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The Promotion World InformerIssue #31 April 6, 1998Contents Of This Issue:
Editor's NotesThank you to everyone who sent me recommendations for listservers. Now all I need to do in setting up the discussion list is to find some time to moderate it! Next week will be a busy week. It's a long weekend, I am involved in a large Easter drama and we have relatives coming. So... there won't be an issue of the Informer next week! We respect your privacy! The Informer is only sent to those who subscribe to it. We will never give our subscriber list to anyone. If you don't remember signing up, let me jog your memory. You probably signed up on my site, found at http://www.promotionworld.com. If you don't want to receive this newsletter anymore, then just follow the simple unsubscribe instructions at the end of this newsletter.
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Cool Quotes
Feature Article
Running A Newsletter Let's talk about a way to make your online marketing approach a more active and successful one. OK, so how does that work exactly? First, let's look at how a typical Web business might operate. You guzzle down various forms of liquid caffeine so you can stay up till 3AM every night (hey, that sounds familiar!) promoting your Web site every way you know how. You read the stats every day hoping that a lot of Web surfers have stopped by to see your site. Visitors arrive, or they don't. It's up to them. OK, so then what happens? Well, if you're lucky, a visitor bookmarks your site. If you're really lucky they someday actually remember to click on your bookmark again amongst the hundreds of others they have collected. The frustrating reality is that the Web site visitor you've worked so hard to get still views you as a total stranger and you've probably got one chance to close a sale with them before they impulsively click off to one of a million other Internet destinations never to return again. You're very active working at your business but the approach could be seen as a passive one in the sense that you're still stuck sitting there waiting on other people to remember you and click on a bookmark or other link. Is this any way to run a business? That's what we started to ask ourselves. We stumbled on to the timeless business truth that, whether your business is online or offline, it's crucial to build long term relationships with your prospective customers. Why? Because it takes time for people both to understand what your business really has to offer and to develop confidence that they can trust you to provide your service in a competent and honest manner. And besides, once you've gone to all the work of getting a customer it's fun to sell them stuff every month! Web sites are great at presenting an attractive storefront that can create a good first impression. But once you've attracted these frantic, click happy Web window shoppers in to your store the job becomes converting this casual momentary encounter in to a long term friendship and business relationship. So let's try this. Suppose you create a good free emailed newsletter that contains useful information relevant to the product or service you're selling from your Web site. Your newsletter doesn't have to be a masterpiece of literature but it should contain content that a typical visitor to your Web site can enjoy and use. Let's put a couple of lines about your newsletter on all the major pages of your Web site. Let's add a little form that makes it easy for your visitors to subscribe. Now, when a visitor to your Web site reaches the moment of maximum interest they can, instead of bookmarking, add their name to your mailing list. Hey, while we're on the subject, maybe you'd like to join our list!
------------------------------------------------------------ Here's the most important thing to remember. You no longer have to base your online business on the hope that people will visit, and then remember to revisit, your Web site. As your mailing list builds you will be able to employ the most widely used Internet technology, email, to regularly deliver your message directly to the hard drives of a growing self selected audience of hundreds, and then thousands, of people that have voluntarily shown an interest in your services. Big difference! Now you can initiate the conversation and relationship from your end. You'll have plenty of more chances to make the sale you might not have made today. Now you have what we would call an active marketing strategy! Hey, that's pretty cool! You've gone to a lot of work to bring prospective customers to your Web site. After all that, why just let these interested people wander off, maybe never to return? Why not use a fun and useful free emailed newsletter to give these important prospects a reason to remain part of your life.
Sincerely,
__O_A_K_N_E_T__P_U_B_L_I_S_H_I_N_G__ ____________________________________ Just to let you all know, Phil runs a great newsletter mailing service. In fact, this newsletter is sent out from his servers! I am more than happy with the service I get from him. If you are planning on starting a newsletter, I can highly recommend them to you! Accounts are only $25/month. For details see http://www.promotionworld.com/newslet/listserv.html They also offer a reseller program through which you make $50 US for every customer you refer to them. That's pretty good. First, they offer great prices, high quality and great customer support on their listserv services, they also offer a great commission on selling their services. Just so you know, not many companies on the Internet do that.
What's New At Promotion World
Expert Interviews: John Audette.
