One of the easiest methods to employ in your plan to drive traffic to your local small business is pay per click advertising. This particular advertising model has been around since the late 1990’s and has been a means of generating hits for many different businesses with an online presence.

Pay per click advertising is an excellent way to get the word about your local small business to a wide audience. The process involves spotting an ad on various web sites that will forward an interested party back to your web site.

Part of the attraction of pay per click advertising is that the ad owner only pays when someone clicks on the ad and actually follows through to the web site.

When it comes to PPC advertising, never forget the importance of keywords. Essentially, keywords are words and phrases that are considered to be common modes of searching the Internet to find desired content.

As an advertiser, your job is to come up with keywords that you believe are likely to take you to web sites that are relevant to the type of business site you currently operate. The rationale is that persons who visit those sites would most likely be interested in the content of your site.

If you manage to find the right web sites for your ads, then the chances of generating clicks to your site are much greater.

While the keyword mode of pay per click advertising is very common, there is also a second method. Known as content match PPC, the principle is still the same.

The main difference is that rather than basing the search on keywords, the results are based on the content of the site. As an example, if you run a site that is dedicated to gardening supplies, then it would be a natural for you to want to place ads on sites dedicated to gardening.

Content matching can be used right along with keywords to create a well rounded pay per click component in your overall publicity campaign.

Finding online resources to help you with the process of placing pay per click ads is relatively easy. One of the most popular approaches is to make use of the Google Adwords program. You can get started by identifying a list of relevant keywords. You can also get help in designing the appearance of your ad, using online tools.

Adwords also includes a number of online tools, so you can keep track of how many hits get to your web site through those hits. This allows you to stay on top of how much pay per click is advertising is costing you each month. By comparing the sales that result from the hits with the cost of your pay per click campaign, you can determine if the program is making money for you.

Another target for your pay per click campaign is online comparison shopping engines. These types of engines often are willing to provide feeds through the placement of ads on their searches.

Just as with the ads on informational web sites, persons can click through to your web site and see what you have to offer. Some of these sites provide you with the ability to see the number of hits, while others do not. Payment for placing the ad on the shopping comparison site may be in the form of a fixed monthly amount or based on a fixed rate per click.

Keep in mind that there is no such thing as exclusionary pay per click arrangement. This means you can sign up with as many keyword and shopping ad services as you like. In fact, you may do very well to try out several different services, to see which ones seem to provide you with the best matches and coverage.

If funds for advertising are limited, go with a well known service, and then add more services as your revenue stream builds to the point you can afford to do so. Remember that your goal is to build a solid foundation for your web site, so it may take some time before you begin to see results.

Disregard stories about overnight success. Chances are you will go about six months to a year before you see significant traffic that results in sales.

Pay per click advertising is often an affordable way to launch your advertising campaign. The cost per click is often a fraction of a cent, so it certainly will not cost a great deal, unless you happen to get a huge number of visitors clicking through to your site.

The law of averages would dictate that of that huge number, enough sales would result to make your investment in the pay per click program well worth your time and the expense.

To learn more ways to drive traffic to your company using local business marketing go to: http://www.streetsmartsalesandmarketing.com/LocalBusinessMarketing.htm

• Has the traffic to your website declined over the last few months or years?
• Are looking for new and inexpensive ways to convert more of your website visitors into paying customers?
• Would you like to have more of your website visitors sign up to get your online or offline company newsletter?
• Are you frustrated because no one is calling, e-mailing or buying from your site?

Want to know why? Attend this free webinar and find out.

Click Here to Register: http://budurl.com/10WebsiteMistakes

I don’t care how great your website looks, how many awards you’ve won, how many friends say it looks great, the bottom line is that if your website isn’t converting visitors into leads or paying customers you may be making some of these 10 fatal errors.

By attending this free webinar you’ll learn:

• How to better influence a visitor’s buying decision and increase your conversion rate
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• Emotional triggers that can stimulate your visitors to take action
• Important website statistics that you need to track
• How your website can benefit from social networking sites
• Why search engine optimization is so important

If your website is not generating as many sales as it should or if you just want to take your site to the next level, then you must attend this webinar.

