1. Success mind set. Don’t gloss over this strategy — it may be the most important of all. If you truly want to succeed in your business and are passionate about what you do, nothing will hold you back. This often means that you have to step out in faith that you’ll succeed, and most importantly, believe in yourself as a success. Sure, you may stumble, or even fall, but you must be willing to pick yourself back up and persevere — even without a safety net hanging under you.

2. Target market. The biggest mistake that business owners make is wanting to sell to everyone. If you’ve tried this, you have no doubt discovered that casting your net around everyone is a very difficult task. Narrowing that group to a more manageable number will actually serve you much better, believe it or not. If you can identify a smaller group of hungry prospects who are willing to pay for the solutions to the problems that keep them awake at night (or those who are willing to pay for more information about a hobby or interest that occupies much of their free time) AND who are reachable in groups (associations, membership sites, magazines, newsletters, discussion forums or lists, social networking groups, etc.), then you have made a key discovery that will catapult your business forward.

3. Client Attraction Device. You’ve heard it said time and time again that “the money is in the list.” This still holds true today, as well. Without a list of interested prospects to whom you can market, you don’t have a business. The quickest way to begin to develop a list is to give something away. Yes, you heard me correctly. If you have content you have already created, dig through that to see if you have something appropriate for your chosen target market.

If not, identify a problem of your target market, and create some content that answers one of those problems. Perhaps it’s a checklist, a Top 10 list, an ebook or special report, an audio interview, a pod cast, a video — do whatever is easiest for you. Just ensure that it is in a plug and play format, i.e. don’t make your prospect download some weird software that’s not commonplace to read and view this material.

Make sure that your Client Attraction Device has some valuable content in it. Nothing is more frustrating to me than to read a free giveway that only serves to remind me that I have a problem and offers no solution unless I pay for it. Don’t be afraid to demonstrate your expertise by giving “how to” information away. Trust me, if you are truly good at what you do, there’s no way that you can share everything you know on a topic in one short information product. Your Client Attraction Device starts your prospects on the like, know, and trust road that is imperative for them to travel before they will decide to buy something from you.

4. Email marketing system. You must have some way to collect your prospect’s information and a system by which you can stay in contact with them. The best way to do this is by purchasing email marketíng services. Do not use a free service for this, nor try to send emails out of your Outlook program. If you want to be a serous online business owner, invest in the most important asset in your business — your email marketíng system.

5. Blogsite. A blogsite, which is a web site/blog hybrid, is the quickest way to build an online presence. The two most popular blogging platforms, the fee-based Typepad and open source software WordPress, can be used to create a blogsite very quickly. If you want either of them customized with a particular look or feel, that may take a bit longer and require a greater investment. However, either will work well to get you started, and both will permit you to enter your email marketíng system’s signup code onto a page so that you can immediately begin to collect contact information from prospects who have requested your Client Attraction Device.

6. Stay in touch. Whether you do this by submitting regular blog posts or publishing an email newsletter (or both), you need to reach out and touch your prospects at least weekly (or several times a week if you are blogging). Give them some insights about what’s happening with you personally as well as sharing some aspect of your expertise with them by creating a content-rich article or answering their questions. And, don’t forget to sell — provide some product or service in each email newsletter, or submit regular blog posts that remind your readers about what you are selling.
7. Social networking. Never before have we had the opportuníty to connect with others online easily and inexpensively as we do now with social networking. Create profiles on the social networks) used by your target market, do research to add friends/followers in your target market, and use the status updates to be useful to your followers, i.e. by sharing resources, asking questions, and updating them about how you help clients/customers.

8. Drive traffic to your site. There are a number of ways to accomplish this, but my favorite starts with writing an article. Once it’s written, I publish it in my ezine, my blog, and to my web site and syndicate it on article directories all over the Web. Then I have the option of making a pod cast with the content; creating a screencast video or “talking head” video from it; writing and submitting a press release; creating a teleclass; create a Q&A radio show interview opportuníty; breaking up the points as separate Twitter posts, or Tweets, and tweeting them to my followers; or sharing it on my Squidoo lens or other information-sharing portals. The point here is to work once and profit, profit, profit. Repurpose one article as many ways as you can to drive traffic back to your blogsite and thus get more and more prospects to sign up on your list and ultimately convert them to customers.

