Category: Grow a Home Business

    Real-Time Search Strategies

    When you decide to implement a real-time marketing strategy, it’s important to understand how search plays into your efforts. Not only will you need to conduct searches to find out what is happening within your community, but your customers will conduct searches as well. As you conduct real-time marketing, you will want your audience to find the information and content that you push out.

    * Boost Your Facebook Posts – When you are using real-time marketing strategies, it’s important that you spend money to advance your real-time strategy. Since it is real time you don’t have the luxury of waiting for the information to gain momentum. Instead, spend the money to promote the post.

    * Pay for Ads on Google – Promote your real-time answers, products and services with Google so that the most audience members will see the information as quickly as possible. Using paid Google Ads and buying the right keywords, or displaying ads that will display where your audience goes, will make it that much more likely your efforts are noticed.

    * Use Popular Hashtags – When an event occurs, a hashtag is often developed. If you can relate your post to the hashtag, you’re more likely to get seen by those who are following that particular news when they search for information based on that hashtag.

    * Plan in Advance – This might seem contrary to the idea of real-time marketing but the truth is you can make an outline of actions to take in advance. Additionally you can plan in advance which products that you might push out based on various information that comes to light during the real-time marketing push.

    * Develop Guidelines – It’s important that guidelines are created based on knowledge of your products, services and audience so that nothing is pushed out that contradicts these values due to the real-time effort.

    * Monitor Customer Sentiment – One way to use search is to monitor real-time customer sentiment. Use social media like Twitter to search for keywords that relate to your products, service, industry or company to help.

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    – When you have sent out a real-time marketing message on social media, why not add the same information to an email newsletter blast, a blog post, or other areas so that you show up more in search.

    Real-time marketing is an important way to get to know your audience better, help them to get to know your business better, and to ensure that your values match. The more effort you spend on real-time marketing, the better all your online marketing collateral will work for you. Your website, blog, social media, groups, and communities will reflect the effort that you put into real-time marketing.

    Categories: Marketing, online advertising Tags: Tags:

    Get the Most from Search Engine Traffic

    Search engine optimization is an important component in online marketing. It uses techniques to ensure that your website or blog receives as much traffic as possible from all the search engines. But, you don’t really want all the traffic; you just want the traffic that is right for your website. You want targeted traffic that wants what you have to offer. This is the way you make the most of search engine traffic.

    To get started making the most of search engine traffic, do the easiest things first.

    Check Your Site for Broken Links

    Do you have broken links on your page that you haven’t fixed? This can happen easily for many reasons. However, the reasons don’t matter as much as making sure that you fix the broken links. You can use a broken link checker to check for links regularly on your website. When you find links that don’t work, fix them right away.

    Link – http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/

    Optimize Your 404 Error Pages

    You can personalize a 404 error page to take advantage of your audience members accidentally going to the wrong page or a link you didn’t catch that’s broken. There are many ways you can personalize and optimize a 404 error page; how you do it will depend on the voice you want to project on your website or blog.

    Update Keywords

    Over time keywords change due to the audience changing or society changing. Words today may mean something else later. Taking time to study keywords and making a long list of all variations of keywords can also help you think of new content to create for your audience.

    Use Keywords in Headlines and Titles

    When you have studied the right keywords, you can use them as titles, headlines and sub-headlines on your website and blog posts. Don’t try to be tricky in your titles at all; instead use all words correctly and accurately.

    Remember Benefits over Features

    Your audience cares more about what’s in it for them than about what’s in it for you if you answer the CTAs. Find ways to get through to your audience about all the benefits of your offerings and what you can do for them.

    Get Links from Authority Sites

    The days of getting any links into your site are over, but getting links from authority sites is always important and will always be in. If you can get links from .edu sites, that’s even better. A way to accomplish this is to create your own courses that are high value enough that an education site may take notice.

    Link to Authority Sites

    A great way to get noticed by others, including search engines, is to link out to other sites that have authority. Content curation is a great way to create valid links out from your website to authority websites. Include a blurb of your own for each item you link to so that your opinion and thoughts are added to the information you share.

    Keep Content Updated

    Content of all forms is important to put on your website and blog. Use text content in the form of blog posts, audio, video, long form, short form, white papers and more on your blog and website to get the most from search engine traffic.

    Finally, use the right meta information such as “alt” tags on images, tags on posts, and so forth. Try using a plugin like SEO by Yoast if you use WordPress to build your site, to help you get the most from search engine traffic.