When: Thursday February 4th, 5 PM PST/8 PM EST
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I look forward to seeing you all on this webinar.

If you are not doing Video Marketing you are leaving traffic and profits on the table. Besides that great reason, do you know the top 7 reasons to create Video Articles? You’ll find the top 7 reasons and tips below:

1. Actually faster than a written article – I know that sounds crazy but it has been my experience. Once you get in the flow of this, it really can take you less time to create a Video Article than a text article. I still remember the first time that happened and I just thought it was a fluke. Now it is a consistent event.

2. Tools have never been cheaper or easier – I remember two things from when I first started: 1) the tools and training were expensive and 2) there were so many steps involved and it was easy to get stuck. Now the tools are in range and the steps are condensed down to just a few that anyone can do.

3. YouTube is the #3 ranked website in the world – It comes down to a simple question: Do you want to get traffic to your web sites and blogs by getting in front of where the traffic going? If you answered no I’m not sure why you are reading this article. If you answered yes, then you want to get your information on the #3 most trafficked website in the world.

4. Great tools for distributing your video – And you don’t stop at just YouTube. With video distribution sites such as TubeMogul (free) and TrafficGeyser (fee) you can quickly and easily get your Video Articles distributed all over the internet.

5. Your own TV station – We are at the point where anyone with a life improving message that is willing to learn the steps and put in the time can have their own “online TV station.” And you get to reach all over the world. Remember, www stands for world wide web.

6. It’s what we know – We all grew up watching video on TV. It is what we know. When your message comes in to your prospects home or office screen, just like TV, the potential for your prospect to know, like and trust you is just tremendous.

7. 50 times more likely to get indexed by Google – This is important if you want to get found on the internet. You Video Article is 50 times more likely to get indexed by Google than your text article. Am I saying you should now do only Video Articles and not write articles. Of course not. Do both. And repurpose those text articles into Video Articles.

And to learn more about how to leverage the Social Networks for waves of traffic and more, get your FREE Instant Access to our Social Marketing Video Training Series when you visit http://SocialMarketingBlueprint.com/7laws

You’ll get a series of videos, audios and pdfs all about Social Media Traffic & Profits

From Jeff Herring and the SocialMarketingBlueprint.com

Have you seen the JK Wedding Dance video on Youtube? Once the video went viral, it was featured on many TV shows and internet outlets. Use these 10 tips to gain the same sort of success for your business through viral video marketing.

Video Marketing – Taking a Message Viral

1. One of a Kind – When you are the only one doing something eye catching, people will stop and take notice, and then they will tell their friends. You have to seize the moment and ride it for all that it is worth though, because if you really have a good idea, someone will imitate you soon enough.

2. Shocking – It is fine to create a one of a kind message, but it has to get someone?People will be interested if you shock them (tastefully). Don’t be conservative–keep your video tasteful while shocking your viewers at the same time.

3. Speak English – While it is great that you and all of your buddies in the industry speak your own language, but very likely your customer do not, so do not speak in shorthand, speak English.

4. Be Genuine – You can try to be cool, and that guarantees that you will not be. Be genuine, and if what you created is good, it will become cool on its own.

5. Be Brief – Most viral videos go straight to the point. You get a nice little jolt that may be funny or shocking, but it is over almost before it has begun. Your viral video should barely be an interruption to the person watching it.

6. Be Funny – Laughter is one of the most powerful medicines known to man. It makes you feel good. People will not only enjoy your video message, but the will be eager to pass it along as well.

7. Shoot for the Stars – Rather than do something outrageous, do something over the top outrageous. Do something so surprising, so funny, so shocking, that people will have to watch your video just because they cannot believe their ears.

8. Be a Little Rough – Keep the quality of your video a little homemade looking. By not having your video look like a commercial, people will think that they have found a gem. Everyone loves to be the first one to discover something outrageous, so having your video look homemade lets them stumble upon a gem.