If you have found Promotion World helpful to you in promoting your
site, we would really appreciate it if you could add a link back to
us from your site. We have made a whole bunch of new banners
and buttons to make it easier for you! The reviews for the following exchanges have been changed:
TrafficX See the banner exchange section for links to these reviews. http://www.promotionworld.com/be/reviews.html
Bits And PiecesThis last week saw the first issue of the Associate Programs Newsletter. It's great! It has tons of tips for making more money for your website using associate programs. I highly recommend you subscribe. To subscribe to Associate Programs Newsletter put SUBSCRIBE in the BODY of an email to: mailto:associate-programs@oaknetpub.com
You should also visit http://www.associateprograms.com for
lots more information on associate programs. The ClickZ Network, publisher of the popular daily online marketing resource ClickZ, announced this last week the acquisition of Who's Marketing Online http://www.wmo.com, a regularly updated Web-based magazine which provides hands-on tips, reviews, and resource listings for professionals new to online marketing. Sounds good. Also, I would encourage you all to check out ClickZ. There are many great marketing articles there. http://www.clickz.com
Feature Article
Offering A Contest To Promote Your Web Site Producing quality traffic to your web site is a task that requires constant attention and effort. Unless you're a multi-billion dollar corporation like Microsoft, whose name and reputation on it's own creates visitors to their web site, you'll have to market and promote your web site to get visitors. This can be especially difficult for the home based or small business entrepreneurs because they have limited or non-existent marketing and advertising budgets. Don't worry, all is not lost for those home based and small business entrepreneurs with limited budgets. There's quite a few free and inexpensive ways to create quality traffic to your web site but one of the most effective is offering a contest on your web site! You want to get one thing straight right from the start. "Just offering a contest doesn't create traffic in itself, it must be a focused marketing and promotion campaign!" There's a few key factors to consider when deciding if offering a contest is an effective marketing and promotion option to bring quality traffic to your web site. Your Contest Must Be:
Starting to get the picture? What they've done is to create a contest that's of interest to their target market! What a better way to get travelers interested in your travel business by offering a free vacation and by getting hundreds, even thousands of other web sites to promote their contest and web site. It doesn't matter who your target market is "You Must Offer A Contest That Provides A Benefit To Your Target Market!" Don't get me wrong, winning a prize is always fun, but the whole purpose of your contest is to get your target market to your web site so they'll be exposed to your products and services and hopefully make a purchase. Now, if your contest offers one of your products as a prize, and that prize is of benefit to your target market, you're going to receive the benefits of one of the most powerful forms of advertising online today in the form of a free product via your contest. If your product provides value to your target market, then it should also produce direct sales from your contest winners and indirect sales from contest entrants and word of mouth! Remember, keep in mind the reason for offering a contest in the first place, "To Increase Your Web Site Traffic By Your Target Market!" It's obvious that any online entrepreneur would want to receive 100 interested prospects visiting your web site rather than 500 visitors who don't have the slightest interest in your product or service, they're just there to win a free prize. You're in business to make money and the only way to make money is to create and make sales! For example: We offer a "Link To Us" contest at our web site that's produced some great traffic building statistics. It's a very simple contest and here's the why and how it works. It's designed to be a win-win scenario for both parties involved, us and the contest entrant. The contest entrant can offer their web site visitors a Free Resource for online marketing and advertising to produce repeat visitors and we get more web sites on the web that have made a link to our web site increasing our traffic. All the contest entrant has to do is simply choose a banner they want displayed on their web site, copy the HTML code that links the banner to our web site, install the banner on their web site then send us an email with the URL linking to our web site and they're entered in our contest. We've even added another incentive to enter our contest by offering a Free Report "Email Marketing & Advertising Via Autoresponders" as a Free Gift for their contest entry. Everybody involved in this contest wins and more important, we're attracting more of our target market to our contest, web site, products and services.
So how do you go about making the contest entering easy? You can use any format from a simple email reply to a form response with a short survey. Just make sure you don't ask your contest entrants to answer a long survey or you'll loose quite a few prospects a month. Let's take a look at the example I used earlier. In our "Link To Us Contest" the entry procedure is very easy. After you've selected the banner you want to use, copied the HTML code for the link, added them to your web site, all you have to do is simply send us an email with the URL of the linking page where the banner's located and that's it! Whatever method you decide to use for entry into your contest, just put it to a simple self test! Take a look at your contest entry procedures and if you think they're either too difficult to follow, are unnecessarily lengthy or are asking for too much personal information, then they usually are. If you wouldn't take the time to enter the contest or provide the information on the entry form as a condition for entry, then why would you expect your potential contest entrants to?
This is a major key and the stepping stone to producing more sales and creating new customers and clients. If you've followed and accomplished the first two key features, then your contest entrants are going to be those from your target market, they've been to your web site, had the opportunity to look around and just might have already purchased some of your products or services, have bookmarked your web site for future visits and , of course, entered your contest. Once again, let's look at the contest example I used earlier. In our "Link To Us" contest we offer as the grand prize, an Online Marketing and Advertising Package of over $250 worth of products or services that are very useful to and are of interest to our target market of home based and small business entrepreneurs. But what if you don't have a product or service that lends itself as a possible contest grand prize or the cost of your product is just too expensive? No problem, it just takes a bit of flexibility and creative thinking. Even if your product or service is expensive I think you can find a happy medium, especially when it comes to services. For example, web site designers can offer a Free web site design, a Free web site evaluation or some sort of service related offer. The possibilities are endless regardless of your specific product or service, just release your creative talents and you'll find something that works. The product might be a bit more limited in applying it to your contest while staying with the contest key factors of making the prize beneficial to and supplying a value to your contest entrants, your target market. However, one product that can be used in almost any contest, any industry and is an excellent choice is a Free Report. You can easily write a good Free Report that deals with your specific industry, product or service that your target market would be interested in receiving. You can also use any combination of products or services as prizes, just let your creativity be your guide. If you can put yourself in your target market's mind and determined what would be considered valuable information, you have your topic for your Free Report. You can also purchase inexpensive products to offer as your contest's grand prize. Final Thoughts: Throughout this article I've made references to our "Link To Us" Web Site Contest that's become a very successful online marketing tool. If you'd like to see what our contest looks like, check out the prizes or are interested in entering, just take a few moments and visit http://www.intersuccess.com/link.htm. Besides, if you enter, you'll receive the Free Report and have an opportunity to receive over $250 in online marketing and advertising resources that will help you become a more successful online marketer. I'd also like to invite you to visit our main web site at http://www.intersuccess.com. Just take a look around, do some window shopping, receive tons of Free Information from over 75 pages of online marketing and advertising dynamite that will help you EXPLODE your online profits,. Enjoy! To Your Online Marketing Success!
