Dominate Your Local Market!

An open message to the marketers whose lists I am subscribed to.

I use multiple email accounts for multiple purposes. When I subscribe to someone’s mailing list, I use one. When I sign up for affiliate programs I use another. When I purchase from marketers, I may use another. I use multiple email addresses to receive email in the same way that marketers use multiple mailing lists to SEND email.

What all of this adds up to is that I get dozens of duplicate emails daily from the same people, often multiple emails to the same address from different mail lists of the same person.

This eats up some of my productive time as I sort through them - way too much time in my opinion. Over the next few weeks, I am going to be clicking the “unsubscribe” button on a lot of mailing lists.

I subscribed to most of these lists on purpose and I appreciate getting mail from my favorite marketers, but ten or eleven duplicate emails is just too much. In those instances, I will be attempting to unsubscribe to all but one. If there is doubt, I will err on the side of caution. I don’t want to lose the info you send any more than you want to lose a subscriber. But those multiple subs just waste my time and lot of bandwidth.

So don’t take it personally, Mr. Emailer. I am not disrespecting the info you send me, I’m just trying to eliminate some of he “electronic clutter” from my life.

Ever feel like quitting? Ever felt like you didn’t have what it takes to reach your goals? This six minute video has something to say to us all.

How to Optimize for Local Search

Today we bring you a video where Dr. Ralph Wilson interviews Frederick Marckini on How to Optimize for Local Search. If you do any kind of business in a specific geographic area, this video is a “must see.”

I hope you enjoyed the video and got some helpful tips from it. I just wanted to add that the time to secure your position in Google Geotargeting is now. Your competitors are already doing it, some by plan, some by accident. But accidental search engine positioning is better than no search engine positioning.

And while Google Pay per Click (PPC) advertising can be incredibly inexpensive for your local markets for most keywords, positioning yourself in the Google organic search is even less so.

What is organic search? Organic search is the unpaid search results that come up whenever you type a keyword into Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other search engine. Your customers are more likely to click on organic search results, but it is harder to get near the top of the listings for your chosen keyword.

There are strategies that you could be using right now to better your position in organic search. We took a client in Houston, TX to the top of her keyword search results because her competition had left themselves vulnerable.

And there is an important lesson in that for all of us. Once a website is well positioned in the organic search results for a given keyword, it is much harder to dislodge them than it would have been to work your way into that position in the first place.

So the time to move is now, before your competition gets any more firmly entrenched ahead of you. Orange Cat Productions has some basic strategies for improving your organic search position in local markets. Contact Orange Cat today and start building your positioning while it is still affordable.

The other day, I was reading a thread on the Warrior Forum (a forum for internet marketing) and I came across a discussion of mailing lists that brought some interesting things to light.

If you’re a reader of this blog, you know how often I mention the fact that you need to be collecting simple contact information from your visitors, using autoresponders to begin building a relationship and maintaining contact using the autoresponder and broadcast mailings.

There has been a lot of debate over the merits of single opt-in and double opt-in mailing lists. The idea of a double opt-in list is simple. The subscriber has to confirm their subscription before they are added to the list.

This is primarily to prevent automated sign-ups, malicious sign-ups (where a person subscribes someone else to one or more lists). It also sends a signal to the subscribers that they are dealing with an ethical marketer who is taking steps to prevent such things.

The most common complaint I hear from list owners about double opt-in lists is that a large percentage of their subscribers never confirm. And that would seem to be a problem. Don’t you want to reach EVERYONE who takes the time to sign up for your list?

Short answer - No, you don’t.

There are reasons why people don’t confirm. Some of them don’t receive the confirmation email. Some of them change their mind. Some of them were subscribed by someone else. Let’s take these one at a time.

Some of them don’t receive the confirmation message.

OK, you’ve put a really clear message on the subscribe thank you page that explains what they need to do to confirm their subscription. But you still only get 50% of them to confirm. What happened? Maybe some of them didn’t get the confirmation email. What do you do about them? Well, nothing. If they didn’t get your confirmation message, they obviously didn’t make the effort to whitelist you. So even if your list were single opt-in, they wouldn’t be getting your messages either.

Some of them change their mind.

Buyer regret happens even with email list sign-ups. And if you offer an “ethical bribe,” they may be tempted to use a phony email address just to get what you are offering. By making them confirm, you weed out the phony emails and those that want your gift, but not your mailings or newsletter.