9. Be True to your Brand – While you are concentrating on being shocking and amazing, do remember that you have a reason for making the video, and that is to promote your business or product. So while you need to be amazing in your video, you also need to make your point and make it memorable.

10. Keep It Lively – Make sure that your video is full of action. Keep the talk to a minimum, and keep things moving. Make sure that you have enough dialogue so your audience can easily understand your point, and then keep thing moving.

These tips will help your video go viral, and once that happens everyone will know about your business.

Anton Pearce specializes in helping you to use internet marketing to get all the clients you need for your practice. Sign up for his highly acclaimed and miraculously free ezine and find out how to turn your website into an automated new client or patient referral generating machine.

]]> http://wiseguymarketing.com/guerrilla-marketing/leverage-viral-video-marketing-to-benefit-your-business/feed/ 0 http://wiseguymarketing.com/guerrilla-marketing/drive-more-traffic-to-your-website-using-an-easy-and-free-tell-a-friend-script/ http://wiseguymarketing.com/guerrilla-marketing/drive-more-traffic-to-your-website-using-an-easy-and-free-tell-a-friend-script/#comments Sat, 16 Jan 2010 03:56:26 +0000 admin http://wiseguymarketing.com/?p=271

The biggest issue facing any business today is how to drive more traffic to the company website. But not just more traffic, but more qualified traffic. Qualified meaning that they are more likely to buy once they get there. There are tons of books and articles out there that provide multiple strategies some – harder to implement then others.

This article is going to focus on one of the easiest to implement and one that’s free! I will be showing you how to make use of a tell-a-friend script to make your website become more viral. Viral marketing makes use of the tendency of a person to share something to find informative, entertaining or amazing.

A tell a friend script is a simple programming script that you can literally “cut and paste” into your website. Tell a friend scripts can be placed anywhere on your site. I place it in my navigation bar so that it appears on every page. You just want to be sure that it is easy to see so that a person can easily click on it to send the information they find interesting to any of his friends or his family members.

To see an real life example of 2 types of tell-a friend scripts go to www.StreetSmartSalesAndMarketing.com. Check out the side and bottom navigation bars and click on the Tell a Friend/Share This button.

The basic concept of a tell a friend script is a script wherein a person may input his name, e-mail address, the recipient’s e-mail address and send the media to the intended recipient much like an e-mail with an attachment. As the recipient receives the e-mail he wouldn’t think of the mail a spam mail because he would see the sender’s name as someone he or she knows and trust.

Tell a friend script eliminates greatly the chances of being blocked because they use the information inputted by the sender. This allows for wider spreading of this marketing method. It can be quite sneaky but it is very effective.

With the e-mail sent and opened the sent media will either be read, viewed or played. Also along with the mail would be a brief description of the company or site that sponsors the media sent. This allows for the introduction of either the site, company name or its products. The along with it is another tell a friend script.

Then the process begins again. As more people use the tell a friend script, more and more people will know of the existence of the sponsoring company or site. People who read the ads inside the mail who liked what they see would go and click on the link and visit the site. This drives traffic into the site resulting to great number of potential customers.

A tell a friend script is very simple and does not require a complicated method of programming. In fact, you can copy paste a script and simply put it on an intended page. Finding one is even simpler. All you have to do is go to a search engine and type in the search box “tell a friend script” then press enter or click go.

In the search results page you will see many links that will direct you to a site where you can get a tell a friend script. It would just be a simple matter of looking and searching for the script and copying it to your intended web page.

To get you started you can check out SocialTwist.com or ShareThis.com. The cool thing about these 2 services is they also let the website visitor share your website though social bookmarking websites like Digg, Delicious and Stumbleupon just to name a few.

With a tell a friend script viral marketing strategy you can drive traffic into your site which could potentially spell profits. This is a simple harmless script that offers great benefits for low cost paired with great creativity and foresight.

