I’ve heard some respected people in the industry quote stats like “only 2% of YouTube videos ever go viral.”  Granted, it’s a bit absurd to try and quantify what percentage of videos go viral when the very definition of something having “gone viral” is open to wide interpretation and debate.  How many views make a video viral… is it 100,000? A million? How fast do those views have to come to count as viral? You can see how difficult it gets to quantify. But I think we can all agree that very few videos go viral as hoped.

I think it might help to examine some viral video successes and attempt to break them down, check out what makes them different, and define what it was that made them work.

1. The Accident  - AKA: Oops, You’re Famous

Summary: Probably the most common type of viral video is the accidental viral video. These are shot by non professionals, usually just a single user, and are uploaded without the faintest hope or inkling of mega popularity. These are often uploaded for friends and family, but unexpectedly take on a life of their own.

Examples: Chocolate Rain, or the JK Wedding Dance.

Chance of Success: Virtually nonexistent. Since viewers are the ones who cause Accident Viral Videos to exist, they are impossible to predict.  Creators of these Accident videos are often quite surprised to see their little creation hit a million views or to get invites to a national talk show. By definition, you can’t plan for this to happen.

2. The Imitation - AKA: Anything You Can Do I Can Do Worse

Summary: What happens when Big Business takes notice of an Accident viral video (or any other viral video success for that matter)? They try to recreate it, naturally. You can also call this “The Hollywood”, since major film studios have been riding film trends with countless rip-offs for years—after coming out of the Disaster Movie era a few years back, we are now firmly entrenched in the Snarky Animation era (thank you Shrek) and the Torture Horror era (thank you Saw). It works like this: See something successful, then recreate it as closely as possible, removing only the most obvious copy-cat elements. Like making photocopies of photocopies… the enjoyment and interest in the video wanes exponentially with each passing generation of rip-offs.

Examples: Dr. Pepper hiring the Chocolate Rain guy to sing about Cherry Chocolate Rain, or the JK Divorce Dance video.

Chances of Success: Moderate. Ripoff, Spoof, and Copycat videos are never as popular as their inspiration. They benefit initially by piggy-backing off the fame and popularity of the original, but that soon wanes. A huge section of the video-watching population sees them for what they are… rip-offs… copies of an original that is much more… well, original.

3. The Embarrassment - AKA: Kill Me Now

Summary: Something embarrassing happens to someone, and said embarrassment is caught on film. Uh oh.  This is one of the most popular kinds of videos… it’s the “you’ll never believe what this idiot just did” phenomenon.  It’s very difficult for major brands to have success with this kind of viral video, as most brands aren’t interested in embarrassing themselves.  Yet you have the recent Jim Brewer Goes Off On Film Crew video that, to me, has to be fake and manufactured.  And in that example, it’s the hired actor “embarrassing” himself, not the brand.

Examples: Star Wars Kid, Boom Goes the Dynamite, Miss South Carolina

Chances of Success: Higher than normal if real, far less likely if staged.

4. The Special Effects - AKA: Is That Real?

Summary: A popular trend in viral video is the subtle use of special effects to make an unbelievable event slightly more believable. Because the quality of video on YouTube is generally lower than what you get at your local movie theater (and because the screen size is so much smaller), special effects are slightly harder to gauge for the average viewer. With just the right touch of CGI, you can make something fantastic appear real.

Examples: Kobe Jumping Over A Car, Microsoft’s MegaWOOSH, NFL.com’s Fantasy Football Series

Chances of Success: High, particularly if you can score a celebrity like Kobe to star in your video (keep in mind… “high probability” on this scale is still a long-shot). All that’s required is enough believability to cause a portion of the audience to wonder if it’s real. Once you have a few of them believing it, they’ll start the viral process for you, sending out links to the video to all their friends. Even something so obviously fake as the Microsoft Slide video still convinced enough people to go viral—even prompting Microsoft to eventually admit it was faked.

5. The WTF - AKA: What Did I Just Watch?!

Summary: Sometimes a video goes viral simply because viewers aren’t sure what they’re looking at. Sometimes unexplained imagery captivates an audience in a way that standard videos cannot.

Examples: Cadbury’s Gorilla, Sony Bravia Bouncing Balls

Chances of Success: Low. Hitting on a “what the heck is that?” video is an extremely inexact science. If you’d have told me two years ago that Cadbury’s was about to release a viral video of a gorilla playing drums along to Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” and that it would get millions of views, I’d have told you that you were insane. Predicting what people will like is hard enough when you’re staying comfortably in the box. Stray outside that box into the strange and bizarre, and your odds go down even further.  The payoff, though, can be huge.

6. The Shill - AKA: Obviously Corporate Advertising

Summary: You might think I’m about to bash or slam these videos.  But I’m not.  If a company can find a way to highlight a product or service in a manner that is still entertaining to viewers, you have what we call a “win/win” scenario.  What might initially look like a television commercial can—with the right dash of humor and personality—become a web sensation.  Users want to be entertained, first and foremost.  If it happens to be an advertisement, so be it… as long as it makes us laugh (or smile, or cry, or whatever).

Examples: Will It Blend, Awareness Test

Chances of Success: Among the highest on this list. People have inherent trust in certain brands, and at the end of the day, most of the viewing public just wants to be entertained. If you can do that while being completely transparent in your attempts to advertise, then you can save time and money on the front end and have maximum impact on the back end.