    Categories: Traffic Tags: Tags: ,

    Use the Tools Facebook Offers

    Using the tools that are already offered in Facebook is important because they are really great. They are set up to help make it as easy as possible for you to market your business online. They are pretty much foolproof because they are made for Facebook.

    * Blueprint – You can learn straight from Facebook what works best for marketing your business on their platform. You can learn new skills, study fast or slow depending on how you want to do it, and you can access your courses from anyplace. On a side note, if you want to offer services for your clients on Facebook, getting these skills is in demand.

    Link to Blueprint – https://www.facebook.com/blueprint?_rdr

    * Learn How – If you really want to get to the next level of learning how to succeed with Facebook on Facebook’s platform, learn how to make the most of your Facebook page, how Facebook ads work, how to measure results, and exactly how to create ads that target your audience.

    Link to Learn How – https://www.facebook.com/business/learn

    * Free Analytics Apps – Using the analytics that Facebook offers is important because it gives you the real insights that you need in order to know whether or not your efforts are working on Facebook or not. You can measure views, clicks, sales and more.

    * Use the Power Editor – Facebook has an advertisement editor so you don’t need to use any outside sources to create your ads that get results. Its Power Editor allows you to manage your ads easily. You do need to use Chrome to use the power editor but it’s simple to use and set up.

    Link to Power Editor – https://www.facebook.com/help/194355723944655/

    * Facebook Segmenting Tools – Facebook allows you to look at different groups of people according to their demographics and other segmentation modes. You can market directly to people who are on specific platforms, and even in particular states or in certain groups on Facebook.

    * Create Funnels – When you use Facebook to create a funnel, you can see how people move through your funnel and become customers. It will give you enormous insights into what your customers are doing once they enter your funnel.

    * Business Pages – Facebook allows you to create a business page for free. Once you create your business page, you’ll have new tools opened to you to help you promote it. You can create a call to action, put your newsletter sign-up on there, and more.

    * Communities – Using communities to market your business is a great way to use Facebook for marketing. You can not only communicate in a new way with your customers, but you can also promote the posts and more in the communities.

    Facebook is a wonderful platform to use to promote your business – whether it’s a bricks and mortar business or a digital business. It doesn’t matter because you can use it to market internationally or hyper locally when you use the tools they make available to businesses.

    Categories: Facebook, online advertising Tags: Tags:

    Using a PPC Campaign to Build Your Lists Fast

    One of the best ways to use a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, especially when you’re first starting out, is to build your email list. An email list is an essential element in online marketing today. They say the money is in the list, and “they” aren’t making that up. If you have an active, responsive email list, you can essentially give yourself a raise whenever you want.

    Find the Right Keywords

    There are lots of ways to find keywords so that you can promote your email lists. But one way is still the best and that’s using Google’s Keyword Planner. You’ll have to create an account and sign in to use the tools available, but they are very worth it. Use this tool to help you discover keywords that are already working on your website by plugging in your URL, or by checking the competition level of other keyword ideas.

    Determine What You’ll Offer

    You want to offer something to your audience in exchange for their email address. It might be a free report, an excerpt from your book, or something else entirely – but it should be valuable only to your ideal audience and have a perceived value that is far above the free price tag you’ve attached to it.

    Get Excitement Going

    You can blog about your list-building efforts without being too advertorial. Just talk about how excited you are to get people on your list so that you can offer them even more exciting information and stuff to make their life easier. Solve their problems, and you’ll win their information.

    Develop Your Squeeze Pages

    When someone clicks through to get the free offer and sees your squeeze page, they should be ready to jump on board quickly. Focus on the headline and the benefits of joining your list and the freebie to your audience. The squeeze page should say it all. Avoid the temptation to offer other things to your lead via the squeeze page. Remember, once they’re on your list you can offer other things later. Keep it simple right now.

    Link Everything Together

    You want to provide as much social proof as you can. If you can, link together your squeeze page, your advertisements and more with social media and the great comments others are saying about your offerings. You can even use specialized technology that asks your signer to share that they just signed up with others on their social networks.

    Provide Excellent Value

    If you truly want people to sign up for your lists, and stay signed up, offer incredible value in exchange for their email address. Stick to what you say you’ll do for them and focus on the value you provide to them. They’ll brag and you’ll build your list even more.

