Category Archives for "Internet Marketing"

HostGator Shines as a Host for WordPress Blogs

By Johna11 | Blogging , Internet Marketing

I just invested over a week uploading backed up files, testing to be sure the uploaded Help Customers Buy blog worked on a different domain name before I moved my helpcustomersbuy.com domain to HostGator. This process was so complicated because of some problems with my backups. My last good back up was May 22nd so if worse came to worse, I’d lose all of the blog posts between then and my last one July 22nd, Thank you Tech Support! My previous post was about the tech support at both HostGator and Alan at Yahoo!

Problems in my blog at Yahoo! complicated getting a current backup. That’s history now. However, moving from one hosting company to another is not for the faint hearted. There were lots of lessons along the way. For one, Continue reading

Social networking without looking like a spammer

By John Aberle | Internet Marketing , Social Networking

It seems everything in life is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s called social networking because people want to be social and interact. They want to become part of a community. On the other hand, the Internet marketing is full of spammers, people who only care about their own profit and have no sincere desire to engage with you beyond getting your money. In this case, the spammers aren’t filling email boxes but rather cluttering blogs with meaningless comments. So how do you become part of the Internet community while avoiding looking like a spammer?

How to spot spam comments

Interestingly, it’s easy. First, look at what spammers who put comments on blogs do. While some are obvious, the challenging calls about whether or not it’s spam come from the spammers who play to our egos by telling us how great we are and how much they love our posts.

Typical tactics are to say something like, Continue reading

Email Marketing Terminology Tripped Me Up

By John Aberle | Internet Marketing , sales , Sales Calls

It seems with Internet marketing there is always something to learn. Earlier this week I got another of those lessons. I was feeling really good about finishing my 8th lesson of the 9 lessons I’m giving people who join my community by opting onto mailing list. Then I noticed that not everyone on my list had received all of the lessons. And some lessons seemed to be missing – bummer.

So I started to make up the missing lessons. In the course of trying to create an autoresponder campaign to ensure this wouldn’t happen again, I discovered my error. I forgot that MailChimp sets up campaigns and autoresponder emails under separate tabs. Other than when the get sent, everything about setting up an autoresponder email and a campaign email is the same. I found that most of my lessons I had, in fact, already set up on the autoresponder, having only missed #7.

The lesson – double check your terminology

So what was the lesson here? It was a reminder of the problem with communications Continue reading

Your blog as the hub of your Internet marketing

By John Aberle | Blogging , Internet Marketing

Although many Internet marketers recommend making your blog the hub of your Internet marketing, I know of no brick and mortar companies that would go that far. Nevertheless, maintaining a blog is one of the most powerful tools you can use to promote your business. After all, a static website merely gives you an address. Now you need to attract visitors. Probably the most popular dream of most businesses with websites is to find themselves on the first page of the generic search for their most important keywords because it costs them nothing.

Frequent updates get you better placement in generic search results

To do that, though, takes effort and understanding how search engines rank websites. One of the primary things search engines want to find is frequent updates. Due to the nature of blogs which typically get new articles posted to them weekly or even daily in some cases, the search engines return more frequently to blogs to check on updates. Additionally, blogs are easy to add to or to fix while websites often take a webmaster to make changes. Besides, once uploaded, most people forget about their websites so the sites never get updated.

Slater’s 50/50 blog is presently just another unchanging page

Continuing to use Slater’s 50/50 to demonstrate a real business, in this article, I’m looking at their blog. As Scott Slater is a very sharp marketer, I’m surprised to find his current blog is simply a place holder which he does with a “Blog” tab on the nav bar (navigation bar). Unfortunately, the blog appears to be ignored. Continue reading

The Hidden Things on Your Websites Search Engines Look for

By John Aberle | Internet Marketing , Website Design

What you don’t see on the website still affects you

Although the first impression is critical when it comes to websites, there’s more to an effective website than meets the eye. For marketing purposes, what you don’t see can have a major impact on the ability of your site to be found by people who want the products and services you provide. It would be like locating your business on a busy highway then erecting a wall between your company and the road so nobody could see it as you drove by.

So what can you do to help your website be found? This critique will focus on Internet marketing. Typically, good graphic designers lack the marketing background to maximize the effectiveness of your site for you.

Obviously there are a lot of Internet marketing activities you can do to have your website found, including pay-per-click advertising and social networking. You can also use traditional marketing, such as mailing postcards and purchasing newspaper inserts. This article focuses instead on the things you can do in your website design to become more attractive to the Internet search engines.

Meta tags and alternate text

Although it takes a programmer or web designer to explain the differences and purposes of meta tags versus alternate text, from a marketing viewpoint, the important thing is that these are areas visible in the source code of your website that the search engine’s software, called spiders because they “crawl” the “web” looking for information they need to catalog the sites on the Internet.

