guest author, providing strong, valuable editorial. I also speak at industry conferences. From these efforts I gain exposure for my business, build credibility, and also get leads.

6. Business Basics. Create a strategic plan. Determine where you want to be in 1 or 2 years and what tactics you're going to do to achieve your goal. Go over your break-even point per month and how many clients/customers it will take to maintain or exceed that point. Keep little overhead. Establish a "true" home office. Share office space. Rent space or time at a business office center. Or get a "virtual office". When you're just starting out, cash flow is vital. If you need to outsource work, look into college interns related to the field you're in or bid out jobs in places like elance.com or ifreelance.com.

7. Confidence is Crucial. I don't just talk the talk, I walk the walk. I can back up everything I say by my past experience and future actions. Bottom line: I'm damn good at what I do and I make people money. I know it, and the companies or clients I've worked for (that take my advice and implement what I recommend) know it. This comes, however, with being in the marketing world for over 16 years. It also comes with being an accomplished professional. Once you have several successful tenures under your belt you know your worth and can set a value for your time. There's a difference between being confident and cocky. Confidence is self assured. Cocky is obnoxious. You need to know the difference and become your own advocate. This is conveyed in all that you do and is transparent to potential prospects.

8. Balancing Act. Any start-up business can be a drain on your life and family. A lot of time and effort goes into the launch, maintenance, and client relationship management. Then of course there's the administrative functions like daily accounting and record keeping. But it doesn't have to be that way. Make sure you set specific time for your work and time for your family. When work is done, leave it in the office (even if your office is another room of your house). Enjoy time with your loved ones and soon you all can reap the rewards of a successful company.

After all, you work to live, not live to work!

5 Easy Steps to Increase Website Traffic and Buzz

On the recent "Content 2.0" teleseminar I did with Bob Bly, I spoke about not having SEO on your website is similar to not having any contact information in your telephone book ad ... no one will find you, which defeats the purpose.

Many businesses, large and small, spend the time and effort to develop a website only to forget to take it one step further by incorporating SEO to the site as well as creating buzz about the site. And what happens is the end result is a nice, pretty site, but no visitors. No traffic. No point to having the site.

But that can all be avoided.

The below is an article I wrote while I was VP of Marketing at Agora Publishing/Early to Rise. I’m republishing it because unfortunately, I see many websites that have all the bells and whistles you can possibly ask for, but it’s lost in the “Internet black hole”.

Check it out…

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Rescue Your Website From the Internet "Black Hole"
By Wendy Montes de Oca

Okay, so you have a website. You’ve spent time and money getting this thing up. You’ve used all your creative juices to get the words just right. And you added some nice graphics to make the site aesthetically pleasing. Now what?

A website is of little use if nobody can find it.

Mastering organic search ranking has proven to be a fundamental part of the online marketing mix. (By "organic," I mean the "natural," as opposed to "paid/PPC," listing that appears when someone conducts a search on Google or other search engines. Optimal placement is typically within the first 20 listings or three pages.)

Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) – the ability to increase your site’s visibility in organic search listings and refine the content structure on the site itself – are critical for market awareness and customer acquisition. According to WebProNews, 66.3 percent of searchers click on organic listings before they click on a sponsored link. Even more important, a recent study by CreativeWebsiteMarketing.com indicates that most people who buy online start with a search engine.

Don’t let your site get lost in Internet obscurity. Here are five simple ways to help boost your website’s traffic and optimization.

1. Create online buzz about your site, product, or service.
You can do this by generating online press releases. There are services on the Web, such as PRWeb.com or Free-press-release.com, that do this for free or at a nominal cost. Another idea is to post comments to high-traffic blogs, bulletin boards, chat rooms, or forums.

Do a Web search for top blogs or news forums that are related to whatever it is that you’re selling. Go to each site, one by one, and post a comment. (Start a new topic or reply to an existing one.) This helps in two ways: One, you create buzz in the marketplace. Depending on your tactics, your message can even go viral. Two, you get a "back-link" to your site that helps when the site is indexed by search engine spiders.