    You can build your list using PPC if you start out with the right attitude. Provide excellent value, and then stick by your word to provide the best content and updates and information that you can to your audience.

    Categories: online advertising Tags: Tags:

    Using Facebook Ads Effectively

    Facebook is a wonderful tool to use when marketing your business, products and/or services. They make it really easy for anyone to do it, whether a large corporation or a small home business. You can run Facebook Ads effectively by setting a goal, and then taking the steps necessary to reach that goal. Test what you are doing, and check in on how everything you’re doing is working.

    * Build Your Email List – Using Facebook to build your email list is very effective because they make it easy with the ability to add tabs and a call to action to get people to sign up for your list. Plus you can put up a nice banner that points people to the CTA.

    * Get More Page Likes – Using Facebook Ads to get more likes for your business pages or to promote your communities is a great way to increase engagement. Make the ad truly relevant to your audience and you’ll get a better response.

    * Segment Your Audience – You have a large audience, but you also have smaller subset audiences that you can use to narrow down who you’re targeting from your audience. It makes writing copy easier if you have a small segment to think of as you develop ads.

    * Target Interest Groups – Facebook makes it easy to target people based on many demographics, including interest. This is wonderful way to target specific groups that will be interested in what you’re offering.

    * Sell Your Product Directly – Using Facebook to sell your products and or services directly is a great way to use Facebook Ads; however, you want to ensure that they still sign up for your list.

    * Use CPM Instead of PPC – PPC means pay per click, and CPM means cost per thousand and is measured in views. Facebook has a good system that when using CPM it will do what works best and gets the most bang for your buck.

    * Include Pictures That Are Relevant – You want pictures that draw attention to your advertisement to your audience. Know what they like and choose those pictures, because you don’t want to do anything that turns them off.

    * Promote Your Posts – When you write a good post and share it on your Facebook page, it’s important to promote it so that more people see it. Paying to promote posts will ensure that more people see it, and you’ll get more engagement. Be sure to ask for a CTA.

    The important thing is to have a goal before you start so that you know that you’re being effective with the actions that you take. Without a goal you have no idea whether what you’re doing is successful.

    Categories: online advertising Tags: Tags:

    Using PPC to Build Your List

    It’s a well-known fact that email marketing is number one when it comes to conversions. If you’re not actively building your list, then you’re leaving money on the table. In fact, you should always be building your email list. Always.

    The way to do that using PPC is to follow the steps below.

    * Create Link Bait – EBooks, eCourses, video courses, checklists, PowerPoint slides, an app, a template or something like that will make great link bait. Ensure that it’s something only your audience will want, to discourage freebie seekers. It needs to be valuable to your audience, something that will wow them and excite them about what else you have to offer enough that they’re willing to exchange their email address for it.

    * Create an Autoresponder Series – Get the autoresponder set up with preloaded information that will market your other products directed toward the target audience who you made the free item for. Always remember who is reading your content.

    * Craft anRun the Campaign Optimized Landing Page – Using software like LeadPages.net (which works with your email marketing software like AWeber.com) to create a landing page that encourages them to easily sign up for your free item. Don’t distract your viewers from the goal by giving them more options than signing up for your email list.

    * Set up Your PPC Account – Whether it’s Google AdSense, Bing or Facebook ads, set up your account so that you are ready to get started. If you use AdSense or Bing it may take longer to set up than Facebook does, so be prepared for that. For the point of marketing your freebie and getting email addresses for your list use one keyword phrase, at a time directed toward a small portion of your audience.

    * Run the Campaign – Once you have everything set up, run the campaign within your budget. Check daily to ensure you’re reaching your goals. Readjust as needed. Ideally, you should be able to run this campaign indefinitely; only change it when the material you created is out of date.

    * Collect the Email Addresses – The landing page and the freebie do the work for you, but once you have the email addresses you must immediately start marketing to them. The autoresponder series is supposed to follow up after they had a chance to use the free item, and then start educating and recommending other items to them.

    * Keep Them Interested – Cross-promote people on your list to your social media accounts. Remind them about your blog posts; tell them about your interviews, webinars, and other events going on that will be of interest to them.

    * Repeat – Do this same thing for every email list that you want to build. As long as you are attracting targeted list members and those members are converting to buyers, you can keep the campaigns going.

    Email lists are an integral part of every business today. Whether you’re online or offline, a big business or small business, email marketing is important to take part in. Start with building your email list using PPC.