Look at Subservient Chicken (no, not a video, but a good example nonetheless). Most of the folks I knew who were forwarding that around in 2001 or whenever it was were not the least bit concerned that it was a clear and obvious Burger King commercial. All they cared about was that you could control what the chicken does! In the end, Burger King’s stock went up a few notches in the eyes of the users because they provided something fun and entertaining.

7. The Blair Witch - AKA: Those  Faking Fakers

Summary: Not to be confused with The Special Effects (though they are similar), The Blair Witch viral video is one where everything is staged.  Big companies are so desperate for their own slice of viral video history that they’re often willing to try faking it.  Hire some actors, give them a script, and then pay them to pretend they aren’t actors.  It’s a lot harder to do right than you might think.  Forget for a second that the average YouTube viewer is already trained to cry “fake” at the first sign of something out of the ordinary. It’s actually incredibly hard to artificially manufacture authenticity.

Examples: LonelyGirl15, the Disneyland “Spontaneous” Wedding Proposal from earlier this summer (that is so obviously and totally fake).

Chances of Success: Pretty slim. Lonely Girl kind of killed it for the rest of us. The YouTube series turned us all into cynical skeptics.

So, which variety of viral video should businesses shoot for? Well, most businesses aren’t out to embarrass themselves, so we can scratch that one.  The Accident videos are, by definition, not something you can intentionally create, so that’s out too.  The Imitation is a short term solution, destined to have a ceiling for success, but I still have clients that choose that option.

The Special Effects videos almost always require a bit of budget, particularly if you’re going to use a recognizable figure.  To fake an amazing feat, even if you eschew CGI, there are tons of hidden costs in planning, setup, and execution.

The WTF is probably the riskiest venture, because you spend money on producing an ad that has no assurance of even being understood, let alone enjoyed.   I’m sure there was more than one raised eyebrow in the room when Sony was pitched on the Bouncing Ball concept. Most of my clients are not interested in being video concept trailblazers, at least not in this economy.

And the Blair Witch is nearly as risky as the WTF. First, it’s tough to find actors who are good enough to pull off the fake but are also not recognizable enough for people to instantly remember them from some White Castle commercial. But it’s also risky because of the possibility of getting caught in the fakery. Once viewers know something is fake, you may still get views… but your branding efforts are completely undone.

If you’re just dipping your toe in the water of viral videos for the first time, or if you are a small business… the best approach is to simply find a creative, lighthearted way to highlight who you are and what you do.

Mission post with thanks from the geniuses at www.reelseo.com

The amount of leverage that this gives to even a small home business entrepreneur to brainstorm and act upon big ideas, simply can’t be over-estimated.  The ability to put those ideas into the homes of literally millions worldwide is what it truly amounts to.  That’s the sort of power that was previously only available to large corporations.  But not any more.

Already successful but traditional entrepreneurs can look forward to their ideas creating even bigger pay days by utilising the internet.  Now they can have a voice and sell their products in places that were simply out of reach previously.  No other business medium has had the impact or afforded such opportunity before.

But thats only the beginning.  Slick entrepreneurs know that they can test their ideas whilst cutting their advertising and promotional costs down to virtually zero.  Saying that, they can still reach a bigger target market than ever before.  That market is still growing and is still very sustainable.

In real-life terms, that means that no matter what an entrepreneur is selling - digital or physical products – if its a good idea, it can literally make a fortune in a very short period of time.

Plus there’s so many ways to promote and advertise and a lot of them are free, certainly nearly all are very inexpensive.  So a clever entrepreneur can promote a new idea using free advertising methods and then re-invest the profits to promote a good idea further and generate even more sales and bigger pay days.

If you’re thinking of entering the world of entrepreneur business then just one good idea could truly change your life overnight.  Really, thats not cloud cuckoo-land.  Naturally you need to hit upon the right idea but even small ideas can lead to bigger things, and sometimes, even the daftest idea can be what makes it big.   So for entrepreneurs full of big ideas the world wide web truly is their oyster and there’s a very big pearl in the middle of it.   I advise you all to think hard and reach out for it.

Upon closer inspection, Zeriouz seems to be a network for web owners to register on a scheme to promote other zeriouz partners plus adding a link for people to register their own site, through yours.  If successful, those that sign up for it (100% free), will have your link on their site as a referral to promote your site and obtain a backlink of that page.

There’s not much across the web as to whether it actually works, but the theory is there.  Much in the way Network Marketing works,  Zeriouz offers a hierarchial system not to be confused with ‘pyramids’, but more like a ‘downline’.  That is to say, that if someone uses your referral to get signed up, your link will appear in the 5 zeriouz partners on the bottom of their page.

In theory, this should work and is totally ‘White hat SEO’ as you are not spamming sites, nor are you joining some link farm – which most SEO’s know, is frowned on by Google and other Search Engines.  Each referral is subject to people checking your page to ensure you are correctly promoting your site and that you have the links (unmodified) on your homepage.

Here’s what the owner of Zeriouz claims on his website:

There are too many people not understanding zeriouz (mainly because they don’t read the website, which I spent a lot of time and effort writing explanations and making videos for). It’s not everyone, but it’s the majority. I just want to let you know how to make the most of zeriouz, and if you listen to me you WILL create a lot of links and traffic! I am broadcasting this message to everyone who has added their URL to zeriouz (and also everyone that has viewed zeriouz and entered their details), so that you can make the most of the FREE and POWERFUL zeriouz system.