An important note: Your post should be relevant and genuine. Your comment should be relevant to the question you’re replying to, have some sort of value to the readers that view it, and be in the proper area/subject matter on the forum you’re posting to. Stay away from posts that are blatantly self-serving. These posts are viewed as spam by forum webmasters and could get you banned from the forum, or at least be deleted.

For example, MaryEllen Tribby (ETR’s Publisher) had the good fortune to interview Newt Gingrich in March. Immediately after the interview, we posted a press release to several online press distribution services. We also uploaded comments about the interview to news-aggregating services, blogs, and political forums (with a back-link to the release posted in our Investors Daily Edge archive).

Within the weeks following the initial interview, website visits and traffic ranking more than doubled and conversion also showed a spike. Three months later, this release is still being picked up by the media and through syndication… and the Investors Daily Edge website is enjoying residual traffic and back-links from this effort.

Year-to-date, these techniques and the others I’m about to go into have helped increase traffic nearly 80 percent with a monetization of more than 150 percent ROI.

Which leads me to my next strategy…

2. Initiate a relevant inbound link program.
Set up a reciprocal link page or blog roll (a listing of URLs on a blog, as opposed to a website) that can house links from industry sites. Contact these sites to see if they’d be willing to swap links with you – a link to your site for a link to theirs. Again, relevance is key. Search engines shun link harvesting (collecting links from random websites that have no relevance to your site), so these links should be from sites that are similar in nature to your business.

3. Give Web searchers great content and a link back to your site.
Upload relevant content to sites that make such information available to other sites that want to publish it, such as ArticleDashboard.com or ArticlesFactory.com. This is a great way to increase market awareness as well as establish an inbound link to your site. There is also a syndication opportunity, as third-party sites may come across your article when doing a Web search and republish your content on their own websites. As long as third-parties give your site editorial attribution and a link, getting them to republish your content is just another distribution channel for you to consider.

4. Website pages should be keyword rich and related to your business.
Make a list of your top 20 keywords and variations of those words, and incorporate them into the copy on your site (avoiding the obvious repetition of words). Search engine "spiders" crawl Web pages from top to bottom, so your strongest keywords should be in that order on your home page and sub-pages (the most relevant on the top, the least relevant on the bottom).
You’ll want to do the same for your tagging. Make sure your title tags (the descriptions at the top of each page) and meta tags are unique and chock full of keywords. And your alt tags (images) should have relevant descriptions as well.

5. List your site in online directories by related category or region.
This is an effective way to increase exposure and get found by prospects searching specifically for information on your product or service by keyword topic. Popular directories (like Business.com) typically have a nominal fee. But there are many other directories (like Dmoz.org, Info.com, and Superpages.com) that are free.

Most important, before you start your SEO initiatives, don’t forget to establish a baseline for your site so you can measure pre- vs. post-SEO tactics. Upload a site counter (which counts the number of visits to your website), obtain your site’s Alexa traffic ranking at Alexa.com, or get your site’s daily visit average (from Google Analytics or another application) – and then chart your weekly progress in Excel. Understand that it typically takes two to three months for a site to be optimized… so be patient. You will eventually see results.

[The above article appears courtesy of Early to Rise http://www.earlytorise.com/]

Content 2.0 Teleseminar (Part 1) - The Day After

For those of you that attended my teleseminar this week with Bob Bly, Content 2.0: The Missing Piece in the Internet Puzzle to Traffic, Leads, Sales and Buzz, thanks for joining us.

We have gotten inundated with feedback from attendees expressing how great the call was and how impressed they were with the level of expertise and information that was given.

And just in case you didn’t take notes on how to drive website traffic and increase revenues for virtually little effort or marketing dollars … don’t worry. Attendees will receive a transcript of both Part 1 (which was on Feb. 17) as well as Part 2 (which will be on Feb. 24) very soon as well as a bonus message form Bob containing all the free websites and tools that we discussed on the call.

If you missed the call completely … no worries. Bob and I plan on taking these 2+ hours worth of powerful, proven, traffic building tactics and create an eBook which will be available soon for purchase.