Some of them were subscribed by someone else.

This is more common than your think. It’s not just malicious subscriptions that sign up others. How about so called “tell-a-friend” scripts that keep emails in a back-end database for later use. Tell your friend and they are signed up. If the list is single opt-in, they are signed up unwillingly. I’ve stopped using “tell-a-friend” scripts because my friends are more important than some unscrupulous emailers. If I want a friend to see a website, I can email them the URL. Don’t use these things - too many of them are poison. Worst of all, I have seen these scripts mail to the “friends” from the original friends email address. Nice - spam them and blame it on the person naive enough to give their friends email addresses to you.

And folks, commercial email sent to someone who didn’t request it is spam, plain and simple, regardless of who is the sender.

Single opt-in pitfalls

I use single opt-in on a few of my lists. Generally they are lists of current or past customers, members of membership sites, etc. Lists that can be signed up for on a web form are not good single opt-in candidates.

Too many list owners put way too much stock in the size of their list. It is like pissing on trees - “my list is bigger than your list.” Tests by several marketers have indicated that a properly maintained double opt-in list is far more productive than a single opt-in list. I didn’t use the term “well maintained single opt-in list” because there is no such thing. When a list owner puts more stock in numbers than in the quality of the subscriber, their credibility takes a hit. Subscribers have less respect for the list and it’s owner making them that more likely to not think twice about filtering the email into limbo or clicking their “spam” button.

You’ve all read about how ISPs are penalizing single opt-in list owners by making their mail less deliverable than double opt-in mails. They are also beginning to track such things as open rate and click-throughs to determine if email from certain sender has any value to their customers. If there are few opens or clicks and the “spam” button gets clicked a few times, what do you think is going to happen that domain’s emails?

Email lists area all about deliverability. Track your open rate. If it is extremely low, you’ve got a problem. Not everyone reads every mail. But if I had an open rate of 5%, 10% or 15%, I’d be concerned.

One more thing that has turned up in some folks testing. A lot of the single opt-in subscribers who are opening the mail (thus counting in your open rate stat) are also hitting the “spam” button instead of delete. They just highlight a bunch of emails and click, spam. It’s that respect thing again. It’s free and easy, so it has less value.

Do your subscribers respect you?

So once again, it all goes to credibility. If you are taking steps to show that you are a credible source of information, running a credible email list is an important part.

Another important part of keeping your list deliverable in proper maintainence. Hard bounces and phony addresses need to be cleaned off the list. The software I use (AutoResponse Plus) and most services, such as aWeber limit the number of tries the system will make to an address. Removing them is then a simple process.

It’s harder to track those who are on your list, but are inactive. Some people send out an email threatening to remove subscribers who don’t take some action. I don’t like the idea of threatening subscribers, but if you have a single opt-in list, it may the only way of eliminating inactive subscribers who can damage your ability to deliver email to others.

This is always a hot issue, so if you have something you agree or disagree with, or simply have something to add to this, your comments are always welcome.

Do you find yourself spending all kinds of time on forums, YouTube, reading and re-sending jokes, chain emails, etc. during the day? Would you take that sort of behavior from someone you were paying? No? Well, maybe it’s time you considered firing yourself.

That was the subject of today’s post on Robert Plank’s Blog and worth a read. At the very least, it’ll get you thinking about what you do all day.

Put together some great guitar, a classic piece of music, a simple video and link to a website and what do you get? 40 Million YouTube views and counting. Thinking of the difference 40 Million plus visitors could make to your marketing effort?

Yes, he’s good. And that’s why he has drawn 40 million viewers. And let’s be honest here. That’s not a very good video, is it? But it gets his point across. Want to play guitar like me (i.e., very good) - then grab this course or this product and you can.

You are also good at what you do. And there are YouTube visitors searching right now for the type of information you have to share, whether that is how-to info, or products or homes for sale.

Now, I know you may not be a super guitar player, and you may not draw 40 million viewers, but just think of the power of YouTube and what it could do for your business. And best of all, it’s FREE. Every time we’ve put something on YouTube, we’ve increased traffic to our website. And increased traffic means increased sales if your website is set up to take advantage of the traffic. If it’s not, you have some work to do.

