Month: June 2008

Why do online marketers take the time to do live and archived podcasts?
Are they simply wasting their time or is there value?

Stay tuned for an exclusive interview with a business friend of mine that will be posted within the next week or so that sheds more light on these questions about podcasts. However, to help you “see” the effects of podcasts, here are some recent stats:

Now granted, these are not HUGE numbers. I had 11 listeners the first day, then 12 a couple weeks later, then 5, 1, 0, 2, 4, 6, 4, 9, 6, 6, 6, 11, 10, 2 and then WHAM – 22! My best day yet. That’s a total of 117 downloads in less than a month of doing podcasts at MollerMarketing.com.

These people find me through links on other sites, social media efforts, and through iTunes where I post the podcast for free to the general public. (If you go to iTunes and type in Moller Marketing in the search or How to Start an Online Business, you’ll see my podcast show up.)

To get you all more involved in the Moller Marketing Podcast, the first reader to make a valid comment on this post will be the first “sponsor” on the next podcast. This will be a FREE offer so act now!

Moller Marketing will also be offering a special introductory advertising rate of only $10 for podcast sponsorship. Starting in July, there will be 3 sponsorship spots on the Moller Marketing Podcast – one mentioned at the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end of each recorded conversation. I will be presenting one podcast per week . The $10 introductory fee will include ad placement for the entire month of July 2008 – this means your business will be promoted at least 4 times in the month of July, plus a content link in the text of each podcast.

Each sponsor will be required to provide the following:

• Complete Payment made prior to launch (email mollermarketing (at) gmail (dot) com for further details.)
• 3-4 sentences of text that explain what your site is about, what you are offering and a special promotion that we can track.

The friend who taught me about podcasts has helped one of his sponsors sell $2,000 worth of product in a month because of the mention of the sponsors product, site, and promotion. Stay tuned for more fun to come!

Mat Siltala of DreamSystemsMedia.com tells Moller Marketing all about keyword research and why its vital when starting an online business.

Mat Siltala has been in the industry of search engine optimization and online marketing for about 10 years. He started his career online working for a radio station and saw the little things he did for that company pay off. He owns several internet businesses online, including Rocky Mountain Mattress and a search engine optimization consulting firm.

[powerpress url=”http://mollermarketing.com/podcast/Mat%20Siltala%20Interview.mp3″]

 

Why is keyword research so important when it comes to marketing online?

• It helps separate you from your competitors
• It helps you learn what your competitors are doing
• It helps you determine who your target audience is

How do you determine which keywords are the quality ones?

Research your competition. Which keywords are they going after? Look at their title tags, content, links, etc. to see what they are using. Find variations of those words. Spend time on keywords that are targeted (niche), not the general phrases that everyone is going after. Targeted keywords tend to convert better too.

How do you use keywords to market your website online?

Keyword research is a key part of my marketing campaign. There are many different tools out there to use. Aaron Wall has a great keyword research too. Keyword Discovery has one. SEOMoz is pretty good. Wordtracker too. Using your competition can help you so much – you can develop more of a targeted niche, something to build the content around.

Once clients have done the keyword research, where do they put those keyword phrases?

• Anchor Text in Off-site marketing – links pointing people back to your site (ie. writing articles, press releases, blog comments, submitting to free and paid directories, and link sharing with related websites)
• Inside the content of your site
• If your site has 500 words of content, need to use specific keywords at least 5 times to show search engines what you are about.
• Blog posts
• Navigation
• Title Tags
• Header Tags
• Friendly URLs
• Alt Tags in pictures and links
• Meta tag title, description and keywords

Why is keyword research an ongoing process?

You never want to stop figuring out what are the best converting keywords. Just because you’re being found for one word doesn’t mean its the best one.
What analytics software do you recommend?

• Google Analytics
• HaveaMint.com – $30 one time fee with Real Time Stats
• Blvdstatus.com – Sign up for Beta Program today. This software will help track real time stats.

What are your websites?

RockyMountainMattress.com sells memory foam mattresses and custom mattresses.

Any other recommendations?

Understand that you’re competing with people that have been doing this for years. It won’t happen overnight. Take it slow, build quality content and links, figure out the right keywords and build trust and credibility.

I’m on a roll right now for blog posting after reading this article about blogging frequency by ProBlogger. As some of you may have heard or seen, I’ve been doing lots of research on logo design and usage.

A logo is a key part of the sales process. 90% or more of my traffic comes from natural search engine placements. I’ve realized that if my logo looks like someone just threw it together, it doesn’t instill trust or confidence in what I’m offering. Often times how good the products, services or offer I have may not matter if that first impression isn’t that good.