The advent of the Internet makes it easier than ever to create and promote an online business with very little startup capital. And, if done correctly, the strategies will results in you filling your business in 60 days with eager and willing prospects ready to buy what you are offering.

A lot of people can recognize good design when they see it on the web. But most people don’t really know what makes that design good.

How do you define “good design?” Is it subjective, like your favorite flavor of ice cream? Although there is some subjectivity within good design, there are artistic principles that good design is built from. Here are a few that form the foundation of good design.
1. Proximity

Because items that are in close proximity to one another become one visual unit, items that are related to one another should be grouped together. Laying out related items on a website page this way helps the eye associate the information and enables the viewer to mentally categorize the information easily. The flip side of this principle is that items that are not related should not be placed in close proximity to one another.

The purpose of the principle of proximity is to organize information in a way that enables viewers to quickly and easily comprehend. When information is organized, people are more likely to read it and respond. People are also more likely to remember information that is organized.

How can you determine if items form a visual unit? Squint your eyes and look at the page on a website. Now count the number of times your eye stops as it views the page. On a page that is using the principle of proximity well, your eye will stop three to five times. In other words, there will be three to five groups of information for the eye to comprehend separately.

2. Alignment

You’ve seen website page layouts where the text and graphics are placed wherever there happens to be space. The effect is messy, with no impact. Nothing should be placed on a page arbitrarily. There should be a visual connection between each item on the page. When items are aligned, it creates a cohesiveness that the eye appreciates.

The purpose of alignment is to unify the website page. Imagine a well-organized kitchen. All the pots and pans are stored in the organizer, the fruit is nicely displayed in a basket on the counter, the spices are all on the rack – everything is in its place. A page layout needs the same thing.

Look at a website page that you feel is good design. Now focus on the main visual element. Where does your eye go from there? Do you see how other elements are aligned with that one main element both vertically and horizontally?

3. Repetition

Good design repeats some aspect of the website design throughout the site. It’s this repetition that makes all the pages in a site look like they belong together. Color scheme, graphic elements, typefaces – all of these elements should be repeated – used consistently – throughout.

The purpose of repetition is to create consistency and to add visual interest. Repetition creates a professional, polished look that the eye is drawn to. When a website design uses repetition and is consistent, it is more likely to be viewed and read.

Here are some ways you can create repetition beyond simple consistency in typefaces and colors: Use some element in your logo as a major graphic element in the design. If you are using a ruled line, make the line more interesting visually by perhaps making it with tiny dots or dashes, then repeating the line element throughout the design. Create patterns that are repeated throughout the design. Take a small element and place it somewhere on each page for a whimsical look. Just be careful not to overdo the repetition, or viewers will be annoyed rather than pleased.

4. Contrast

The principle of contrast states that if two items are not the same, then they should be different – very different. Contrast creates an organizational hierarchy of the information and graphics on a webpage. When using contrast, you can’t be a wimp! The contrast must be strong to be effective.

The purpose of contrast is two-fold: to create interest on the page, and to organize information. A page that is interesting to look at is more likely to be read. And contrasting elements will help a reader understand the way the information is organized.

Contrast can be created in many ways. You can contrast large type with small type, a serif font with a sans-serif font, bold with light, smooth texture with rough texture, a small graphic with a large one, a dark color with a light one.

A design that integrates these principles will automatically gain a professionalism and polish that it would otherwise lack. Next time you stumble across a website design that makes you say “wow”, check for these principles – you’ll find them quietly working to make that design a good one!

Google is traditionally the main area of focus when it comes to search engine optimization. With the search engine giant so far ahead of the game in terms of search market share, it’s not hard to understand why.

Search is changing though, and there are always new elements coming into play. Since social media has come into its own, more opportunities and questions have come along with it. Now Microsoft is going for Google’s throat with a new search engine and an aggressive marketing campaign. What this means for the future of search market share is yet to be determined, but there’s no denying Bing is capturing some attention, and that means there are people searching with it. Altered your SEO strategy for Bing? Tell us why.

