Online Christmas Game in Flash

If you have a minute checkout this latest christmas flash game we recently developed for one of our clients PMI mortgage Insurance.



P.S. If you want to learn more about my formula for website traffic and how to get it as cheap as possible, you might be interested in my new online marketing seminar.

God Created the Internet to Market your Business Online

God created the internet to market your business online – get that firmly entrenched in your mind … and when he created it what he wanted you to have is thousands of visitors to your site.

To achieve this you'll need a strategy to get quality traffic to your website and drive sales.

An effective online marketing strategy is more than SEO, email marketing, or even optimising your website. It involves a number of activities that, when combined, result in a dramatic increase in sales.

Over seven years Fred Schebesta has learnt the essential secrets to online marketing success.

If you've ever wanted to get a handle on online marketing and make a powerful impact on your business, here is your chance. With only ten places available for this seminar, participants learn from one of Australia's best and awarded online marketing experts - Fred Schebesta.

You will get hands on experience that will improve you online marketing abilities and enable you to start marketing like a professional online marketing agency.

You can get a sneak preview of Fred Schebesta's 11 Online Marketing Secrets Seminar below, watch Fred as he explains the fastest way to grow your email database:




Learn Internet Marketing from Fred Schebesta, limited places available.

12 Quick Christmas Online Marketing Review Tips to Increase Sales Online

Check Your Website with 12 Quick Christmas Online Marketing Tips

Interestingly the 12 days of Christmas song is not actually a countdown to Christmas day but instead a count from Christmas day to the 6th of January, “The Epiphany Day”. This Christmas whilst you are pondering around and have some time on the internet give yourself a break in 2008 and do a little review of your online marketing with these 12 tips.

1. Review your competitor’s website – Type in the main keyword you are competing for in Google and browse through the top 10 results to see what they are doing that you might be able to do. Sometimes comparing yourself to the competition can bring about quick shortcuts which you were pondering before.
2. Review your web stats – If you don’t have access to your web stats, I suggest spend the time to get it. Checkout these metrics and set a reminder for this time next year to make a comparison:
1. Major keywords bringing you traffic
2. Which websites are bringing you the most traffic
3. Number of unique visitors on your website per month
3. Test your website – Just click around it and pretend you are a customer. You are looking for:
1. Quick improvements
2. Spelling mistakes
3. Errors
4. A reminder of where you are at with your site.
4. Increase trust and review your content – Remove your 2005 press release on your website and consider replacing it with some latest news. Fresh content is very persuasive as it shows that the website is alive. Actually read your homepage content and make a quick assessment.
5. Write a quick article – A good article for your website that helps visitors is invaluable. It helps in the sales process for your visitors and it is also great search engine food. If you are stuck for ideas:
1. Pickup a your trade magazine and write about what your take is on the industry and what your predictions are for 2008
2. Write a “How to Choose a ‘your profession’” e.g. How to choose an online marketing consultant.
6. Hunt for a new domain name – Check if the generic keyword for your industry (www.Shoes.com.au) has expired and if you can snap it up. This happened to me quite a few times with our clients. Domain names with keywords inside them are easier to rank in the search engines.
7. Build your email database – Collect together all of those rogue business cards and other email addresses you have and compile them together into an Excelsheet ready to be put into an online mailout database.
8. Write a quick enewsletter – Get together some content and prepare to send out your enewsletter in January next year. Be ready to press the send button next year, before it gets crazy again.
9. Tweak your adwords – Kill poor performing ads and pump up ads that are performing well. If you haven’t got a paid search marketing campaign, get one up and running in 27 minutes with my free guide.
   
10. Rewrite your about us page – Include all of the new things that happened in 2007 into your about us. Include new clients, new products and any other big news that occurred.
11. Check your contact us form – Make sure it works. Is it logical to use, does it make sense to you what it requires. Fill it out. Got back to your website and think where else you could put links to your contact us page to get more people to it?
12. Plan your 2008 online marketing – Jot down things that you want to do, wishlists and what you won’t do next year.