Some people have literally thousands of links from other people’s websites, pointing to their own “through zeriouz”. The difference between these people and the ones who have no links at all is a “little bit of promotion”. Just a LITTLE BIT!

See, zeriouz doesn’t do anything all by itself.  In order to get links on other people’s websites to your own, you must have them become a zeriouz partner. Each and every person that becomes a zeriouz partner through a referral URL) will add a link to YOUR WEBSITE on “their homepage”. To refer more partners, you have three options:

1). You can simply promote your own website. This is something you should already be doing if you’re trying to increase traffic. People will naturally see the zeriouz partner link (if they can see it ie: It’s not somewhere on the page where no one will look), and they will click “Add Your Link”. When they join zeriouz, your URL will be on their homepage.

2). Providing that you have the zeriouz code on the homepage of your website, you can (and really should) just promote your zeriouz referral URL further on your own website. That’s the URL in the “Add Your Link” code. To get the URL simply right click on it and copy the link. Then you can put that link in your signature on forums, or even make a link close to the top of your website saying: “Free Traffic”. If you have a forum or email lists, SEND IT TO THEM. Encourage people to become a zeriouz partner. The whole idea is to get people to zeriouz through your own referral URL! That’s what results in links and traffic!

3). You can directly send people to zeriouz (through your referral URL) on safelists, forums, solo ads – what ever! This is HIGHLY recommended. Some of you have the ABILITY to mass promote your zeriouz referral URL, yet you do not. You could be attracting thousands of links to YOUR WEBSITE. This means traffic!

See, some people are adding zeriouz code to a website that has “zero traffic”, or very close to zero traffic. They are not promoting their own website OR their zeriouz referral URL, and then they’re contacting me a month later and saying: “So where’s all the links?” — “HUH? WHERE’S ALL THE LINKS?”. zeriouz does NOT give you free traffic without you promoting anything. That is not how it works. You MUST promote your website and your zeriouz URL.

Yahoo is displaying over 91,000 of them but my records show that there’s close to 200,000 links. These are websites linking to zeriouz partners! If you don’t have any links out of those 200,000 – you didn’t promote your zeriouz referral URL. It’s that simple!

Zeriouz is SO easy to build referrals for, because it’s absolutely free and requires no registration. zeriouz is extremely powerful, extremely viral and is growing extremely fast — even with a small portion of the people actually taking the time to understand how it works and going out to promote their website and referral URL. Even the people who are putting in a meager effort are attracting a lot of links.

If EVERYONE promoted their referral URL, there would be over 2 million links by now – not 200,000. There WILL be 2 million links soon though, because I am currently spending close to ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS each month promoting zeriouz! I want everyone to benefit from that advertising. zeriouz gets LOT of traffic. That is why it’s also very good to be on the moderation list which only costs $7.00 (This WILL be going up to the tune of close to $100) per link once zeriouz has links in the millions, so take advantage of that now. All advertising money goes directly (100%) back into the promotion of zeriouz anyway! So it’s a great advertising offer!

I am just trying to reiterate and emphasize that if you promote your referral URL (even just ONE new referral per day), your links WILL increase and you WILL see a lot more traffic to your website. Over time, you will have attracted thousands of links and will have THOUSANDS of websites linking to yours.

Please understand what I am saying here. I am not trying to hype zeriouz up.  Zeriouz REALLY WORKS – but you have to do at least SOMETHING to get referrals. You can’t just add the code to your website — sit back and say: “So where’s all the traffic?”.

If you have understood this message, PLEASE contact me back and say: “Yes I understand” (and I spent some time on the website to understand everything). It will help me to get some sleep tonight

If you do NOT understand how zeriouz works, please contact me also! I will explain it to you personally! But first, PLEASE take a look at the website. There’s a LOT of information there — all about how everything works. Each time I reply to someone, I am almost always repeating “verbatim” what is in the zeriouz information center.

There are videos too. There are explanations everywhere. I highly recommend that if you are NOT receiving traffic from zeriouz and if you are NOT promoting your referral URL, please go back to zeriouz and spend a bit of time on the site to truly learn how it works — because if you do not understand — YOU ARE MISSING OUT! This is UTTERLY free (and powerful) advertising!”

===============================================

Now I’ve only started this and have no base for any results yet – but I’ll keep you all updated as to how successful this is as time goes on.

———\\ UPDATE //———

6 months of displaying the zeriouz links on my site, and not 1 link.   May try it again in the future, but for the meantime, I’m going to stick to creating my own backlinks the good old fashioned way.   

]]> http://www.theonemanmission.com/marketing/is-zeriouz-serious/feed/ 3 http://www.theonemanmission.com/marketing/online-v-offline-marketing/ http://www.theonemanmission.com/marketing/online-v-offline-marketing/#comments Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:37:37 +0000 Phil http://theonemanmission.com/?p=446

As future web entrepreneurs, we already know that online marketing and offline marketing are very different entities.  We all know that this goes without saying.  But there are some questions out there that have been roaming around my brain for quite some time so I figured I would address this very topic with you guys as well.   

First, let me start off by saying neither method is better than the other.  They both take different avenues to get certain things done within their businesses.  They achieve different things.  So this isn’t a “who is better than who” debate.  This explanation really just highlights some of the differences between the two.