SEO for Bing

Microsoft’s stance on search engine optimization really doesn’t appear to be all that different from Google’s. You’re not going to get the same results on both Google and Bing in many cases, but that is after all why the two can co-exist. The real difference is in how the results are presented, and not as much in how the two determine quality and relevancy.

Bing and Google have separate algorithms, but both like quality, relevant links and good content, as opposed to deception and spam. Bing in fact, hasn’t really changed much (from Live Search) in terms of crawling.

“There have been no major changes to the MSNBot crawler during the upgrade to Bing,” Microsoft says in a Bing white paper for webmasters (pdf). “However, the Bing team is continuously refining and improving our crawling and indexing abilities. Note that the bot name hasn’t changed. It will still show up in the web server access logs as MSNBog.”

Sidenote: Webmasters will want to acknowledge that Microsoft has increased the size limit of sitemaps from 10,000 URLs to 50,000. Google is also now supporting up to 50,000 “child sitemaps” of sitemaps index files.

Like I was saying, the biggest difference between the two search engines is in the presentation. Bing of course separates (some) results into categories. This has worried some search marketers, but Microsoft says good SEO will work just as well with this set up. Bing also has the explore pane (navigational menu on the left-hand side of search results), which corresponds with the categories in the SERPs. In some ways, this is similar to Google’s recent addition of “search options.”

I discussed what Google’s search options would mean for SEO here. Basically, I just broke it down section by section, and you could do the same thing with Bing I think. Look at the keyword phrases you want to rank for, and see how Bing breaks it up. Let’s say “cell phones” for example. Bing gives you categories like shopping, brands, buying guide, providers, accessories, images, videos, and local.

This tells me that you want to play up the appropriate categories on your site, so that it shows up in the relevant categories on Bing. If you sell accessories, place emphasize that, and you’ll probably have a better shot ending up in that category. With Bing, it’s not about getting to the top of the SERP. It’s about getting to the top of the right part of the SERP. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Having quality and relevant (to that part of the SERP) content is the best thing you can do. Incidentally, this will probably help your cause in Google (and other search engines) at the same time.

“Ultimately, SEO is still SEO. Bing doesn’t change that. Bing’s new user interface design simply adds new opportunities to searchers to find what the information they want more quickly and easily, and that benefits webmasters who have taken the time to work on the quality of their content and website design,” says Microsoft.

Curious About What Bing Looks for in Links?

Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center recently posted a pair of blog posts looking at what makes some links good and some bad. You may find some of these things familiar:

- “If you don’t feel you can endorse the quality of the content at another site, you shouldn’t be linking to them.”

- Don’t seek links from sites whose content isn’t worthy of your endorsement.

- Links to and from your site should be relevant to your site (or at least the page you’re linking from/to)

- Focus on quality, not quantity. Few highly relevant links are better than a bunch of crap links

- Avoid “bad neighborhoods” like dedicated domains or IP ranges that do nothing but set up meaningless link exchanges.

- Avoid hidden text

Okay, you’re the proud mama or papa to your brand new website. Now what? This isn’t like the movies – just because you built it doesn’t mean they’ll come. The Internet is a huge limitless space with ever-growing numbers of websites. You are just one small website among millions. How will anybody ever find you? How do you become visible? Right now, you just exist out in the web, untethered. You need to become visible when someone searches for you and one way to become visible to people is to become visible to search engines. And one way to become visible to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN is for your site to be tethered, or linked to other sites.

If you’ve spent any time reading Internet marketing blogs you know that link building is a huge part of a marketing campaign. Backlinks – links that point to your website – are a major factor in determining your popularity or ranking with the search engines. And of course, just like in high school, you want to be popular.

You can buy your way into links, but here we’re talking about a few free and easy ways. An obvious and natural way to build links is through content. When you start a link-building campaign for your new website, focus on attracting links that will add value for your website visitors and best represent your most important keywords too. It is invaluable to have visitors go to your site and share your content.

Here are a few easy and mostly free ways to build links for your website.

Blog-Based Link Building

One way to get natural links back to your website is by setting up a blog for your company. Make sure you network online with other blogs that complement yours. If you share industry news and have useful and relevant content, you’ll attract links. Reference other bloggers in your content and link to other blogs in your industry.