How to start a search engine marketing campaign

Why start a search engine marketing campaign?
Buying traffic for the sake of buying traffic will send you broke. The reason is because it isn’t targeted, so you will only get people coming to your website that just leave. Buying just any traffic is like putting up a T.V. ad, you are shooting millions of arrows out to try and hit a prospect. The answer to not wasting your money is to target specific users and prequalify your traffic.

Target specific users – Market to people who are interested in your product. Michael Kiely taught me to “Fish where the fish are”. I took out of that advertise where people are looking for your products. Search engine marketing targets the people who are interested in your products because the visitor types in what they are searching for. The user makes their intentions clear that they are searching for “a way to save my marriage”, keyword typed in = “Save Marriage Book”. Before the user goes to your website they tell you what products they want to see. If your product matches what they want to see you can easily market your product to them.

Prequalify your audience – Buying advertising on a performance basis is a great start but you still don’t want to be paying for traffic that is not sent to your website for the right reason. Getting a user to do something like typing in a query makes the traffic more qualified. Users actually have to search for your ads.

I recommend buying search engine marketing traffic as the first thing to do. The reason is that you can keep your budgets low, ($100 per month) and you can keep the campaign small and manageable to determine what results you get.

How to start your search engine marketing campaign to get instant traffic

Step 1 - Choose your search engine: I recommend starting with Google because it accounts for around 70% of the Australian search engine market traffic. Yahoo and Ninemsn each account for around 12% each and the minor other search engines account for the remainder.
Below is a snapshot from one of my clients websites that shows you the % of traffic they get from each of the search engines.




You can see from the above results that Google is the big Gorilla in the Australian search space so I always recommend you optimise first for it and buy Adwords first. After that consider Yahoo and Ninemsn.

Step 2 - Setup your campaign on Google
I have put a guide together to help you in 7 steps get your site live on google. Just go to www.StartSearchMarketing.com.au and follow the steps.
To begin you will need the following:

1. A website – You need somewhere to send the traffic you will get from the search engine.
2. A credit card – This is to pay for your ads.

www.StartSearchMarketing.com.au
Start your search marketing campaign now

5 Secrets to A Successful Performance Media Campaign

Performance Media may be one of the easiest, and most effective, online marketing opportunities in today’s market.

What is Performance Media/Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is an agreement between two sites in which one site (the affiliate) agrees to feature content or an ad designed to drive traffic to another site. In return, the affiliate receives a percentage of sales or some other form of compensation generated by that traffic.

What are the benefits?

• You only pay for results. You don't pay for page views or click-throughs: you pay for results. You decide what is most valuable to you -- a sale, an e-mail lead, a download, a newsletter subscriber, or any other measurable activity.
• It exposes you to a bigger market to sell your product.
• It gives you the potential benefit of getting advertising space on sites and only paying for commissions, not for the actual advertising space.
• You will most likely benefit form lower cost per acquisition than traditional online marketing.

5 things that you need to consider for a successful Affiliate Marketing Program:

1. Direct traffic to the most persuasive and relevant section on your website – The last thing you want is to generate traffic to your site and see it dropping off straight away, because people can’t find what they are looking for. This is particularly important as your affiliates are incentive by commissions and if your site doesn’t convert they will stop promoting your program. When you are advertising for a certain offer in your ad, make sure that potential customers are directed to the exact section of your page that promotes that product or offer. A lot of businesses redirect potential customers to the landing page and lose valuable leads, as people don’t have time to look through the site to find the particular product/offer that you advertised for. Keep the message simple and deliver on what you promise in your ad, i.e Avoid hidden costs or charges.
2. Work with your affiliates – Building a strong relationship with your affiliates is crucial to a successful performance campaign. See it as a long-term relationship that you need to work on constantly, which will lead to a win-win situation. It is essential to develop a community of reliable affiliates, who are committed to your program and its success. One strategy to do this is a monthly email newsletter to communicate directly with your affiliates. A monthly newsletter not only increases awareness in your program but allows you to offer incentives (e.g. Higher commissions) for better performance. Another point to think about is whether you will pay your affiliates a commission on sales only, or pay them by some other incentive. As a merchant, your options for commission payments are: Pay-per-sale, Pay-per-click or Pay-per-lead.
3. Ensure your site converts, otherwise you are wasting your time – The best performing online businesses have a simple and clear site. Ensure your site is easy to complete the desired conversion action e.g. fill in a contact form and that potential customers can find what they are looking for within 2 clicks away. A site map can be useful for users who wish to navigate to specific sections. Organize your pages into nice categories so that it is not frustrating for your readers to find what they want. Ask yourself the questions:
1. Who am I trying to persuade to take the desired action?
2. What is the action I want them to take?
3. What does that person need in order to feel confident taking that action?
4. Rotate your creative to keep it fresh and converting – There are many different types of online advertising creative such as: banner ads, pixel advertising, pop ups, emails, text links and the more options you provide your affiliates the easier it is for them to promote you. You have to decide which is the best for your product and/or service. If you're not experienced, one of the easiest ways is to find out what methods the bigger sellers in your market are using. Always make sure you have few different ad-formats available, as this will generate more exposure and will give you a better understanding of what works, its also helps you understand which creative converts the best and therefore what your customers prefer.
5. Contact details/Excellent customer service – Many small businesses that aren’t performing well on the internet may find that their contact details are impossible to find. Lots of people think that their privacy will be violated and they will get hundreds of customers calling them asking questions. This is a tragedy. You must speak to your customers as they want to spend money with you. Every single one telephone call is a potential opportunity to make money. It’s also important to give your customers the peace of mind that they can just pick up the telephone and contact you. After your customers trust you they will order more on your website and thus keep your affiliates happy. To be successful in your affiliate program, you should have customer service and support not just for your customers but also your affiliates. Be prepared to respond to questions and enquiries in various forms such as emails, faxes, phone calls or instant messages from your affiliates promptly and professionally so that you build better relationships.

If you want to learn more about performance media opportunities for you business, please speak to one of our consultants for a free evaluation as to whether it will be suitable for your business. Contact us on 02-9339 6747.

How to avoid search engines telling customers things you don't want them to see

This morning I typed in Colorado into the search engine hoping to browse their lovely website and catalogue. I was absolutely shocked when I saw the second listing in Google:

"webstore is closing" – this was followed by a website which was an email folder which lead to a broken link.



The website itself at present has no content, and you can’t browse to that folder. Google has slipped through the cracks of the website and has found some content that it feels is important. If I were Colorado I would be concerned as to what links are lurking in the rest of their website!


3 ways to search engine optimise your website so that spiders don't find your skeletons

1. Add the pages and folders you don't want visible in search engines to your robots.txt file eg:
   Disallow: /admin-access/
   Disallow: /cms-login/


2. Make sure that pages like CMS login, administrator access etc that should only be accessible to the webmaster are not linked to from anywhere on your site.


3. Use your Google Webmaster tools account to submit a URL removal request

NSW Young BizStar Entrepreneur Competition

My fellow director of Freestyle Media, Frank Restuccia had a great time talking at the final of the NSW Young BizStar Competition 2007 yesterday.

He told me it was a great opportunity to pass on our experience of the pros and cons of being young and starting a successful business to the next generation of entrepreneurs

I know he inspired them to great deeds with our story of:

1. Starting Freestyle Media while studying at University in 2001
2. Building it up to group revenues exceeding $2M in the past financial year
3. My being appointed ADMA Australian and NSW Young Direct Marketer of the Year 2006 for pioneering work combining traditional direct marketing with online marketing techniques.

Most importantly he motivated them to persevere in their quest to be entrepreneurs because in the words of former President of the United States Calvin Coolidge they should:

“Press on: nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent”

Warning, Are you ignoring Your Desperate Customers Searching for your Services!

During the evening my stomach hurt, but when I woke in the morning..

At 1:02am on Monday my stomach hurt so much that I felt like crying, I had no idea what was wrong. My father is an anaesthetist and I called him because he helps me out when I am really unwell. I told him my symptoms and he quickly diagnosed that it was my appendix that was in trouble. I live in Sydney and know of all the private hospitals, although I was in Melbourne for business and had no idea where or what the private hospitals were called. So I did like everyone else would and asked a mate for a recommendation, he said the Alfred Hospital was good in St Kilda so I went there.