If you’d like to be one of the first to be notified when this eBook is ready, please email me at wendy@precisionmarketingmedia.com and put in the subject line “VIP List – Content 2.0 eBook”. And I’ll make sure to add you to our priority notification list.

For more information about the techniques discussed on the call, visit:
http://www.blyteleseminars.com/content2/
http://www.precisionmarketingmedia.com/sonar.html

Start the year off right! Increase website traffic and sales

Attn: Early Birds.

There's going to be an event like no other. And because of the critical subject matter being covered ... the incredibly low cost ... and the fact that during this turbulent economy many business owners are looking for low cost marketing solutions with big results ... we expect this event to be filled to capacity. So you should take action now!

I wanted my blog readers to practically be the first to hear about it.

This powerful, 2-day, teleseminar will teach you how you can leverage content (from sources you probably didn't even think about) and turn it into increased traffic, leads, sales and buzz.

This event will be hosted by bestselling author, master copywriter, and Internet marketing strategist, Bob Bly, and will be co-hosted by, yours truly.

If you haven't been able to tap into my expertise as your personal marketing consultant -- I urge you to take advantage of this rare opportunity to find out my secrets to helping many of the companies I've worked for make hundreds of thousands of dollars as well as increase market awareness, revenues and subscribers. And all for just $19!

That's not crazy talk. We know how many businesses, marketers, and entrepreneurs are struggling now and wanted to make sure this event was priced to sell ... and no one was left out.

Here's the info...

"Content 2.0": The Missing Piece in the Internet Puzzle to Traffic, Leads, Sales and Buzz. A "Must Attend" Teleseminar Featuring Bob Bly and Wendy Montes de Oca, MBA, February 17 & February 24, 2pm EST.

Click here to learn more and to register http://blyteleseminars.com/content2/

Improve subscriber lifetime value as well as shorten the conversion process

If you’re having trouble bonding with your subscribers or notice they’re dropping off your file before they make a purchase, consider implementing a proven strategy that helps improve bonding, LTV (life time value) as well as reduces the average sales conversion cycle by about 50%...

…implement an introductory series of emails for your new subs.

These are targeted messages to your “new to files” written with bonding in mind. Its job is to help these new folks buy into your philosophy, get to know who you are and what you do, help them bond with you or your “gurus” and reinforce your credentials – all through the power of editorial.

These emails should be staggered and go over a course of a few weeks. These names should be suppressed from general population and they should preferably not get any promotions during this bonding process.

One caveat, you might want to offer a special “welcome aboard” offer at the end of the series, such as 20% off their first order.

But in addition to your editorial messages, you should help the subscriber develop that “warm, fuzzy feeling” and offer quality content and free bonus reports.

If your email service has the ability to track conversions down to the user level, set it up so that for every user that doesn’t convert in a timely manner (i.e. 30, 60, 90 days), another, targeted editorial message goes out to them automatically – sweetening the offer to convert to a paying customer.

This could plan be modified slightly for each publisher, but the ultimate goal is to let new subscriber develop a connection with the guru/publication before any hard sales offers.
Ultimately, it has been proved that LTV and conversions improved by more than 50% (when group of new subs/cohorts were tracked over a course of time). In addition, the subs that did become customers, converted quicker and stood on file longer than those not in the "intro series" emails.

Cover Your Basis - PPC and SEO

There’s a great tactic that will help your list building efforts -- both with paid AND organic search.

And it’s not much additional work … if you already have a lead generation landing page you’re using for PPC, you can cover your basis on the organic side with a few additions. Here’s how:

--Start by creating a new URL for SEO purposes using the existing PPC landing page.

--Make sure the new SEO URL is packed with your targeted and relevant keywords (one caveat: before this, make sure you’ve done your research to see which keywords to use and the search volume on each one).

--Add relevant and targeted keywords into the new SEO lead gen page’s tags including: title tag, meta description, and meta keywords. Also, if you have images on the page, make sure to add relevant keywords to those.

--If not already done, drop in the Google Analytics code to this page so you can track page visits/traffic.

After your page is indexed by the search engine spiders (which may take a few weeks), your lead gen page should start appearing in organic search rankings based on the keywords you’ve indicated in your tags.