For blogs, content is extremely important. Every time you add words to your blog or website, you are presenting yourself to a potentially huge audience. How does your blog’s content reflect your company? This content could be the page that carries your company’s name around the Internet world. Cheap content is just that – cheap. Create content that people want to read and that will make them come back again and again.

Reviewing products and services and posting those reviews on other sites is another way to build links. Your honest evaluations and smart opinions can also build your reputation as an expert in your field.

Link Building with Social Media

Another way to build natural links to your website is through social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter. These sites allow you to set up a user profile where you can add information about you and your company including a link to your website.

Some sites, Facebook for example, also have a way to promote your business with a page, ad or group. Just keep in mind that there are good ways and bad ways to promote your business on social sites and you should observe proper etiquette when you do.

Link Building with Organizations and Directories

If your industry has professional organizations or associations that you belong to, check with them and see if they have an online directory with links to member sites. They may or may not charge a fee for this. If they do, it shouldn’t be much.

Check with your local Chamber of Commerce or Better Business Bureau. Links from sites like these can be very helpful. Check with other local businesses and organizations that have lists of businesses and request links from them, too.

Online directories are another opportuníty to look into. Yahoo! Directory is a good one. If your business is in a specific geographical area, you might also find some local directories to submit to that will boost your local visibility.

Links from Charities or Non-profits

If your company makes charitable donations to organizations and non-profíts, see if they have a “donors” list on their website and ask if they will link to your website.

Links from Press Releases

Has your business just started or have you just launched a new product? A press release is a great idea to announce your news. There are quite a few press release distribution services available and some have a free first time offer.

Links from Partners

If your website offers information about other website partners like business directories, you should make sure to use all your linking potential. You could have a badge that your partner could put on their site linking to you and one for your site that links to theirs.

If you have an RSS feed or a widget on your site that has good value to visitors, those can be taken from your website and displayed on another person’s website, linking back to your site.

The Internet is constantly evolving and there are thousands of ways to build links. Look around at other websites and see what they have and how they work. Look at your business, think outside the box and you might come up with other ways to develop links. If it all seems like too much, there are many online consulting companies that can help with link building, SEO optimization and brandcasting

SEO doesn’t have to be complex and by following these simple on-page optimization techniques you can give your SEO campaign the perfect start.
SEO is often seen as being a difficult and in-depth process, but the reality is that by following some reasonably common sense guidelines it is possible to get good rankings. That’s not to say that optimization is a simple or quick process; there are, unfortunately, no short cuts. Your SEO efforts should be a concerted and long term effort in order that you will enjoy the best possible results and should incorporate both on-page and off-page optimization techniques. By following the on-page SEO strategies below you can set a strong foundation to all your SEO work.

Keyword Research

Before you begin penning content and writing title and meta tags you first need to research the keywords you will use on each of your pages. Using the wrong keywords can negatively impact your entire campaign, causing you to lose untold hours and days of work and eventually forcing you to concede that you made the wrong decision and start all over again.

The most appropriate and most beneficial keywords are popular enough that they will enjoy regular searches but without being prohibitively competitive or overly generic. A number of keyword research tools exist and your competitors’ websites are a good place to start your early research. Ensure keywords are targeted specifically to the type of content you will provide as well as the service or product you will be selling. More targeted keywords will result in more targeted visitors and targeted visitors mean greater conversion rates and an improved return on your efforts.

Niche And Semantically Related Keywords

A good strategy is to incorporate a reasonable list of competitive keywords with less competitive ones. The more niche keywords will serve you well during the early days of your website and over time you should be able to start competing for the more challenging of the keywords you use. Also incorporate semantically or topically related keywords into your keyword list because the search engines are placing more and more emphasis on those pages that use related keywords as well as primary keywords.

Accessibility And Standards

Site accessibility is an integral part of good website design but it should also be considered an important factor in any SEO strategy. Using standards based code for your website will help to ensure that anybody that wishes to access and view your website will be able to do so. It will also mean that the spiders used by search engines will be able to access and index your pages effectively ensuring that you get the full credit for your site.

Navigation And Intra-Linking

Your navigation menu and internal links should be prominently placed, easy to see, and easy to follow for the spiders. It is good practice to include a text link from the home page to a compliant sitemap on your site, alleviating any potential problems that might arise from broken links or the use of graphical or flash based navigation menus. You can also consider adding links into the main body of your content, although too many will make the page difficult to read and therefore diminish the overall effectiveness so don’t get too carried away.