As the general economy presents another series of poor numbers and the terrifying face of deflation threatens, mainstream advertisers are forced to ask themselves some very difficult questions.  Limited purchasing budgets must stretch further and attract a buying public wary of spending their own limited purchasing budgets.  Coupled with the declining value of the US dollar, many companies cannot afford a failed advertising campaign but still need to attract new customers and reach out to past clients.  There are several forms of advertising media available both in the online and offline worlds, all of which have shown solid returns for advertisers and all of which, carry their pros and cons.

Being a keen SEO and online marketer, I am obviously biased to the paid form of online marketing and believe its success far outweighs the results delivered by offline marketing simply because so many people are turning to the Internet to look for absolutely anything they desire… and they will find it!

I recently read an article on ClickZ which sheds an interesting perspective on these two forms of marketing.  Basically statistics are showing that the integration of online and offline marketing is achieving results far better than they can produce on their own. “According to a new study by Jupiter Research and search marketing agency iProspect, a surprising two-thirds of searchers are led to search on a given keyword as a result of offline marketing”.

I think it is essential for companies to integrate online and offline marketing strategies (and it is a shame that so many of them don’t); we are, after all, living in a technologically driven age where if you need to know anything all you need to do is conduct a search on the Web.   How to fix your own car, how to buy a house, where best to buy rawhide bones for your pet dog.

So what better way is there to find out if an advertisement in a newspaper/magazine is really selling what it claims to be, than by searching for it on the Internet?  And what’s even better is that while offline ads are leading to searches on the web, online advertising is able to track what is or isn’t leading to purchases or sales and allow us to tweak the campaign at any time in order to achieve the results – not so easy for the offline marketing endeavours is it?

So for all those future web companies and web entrepreneurs out there who have been weary of making the move to online advertising – it’s not one or the other anymore.  By integrating the two you can achieve success… the results will speak for themselves. ]]> http://www.theonemanmission.com/marketing/online-v-offline-marketing/feed/ 0 http://www.theonemanmission.com/marketing/facebook-your-website/ http://www.theonemanmission.com/marketing/facebook-your-website/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:28:25 +0000 Phil http://theonemanmission.com/?p=422 Facebook.  Everyone’s on it.  But setting aside the networking aspect where you use it as a platform to find your old school buds and friends you thought you’d never see again, marketing on facebook has become a massive stream of traffic.   Think of it as a tool to help promote your business and services by driving traffic through a number of different ways.   If you ignore the marketing method that facebook allows, you are ignoring one of the biggest and best ways to promote your business online, and thus, limiting your earning potential.  If you don’t do any other marketing through social network sites, make sure facebook is one you definately consider.

With my own project (project x), I will be certainly using facebook marketing to help build the awareness online, so I researched the different ways facebook can be used to reach masses of people and potential customers:

1. Facebook social ads. Facebook social ad is quite similar to the ads that you are seeing on search engines. You can either choose a pay-per-click or pay-for-views model. There are millions of members on Facebook and social ads allow you to target your ads to very specific audience based on demographics and geographic areas. By targeting your ads based on what people have written on their profiles, you can expect a better ROI from your social ads campaign.

2. Profile page. On your profile page, you can provide links to your websites, Squidoo pages, or articles that you have written. You can also write more information about your business so that visitors to your page can understand what services or products that you are providing.

3. Social groups. You can create a social group on Facebook for your business and invite people to join the group. This is a very good viral marketing tactic and you absolutely need to capitalise on it. With your social groups, you can post links, business updates and events so that your group members are always updated on what you are doing.

4. Facebook page for your website. A Facebook page for your website is quite similar to your profile page. On your Facebook page, you can post links, information and gather fans for your business.

5. Facebook applications. On Facebook, you can find countless applications which are excellent viral marketing tool that can help bring in more traffic to your website. If you do not know how to program a Facebook application, you can outsource the task to a freelancer at an affordable fee.

Facebook is definitely a great marketing channel for all business owners and marketers.  If you are not on Facebook, you are not part of the human race, and should create an account right now.  Once you are on Facebook, implement the tips on this page and get more traffic to your website right away.

I have been researching across the web  and looking at some of my client’ stats and have come up with a rough guide to how many unique visitors on average you can expect to get from a popular story on some of the top social tagging and news sites.  I have worked out my estimates mainly from Google Analytics, so it’s a good estimation.

Yahoo! Buzz

There is a new sheriff in town, there have been reports of Yahoo! Buzz which sends over one million visitors to a frontpage story.  From what I have heard off one or two bloggers you can generally expect just short of half a million uniques.  This is something you should seriously look at in the first instance.

Frontpage Traffic: 100,000 – 1,000,000+

Digg

Social news site Digg is renowned for crashing servers, this is mainly because of the volume of visitors it sends in such a short space of time when a submission 1st hits the frontpage.   Still good numbers and definately one to seriously look at.

Frontpage Traffic: 2,000 – 60,000+

StumbleUpon

According to my research, a submission to StumbleUpon will generally go ‘popular’ and send some decent traffic  your way, when it gets to around 50 stumbles.  The bulk of the traffic will usually spread over 2-3 days, after that it will come in dribs and drabs.

Traffic: 1,000 – 50,000+

Reddit

Providing you have some decent news to share, or a story that will interest the community, Reddit is a sure thing for a quick burst of visitors.  The amount of visitors a popular link receives will depend on how far up the frontpage it goes and how long it stays there for.

