Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

The Power of Pay Per Click

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This is a guest post from Mike Seddon, co founder of the website promotion specialist KKSmarts.

Pay per click advertising has revolutionised the advertising landscape. Never before has there been an advertising medium that allowed you to advertise specifically to your target audience and measure accurately the results of that advertising.

It’s for these reasons alone that any business should seriously consider using pay per click as part of its marketing mix. However many businesses fail to grasp this opportunity properly.

The other compelling reason for using pay per click is that services like Google Adwords will actually allow small business to compete successfully alongside the big companies with deep advertising pockets. This is because Google rewards advertising that is relevant rather than just selling advertising space to the companies prepared to pay more.

Before I explain all this in more detail, let’s just first make sure we all understand what we mean by pay per click.

I’m sure you’ve all seen those adverts down the left hand side of your search results in Google. Those advertisers have bid in an auction to appear on that page whenever the search phrase you used was entered into Google. They will only pay if you click on their advert. They don’t pay anything just to appear. Hence the name pay per click.

Can you imagine paying for newspaper adverts in the basis that you only paid them for each person that was to contact you? There is no way the newspapers could offer that type of service. They simply can’t measure how people react to adverts. This is one of the great benefits of pay per click. You only pay when your advertising successfully brings in potential customers.

Also because you pick the words (called keywords) that you want your adverts to appear for, then you can effectively control who sees your adverts. By carefully choosing keywords you can ensure your adverts are only seen by people who are looking to buy your products.

Imagine the newspaper example again. Do you think newspapers could sell adverting based on only charging you for the newspapers that are read by the people who are specifically looking to buy your product? Not likely. Of course newspapers do have demographics they appeal to and that does give you some targeting for your advertising but it’s not as precisely targeted as pay per click can be.

So already you can see how pay per click makes a lot of sense.

However, what about my point that services like Google Adwords allows you to compete successfully with the big companies? The reason this is so is because they reward advertisers who deliver adverts that meet the needs of the people searching on Google. They assign a quality score for your keywords and your adverts. This quality score is used to decide the minimum bid you need to pay for your advert to appear and it also decides how high up the page you appear.

So by tailoring your adverts to closely match your keywords you can achieve a good quality score. If your advert then gets more clicks than the average expected for that keyword then Google rewards you by increasing your quality score. Thus you pay even less for your clicks.

The big companies rarely understand this and they just pay high bid prices. They also tend to bid on practically every keyword that can find and they use the same advert for all these keywords. Savvy internet advertisers can beat them every time.

So I urge you to embrace the power of pay per click.

Mike Seddon is co founder of the website promotion specialist KKSmarts. You can find out more about pay per click on their website. In particular they have lots of free guides on how to get the best out of Google Adwords.

How Personal Should You Be?

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How much personal information should you share with customers and the world? That question has become more important than ever with the proliferation of social media sites and a tendency to overshare when it comes to things that traditionally were kept private.

If you are willing to give customers a peek into your “real life” it can help to build relationships with them. The trick is figuring out how much to tell and how much to keep private. Telling too much can make you appear unprofessional and damage your reputation. And too much personal information will turn off people who are following you or reading your blog to learn about your expertise.

One way to manage this is to have separate business and personal accounts. That can be difficult to manage (How do you make sure that business contacts are in the business account and family and friends are in the personal account?) but keeping things separate can be a good choice.

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Little Known Tip for Building Facebook Fans

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This is a guest post from Ann Baker, CEO of Publicity Pros.

You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.  It’s an age-old attention grabber that goes back to childhood days.  Apply it to your Facebook business page, and you’ll build Likers in rapid order.

Here’s the concept:  When a visitor comes to your Facebook page (more on how to make that happen in a minute), you lure him to a special tab you’ve created – one that offers something of interest or value that your visitor will want.  The trick is, you don’t just give the item to the visitor straight out – you show a screen that offers to show or deliver the item when the visitor clicks ‘Like’ for the page.  The offer could be for something like a tip, access to an article or video, a coupon code, or simply placing a vote for something fun – like a thumbs up or down on a recent event.

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5 Step Google Places Page Optimization

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NOTE: An updated version of this post is available: 3 Steps to Claim and Optimize Google Places for Business Page

This post is from Lauren Bradley of Boston SEO Services.