Title And Meta Tags

While search engines do not specifically use the meta tags to help assess the value of a page like they once did, meta tags are still critical to good SEO performance. The title and description tags that you add at the top of a page are used in various ways including in the compiling and display of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). This is the first thing a potential site visitor will see from your site so this mini listing needs to be as effective as any paid advert or PPC ad. Poorly written titles and descriptions can put many readers off viewing your pages so a little time and effort here can have a very positive effect.

Using your keywords in the title and the description is good practice because these will be highlighted in the search results if they were used in the search query itself. This will make your result more prominent and instantly identify your page as being relevant to the user. Don’t needlessly use keywords, however, and don’t throw extra keywords into the description at the cost of a well written, short ad.

Other Formatting Tags

On-page content should always be written with the visitor in mind, although obviously it can still be optimized for search engines. As such, proper page structure is important to your reader as well as to the engines. H1 and H2 tags are an effective way of breaking up page content, and give readers the chance to skim through a page and determine its relevance.

A page should only contain a single H1 tag at the top of the content but can include multiple H2 and H3 tags. Alt tags on images should also be included and these as well as the actual file path to the image itself can include important keywords (but do make sure that they actually make sense and are more than just a keyword thrown in for the sake of SEO).

Page Content Optimization

Finally, we get to the heart of the page – the content itself. Use the keywords you researched for a page including semantically related keywords. Write as naturally and appealingly as possible while keeping those keywords in mind and don’t get carried away stuffing or cramming them into the body of the text. Not only is this unappealing to readers but is seriously frowned upon by the search engines.

The reader really is the most important aspect of your content. If the majority of your visitors are coming from the search engines remember that they arrived using specific keywords. This means that they are searching for equally specific information relating to those keywords – make sure you deliver on the promise that you made in your title and description tags.

If websites have one overarching goal it is to create confidence in whatever the website is promoting and who’s promoting it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a product, a service, a sales campaign, or an idea, if the presentation is not minimally credible or optimally motivational, then it fails as a means of marketing communication.

Communicate to the Subconscious Mind

Branding is often thought of as a marketing strategy reserved for major consumer product companies, but the fact is all businesses are brands that are either cultivated so they blossom, or let go-to-seed like a garden full of weeds.

Marketing neophytes often think of branding only in terms of some physical manifestation, like a logo, but a brand is the full complement of residual impressions resulting from all the experiences associated with a product, service or company. And today, the online experience is a vital venue for creating those experiences.

By using video, the marketer has the opportunity to tap into the audiences’ subconscious mind, the buried remnants of both remembered and forgotten experiences; the kind of experiences that form attitudes, prejudices, and preferences that inform our decisions, most importantly our buying decisions.

Where Businesses Go Wrong

Where businesses go wrong is settling for only the obvious, the logical, and the rational. Brands are formed in the subconscious, so if your marketing communication doesn’t reach the subconscious mind then it is not establishing or enhancing the brand in any meaningful effective long-term way.

What video does, when done right, is communicate on both the obvious and subconscious levels, making it the ideal Web-communication vehicle for creating a powerful brand experience, but only if you understand how to use the presentation and performance elements available.

Considering how powerful a tool Web-video can be, it amazes me how so many normally intelligent business people can opt for second-rate presentations. The do-it-yourself and user-generated efforts compete for the booby prize with the mindless corporate drivel – they all miss the point: a persuasive motivating presentation must communicate on multiple levels.

How To Deliver A Brand Story

We like to refer to developing, delivering, enhancing, and managing a Web-based brand, as The Brand Story Process. By thinking of your brand in terms of a story rather than just some graphical image, or nebulous mission statement, you avoid many of the pitfalls associated with ineffective branding.

A story, any story, has certain fundamental elements:
A storyline, plot or arc that moves the audience from skeptical Web-surfers to loyal customers;
A hero, who vicariously represents the audience and their dilemma in satisfying their subconscious needs or desires;
A villain, who represents the problems, obstacles, or challenges that confront the audience in satisfying those subconscious needs;
An agent of change that represents your company’s ability to resolve the dilemma by providing a solution to satisfying those needs;
And a format that structures the presentation in a series of procedural or serial video episodes, that establishes and enhances the brand image, all while delivering literal and subliminal benefits.