Frontpage Traffic: 2,500 – 30,000+

eBaum’s World

Comedy and humour site Ebaums World is normally overlooked by internet marketers as a good traffic source.  The newly created ‘link submit’ category can drive thousands of visitors to your website.

Frontpage Traffic: 2,500 – 20,000+

I Am Bored

Another site that seems to have been overlooked by internet marketers is I Am Bored, popular submissions will generally receive many thousands of unique visitors.

Frontpage Traffic: 2,000 – 20,000+

del.icio.us

Social ‘tagging’ website Delicious tends to trickle traffic over time.   Saying that, links that hit the frontpage as a featured submission will generally receive a good couple of thousand visitors in a very short space of time.

Frontpage Traffic: 500 – 5,000+

Facebook

Facebook is one of the most highly trafficked websites online, with millions of visitors every day. If you are thinking of ways to increase the traffic to your website, you cannot leave Facebook marketing out of the picture.

Social media marketing is very popular nowadays and it is an excellent way for marketers to build brand and increase overall traffic to their sites.  I will cover Facebook Marketing seperately soon as this deserves a seperate section on how Facebook marketing can be effectively utilised to grow your online presence.

The Fark Community

If your submission is liked by the Fark community it will without doubt receive some good traffic. If a link makes it onto the frontpage it will receive huge amounts.

Frontpage Traffic: 5,000 – 45,000+

1  Search status   https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/321 .  This tool is actually a Firefox extension, whatever browser you may use is up to you.  But the browser of choice for web developers, designers and internet marketing professionals should be Firefox for its wide array of plugins.  This handy little tool will tell you the pagerank/alexa/compete ranking for the current site you are on.   Which is helpful information, but it also allows you to right click and bring up a menu which will let you search for backlinks (on yahoo, google, msn), indexed (on yahoo, google, msn) pages and keyword density. 

2.   SEO for Firefox:  http://seobook.com .   This one is also a Firefox extension, it allows you to see information within search results about the various pages that are being displayed.  This one is mostly handy-to-do research on competitors and reasons why they may be ranking better then a site you are optimizing.   Some of the information is less important than stuff like backlinks or edu and gov links.   But all-in-all you can get a pretty good idea about a site by just looking at that information.

3.   Webmaster Central  http://www.google.com/webmasters/ .   This is a Google-provided service that will allow you to see some really great statistics about a site.   You have to sign up for a Google account and verify that you have access to the domain, but once that is done there is a treasure chest of information available.   You can see the most popular search results your site showed up for, you can see what the most popular search results you received a click for and all kinds of other helpful information.  This can assist you in trying different methods of getting that user to click on your link in the search results.

4.   Seomoz   http://seomoz.com .   By itself, this isn’t really a ‘tool’ in the typical sense of the word, but the amount of tools that they offer for free is overwhelming.  Not to mention the fantastic content that is available so you can better understand all of their tools and others to best rank better and create more conversions for your clients.   One of the tools is a backlink anchor analysis, which can help you to discover what sites are linking in to your site in the anchor text.   It also has a Page Strength tool that will give you some information about how your site is doing in various aspects and assign a calculated Page Strength.    They also have a premium membership that offers some more advanced tools for about $49/month.

5.   SEO Chat   http://www.seochat.com .   This is another web site that isn’t by itself a tool but does provide a ton of fantastic tools that can add to your arsenal of optimization.  There are a lot of Keyword-related tools that can help in your keyword research tasks for your client.   One of my favorites is using Site Link Analyzer that will give you a ton of fantastic information about the links in your web site.   The site also offers some great articles and a forum to help you even more with your search marketing needs.  

I know not all of these are what you were expecting, but I’m sure you wanted to see this link or that link for helping you to build up your site in search engines.   Honestly, this is what I use to help me with every client I work with.   It is important that you optimize yourself with these five resources and not get distracted by some of the other junk that may be offered in other sites.   Believe me, there is a lot (eg, get as many backlinks as physically possible).   Nearly everything you need will be found in these five search marketing resources.  You don’t need to spend a ton of time elsewhere that could be spent adding great content to your site.

Ever wondered how you can make money from adverts on a website?  What is Google Adsense and why is everyone raving about it?  How it can help not only create revenue, but market your site?.  Here’s an explanation to yield a little light on it all…

Google Adsense and other banner advertising methods run on a method called Pay-Per-Click programs (PPC) and it is the new buzz in internet marketing. The growth in web traffic generated by pay per click services is growing and a marketing option to be seriously considered when starting or maintaining popularity on your website.

With PPC, the way it works is: you pay each time a web viewer chooses your ad listing link and clicks into your website.  It doesn’t cost anything to actually show adverts on a website as it only costs you when they click on the ad, hence the name.

Pay per click targets a very specific audience reaching up to 85% of all internet users in a cost effective and immediate way.  There can be as much as a $20 return of investment for each $1 spent.  Sounds pretty good doesn’t it?

Exactly How Does Pay Per Click (PPC) Work?

The first step is to select which ad agent to use.

The biggestt PPC agent on the web is Yahoo! Sponsored Search.  Yahoo! Sponsored Search has traffic of approx 200 million searches per month reaching about 80% of all the web users.  They have the largest reach on the Web.  Yahoo! Sponsored Search’s pay per click listings appear on Yahoo Search, Yahoo Directory, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Lycos, InfoSpace, and other search engines and directories, so plenty of streams all across the web to reach your markets.