To learn more secrets on how to drive more traffic, convert more visitors to paying customers and get found faster by the search engines pick up a free copy of “7 Steps to Website Success” Just go to www.WebsiteMakeoverASAP.com

Newsletters allow you to impress your subscribers. It can show your expertise and knowledge about the topic at hand and the many benefits you can offer them. When you impress people, they will become potential customers and another great thing is that they can recommend you to their friends, colleagues and family. All of them could very well be customers in the future.

Providing a newsletter for your opt-in list subscribers provides many benefits in terms of driving traffic into your site as well as boosting the sales and profits of your site and company. This is a marketing ploy that will not hugely dent your marketing budget and will not also require many man-hours in developing this project.

With a newsletter, you can inform the public about your company and products as well as services. You can keep them posted and updated about what’s going-on with your company as well as many of your promotions and offerings. With these, you keep on reminding your subscribers that you are still here and is willing to offer them good deals and services.

If you do not have a newsletter or publishing one for your site, then you may have to consider about researching and be well informed on how to publish one. It is not as easy as it seems but if and when you get the right idea and process, it will be smooth sailing from there on. Try to take the time to learn what you need to learn and get that newsletter ready and good to attract subscribers to your newsletter as well as traffic to your site.

In the next few paragraphs, I will provide you with some things to reflect on when you decide to start your own newsletter for your site. Here are five things to consider when publishing a newsletter.

1) Make sure that the content of your newsletter pertains to and closely associated with your business or the theme of your site. Do not dwell too far on what could be regarded as your field of expertise. You have started a site and your theme for your site will always be something you are knowledgeable about. For example; if you have a site that sells auto car parts, your newsletter must contain articles or content like photos that pertain to cars, auto parts and such. You may also include content about your company and your staff.

Remember that visitors of a certain site are there because they are interested in what the site has to offer. If they sign up for an opt-in list or for a newsletter this means that they want to be updated for that certain theme or subject. Be sure that when you publish your newsletter you are providing for the need of the subscriber as well as their interests.

2) Ensure that you have well written, information riddled and content rich articles. You articles will be the body of your newsletter and that they should be able to excite your readers as well as provide information. Articles should be well written and checked for errors such as spelling and grammatical errors for it to look professional and believable. The trust of your client to you and newsletter is at stake here.

3) Fact-check your articles. Make sure that you provide true facts and figures so that your reputation as an expert and knowledgeable in that field is not questioned. If you lose the trust of your subscribers these may persuade them to unsubscribe to your newsletter. You will lose many potential sales this way.

4) Provide fresh and new articles that can provide new information to your subscribers. If you publish stale and old news in your newsletter, there is a tendency that people or your subscribers already have read and known about them. This will lose their interest in your newsletter and they wont get to read what is most important, your ads. They may not open or read any of your succeeding newsletters losing your intention in writing and publishing newsletters, to get them to visit your site and make a purchase.

5) Never use copyrighted materials such as photos and articles. This is outright plagiarism, you may get into a lot of trouble for this. You can lose your business and get sued over copyright infringement. If you do not have the time to write your own articles, there are many willing and able professional article writers that can do it for you for a reasonable fee. All your investment in writing and publishing articles will be well worth it when you see your list build up and your traffic increasing.

6) Be sure to offer unique ways to get visitors to your website to opt-in to your newsletter. Offering a free special report available for immediate download can be very effective. I offer a free Website Makeover Analysis Quiz to get some of my visitors to opt-in

By the way for those companies that have a retail or store location, publishing an online newsletter is a great way to help in your local business marketing efforts.

Many small- to medium-sized businesses fail due to a lack of an effective marketing and sales program. Entrepreneurs may be very good at their core business, but know very little about marketing. Certain people suffer from the theory espoused by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.” They are innocently caught up in a love for their own products or services and believe the world will indeed beat a path to their door when prospects hear about the fantastic new product. This attitude is wrong, dangerous, and not in line with the practices of successful B2B marketers. In fact, more often than not, superior marketing beats a superior product.