Storyline – The Arc of Transformation

At the heart of your brand story is your marketing message and that message must invoke change: a transformation from dissatisfaction to satisfaction, and not just a presentation of features and benefits.

Your brand storyline puts what you offer into context, and illustrates the achievable results through onscreen surrogates acting out the audience’s hidden agendas. A competitor can always cut your price or add new features, but neither tactic can overcome brand loyalty based on satisfying subconscious emotional needs.

Hero As Brand Messenger

It’s not just the message; it’s the messenger. There is no substitute for the human being. No avatar, cartoon character, or computer-generated equivalent will provide the subtlety and nuance required to communicate on the verbal, visible, and subconscious levels.

The one caveat is that real people can be ‘too real’ for their own good. We rarely recommend using company executives in front of the camera because the camera picks up all kinds of signals that the unpracticed performer is not aware of, resulting in an impression often contrary to the intended message. An uptight senior executive, no matter how well meaning, delivering a reassuring message to the public over some product liability problem can actually hurt the company’s rehabilitation efforts if that onscreen presenter is deemed untrustworthy or deceptive.

He’ll Always Be Tricky Dick

There are many examples of this sort of marketing faux pas, with Richard Nixon’s 1960 television debate with John Kennedy being one of the most famous. On the radio many people thought Nixon, the veteran campaigner, won the debate, but under the penetrating scrutiny of the television camera, Nixon’s true self came through. It was not just the five o’clock shadow; it was his buried true-self delivering a negative impression to the audience’s subconscious mind. The negative Nixon brand was established forever, one that never fully recovered.

A Brand Should Never Get Old, Ill, or Fat

Even positive reaction to a real personality can turn out to be negative. Take the example of Steve Jobs. His keynote addresses are treated like rock star performances, but when not available to perform for whatever reason, rumors start, and even major corporations like Apple feel the effect.

What you really want to create is a brand character, a spokesperson that can be managed, cultivated, and grown into a long-term brand representative, one who can deliver your marketing message and brand story in consistent, effective, and controlled campaigns.

Every Brand Story Needs A Villain

When we speak of the brand villain we are not necessarily referring to another character although that can certainly be one way of illustrating the issue at hand. As an alternative, situations or scenarios can be used to represent the problem or dilemma.

Psychological issues are most often not so cut-and-dried as to be presented by the black-hat villain and white-hat hero. Engaging heroes are often tainted or damaged in a way the audience can relate to, and effective villains are not so much evil as they are representative of an alternative agenda.

Take for example the recent commercial campaign for ‘Oatmeal Crisps’ that is currently running in the Canadian market. The series of spots features a father who is trying to protect his favorite cereal from being consumed by his teenage son in one commercial, and by his elderly father in another. This extremely clever campaign digs deep into the emotional resentments and psychological issues involved in the family dynamic, but it does it in a humorous, lighthearted manner, where the audience can relate to the situation, and accept the underlying message. Here’s a case of protagonist and antagonist, a more sophisticated approach to the hero-villain relationship.

You Are The Agent of Change

By adopting the Brand Story approach to marketing, you need to accept the notion that your brand is an agent of change. All stories are about change: transformation from one state (dissatisfaction) to another (satisfaction). You construct your brand story based on the idea that your brand will transform the audience somehow.

Take the ‘Multi Grain Cheerios’ commercial featuring a husband and wife discussing the ingredients listed on the cereal box: while the overt message is buy this product because it tastes good, the underlying message is that it helps control your weight thus making you more attractive to your spouse, not a subject that any sensitive spouse would suggest. The cereal is presented as the agent of change: overweight and unattractive, to slim and beautiful, while at the same time removing the stigma of dieting by providing the taste excuse to justify the purchase.

This commercial like the previously mentioned ‘Oatmeal Crisps’ commercial creates a conflict that delivers multiple messages through the familiar husband-wife scenario; one that is familiar to anyone who has ever dared suggest their significant other should lose some weight.