What will also help your page’s ranking be more favorable is if you can get some backlinks from high traffic websites linking to this new, SEO landing page.

SIPA Marketing Conf. - Presentation on Leveraging LinkedIn

SIPA’s (Specialized Information Publishing Association) Mid-Year Event was in Miami last week at the Ritz-Carlton.

The event was a great success…from a networking, prospecting, and educational standpoint.
My presentation on Leveraging LinkedIn was also a success. I discussed many tips and tricks to use LinkedIn for events, content syndication, market research, PR, and more.

If you’re interested in a copy of my presentation, please email me (my contact info is in my blog profile).

SEO: Definitely Worth Your Time

The below is an article I wrote while I was VP of Marketing at Agora Publishing/Early to Rise.I’m republishing it because it’s timely…with the current economy the way it is, marketers are often forgetting about the grass-roots approaches … marketing that is virtually no cost, but just requires time, effort and strategic thought.

SEO often gets a bad rap, because some marketers don’t know how to measure it. But it should always be a crucial part of your online marketing mix.

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Don’t Overlook Organic Search Efforts in Your Online Marketing Mix
By Wendy Montes de Oca

Many Internet entrepreneurs think they’re doing everything they can to get the word out about their businesses. They allocate their marketing budgets to direct mail, e-mail, banner ads, print ads, co-registration, and pay-per-click (PPC). They spend much of their time, effort, and money on getting those channels to produce a positive ROI (return on investment). But they’re ignoring a major source of potential traffic… which means they are losing hordes of potential new customers. Big mistake.

I’m talking about organic search via search engine marketing and optimization (SEM/SEO).
Many marketers think focusing on organic search is "a waste of time." Some think there’s no way to monitor, measure, and monetize the results. But they’re either clueless or misinformed. For instance, according to a recent survey by Jupiter Research, 80 percent of Web users get information from organic search results. And measuring sources of traffic and visitors is easy with the free Web tool Google Analytics.

Search engines like diversity in relevant back links to your website. And one of the best ways to get lots of relevant back links – as I said in my article about the SONAR Method of Content Distribution – is with a synchronized distribution of your content to a variety of sources.
So in addition to having optimized website pages, having a variety of news aggregators, social networks, blogs, and directories linking to your site helps give you a heavier weight in organic listings. This helps build your organic market presence for little or no cost. And, let’s face it, low cost is a good thing.

Using organic search strategies helped increase traffic rank and visits to ETR’s sister publication, Total Health Breakthroughs, by 3,160 percent and 81.5 percent, respectively, in only three months. In that same time period, Total Health Breakthroughs had a 62.01 percent rate of converting that organic search traffic into subscribers. That’s about 16,000 organic names in three months at virtually no cost!

Now tell me… does that seem like a waste of time to you?

[Note: This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health, and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.]

Branding vs. Direct Response: Which is right for you?

As I’ve written before … several of my real-life experiences influence my blog posts.

A colleague of mine asked how could he leverage a popular email list and drive them (consumers) to a retail store to purchase his product.

My explanation and recommendation led me to explain the difference between branding and direct response marketing.

You see, driving a consumer to a store to “take action” is more "branding". Branding is a form of marketing where a consumer sees or hears your message (albeit email, TV, print ad, radio) and then takes action. The action isn’t immediate (i.e. “direct response”) it typically involves going to a retailer to make the sale (or “convert”).

The marketer has to hope that once the consumer sees/hears the message they remember it. (Advertising studies show that the average consumer needs to see a message 7-8 times before it becomes familiar to them). Then, hope that consumer has enough loyalty or name recognition from that product that when they do go to the retailer to purchase, they don’t get distracted by other competitive products.

Branding is hard to measure. Usually, you tie into the timing of your campaign in to retail sales for the specific product during that same time period and make assumptions.

As opposed to “direct response marketing”, where there is generally one strong message with a compelling offer. One platform (i.e. an email, a newsletter ad, a direct letter, an online ad). You see, it's more controlled … you’re directing the consumer where to go next (i.e. “Click here now”) and your message will be the only one in front of them at that time. In addition, it's quantifiable … easier to measure … looking at metrics like open rates, click through rates, response rates, conversion rates. You can directly calculate your ROI (return on investment), which helps the marketer offset any advertising costs from the profits. Plus, typically direct response marketing overall is more cost effective than branding.