    Categories: Email Subscribers, online advertising Tags: Tags:

    Using the Right Keywords for your PPC Campaign

    When you run a PPC campaign, choosing the right keywords is an important part of having a successful campaign. There are many places you can waste money, and one is over-bidding on the wrong keywords. Therefore, it’s important to understand what type of keywords you need to bid on and why.

    Don’t Use Broad Match Keywords

    Since broad match keywords are the default, most people make the mistake of bidding on them. A broad match means that if you want to bid on a keyword like snowflake, if someone types in “snow” then it will assume “flake,” or if someone types in “flake” it will assume “snow.” This isn’t the way you want your searches to work, especially when you are working on a low budget.

    Use Exact Match Type Keywords

    This is especially important when you are trying to build your email list. The exact match type keywords are the best ones to use because this means you’re sure of your keywords and keyword phrases, as well as your audience and what words they’ll choose.

    Choose Fewer Keywords per Campaign

    Instead of bidding on many keywords and keyword phrases, choose one to three phrases per campaign. This is the best way to ensure that the right people find your products at the right time. You’ll need to do a lot of research to determine what these keywords are, but it will work best if you do it this way. In an email campaign, consider using only one keyword phrase.

    Find the Right Keywords

    Use a keyword tool such as Google Keyword Planner or Keyword Tool, which is a good alternative to Google Keyword Planner. Once you’ve chosen your niche, you can start finding the best keywords to market your products. You want to find keywords that are low competition and high demand. This means people are searching for them, and there isn’t a lot of supply. These keywords will be your most lucrative yet less expensive.

    Links:
    Google Keyword Planner – https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner
    Keyword Tool – http://keywordtool.io/

    Test Your Keywords

    Try out the keywords to see if they work. Run a test campaign to see if your targeted audience clicks the ads, joins your email list and buys your product. If all those things don’t happen, then you should choose a different keyword. You want keywords to attract the right people at the right time.

    Keywords are an essential element in your marketing efforts, most especially pay-per-click marketing. However, it’s also important, vital really, to remember that you are creating content and products for people. The people who are your target audience have desires, needs, hopes and dreams and problems that you need to solve. Never forget that.

    Categories: online advertising Tags: Tags:

    Ad Extensions: What Are They and How Can You Use Them?

    When you place a pay per click (PPC) advertisement, there are many ways to enhance your advertisement so that it works harder to produce the results you desire. One of these ways is to use ad extensions. Essentially, an ad extension is special format for advertisements online that help extra information show on a search result.

    Not all ad extensions show, even if you’ve enabled them or added them. Many factors, such as how high your advertisement shows up on the search engine, will affect whether the algorithm determines that extra is needed for the consumer to make a good choice. Your ad will be compared to another ad, and as you learn more you can improve the likelihood of extensions showing for your ads.

    There are several extensions that you can use, such as:

    * Social Extensions – This extension is an automatic extension that you can include just because you have a Google+ account or other social account that you list.

    * Location Extension – This is a special extension that you have to set up with Google Business and go through a bit of proving that your business is real.

    * Seller or Consumer Ratings – An automatic extension that will appear if you fill out the information and someone has made a rating or written a review about your business.

    * Call Extension – A manual extension that you can add if you want people to have the ability to click to call you from the search result.

    * Sitelinks – Another manual choice that allows you to add the link to your site. Those who see the search results for your site can click on it.

    * Callout Extensions – This extension allows you to put extra information and descriptive text for the searcher to help them make a choice of what to click on.

    * Previous Visits – This is an automatic extension that shows the searcher whether or not they’ve clicked through this particular site before.

    There are many other extensions and more being created all the time that you can add to your PPC ads. Using ad extensions offers increased visibility for your business as well as helps make it easier for a customer searching for your business to find what they want. By providing as much information as possible, you allow searchers to determine if your link is right for them before they click through.

    Most extensions don’t actually cost anything to add, but they do offer more opportunities for a person searching to click through. Plus, it requires a little more thought and time to put them together.

    Ads with extensions generally appear higher in search results, which causes them to be a lot more effective in producing the results that you want.

    Categories: online advertising Tags: Tags:

    Eight Ways to Market Online with PPC

    Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is a very popular form of online marketing. It consists of an ad that is delivered to various websites that have the ad code on it. You can run PPC ads via Google AdSense, Bing, Facebook and others. You simply create your ad according to the guidelines of the service you choose to use, pick your keywords, the price you want to pay and your budget, and you’re good to go.