If you haven’t noticed, Google drastically changed its local search results late in 2010. Prior to the change, when a user would type in “Plumber St. Louis” the results would show 7 listings at the top next to a map.

After the change, the local search results take up the entire first page (for most searches) pushing organic listings way far down.

This change is powerful for small business owners. If you simply type in “shoes” to Google, it will most likely return shoe stores closest to your current location.

Google has made it pretty simple for small business owners to set up and optimize their Google Places pages. These are the pages that help to determine local search rankings. Many local business owners do not want to mess around with setting up and optimizing their Google Places page because 1. they don’t know where to start or 2. don’t have time to set it up.

I have simplified the process as much as possible for these reasons. If you do anything to help build your online presence, complete the following five steps.

Step One: Verify and Claim your Google Places page
Verifying your Places page as the owner of the business is important if you are at all concerned about controlling information about your company that is on the internet. As a verified owner, you can edit and add information to your Places page as you wish.

Verifying it is simple, after finding your Google Places page, there is a link in the top right corner that will either say “Owner verified” or “Business owner?” After clicking on that, you will be walked through the process of claiming your Places page.

Step Two: Consistent NAP
Maintaining a consistent NAP (Name, Address and Phone number) on your Google Places page and across the internet plays a strong role in rankings. Everything on your Places page from the name of your company to the suite of your office needs to be consistent with your website. Saying Suite 210 on one place and then #210 on another is inconsistent. This seems minor, but does play a role.

Step Three: Keyword Optimized Categories
This seems intuitive, however the number of business owners who list their categories incorrectly is a little shocking. If you have already done some keyword research for your company, this is where those words come into play. If you haven’t, you should have a decent understanding of your products, services and how your prospects might be searching for you.

Use those keywords when filling out your categories. As you type in words, Google will make phrase suggestions for you to choose from. I would recommend picking at least two Google suggested phrases of your five categories. It is important to also fill out all 5 categories.

Step Four: Natural & Complete Description
Completing your description is something you should put a few minutes of thought into. If you sell pastries, put a little more thought into your description than just, “Your neighbor pastry shop.”

What’s unique about you? Do you do something different than others?

Google gives you this opportunity to talk yourself up to your prospects. So do it. Don’t stuff it with keywords. This about writing to impress the reader and not the search engine.

Step 5: Collecting Honest & Legitimate Reviews
Word of mouth advertising is the most profitable, powerful and persuasive marketing tactic. Google has set up a review system that allows your current clients to talk about you and your services. Not only does this give your prospects more information about your offerings and personality but Google also uses this as a “voting” system when determining rankings.

Keep in mind that you are not wanting to scam the system or seem at all spammy. It is important to collect legitimate and honest reviews from your clients.

Using an Email Signature

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One of the most effective Internet marketing secrets is also one of the easiest–and it’s free!

Do your emails include a signature file? A signature file is a standard block of text you include in each of your outgoing email messages and postings to forums.

Most email systems (including Gmail, Outlook and others) allow you to create a signature file which will automatically appear at the end of every message you send. Search the “Help” function in your email program to learn how to do this.

Your email signature may include your name, tagline or slogan, URL and other contact information, such as your telephone number, links to social media profiles or IM and Skype IDs.

To make your signature most effective, include a call to action. Your call to action may drive people to your website to sign up for your newsletter or download a free report. Or you may ask people to follow you on Twitter or call you for a free consultation. Or include a link to your sales page where they can buy your flagship product.

It is best to keep your signature file to no more than 7 lines. You can’t tell your whole life story, just give the basics of who you are, how to contact you and why they may want to contact you.

Keep it simple. Don’t use HTML in your signature. Many mail programs won’t read it properly, and recipients will see a jumbled mess of codes instead of your beautifully formatted message.

Do put any URLs in your message in this format: http://www.IdeaLady.com/. Most email programs will read the URL as a hotlink, making it easy for readers to click through to your site. You can also make your email address a hotlink by entering it as mailto:email@example.com. 

This is a strategy you can implement today. It’s easy, it’s free and it really works. Many of my customers originally found me through my signature file. How many customers will find you with yours?