At the same time as this I asked my dad to go on Google and find a private hospital in Melbourne, “Private Hospital Melbourne” was the keyword I muttered underneath my pain. Now, my dad couldn’t work out a private from a public hospital in the search engine as they had the worst search engine marketing in the world. I wasn’t exactly in a position to be reading a review as my pain was excruciating. I personally was desperate for care, I would have accepted an Indian backyard shop with a pocket knife if he was going to remove my appendix. The Price was not even a consideration. I would have re-mortgaged my apartment just to get under the knife.

I quickly got into a cab and hurled down the streets to the hospital only to find out it was a public hospital. I have had 2 operations in my life and this one has definitely been up there in the pain stakes. Its amazing how much you use your stomach muscles. I must say that the service speed has not been super at times but the nurses have been great. The food is hospital food and with some creative ordering you can get some nice stuff (I would recommend the spaghetti Bolognaise).

After my operation I heard a diagnosis from my surgeon who said apparently my appendix had actually burst and had created an abscise. My stomach had created a wall around it to stop it from infecting my entire stomach but was not in a good way. The extreme requirement of this situation was drastic although I could not find a single place on the internet for somewhere to fix it. It seems that the hospitals have turned a blind eye to people searching for a hospital to fix their condition in an emergency.

4 things I would immediately do if I were search engine marketing hospitals

1. Buy Relevant keywords - Start buying up keywords for every single emergency condition and send them to a landing page with address details and a good guide on how to get there.
2. Optimise the basics on your website - Display a clear title tag for each page. Especially information as to whether you are a private or public hospital.
3. Put your details on Google Maps - Update your Google map details immediately so that people can quickly and easily find your premises.
4. Search Optimise your website for emergency terms - Start optimising your website for all of your main services and the conditions they fix. Make sure you create pages optimised for human speak and not just doctor speak. “Appendix out” vs. “Appendectomy”. Emergency terms although it makes me a bit squeamish to say this are good money customers searching for services for hospitals, they need your service as a matter of life or death!
   

During my stay I have thought of a lot of ideas in terms of hospital marketing. Here are my initial 3 ideas. I am sure some of you entrepreneurs out there could build businesses out of these.

3 Killer ideas for web businesses that would make money in the hospital niche that are currently wide open

1. Hospital Review website – The website reviews and takes in feedback from people who have used a hospital and makes recommendations. It also provides information and service provisions for the different hospitals.
2. A directory of hospitals in every major city – A simple directory could bring in a lot of traffic from the travellers and I am sure could be a good audience to market to.
3. A hospital survival Blog – There must be people out there who have mastered the art of going to hospital and having a superb time. There are so many little nuances and things you pick up over time. Like why doesn’t the tea lady bring me strawberry milk but they do bring the other patients exotic drinks. How do I upgrade my drinks?

Update: I have been discharged this Friday Morning at 10:24am from hospital and am now recovering in a hotel room. After 5 days in hospital I have had a whirlwind experience and look forward to catching up with you for some of my new online marketing strategies I came up with in my hospital bed! Ask me about my new landing page strategy.

Look over my shoulder as I search engine optimise this website and steal my secrets!

Free Search Engine Optimisation Webinar Recording

Last week I did a webinar with SmartCompany and search engine optimised a few websites including:

• Axa Australia www.axa.com.au
  
• Flexi Car www.FlexiCar.com.au

Key elements we went through:

1. Overall search engine optimisation performance of a website
2. Keyword research and selecting profitable words
3. Structuring your website for keywords
4. Code optimisation
5. Inbound Links
   

Bonus Questions answered
I also answered some very specific questions about search marketing that you can learn a lot from at the later 3rd of the webinar.

You can view the search engine optimisation webinar now.

News:

Freestyle Media adds Goodman Fielder to its speciality FMCG online marketing divison

Advice on creating a headline that makes your Website Sell

What makes a Website Headline Appealing to Your Visitors and gets them to Buy from You?