Although Yahoo has more overall visitors statistically than the mighty Google, Google AdWords is the most productive PPC platform and the place you should start with when you decide to advertise with PPC ads.

Reasons for this, firstly – it is simple to use on the basic level, you sign up, write your ads and manage campaigns with set budgets of what you are prepared to spend per day.  Secondly, in the U.S of A alone, over 80% of all Internet searches will be Google.  With Google AdWords, you can see your ads within a few hours, and you have the ability to start and stop campaigns easily.  You will show your products and services to literally millions of viewers and active shoppers using the massive reach of Google.  Additionally Google AdWords will typically out-perform Yahoo and MSN adCenter when it comes to generating conversions and return on investment.  On Google’s main search results pages?  The ‘Sponsored links’ on the very top and the column on the right are all PPC ads generated by the companies advertising them.  They have paid to be there – some, have paid lots.

The second step is to select your targeted keyword or phrases.

At this point you may want to consider increasing the density of your selected keywords in your website’s HTML code, your site’s description, and title.  However, we have found that you can still experience great returns using PPC without revising your website, as your PPC ads are triggered by the keywords you selected that are tied to your ad and not your web site’s content.  My advice is to spend time thinking of the market you are in and the best keywords to use in your ad campaigns.

The third step is to select your monthly budget.

You basically have to select the very maximum amount that you will pay each month (or day) for click-throughs to your website. How much do you want to appear on users pages?  The higher the budget, the more time you appear.  Simple as. Once the maximum amount is reached, Google will halt click-throughs to your site automatically – basically, they will stop your ad appearing. Additionally, you will select how much you are willing to pay by keyword as well, so you can break it down to £5 per day on the ‘decorating’, £2 per day on ‘painting’, etc.

With Yahoo! Sponsored Search, it’s a little different. With these guys, you will be charged your budget amount on a monthly basis in advance of the ads appearing and then the clicks.  Clicks are then deducted from your account balance on a daily basis as and when people click on them.  Much like a deposit you make, any clicks get deducted form the balance.

With Google AdWords, you can easily ‘pause’ a campaign or change your settings at any time.  There are no minimum monthly spending limits and no contracts or long term commitments, which makes life a lot easier when starting out a new website or company.

Bids and Keywords

There are different costs for PPC between markets and industries.  If you have a popular keyword, in a very competitive market,  be prepared to pay higher than the minimum click amount to get top listing within your category.  The big main players (aka your competition) will have a high budget, so it will be difficult to stand a chance against them.  My advice is to choose keywords that are still within your market, but more of a niche.   Do some keyword researcht to see what’s popular but with less competition.  With both Google AdWords, Yahoo, and Microsoft adCenter, the client with the highest quality score will have their ad shown first.

Google AdWords, Yahoo! Sponsored Search, and Microsoft adCenter have great programs that automatically allow you to manage your budget and to plan your bids effectively.  Check them all out and decide which (if not all) are the best suited for your requirements.

Ad Placement on the Page

With Google AdWords, Yahoo! Sponsored Search, and Microsoft adCenter, an advertiser who pay less per click than another may have their ads in the top position if the ad content is crafted well and receives more clicks per impressions versus than another and has a closely matched landing page to their ad’s theme and keyword list. The ad rank position on all three platforms is determined by quality score and the keyword bid.

Conclusion

Pay per click programs can pay off in increased website traffic, brand identification through impressions, and most importantly in increased leads, prospects, and sales. In addition to exposing your website to a wide qualified audience, targeted click throughs can turn in to sales, generating more profit for your business.

If you are looking for a great way to drive traffic to your website, you should consider adding a PPC program to your advertising plan.

]]> http://www.theonemanmission.com/marketing/pay-per-click-marketing/feed/ 0 http://www.theonemanmission.com/marketing/using-public-relations-to-launch-your-website/ http://www.theonemanmission.com/marketing/using-public-relations-to-launch-your-website/#comments Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:57:33 +0000 Phil http://www.TheOneManMission.com/?p=339 Previously, I have covered SEO in the preparation of your website hitting the world and getting the correct things in place to make it search engine-friendly.  Let’s now look at another great tool at your disposal to get people aware of your site both online and offline – Press Releases.

Press Releases are a crucial way to distinguish or differentiate your website or company in the public’s view.  Startups can use this effective platform to spread the message of the launch of your site, and equally useful; most companies already understand this strategy and in one way or another they have used press releases to make special announcements or let everyone know about special offers or landmark events they have got involved with.

Today, with the online press release, it can be used in a multitude of ways that will help in your effective seo efforts.

So how the hell can it be done?  I mean, how do you compliment your new SEO campaign with a press releas?  The PR campaign online is very different than your standard PR through traditional print media sources, such as a newpaper or magazine. For example, if I launched a site in Manchester -  I would probably distribute the PR to all of the local papers of course (MEN, Metro, Stockport Express etc) and then issue a second ‘wave’ of press releases to my local publications and neighborhood publications like the Didsbury magazine, the Offerton Newsletter etc.   But none of these are really going to assist with my seo on my website in Manchester, (although by making mention of my website inside the press release I would probably receive  a few visitors to my site from it.   The only downside, is that the direct traffic would be very short-lived and wouldn’t give me a permanent back link into my website.  It may give me a few hits on my site that day, but the next day, it would probably be forgotten forever.