A logo that looks great will keep the attention of new web site visitors long enough (about 5 seconds) for them to look at the rest of your site and the price of your products. A great logo will create that layer of trust between my site and a complete stranger.

5 Tips in Selecting a Quality Logo

1. A logo needs longevity: you better like it enough to stay “married” to it forever. You can only know this by research, getting feedback from friends, family and strangers, and at some point taking the leap.
2. A logo needs to be original: just because my neighbor’s business has a cool looking logo doesn’t mean I need to go out and get one that looks exactly the same. We’re not talking about cars or boats here – originality is an important differentiator.
3. A logo should look professional: as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. If I buy my logo at WalMart, I may get the “lowest price – guaranteed” but that doesn’t mean it’s high quality. We recently purchased a small hutch for our dining room from WalMart and I warn everyone to not even look at it the wrong way for fear that it will fall apart. It looks pretty nice but the quality just isn’t there. Be careful when selecting a logo company.
4. A logo should reflect the time and thought gone in to designing it: see tip number 3. Does the logo company you’re working with have a good track record? Do they have testimonials or feedback from other clients? Are they delivering “plus one” service (see the book Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard). These are important questions to ask.
5. A logo is the starting point of your whole corporate image: see tip 1. You’re going to be “married” to this look and feel for a long time. Sure there may be revisions or changes down the road, but big changes can ruin the branding you’ve spent time and money establishing. Think if Nike all of a sudden changed their swoosh sign.

I’m very pleased with the logo that was designed for my Door County, Wisconsin site. The company worked closely with me to insure that I was satisfied, they have a good track record, and they seem committed to my success. Let me know what you think of the new logo.

Here were the steps the logo company went through to help me:

Step 1: They sent me a consultation to get a feel for what I wanted.

Step 2: They sent these ideas:

Step 3: I ran them by family, friends, and the boss (my wife).  We decided on one we liked and made some revisions.

Step 4:  They sent the revisions:

Step 5: The Boss and I talked things over and made a decision:

Here is a link to Logo Discount Code.

Are you getting the short end of the advertising stick? Is your ad agency really helping you see the ROI you need and want? These are important questions all businesses, both online and offline, must ask themselves if they want to stay in business for the long haul.

Since I do alot of advertising sales and coorporate sponsoship deals, I care about helping clients get ROI (return on investment) with their ad campaign: if I don’t care, they won’t be doing business with me for very long.

Here are some things I’ve found that can be helpful:

1. Have an Advertising Goal in mind: Although this may be basic knowledge to most, marketing directors better have some key questions answered if they expect ROI:
   • What do you want the advertising campaign to do? Is is branding? Is it public awareness? Is it to generate leads (names, emails, addresses)? Is it to make sales (most campaigns have this objective)?
   • If it’s sales, what specifically do you want to sell with the ad? Have you targeted a specific product that you can make a good return on or is your ad generic? These are things to think about. Yogi Berra once stated that if you don’t know where you’re going, any road can take you there. This is way too true in advertising – if I don’t know specifically what I want to accomplish, I can’t blame it on the ad agency for not producing the results.
2. See Your Advertising from the Clients Perspective: Often times it’s good advice to take a step back and ask, “If I was someone looking for my own product or service, why would I buy from me?” This may be a tough question to answer since most of us our bias. If so, get feedback from others, take to heart what they say, ask around to people you don’t know; have them give you a short summary of what they thought the ad was attempting to do. You’ll never know what other people think about your product, service, or ad, until you ASK!
3. Include Benefits, Not Features in yourAdvertising: “Only $499” is not as effective as “Save $50 Today!” It’s all about “What’s in it for (The Client), not what’s in it for YOU.
4. Small Success Leads to Big Success: I know, you’ve heard this one before. But small DETAILS lead to big success in advertising too. Did you include a nice picture? Was the ad description clear? One of the best ad campaigns in history was only two words: Got Milk? Get the point?
5. Timing is crucial: This tip relates back to tip 1 – What do you want to happen? WHEN do you want it to happen is important to answer too. Today, tomorrow, in two weeks, next year – BE SPECIFIC! It’s also important to think about the industry you’re in. Almost every industry I’ve ever been a part of has seasonal ebs and flows. It will do me virtually no good to attempt to market Football Memorablia in June. However, off season can be a great time to work with marketers in industries that find themselves in one of the ebs (low times). Think about the timing before you dive in to a campaign with both feet.

These five tips on getting ROI on an advertising campaign have proven to help my own businesses drastically and also the business of the companies I’ve helped with advertising campaigns.

Let me know how it helps your bottom line too.

photo by Web Liquid