In any website, landing page or advertisement your headline is the most important part. How does this apply online:

1. Converting Visitors on Website landing pages – The first words your visitor reads when they land on your landing page.
2. Getting Traffic from Google Adwords Copy – The Headline in your Adwords copy will determine whether your ad gets viewed or not. I would recommend using the keyword you are optimising for in the headline as it usually gives you better quality score and encourages more clicks.
3. Increasing Banner ads Click throughs – The copy in your banner ad determines whether someone clicks not the image. The image needs to tell a story and support the copy. Checkout some banners on some websites and notice what you look at.
1. Image – This sucks you in and supports the copy
2. Copy – This determines if you click or not.
3. Action to take – What do you need to do to take action.

How can you write a killer Headline?

1. Test – Understand that writing the best headline ever requires testing. Just like with those ads I clipped out from London they had been tested and perfected. I clipped them out because the advertisers had done the testing for me and I noted it in my list.
2. What is in it for you – Start from the key appeal of your readers. What is in it for them. The best headlines have self-interest built into them for their readers to be enticed.
3. Remove complicated words – Any word that doesn’t make sense to a 6 year old, revise it and put something simpler in there. If it doesn’t make sense to anyone who reads it. Revise it.
4. Do not be funny, cute or tricky – Those types of headlines are written for copywriters and they don’t sell. Your headline is there to sell not impress people with your copywriting skills.
5. Copy from the best – There are tried and tested formulas for headlines and you may aswell use them. My personal favourites are “How to travel overseas for under $37 a day”, “Finally! A credit card without fees” or “Advice on saving money with credit card debt”. Simple words that gain your interest, copy them and test your own.
6. Curiosity – If you can get a user curious you will also get more attention. Although, attention doesn’t necessarily mean sales. Headlines that sell are better than headlines that get users to look. You know those funky ads on billboards where they just say something weird and you just get confused. Dump that idea. Just hit your target markets selfish bone and get them into your copy.

Analysis of a great headline

“They laughed when I sat at the piano, But when I started to play..”

This is a classic John Capels ad that ran for over 7 years and sold distance learning piano courses every time it ran. Why?

1. The headline has story value – The copy continues to tell how this person learnt to play the piano and how you too can learn.
2. You are immediately curious – Why did they laugh? What happened when you started to play?
3. The product is bang in the middle – You are immediately enlightened to the benefits of the product. This course will teach you how to play the piano and shock your friends at your new ability.

Headline’s Appeal – Be popular and attract attention, Prestige, Enjoyment and gain more leisure.

I love copy. It makes your website sell. Bad copy. No sales.

How to make your website sell and never need to change it again?

How to tap into the Inner Desire of your Customer every time they land on Your Website?

When I was over in London last week I clipped a number of advertisements from the newspaper because I felt they had killer sales appeal to consumers. They tapped into the topics which all humans are concerned with. When you look at advertisements look at them carefully to see what exactly they are appealing to. There are a lot of poor advertisements out there that are just wacky pictures and text and have absolutely no appeal or core benefit to the people who will potentially buy their product. Those are the ads which fail. You can tell an ad which fails because it doesn’t get run over and over again.

Why do ads that work keep getting run?

You would have thought that ads that work get tired because all of the people who have seen the ad have decided whether or not they are interested. This is not true. The reason why the same ad gets run over and over again is because it works. It brings in more net profit than it cost to place the ad. For example the sales letter for the wall street journal was run for over 14 years. The same letter sold subscriptions to that newspaper. There was no need to change it because it just kept selling subscriptions. An advertisement close to home are the AMI sniff and stiff ads. They haven’t changed in 2 months, because they just keep making sales. Every time they run one of piano ads their phone rings and they sell enough product to pay for the ads and make a profit.

How to tap into an appeal to make your website sell over and over again?