Ask yourself these questions before you put your first video on YouTube or any other video site, such as Google Videos or Revver.com:

What happens when a new visitor reaches my home page?
What do they see or hear? Is there a clear definition of the purpose of the website or just random information they may or may not be interested in?

What do I want them to do?
Every web page should have a single purpose. It can supply information, sell a product, request visitor info such as name and email, or anything else important to your business. But it can’t do all of these things at once. You need separate pages for each function. This make the purpose of the page clearer to both visitors and search engines. You’ll get better response and better search ranking.

Have I made my objective clear to them?
Don’t assume that visitors know what you expect of them. Tell them! If you want them to buy a product, state your case and ask for the sale multiple times. If you want them to sign up for your newsletter, offer them something of value in exchange for their name and email.

Will they ever come back again?
Not if you don’t make some effort to ensure that they have a reason to come back. The first thing any website needs to do is to try and capture some information from the visitor so that you can contact them in the future and offer them something of interest to get them to come back.

Remember that very few visitors buy on their first visit. When that fifth, sixth or seventh contact motivates them to action, you want to be the one making that contact.

So review your website to be sure you have some of these basic elements in place. Then put together a video for YouTube. You don’t have to be Steven Spielberg here. Just convey the information you want in a simple and clear manner. You’ll get better as you make more videos.

Type keywords for your type of business into the search box at YouTube and see what your competitors are doing. You’ll also get some great inspiration for your own videos.

Start out using simple tools like Windows Movie Maker or Quicktime and iMovie. Just get started in some way. Remember that the power of video is yours for the taking at YouTube.

This Sunday (March 9, 2008) at 2 AM marks the start of Daylight Saving Time (DST) here in the U.S., but it hasn’t alwys been so. There have been times when DST was observed locally, creating consusion and chaos.

I remember as a child in the 1960s driving with my parents from our home in New Jersey to visit my grandfather in Knoxville, TN. We would pass through towns (especially along U.S. 11 in Virginia) that didn’t observe DST. This confusion ended in 1966 with the passage of the first Federal law regulating DST.

Chaos of Non-Uniform DST
Widespread confusion was created during the 1950s and 1960s when each U.S. locality could start and end Daylight Saving Time as it desired. One year, 23 different pairs of DST start and end dates were used in Iowa alone. For exactly five weeks each year, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were not on the same time as Washington D.C., Cleveland, or Baltimore – but Chicago was. And, on one Ohio to West Virginia bus route, passengers had to change their watches seven times in 35 miles! The situation led to millions of dollars in costs to several industries, especially those involving transportation and communications. Extra railroad timetables alone cost the today’s equivalent of over $12 million per year.

Amtrak
To keep to their published timetables, trains cannot leave a station before the scheduled time. So, when the clocks fall back one hour in October, all Amtrak trains in the U.S. that are running on time stop at 2:00 a.m. and wait one hour before resuming. Overnight passengers are often surprised to find their train at a dead stop and their travel time an hour longer than expected. At the spring Daylight Saving Time change, trains instantaneously become an hour behind schedule at 2:00 a.m., but they just keep going and do their best to make up the time.

Manslaughter
In California, a Chevrolet Blazer packed with teenagers struck the median of a street and flipped over, tragically killing one teen and injuring several others. The teen driver, fighting charges of felony vehicular manslaughter, claimed that the street was dangerously wet and unsafe due a lawn sprinkler system. The landscaper responsible for the computerized sprinklers testified that the sprinklers were set to come on more than fifteen minutes after the fatal accident. The outcome hinged on whether the sprinklers’ timer had been adjusted for a recent Daylight Saving Time change, for without the DST adjustment, the sprinklers had close to 45 minutes to make the road slick.

For more stories and information on Daylight Saving Time, see the source for this post at: http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/index.html

I don’t have time to watch TV during business hours and every once in a while I miss something that is so worthwhile that I have to let you know as soon as I find out. The link to this video was sent to me by my dear friend, Jay Patel - thanks, Jay.

It is a clip from the Oprah show with final lecture of a very special person, Randy Pausch, a Carnegie-Mellon professor who has 3-6 months to live and who has been called the “World’s Bravest Man.” But his message is for all of us.

Please take a few minutes out of your busy schedule and watch this - it will be time well spent.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8577255250907450469

This past weekend, 10 more videos were posted to the How Do I Do That? Videos website. There are four (4) additions to the Article Marketing Series and a whole new 6 video series on setting up and posting to a free Blogger.com account.