So what can we do online that is similar but with better chances of longer-lasting effects and visits online?  In this case, I would distribute my press releases online to services on the web that enable me to link the content in the press release directly to my website.  By adding one or two useful links (full  http://  working links!) within the article, it would direct ‘clickable’ traffic to my website or any URL’s within my website, and it will be assisting the Google PageRank and overall linking strategy which will directly help on search result page listings on Google.

Using such online distribution services is important because these special sources of news usually already have a high page rank and have a high regard by the search engines as they have a lot of content and traffic already.  So when they release the press release by you, usually the article will start to show in the top of the search engines for the keyword that you targeted throughout the article – almost immediately.  So for example, if we released a press release on ‘UK Healthcare’ and we submitted the release with these keywords to the major online PR services, our article might likely show up for this search term through the PR sites.  If someone searches for this term online and finds the article before they find our site, it is likely that they will click on the article, read the info, then click to our site within the article or perhaps one of the hyperlinked key phrases inside the article.  The nicest part of this press release is that it does not get tossed in the bin like a newspaper, it remains online pointing at our site for as long as the press release service keeps it up!.  Not bad eh?

Now, these online PR sites do charge for their services (suprised?) and can cost anything from £1 up to £315.00.  They all seem to offer different programs as well, so have a look through what each offers and make your decision.  What I mean is that some are enhanced for SEO purposes, while some of the better performing services like prweb.com and prnewswire.com are a little more traditional with their approach.  They also have a more famous reputation and are normally the first line most people will approach.  Remember to follow Google’s guidelines when creating your press release, after all, you still want to establish a release that has useful content and is not just stuffed with keywords that confuse the article.

It is also worth mentioning, that physical magazines and newspapers scan these sites for stories they can actually print if relevant.  Especially in recession, when there appears to be a lack of content, so take full advantage of this now.

Some examples of releases that might work for your business would be maybe the announcement of a new location or premesis, a new service or product that your company is introducing or perhaps you are speaking at a conference or industry event.  Anyhow, when you’re launching a new website, it’s the perfect opportunity (and one of the most effective), so I highly recommend looking into this avenue and making the necessary allowances to your launch budget.  I certainly will when my new site (Project X) is fully up and running.

Search Engines (including Google amongst others) are internet portals where quite literally BILLIONS of people congregate to search for information.  Cheapest places to buy shoes, directions on how to get to their mother-in-laws, all the way to reading about how to remove that big clump of hair growing on their back.  Literally ANYTHING.  The most prominent search engine in the field are search giants Google and Yahoo. The level of traffic these .com organisations receive per hour is well, phenomenal.

So naturally, companies obviously move towards placing their links and sites on search engines as high as possible in an attempt to garner more visits to their web sites from these search engines in question.

In order to maximize their ranking on the search engine results and more importantly the placement on the results page,  companies have used tools such as SEO – or Search Engine Optimisation.  Search engine optimization is the method and process of vastly improving a web site’s ranking in a search engine listing page.   As it suggests, the higher the result in the search, the more traffic you are likely to make, which means the more revenue or return on investment youare likely to enjoy.  Highly competitive markets try even harder as their gains are likely to be far greater than a smaller niche avenue.

Legitimate search engine optimization, practices the focus and goal on the improvement of a page’s ranking in the search engine list by improving the actual site’s content, it’s usability and by using legitimate methods of promotion through various web phenomena such as Viral Marketing.  This is covered seperately in my blog, but in essence, it’s a form of advertising that spreads across the internet from person to person and can be extemely effective in the effect is has as well as the cost-efficiency side of it too.

Search engines nowadays, all use the most complex ‘algorithms’ in keeping their relevancy in the web and to keep illegal and abusive search engine optimization methods from prospering and manipulating their system.  However, what’s known as “black hat” SEO users will always be around so it is expected that search engine giant such as Google and Yahoo continue to make more complex algorithms to filter the cheating garbage out.  A cheating example includes hiding keywords within the website page by having the keywords the same colour as the background, so users can’t see it, but the search engines still read the code.  This is naughty, but the site if targeted by Google, can then be banned.  Large reputable brands (believe it or not) have been caught using this method as well, such as BMW and Disney, but they get banned too.   Google obviously takes this very seriously.   

Search engines now actually display different kinds of ‘listings’ on a result page, not just normal ‘results’.  The more common ones are pay-per-click (PPC) adverts, paid inclusion in the listings, and organic listings.  Of all these listings, SEO concerns itself mainly with organic listings for a variety of keywords.  This can increase the quality and quantity of visitors to a desired web site.  This is something I have always been aware of and offer to all my web design clients at OwenDevelopment. 

So which are the most effective?  Well from my research into this for my own project ‘Project X’, organic searches  are the way to go.   A study from Jupiter Mediarevealed that approximately 5 out of 6 commercial online purchases by users,  came from organic searches compared to paid online ads.  Are people becoming ‘blind’ to PPC adverts on sites?  I must admit that I have.  I for some reason, tend to not click on these ads and have even typed into the address bar the link to the PPC ad, rather than actually just clicking on it.  Why?  I don’t know, but it’s a habit I have just developed from somewhere unknown.  I have a few sites with these ads on, but still I just do it.  Yes, I’m a freak.

