Is Santa a marketing guru or just a pawn?
The December edition of Answers eMagazine arrives on virtual newstands today. This month’s cover story is, “Santa: Your Marketing Guru.” It’s a cute article written by a contributing author, but I’m not really digging the whole Santa-as-a-marketing-guru-thing.
I think Santa is really just a pawn in an evil plot designed by marketers all over the world to get our money.
Santa’s Rotten Kid Problem
How many parents go out and buy gifts in the name of “Santa” just so that their children will get exactly what they asked the fat guy for when they sat on his lap two weeks prior?
Especially parents who have rotten kids! You know… the one’s that deserve and get coal in their stockings.
Floating Window Review
Let me give you a little background before I get to the Floating Window Review. I finally decided to succumb to the will of the marketing Gods and go back to putting pop up subscription forms on many of my websites… which increased my subscription rate by 200% by the way!
Popups are something that I used to do, but stopped because I hate them so much as a consumer. Well, they work - so I made the business decision to go back to them.
The technology behind popups has changed quite a bit since my last dealings with them, so I did a little investigating into the ones that produce the best conversion rates and checked out some of the newer types of popups like the peel away corners or peel away ads (great for sales pages) and the ones where the background fades away (that’s the one this website uses).
Any of these types work well with my blog and sales websites, but they won’t work with my SBI websites because SBI doesn’t allow ftp access to the server (a real bummer sometimes, but other things about SBI make up for it!).
So I needed a solution that would work with SBI… and I found Floating Windows and decided to give it a try… That’s where this Floating Windows Review finally comes in.
I have to admit that my reason for trying it was more than it’s compatibility with SBI… their website is pretty slick too. Floating Windows has nice graphics, examples of both entry and exit popups, and two nice videos that show you how it all works. Their sales letter is pretty effective (you should check it out if you keep swipe files!).
Cool! I’ll give Floating Windows a shot!
October Issue of Answers eMagazine
This is just a quick note to let you know that the October Edition of Answers eMagazine is finished and available. Current subscribers will be sent the download information via email or you can download it directly from the subscribers’ area.
In this month’s issue the Cover Story is about landing pages, what they are, how to use targeted landing pages, and how to write really great landing pages. I’m also running a Special Feature about putting website counters on websites… should you have a counter on your homepage?
In addition, we’ll talk about the difference between reporting and being an expert on your blog, continue our series on tips to increase your conversion rates, and discuss why you should be gearing up for the holidays now.
All in all, it’s a pretty full issue, so I hope you’ll take the time to subscribe to receive your copy now at:
http://imarketingwatch.com/answers/
Humongous Newsletter Mistakes
Newsletters and ezines are a fantastic way to follow up with your target audience and keep your business on the tip of their tongue… so to speak.
Marketing a business with email newsletters can benefit your business because the people who sign up for your newsletter want to hear your message, they are already familiar with your products and services, and you can build a lot of rapport with your target audience through a newsletter. In addition, a well-written newsletter provides you with a tremendous amount of credibility. It puts them in a warm, ready to buy, frame of mind.
Most important of all, however, is that newsletters and ezines can create the additional benefit of generating revenue for your business, provided that you don’t practice any of these humongous newsletter mistakes!
Avoiding The 3 Biggest Pitfalls of Online Advertising
You’ve spent the time, energy and money to create a great website.
You may even be offering a gift to help you build a list.
But there’s one problem … NO ONE is visiting your website.
It’s tough to build a list and get clients when no one is visiting, isn’t it?!
Website optimization can be expensive
Paying someone to optimize your website can be very expensive. And doing it on your own can be a hit-or-miss endeavor.
Free online marketing techniques
Marketing techniques such as writing and posting articles, press releases, or posting comments on blogs and forums are all great ways to drive traffic, but they can be time consuming and can take awhile before they really start driving significant traffic to your website.
Pay-per-click advertising
Google Adwords on the other hand are a great way to instantly drive traffic to your website. In fact, you can write an ad and have it on page one of the search results for your primary keywords in less than 15 minutes.
Just in case you’re not familiar with Google Adwords, they are the paid ads or sponsored listings that show up at the top and right-hand-side of every Google search results page. These ads are called “pay-per-click” ads because while your ad may show many times on the page, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad and goes to your website.
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