Branding efforts take time, as you have to develop your brand loyalty with the list first to help overall conversions (think of loyal brand followers of well-known products like Nike, GE, BMW, McDonald’s, etc ... these companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on brand development). Branding is also not as accurate to measure.

For businesses – especially during the current economic environment – unless you’re a Fortune 500 company, the most reliable marketing method in my opinion is direct response marketing.

What smart marketers are doing NOW to bring in leads & cash

I recently started several discussions in targeted Marketing groups in the popular, LinkedIn professional social network. I asked, “How are you marketing your business during this economy?”

Here’s what I found out…

· Local advertising. Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
“I am using primarily local business-to-business networking in an effort to capture those first dozen or so customers. My web site is optimized to attract hits as well.”

· Word of mouth marketing. Social media (SMO)
“My best marketing tool is wearing my line of jewelry…. I took on social networking a couple months ago, and plan to have a blog also. I am also networking with a travel agent as her most common question is, ‘What do I where on a cruise?’ ”

“As a consultant, testimonials and referrals are very important. I have great clients and the majority of my business in 2009 has been from referrals. I also network at lot through all the major online social networks.”

· Social Media. PR.
“I use are social media, (mainly Twitter, Facebook and Youtube), Press releases, Forums, articles, blog posts. I find that forums are great places to talk to targeted audience.”

· Networking. Leveraging expertise.
“…Definitely local networking is working for me for through various groups as well as the chamber of commerce … I also teach classes and offer my services as a speaker to groups.”

· Event marketing.
“I have been marketing my services through gift bag requests.”

Thanks to all that have taken the time to post comments in the various LinkedIn Groups where I asked this question.

As you can see, most everyone that commented is utilizing low/no cost marketing channels as well as being creative thinkers with their marketing tactics…both proven approaches that I’ve written about many times on this blog and are featured in my SONAR marketing method.

What have YOU been doing to market during t his tough times…let me know!

3 ways to measure your social media efforts

Many people have been using social media because they "think" it's what they should be doing. After all, it's all the rage. Everyone seems to have a Twitter or Facebook account. But social media may not be the right channel for some businesses. Even more disturbing, some businesses are putting all this time and effort into SMO because "everyone else is doing it" and they're not even measuring their efforts to see if all this work is really paying off.

It's not that they're lazy or sub par marketers, it's just that they may not have a direct response or PR background -- in other words, they're not familiar with how to measure ALL of their marketing efforts ... including social media.

Well, I'm here to shed light on this important topic.

Below is an article I wrote while I was VP of Marketing and Business Development at Early to Rise.

Check it out…Have a question about measuring social media or using social media for profits? Drop me an email!

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Measuring Social MediaBy Wendy Montes de Oca, MBA

If you’re an online marketer or publisher, chances are you’re well aware of the power of social media optimization (SMO). If you’re new to the world of Internet marketing, you’ll be interested to know that this breakthrough method is a truly inexpensive (practically free) way to create buzz about your products, increase traffic to your site, build trust about your company, and boost your sales.

Today, I’m going to show you a simple way to get started in social media marketing – and an easy three-step process you can use to measure how well it’s working.

In a nutshell, social media is an interactive platform where people can correspond – via chat rooms, forums, bulletin boards, networks (as in MySpace, Facebook, Classmates, LinkedIn, Bebo), user-generated content sharing (as in Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit), wikis (interactive online encyclopedias), and blogs – with like minded individuals who share similar interests, whatever those interests may be.

Cutting-edge businesses and marketing-centric companies have jumped on the social media bandwagon to leverage the increased popularity of this phenomenon. Companies large and small got their marketers to create MySpace, FaceBook, or LinkedIn profiles in order to have their fingers on the pulse of the market, correspond with consumers, and create buzz about their products.

Here at ETR, we’ve been on the Web for some time now, dabbling in all sorts of social media activities with content syndication, viral marketing, and online PR efforts.