Another reason for failure is that an effective marketing campaign is hard work. Since marketing is probably not what motivated the entrepreneur to open his or her business, it receives less priority than product development and other tasks. Marketing also often comes up short when scarce funds are allocated. Sadly, there are start-up companies that spend tens of thousands of dollars on furniture and equipment, while complaining that there is nothing left for marketing.

New companies also make a mistake by hiring expensive advertising agencies that are incapable of cost-effective, low-budget marketing. Or they hire marketing and sales talent from big companies, and these people are often clueless about how to get results on a limited budget. So if you are in a small company, be careful about hiring the hotshot from a big company to come solve your problems. It often doesn’t work. This is not to say that everyone from a big company is incapable of being effective with a smaller budget-some are great no matter the company size.

Small to medium businesses and start-ups face two major obstacles not shared by larger, entrenched companies. First, if you happen to be a small fish in a large pond, you will be confronted by competitors with much larger advertising and marketing budgets. Second, you may have to spend a larger percentage of your revenues on marketing than older, established organizations.

Given the reality of this situation, you need to squeeze as much efficiency as possible out of every dollar. Be assured that you can do a lot on a limited budget, and expensive does not always mean better. I’ve often used limited-budget strategies to beat the big players and you can do the same. And the lessons you learn by doing it the frugal way will serve you well, no matter how successful you become, or how far your marketing budget expands. Here are a collection of small budget strategies and tactics you can use to beat the big guys:

Small Budget Website Strategies:
1. Don’t overbuild your Website. There are ways to create an impressive site using less-complex open source or template approaches.
2. If possible, have an easy-to-remember Website address that relates to what your company does.
3. List your Web address (URL) on all of your corporate materials.
4. Make sure your Website is optimized for organic search terms. This is a low-cost strategy that will make you much easier to find.
5. Try narrowly focused low-cost pay per click search terms.
6. Give some information away for free to increase your Website stickiness.
7. Create many links with other sites to increase your search engine visibility.
8. Refresh your content often. Do not let the site go stale.

Small Budget Social Media Strategies:
1. Start your own blog and comment on other blogs.
2. Always list your Web address on your blog postings and any electronic communication.
3. Leverage LinkedIn and other networking sites.
4. Use Twitter to find relevant posts and prospects.
5. Be controversial (but not too controversial) to attract attention.
6. Choose a niche where you can be an expert.
7. Write articles and get them published in online media.
8. Focus on one or two social media outlets. This concentrated attention will bring more attention than throwing your efforts at five or six outlets.

Small Budget Email Strategies:
1. Work hard to build your email prospect file of opt-in names. This will be a gold mine of low-cost leads and sales.
2. Include a promotional message and your Website address as part of your standard email signature.
3. Provide links to valuable information in your emails, not just product pitches.
4. Make your emails interesting and/or unusual.
5. Run your email copy through a spam detection tool like EmailExam, Acxiom Digital, or Lyris ContentChecker to ensure your emails will not be caught in the spam filters.
6. Have an easy opt-out process. You do not want to keep sending emails to people who want to be removed from your list.

Small Budget Direct Marketing Strategies:
1. Target your lists more effectively by using demographics, psychographics, and some of the other list segmenting tools available. The object is to mail fewer packages and achieve greater response.
2. Test your mailing and telemarketing in small quantities before committing large sums to full-blown programs. Equally important, use the information you learn on every program to make the next work better.
3. Try a postcard mailer. The production costs are low, the first-class postage is less expensive than letter mail, and they pull very well. You can drive prospects to a Web form or toll-free telephone number.
4. Cut back on four-color process direct mail packages. Unless you sell food, magazines, resort properties, or other products requiring excellent graphic reproduction, you can probably pull as much response using two-color printing.
5. Consider mailing with third-class postage instead of first-class. Depending on whether you presort the file, this will save you a great amount of money, and most prospects will not notice the difference. The exception is with time-sensitive offers, since third-class mail can take a week longer to arrive than first-class.
6. If you mail to large numbers on a national basis, or send highly concentrated mailings into local or regional areas, use postal pre-sorting to lower postage costs.