Are You “Law and Order” or “Prison Break”?

Format: Procedural or Serial

The two most commonly used presentation formats are Procedural, think “Law and Order”, or Serial, think “Prison Break”. Procedurals follow a strict formula that continuously replays the basic story arc with the context of each episode emphasizing the consistent attitudes, perspective, and point-of-view of the franchise or brand. On the other hand, Serials move the plot along from episode to episode keeping the audience in suspense as to what is going to happen next and whether the brand hero will win the day.

One of the best Serial advertising campaigns every implemented was the Nescafe Gold Blend coffee campaign that ran from 1987-1992. You can watch the whole campaign from beginning to end on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igi9u6X4y-s).

One of my favorite Procedural style campaigns is the recent Kleenex (Let It Out) campaign that was brilliantly executed. It played upon the audience’s emotions, memories, and experiences, while associating those deep-seated feelings with their brand of facial tissue that is normally regarded and sold as a strictly commoditized product.

Doing Something, Isn’t Necessarily Doing It Well

Far from being restrictive, these formats provide familiar structure within which the company can establish and enhance their brand, but failure to grasp the underlying emotional element inherent in your offering will lead to failure. A current Canadian advertiser tried to copy the Kleenex format without understanding what made the Kleenex campaign effective; they copied the physical presentation but without any emotional subtext, relying totally on a cost-to-performance benefit, and the result is a second rate effort rather than an effectively clever slipstreamed homage.

It’s About People, By People, For People

Unlike television advertising that is restricted to only those that can afford it, the Web is available to all. The problem is easy and affordable access to the tools and venues to deliver your brand story does not mean that you are telling it effectively. Marketing communication is not about research, technology, or statistics; it’s about people and the underlying emotional needs your brand satisfies – therein lies the basis upon which you build your brand story.

Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination – your website – you need to provide them with effective signs that direct them right to your site by creating carefully chosen keywords. Think of the right keywords as the “Open Sesame!” of the Internet. Find the exactly right words, and presto! Hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or overused, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way to your site – or of seeing any real income from the visitors that do arrive – decreases dramatically. Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may not get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven’t followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It’s hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers’ understanding is significantly different.

The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably wouldn’t have ever considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered words and phrases from outside resources should you add your keywords to the list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your website. By “quality visitors” I mean those consumers who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. The only fallacy with this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably not scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn’t enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greater the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find you.

Let’s look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword “automobile companies.” However, your company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword “automobile body shops” would rank lower on the popularity scale than “automobile companies,” but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the specificity of your keyword, the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires putting yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the seller to figure out what motivation prompts a person looking for a service or product to type in a particular word or phrase.

Let’s look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between “Seattle job listings” and “Seattle IT recruiters” which do you think will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people who have decided on their career, have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer parties.

You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until you find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to your site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness of your keywords in individual search engines. There is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profíts per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better revenues.

Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine success. This may sound like a lot of work – and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your business’ rewards.

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So you woke up one morning and had an idea and you were certain it was going to be the next best thing and change the world and your bank account as you know it. One small problem though is that no one knows about you and you are loosing out on business that is now going to your 200+ competitors, who had your idea about a year earlier. so what now?. You decide have a website design company make you the flashiest website and for you the business owner you are discouraged already because there is no sign of profit and you just paid half your startign capital for a website no one is seeing.

So how can you relieve your monthly expenses? Look for an inexpensive website hosting company based  in your area or even overseas, Especially one that with a User Account login so that you can manage your own website updates. Next submit your URL to Directory services for companies in your line of business and list the website on all the search engines. You can also look for companies offering additional services in the same field as your own with whom you can exchange reciprocal links. Keep in mind that google will not assign your domain a page rank until you have been online for some time. There are a number of Search engine optimisation techniques you can use to boost your website ranking, i have listed a number of them in my other posts. things such as registering your domain name with your domain registrar for long periods of time, and not taking part in links with sites considered spam by google.

Social Networking if done correctly can make potential clients aware of your brand and create an interest in your product which will in turn create traffic to your website and possible sales.  Last but not least use word of mouth to get your name known. never underestimate word of mouth for promoting your business, your friends and customers are your best sales team you have.

Author: Webstyles Internet Solutions