Some of the things which the spiders see that we normally don’t are the following:Continue reading

Slater’s Website Creates that Critical First Impression

By John Aberle | Internet Marketing , website

Do you remember the last time you met someone and took an instant like or dislike to them? Have you ever bought a book because your first impression was so strongly positive? Regardless of what decisions you’ve made based on first impressions, we all do it. In sales and marketing, it’s long been known that we make our first impression on a prospect in the first 20 seconds. If it’s not positive, we may never get to make a second impression.

First impressions are more critical in Internet marketing than they are in business because people can click off your site and onto another almost instantly. In fact, research shows that you have 1/20th of a second to make that first impression. Nobody makes a decision that fast on the content. The first impression your website makes depends all on the appearance, which includes pictures, white space, and graphics. I personally find examples help me understand concepts better so I’m going to analyze Slater’s 50/50’s website to show how this works. With his website, Scott Slater continues to demonstrate a good understanding of marketing. For my purposes, it’s instructive that he misses a few more subtle points, which I’ll mention as we go along. Overall, Slater’s 50/50’s is a good example of what a small business can do to promote itself.

Strong first impression graphically

Their landing page (the page where you first enter the site) comes before you get to their Home page. This is different from most websites. I find it is both positive and negative.Continue reading

Social Networking Gets Slater’s 50/50 off to a Strong Start

By John Aberle | Internet Marketing , Sales and Marketing , Social Networking

The first time I heard about the concept of viral marketing was in Malcolm Gladwell’s fascinating book, The Tipping Point. He described the elements necessary for a product to take off and catch the public’s imagination like a virus. The impression I got was that while you can know what elements are necessary, you can’t guarantee that you can get the mix right when you deliberately try to make a product go viral.

The marketer’s dream is to have a product go viral.

This remains true about social networking. Some things are so well done that they capture the imagination of a few people who are influencers, and those people spread the word. If they’re respected and their followers or audience agrees, they too tell their friends. Suddenly your product or service goes viral. At least that is every marketer’s dream.
Continue reading

Yes, You Can Teach Old Sales and Marketing Dogs New Tricks

By John Aberle | Internet Marketing , Sales and Marketing

American English has lots of interesting expressions and clichés. I like them because they tend to convey concepts or morals, as in “the moral of the story” is, like in melodramas. Good writers try to avoid them because they become so overused they lose their punch. Nevertheless, the moral of “You can’t teach old dogs new tricks” seems to be that as people age, they get so stuck in their ways that they refuse to learn.

People Once Considered Too Old to Learn New Skills Are Excelling at Internet Marketing

However valid that once was, in Internet marketing the leaders I like to follow are within five to ten years of my age. In some cases, like Judith & Jim, I know how old they are because they’ve told us. I turned 62 in June, by the way. I don’t recall how old Cathy Perkins, the WordPress Wizard, is; but I know from things she’s said she’s done that she’s around my age, maybe a little younger. Alex Mandossian, from what I know of him, fits in this group as do Jeff Herring, the Article Guy, and Tom Justin. One of the women Continue reading

Skip Manipulating by Customer Service Report Card

By John Aberle | Internet Marketing , Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell , soft sell marketing

There’s a Right Way and a Wrong Way to Ask for a Testimonial

Charles H. Green got me thinking the other day about the right way and the wrong way to ask for testimonials. He was actually talking about how to do customer service surveys but his point applies to asking for testimonials as well. In Trust-Based Selling, Green wrote, “It’s manipulative to ask customers point blank if you have given them excellent service; it is embarrassing, self-serving, and highly self-oriented.” (p. 201) Having been on the receiving end of just such a manipulation seven years ago when I bought a new car, I agree completely with Green.

Bribes and Guilt Trips Can Backfire

The interesting thing is that the sales rep’s effort to control my survey backfired. I got quietly furious about their attempted bribe, Continue reading

The Hidden Lie about Seven Impressions in Advertising

By John Aberle | advertising , Internet Marketing , Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

For some 30 years of my career in sales and marketing, we’ve used a rule of thumb that it takes seven impressions for the average person to buy — assuming he or she actually has a need for what you are selling. And as rules of thumb go, it’s a good one — if you understand what it means. Otherwise, it’s a lie to the extent that it can be very misleading. It’s a lie of omission.

When running ads, in magazines and newspapers, you would normally expect to run for seven days or seven monthly issues and get seven impressions. Wrong. Perhaps because my first sales job when I left the Air Force was in radio advertising, I immediately got a different slant on the seven impressions. Someone has to hear your spot or see — and actually notice — your ad for it to count as an impression. So immediately one has a challenge getting seven impressions.

How many people do you know who actually read every article and every ad in every issue for seven issues. That means that they might notice your ad every third or fourth one.

The other issue is that it needs to be frequent enough that the last impression hasn’t faded from memory. This is why in Internet marketing, Continue reading