Recently, we started leveraging the presence of our individual team members on LinkedIn. If you’re not familiar with this site, it’s a network community for business professionals. Users can set up profiles highlighting their corporate experience and areas of expertise.

Edwin Huertas, one of ETR’s search engine marketing specialists, answers select questions on LinkedIn that are related to his area of expertise. He also uploads blog posts about a variety of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), pay-per-click (PPC), and social media practices. This helps create buzz about ETR (through Edwin’s profile and position at ETR). Plus, he sometimes supplements his posts with links back to relevant articles on our website – which helps drive traffic to the ETR site.

This is a practice you can emulate easily. Simply register as a member of one of the social media groups. Then begin to participate in the discussions. For instance, if a LinkedIn member posts a specific question about SEO, Edwin will try to find an article on our ETR site that addresses that issue. He then answers the question in his own words, but recommends that the member also read the ETR article, which has more valuable information. By answering questions posed by your fellow members (making sure you add relevant links back to content on your website), your posts will begin to generate “free” traffic.

Another site that works well for us is StumbleUpon.com. This site directs Internet surfers to Web pages based on the surfer’s pre-selected categories every time they click on the “Stumble” icon on their toolbar.

You can install the StumbleUpon toolbar on your own computer and recommend articles on your own site. This allows you to give any page a “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down” rating. It also allows you to include a brief description and category for your submission. If you rate your article, it will appear in the StumbleUpon rotation – which, again, means ‘free’ traffic to your site.

Getting started is super-easy. But the key to making social media work for you is the same with any marketing medium: You need to have a way to find out if it’s working.

Although many marketers have been going all out with their social media efforts, most haven’t a clue as to how to actually measure the campaign’s success or failure.

Let’s say Early to Rise just published an article on goal setting for 2009. The article is followed by a related product ad in the ETR issue, as well as by a separate e-mail promotion for a related goal setting product, like our Total Success Achievement program. Product sales are generated from the e-mail and from the ad. Meanwhile, the social media aspect takes over.

The article content is syndicated via RSS feeds, as well as top article directories (like EzineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleBase, Buzzle, and others) and user-generated content networks (such as Digg and Reddit). Readers may also discuss the article on goal setting and self-improvement blogs, forums, and bulletin boards.

So how could you measure the social media aspect of such an effort?
It’s easy. By using the same metrics that are used to measure a public relations effort: Outputs, outcomes, and objectives – what I like to call the “3 O’s.”

1. Outputs (measures effectiveness and efficiency)
For our example, I’d look at Google Analytics for spikes in traffic to the Early to Rise homepage in the days following the article’s publication. I’d look specifically at traffic sources, visits, unique visits, and visit percentages. I’d also look at referring sites and search engines to see whether the traffic is coming directly from social media platforms. And I’d look for an increase in new ETR subscriber sign-ups (leads) during that same time period.

2. Outcomes (measures behavioral changes)
For this metric, I’d look at feedback from our customers… e-mails, phone calls, comments posted on our ETR member forum. I’d also do some reputation monitoring by searching the Web for keywords like “ETR,” the article title, and the product name to see if others were talking about it in chat rooms, external forums, and bulletin boards.

3. Objectives (measures business objectives/sales)
The most obvious and directly related metric is direct sales of the product that are tied to the editorial. Orders generated from an e-mail link or ad link are coded for tracking, so attributing sales to those sources is definitive. If the sales come from a product page on our website where the true “source” cannot be tracked, I’d look at the sales during the corresponding dates of the campaign for correlations.

Finally, for each of the above, I would compare the current campaign data versus the year-to-date (YTD) average and year-over-year data to clearly illustrate pre- and post- campaign performance. In other words, I’d check out website traffic, unique visits, specific product sales, etc. – all for the same time periods. That way, I’d have an established benchmark against which to measure our current social media efforts.

Social media is a low cost and effective way to spread the word about your company and products, as well as to conduct market research. By understanding the “3 O’s” and how they work, you can actually quantify your efforts with hard data… a critical component for any direct marketer.

[Note: This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.]