    You can use PPC for a lot of marketing needs.

    1. Build Your Email List – One of the best ways to use PPC if you have a small budget and a low-cost product is to use it to build your email list. Create a free giveaway that you exchange for an email address. Ensure that the freebie is well crafted and so that it gives them a taste of the paid items you want to promote.

    2. Promote a Product – Using PPC to promote a product is a great way to get visitors to your website fast. Ensure that you also have a slide or pop-under that only comes up if someone does not purchase the item so that they can get on your newsletter.

    3. Promote a Service – You can also use PPC to promote a service. This works especially well if you offer a high-priced service. It’s imperative that you write very professional copy so that you attract the right visitors to this offer.

    4. Sell Affiliate Products – Even if you don’t have your own products, you can still use PPC to promote other people’s products. It’s especially worth it if it’s a high-converting product with a good payout. Be careful to follow the rules about which keywords you can and cannot bid on.

    5. Use Social Media PPC – Social media sites like Facebook also offer pay-per-click opportunities that are inexpensive and which you can use to promote all sorts of products and services. It’s important to check the rules and terms of service.

    6. Try Bing PPC – Bing offers a pay-per-click program too. You can learn how to start a Bing pay-per-click campaign by checking out their website. It’s the same concept in terms of paying for clicks through to your site.

    Link – http://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/create-campaign/topic?market=en&project=Bing_Ads&querytype=topic&query=HLP_BA_CONC_ADCENTER_FLOW.htm

    7. Use AdWords PPC – AdWords is arguably one of the most popular methods by which marketers use PPC. It’s easy to get started with AdWords as they have very few requirements other than that your website cannot be pornographic, spam or illegal.

    Link – https://www.google.com/adwords/

    8. Don’t Forget the Landing Pages – One of the most important aspects of your PPC campaign is your landing page / sales page / squeeze page – whatever you choose to call it. You can use software like LeadPages.net to ensure that yours works as hard as it can for you.

    Using pay-per-click marketing can be very lucrative, or very expensive. It’s important that you understand how everything works and develop a plan of action before getting started so that you don’t waste any money.

    Categories: online advertising Tags: Tags:

    Common PPC Campaign Mistakes to Avoid

    A pay-per-click (PPC) campaign can take your marketing to the next level. You can run PPC campaigns on social media networks like Facebook or on search engines like Google. Even some popular websites offer the ability for you to place PPC ads on them. But, if you want to be successful then you must try to avoid these mistakes.

    * Not Having a Goal – Your first job when you want to run a PPC campaign is to understand your goal. Each marketing campaign that you conduct will have a different goal. Some are to bring traffic, some are to spread brand awareness, some are to build your email list – but whatever your goal, know in advance what it is.

    * Not Making a Special Campaign for Each Channel – Don’t recycle an old PPC campaign to another network. Each network is unique and should be treated as such. The mood, the size of the images, the guidelines for the type of ad that will be approved, are very different between networks.

    * Not Niching Down Your Offerings – When you run any type of PPC campaign, it’s important to have only one CTA. Know exactly what you’re offering and to whom, and convey that in the imagery and copy of your advertisement.

    * Not Having a Clear CTA – Your call to action must be noticeable and clear. You want it to denote an action that gives a clearly defined benefit to the person viewing the advertisement. If it’s not clear, people will not click.

    * Not Using an Appropriate Picture – Don’t just use any picture; be sure to use the right image for the right advertisement. You want your PPC campaign to speak to your audience using images that they understand and that mean something to them.

    * Not Considering the Headline – Your headlines when creating a PPC campaign are critical to the success of the ad. The reason is you have very little space when it comes to PPC campaigns and you want every word to mean something and add value.

    * Not Targeting Narrowly Enough – Many people run ads and think they want to cast a wide net, but this can be far more expensive and lower your conversion rates. You want only people who really need, want and desire your offering to click through.

    * Not Setting a Budget – You need to know what you plan to spend before even getting started. Most platforms allow you to set your budget on a daily basis, or even a total allotment for the entire campaign. By setting the budget you’ll end up saving money in the long run.

    If you avoid these common PPC campaign mistakes, you’ll be a lot more successful with all your PPC campaigns. Avoiding mistakes in all aspects is not possible, but avoiding common mistakes is. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel when it comes to marketing. People with deep pockets have already done the work for you; all you have to do is set up a campaign for success by learning from others.

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