The same videos were added to the Bluegrass Internet Marketing Association website for members to use and to the OrangeCat.com website for clients of OrangeCat Web Hosting or Consulting.

The four Article Marketing Videos added brings that series to fourteen (14) videos:

1. Series Introduction
2. Article Marketing Defined
3. The Anatomy of an Article
4. Example 1 of an Article
5. Example 2 of an Article
6. The Subject of the Article
7. The Title of the Article
8. The Body of the Article
9. The Bio-Box of the Article
10. Create Your Article From PLR Products
11. Paying Someone Else To Write Your Articles
12. How To Use Scriptlance To Get Your Articles Written
13. How To Submit Your Article
14. An Introduction To Article Directories

No matter what you are selling, promoting or giving away on the Net, you can build traffic to your site using articles. That may be how you found your way here!

The Blogger.com blogging video series currently contains these six (6) segments:

• Setup a Google Account - You’ll need one to use Blogger
• Setup a Blogger Account
• Set Your Blogger Settings
• Set Your Blogger Layout and Theme
• Add a Post to Your Blogger Blog
• Schedule a Blogger Post

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

Bill Cosby said it. And I’m here to tell you that he hit the nail on the head. Let’s face it. No matter how hard you try, some folks just aren’t going to like you. And if they don’t like you, they probably aren’t going to do business with you - and there’s nothing you can do about it.

People like to do business with people they are comfortable with. With people they trust. With people they have some affinity with. You might be able to win over a few of those with whom you have nothing in common, but you will expend a lot of time and energy for little return.

So get over it. Forget about them and concentrate on the ones who are naturally drawn to you, the ones Master Marketer Dan Kennedy refers to as your “herd.” And if you work your “herd,” you can be more successful with less effort.

On the other hand, when we try to please everybody, we get caught in the trap of spending time and energy with prospects that we have virtually no chance of selling to.

When the time comes to purchase, prospects easily remember those they do and don’t want to do business with. If you are one of the “dos,” you have competition. Chances are they have met a few others who they’d be happy to deal with. Keeping your name in front of them until they are ready is one of the easiest and most overlooked strategies for ensuring that YOU are the one that gets picked.

Often, people will deal with the business or person that they have had the most recent contact with. One that they’d like to do business with. Make sure to position yourself as that person.

So what do you do to stay in their field of awareness? Simple things. Be sure to email them valuable information on a regular basis. If you are looking to sell them a high-ticket item, make personal contact via phone or hand-written note from time-to-time.

That brings up an interesting point. Much of our business is done through our websites. When we collect information, it is generally just the name and email address to get them on to an autoresponder (A/R) sequence (regular contact). Some of our A/R sequences stretch out for several months and we have plans to extend several of them for over a year. I’m sure that as that year approaches, we will extend them even further, or loop them to start again, adding new messages into the sequence as needed.

But collecting additional information, such as phone numbers and mailing addresses is a bit trickier. I know I am put off when a new contact asks for that type of information. Many marketers report getting bogus information when they push for too much, too soon.

We need to take a little time to build a relationship before we can ask for more information, and even then, extract it a little bit at a time. One of the best ways to get such information is by offering or selling a physical product.

I know the how strong the temptation is to offer only digital products in order to keep costs low, but having the physical info can be very important. Having the ability to send prospects and customers sales letters, gifts and greeting cards radically increases your options for relationship building.

One of the most inexpensive methods of getting shipping info is to offer a free CD with valuable content and ask the person to pay for the shipping and handling. It is easy to see how a modest shipping & handling charge could easily cover the cost of the CD, the shipping container, and shipping expense.

So basically, you can get the information for free. How much of a response you can expect is directly proportional to the value of what is being offered. Low value, low response - high value, high response. How do you know? Your prospects will tell you by how they respond.

By presenting offers of information and free product, as well as what you write into your A/R messages and email broadcasts, you begin to have a personality emerge - it could be yours or the business’s. But some of your prospects will respond to it - that is your “herd.” Take good care of them and they will take good care of you.

Take a little time out of your schedule today and think of ways you can use the above suggestions in YOUR business. Write them down. Then organize them into a plan. Then put the plan into action. If you do one thing every day to build your “herd,” at the end of the year, you will have dome some 250 little things. How do you think that will reflect on your bottom line?