Anyway, this overall result from Jupiter Media has made traditional SEO far more in demand in creating revenue for companies as SEO is not a paid ad method, but a method of intrinsically improving the sites content.

From everywhere I have scanned on the internet, here are a few tips I think are useful on improving content on your site for an  improved result in traditional organic searches:

• Expertise - Develop your strengths.  Sites you get involved with or own, must be on subject that you consider yourself an expert on. People can smell an amateur a mile away (they smell like a crusty sock left in the back of a cupboard).  But if you are knowledgable, people will stay and view the other content and are also more likely to come back to your site regularly.

• Plan -  A good layout that is easy to navigate and view (in web-friendly colours!) can improve usability. This in turn will not unnecessarily aggravate the browser and make it easier to accomodate any user on any browser.

• Research - Check out your competition and see what they have set up. My advice is find the biggets player in the market and see any improvements that you can make that let their site down.  See what works and implement the same, and likewise, what doesn’t and improve it.  If possible try to communicate with users in forums and get useful feedback on what should or can be improved further.  I also found it useful to find complaints in review sites on your market.  Find out what people hate about the main players and shout out on your site how you guarantee to make that aspect easier and more effective. 

• Keywords - Decide which are the most important keywords to use for your sight.  Include these keywords in the metatags in the header of your site, use in the content of the page, within the page title, and also in file names if you use them.

• Remember that the Search Engine is your best friend - Get best mates with your search engine, send him a birthday card and don’t give it a hard time.  Definately don’t cheat on them. Being nice and friendly to it will make its job easier to serve your site up to your target audience.  It will make you more money period.

• Keep Focussed – Concentrate on the topic in question and nothing else. The rule is one topic per page.  Confusing content by swapping from one thing to another won’t help your site.  It’s hard to follow a physical conversation when this happens, let alone on a website.

• Get added on directories - Directories are pools of knowledge made by a human, while search engine are huge databases collected by mostly machine methods.  The relevancy of your page when joining the right directory may cause huge increases in rankings if they are the right directory for your market.   Avoid joining loads of less-known directories, as a only few directory listings on the big main ones will help more.  

• Links - An effective Optimisation method used as SEO 101.  Ask your networks, strategic partners, friends and acquaintances business parnerships to place your site’s website link on their sites.  With a short description this can draw huge amounts of traffic from other sites and increase your sites’ exposure on the web.  For example, Google ranks the importance of its sites by the sheer number of sites that are linked to it, and the better tand more reputable the site that links to you, the higher you will rise in the listings automatically.

• Repeat all the above - Keep repeating all the above tips over and over again, maintaining the optimisation and marketing of your site will keep you at the top of listings and the ££ coming in.  Doing a simple one-off campaign may see you hit the top, but not for long.  You will notice that by not treating this as a constant routine, you will gradually slip down the ranks because I GUARANTEE your competitors will be consistently applying the above. 

Meta Tags are the most basic of information every single website needs: without it, your site will never be read or found by search engines.  Meta tags have two possible attributes:

• <META HTTP-EQUIV=”name” CONTENT=”content“>
• <META NAME=”name” CONTENT=”content“>

META tags should be placed in the header section of the HTML document, between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags.

Robots

Controls Search Engine Web robots on a per-page basis. E.g.

<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX,FOLLOW”>

Robots may traverse this page but not index it.

• INDEX allows the page to be indexed by the spider
• NOINDEX prevents anything on the page from being indexed.
• FOLLOW allows all links on the page to be spidered as well
• NOFOLLOW prevents the crawler from following the links on the page and indexing the linked pages.
• ALL is the same as INDEX,FOLLOW
• NONE is the same as NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW
• NOIMAGEINDEX prevents the images on the page from being indexed but the text on the page can still be indexed.
• NOIMAGECLICK prevents the use of links directly to the images, instead there will only be a link to the page.

Keywords

Keywords used by search engines to index your document in addition to words from the title and document body. E.g.

<META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”fresh oranges, cool autumn scent, living room furniture, IT solutions”>

• Think Key Phrases instead of keywords. Key Phrases will provide you with a much greater volume of internet response.
• The primary words that appear in your title and description should also appear in your keywords, plus the primary words and phrases used on the page. Also, the primary words in your title and description should also appear somewhere else on your page.
• Insert your pages keywords into at least 1 of your images ALT tags. This helps for those search engines that read these tags, but don’t overdo it.
• It is best if you keep the number of keywords, commas and spaces below 800 characters.
• Many search engines only index the first 10 to 20 keywords, so be sure to have the most relevant keywords and phrases listed first.
• Using the same word more than three times, even if used differently within a phrase, might be considered Spamdexing by the search engine and your page might not be included.

Description

A short, plain language description of the document. Used by search engines to describe your document. Particularly important if your document has very little text, is a frameset, or has extensive scripts at the top. E.g.

<META NAME=”description” CONTENT=”Citrus fruit wholesaler in North Wales. 40 varieties of mixed fruit drinks and wines available 24/7, from as little as £2.50″>

Keep your description below 250 characters.  This is SEO 101 and should always be included on every page of the site as a minimum.  Why spend on building a nice looking and informative website, when no-one will ever find it?

Summary

Remember, in the multi-coloured world of SEO, content is king.   Applying appropriate content on your site with effective keywords will do more than anything.  Keep it clear and concise, and you will have all the high rankings you will ever need.