Excerpted From "Internet Marketing Issues" A Free Weekly Ezine Published By Terry Williams & Associates.
Letters To The EditorHi Josh; I was surfing through Scrub The Web last week when I found a new Web tool they have set up. It's a Meta-Tag Analyzer, it checks out any page's tags, finds errors for you, and will make recommendations on how to fix things.
It's at: I don't know if you've already found it, but this Analyzer is a great tool if you have very little time (like me) and want to see what your tags look like before you submit your new page. Let me know what you think. Later,
David Handlos
_________________________
I always enjoy your newsletter - Keep up the good work.
Here is a thought for your readers:
Amazing how much you get for just asking. At Schoolmates we aim to re-unite
old classmates. We now ask our satisfied customers to tell their friends
by simply typing the friends email address - No fuss - no bother. It's all
automated and believe me - It works like a bomb - Sample below:
Sample==============
I recently joined SCHOOLMATES to find my old classmates
and thought you might want to do the same. Nearly 20 000
people have already joined but we always need more.
Won't you please go visit http://www.schoolmates.com and
help spread the word.
PS: You can register for FREE.
Regards
Your Name
Regards
Deon Joubert
ForumOne
Reference.com
E-zine lists
Promotion Links
Ablake
Thanks to Debbie Cohen for this weeks bookmarks. Many thanks! Visit her site:
http://www.freeyellow.com/members2/yes2credit/
Email me if you have any suggestions for future
"Bookmarkable Bookmarks". I will, of course, give you full
credit for any links I might publish. My email address is
mailto:webmaster@promotionworld.com.
Three somewhat new search engines seem to be on the rise to search engine
stardom: these are Planet Search http://www.planetsearch.com/, Northern
Light http://www.northernlight.com/, and Snap http://home.snap.com/.
These search engines are newer and not yet worried about checking for spam.
They rank about the same as the other major search engines (which is every
major search engine ranks differently).
Planet Search uses title and visible text (title always counts more). In
addition, the results of a multi-worded search have the less common keyword
counting the most and then the next and so on. The great thing about Planet
Search is you can learn a lot about your keyword density. The "preview
text" allows you to see all the visible text in your page (including your
title) with the searched keywords in your text in color so you can see how
often they appear. Another helpful part of Planet Search is the bar graph
that is given with the search results.
Northern Light seems to be the same as Planet Search. Your description is
composed of the first 25 words of your title then your text. It might use
META keywords, but they hold little weight. They build folders for each
search so you can narrow your search down (sites with the ~ in the URL are
labeled "personal pages").
Snap has a very elite directory. They pick sites that are large and
well-known. For the search feature, they do seem to search their directory,
but often they automatically switch you to Infoseek. So, it might be time
to rethink things with Infoseek http://www.infoseek.com. When the results
are coming from Snap's index, the results seem far off.
It seems like for at least Planet Search and Northern Light that title (of
course) and visible text are most important. So, watch what you type.
Remember to use the "preview text" feature on Planet Search. There is a lot
you can learn from that alone. Send us any comments or suggestions you have
via e-mail.
--Eat Mor
This newsletter is now accepting advertising! If your site
or product targets webmasters, online merchants or small
business owners, this could be a great place to advertise
your website cheaply. More information can be found at
http://www.promotionworld.com/sponsor.html
I hope you have found this issue of the Informer helpful
and enjoyable. If you really want to unsubscribe from this
newsletter, (shame on you!), send an email to
mailto:informer@oaknetpub.com with REMOVE in the BODY of the message.
If you want to get your friends to subscribe, tell them to
send an email to mailto:informer@oaknetpub.com with
SUBSCRIBE in the BODY of the message.
I am hanging out for your emails! Email is what every
webmaster looks forward to. Send me your comments and
suggestions! They will be much appreciated. Email me at
mailto:webmaster@promotionworld.com.
Newsletter Credits:
Joshua Reimer, Editor (Big Boss)
Eat Mor, Official Tip Finder
And now for the mandatory legal stuff:
This newsletter is copyright 1997, 1998 Joshua Reimer. No part may be
reproduced without permission. Joshua Reimer, Promotion
World and Futuristic Designs are not responsible in any way
for any loss or damage that may befall you if you use the
tips and tricks contained in this newsletter. Hopefully none
will, but we just have to cover all our bases.
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