More Cost-Cutting Ideas:
1. If you are a small company (a flea), find a big company (a dog) to partner with. This will make it much easier for you to sell to bigger companies.
2. Read the chapter on public relations carefully and begin carrying out its advice. PR is a low-effort, high-reward vehicle that is often under-utilized by small-budget marketers.
3. Be persistent. Remember the eight times rule: You don’t have to spend a lot of money on each communication, but you must repeat your message up to eight times to gain prospect awareness.
4. Write handwritten personal notes to prospects and customers. They are cheap but make a big impact.
5. Ask for referrals. They are much easier to sell, at lower cost.
6. Utilize experts. An expert’s advice will cost you something in the short term, but can save you money and aggravation in the long term.
7. List your primary products and services on your stationery and business card, or anything else you give to potential buyers.
8. Since consistency is vital for those with small budgets, make sure every one of your marketing efforts supports and reinforces your unique selling proposition (USP).
9. Sharpen your bargaining skills. Media outlets are hungry for business and many have unsold inventory. Use this to your advantage by negotiating aggressively.

One other important principle to practice is leverage. Try to create content once and use it in multiple marketing scenarios. This is less expensive and time-consuming, and the consistency of message is important.

Christopher Ryan is a noted expert in B2B marketing. Chris is founder and President of Fusion Marketing Partners and was formerly a senior marketing executive at companies like Sybase, PeopleSoft and Group 1 Software. You can buy Mr. Ryans latest book, How to Create an Unstoppable Marketing and Sales Machine, at Amazon.com or at Get the Book.

I was speaking to a local business owner last week who was obviously struggling. Leads generated from the usual sources are off, response to his advertising is almost non-existent and store traffic is down 75%. “Joe” asked me to put together a proposal for turning his business around quickly.

In a few days, I came back with several easy and inexpensive ways that he could double “hits” to his website and generate 20% more leads – guaranteed.

Joe’s response was – “Wow this stuff is great, but I think I am going to hold off for now until things pick up a little.” When I asked why, he said that it was just too much money to spend right now. When I asked what he was going to do, he said “I guess I’ll keep doing what I’m already doing and hope for the best” said Joe.

Joe’s odds of survival? Dismal at best. Why? Not because he didn’t hire me, but because he doesn’t have a specific course of action in place that will see him through these trying times. The sad truth is that many small business owners continue to do what they’ve always done regardless of the mediocre results they continue to get. Why? It’s easy and they just don’t know what else to do.

Listed below are three low-cost/high ROI strategies for that you can implement quickly and can have an almost immediate effect on your bottom line.

1 – Turn Your “Online Brochure” Website Into a Lead Generation Website
Visit the website of any successful Internet marketer and you’ll quickly be exposed to an offer to either sign up for their newsletter or download a free electronic special report. To get this free information however you are asked to give your e-mail address.

Prospects visit your website for one main reason – to get information they can use to make their buying decision. Providing free and helpful information in exchange for a prospect’s contact information will help generate qualified leads for you to follow up with. Click here to learn how to get a fast Website Makeover

2 – Make Your Website Easy to Find Using Search Engine Optimization
These days, having a website is not enough. Your website has to be properly “optimized” so that it can be easily found by Google, Yahoo and MSN. This includes having the proper keywords, titles and descriptions as well as both efficient internal navigation and a lot of incoming external links. Do this correctly and you could be rewarded by being on page one of the search engines.

3 – Drive Traffic Using Internet Marketing
Are you taking advantage of social media, article writing, PR, blogging, e-mail marketing and other forms of inexpensive yet highly effective internet marketing strategies? I have seen firsthand how effective these free or almost free tactics are at uncovering new customers.

The Bottom Line? – When times are good, almost any type of marketing and advertising works. But in recessionary times like we are in now, you have to venture out of your comfort zone and try new things. If your current marketing is not producing the results you need or want, challenge yourself and your staff to create new ways of finding more business.

Looking for new ways to drive qualified traffic to your business? Check out our Local Business Marketing services

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http://www.The WaveManual.com