The first thing when you begin thinking about your appeal is to forget what business you are in. Any business can appeal to a particular appeal but it does not mean that it will sell. The process to figure out which appeal will work best for you is testing. There are some classic appeals for different markets such as

• Business books = Make more money
• Cosmetics = Popularity and attracting attention. (Especially from guys!)
• Doors, Doors, Doors, Doors ads = Bargain. (A little offensive but they have been working for 10 years now)

Appeals which have worked over time

The following appeals have sold products throughout time. Which appeal is your website tapping into?

• Make more money
• Save money
• Retirement security
• Better heath care now
• Healthcare security
• Security in old age
• Advance in profession or trade
• Prestige
• Enjoyment
• Easier chores
• Gain more leisure
• Comfort
• Freedom from worry
• To be one of the “in” group
• A Bargain
• Be popular, attract attention
• Desire to outshine the neighbours

So once you have decided which appeal you are going to test you need to formulate a headline. Headlines are the most important part of an advertisement.

Advice on making a headline that makes your sales.

New Online Marketing Facilities

How can you leverage Freestyle Media's New Online Marketing Facility?

Freestyle Media have moved office together with the other Q Ltd companies. Our new address is

4 - 16 Yurong Street, Darlinghurst

4 ways to leverage the New Online Marketing Facility for your campaigns

1. Better turnaround times for campaign production - With Freestyle Media integrated with its media providers campaigns can be turned around faster for you as we are 7 metres away from the media sources and trafficers of banner ads.

2. Your Campaigns are More integrated campaigns - If you want to get Online and mobile integrated together Freestyle now works together with Axis Media to deliver integrated mobile campaigns.

3. Better search engine rankings for your website - Freestyle Media and First-Rate are now in the same office and can share their search engine knowledge thus improving your results. Search engine knowledge is rare and so the sharing of these treasures will produce better results for your campaigns.

4. Bigger team working on your business - Freestyle is now offering more service with new additions to its staff and partnerships with the other Q companies.

If you want to tour our online marketing facility call Fred Schebesta on 9818 7300.

Freestyle Launches New website for Virgin Broadband

Freestyle Media launched the new Virgin Broadband site last week.

How To Handle Rapid Google Indexing

Last week I was reading Matt Cutts Blog and saw his report that:

The Google crawl/indexing team has continued working hard, and several people have noticed Google's index getting fresher and fresher. Now some documents can show up in minutes instead of hours or days.

The day after that I published a product review on one of my blogs before lunch. After eating I Googled for the product name and was completely blown away to find that my new page was in the top 5 results with the words updated 36 min ago next to it.

Most people are used to waiting several days if not weeks for new pages on their website to appear in search engines and this can lead to complacency about checking spelling, grammar and broken links before publishing a new page.

With Google now indexing some sites literally within minutes the key message to take away is Quality Control. Get someone to read your page text and click through all the links before publishing

Surviving a Surge of Popularity

How would you feel if your website wasn't accessible for a whole day?

Does the thought of that happening make you kind of sick in the stomach?

Well this is exactly what happened to a site I visit regularly (we'll let them be anonymous to avoid embarrassment).

One evening their site got linked to by a major overseas newspaper and the incoming traffic all through the Australian night was 10x normal … until the site crashed under great stress … and took 24 hours to replicate and bring back up again on a different server.

Prevent this happening to you:

• Get your site optimized by a specialist internet marketing company – the techniques to make a website user and search engine friendly also make sure that is fast and efficient


• Make sure your web host can handle sudden unexpected peaks of traffic – ask them if they can guarantee your website will survive what's known in the trade as the slashdot effect


• Monitor your website 24/7 and assign an IT manager with a pager/mobile which gets notified if the site goes down so they can react quickly.

Announcing the Engagement of Fred Schebesta and Jessica Kiely

On the 27th of July at 7:03am, Fred Schebesta gave Jessica Kiely this website.

And the answer was a "Yes".

P.S. Going on a 3 week holiday with Jessica now. See you all back soon!

Update: The wedding festival website is live!

How to take a risk with your Online Marketing

What do you think of the John Howard YouTube?



It is getting pounded by internet users, especially the YouTube community. I like what John and his team has done. Its good. Its getting press and its appealing to the younger voter. He is actually gotten with the times and realised that less people are watching the TV and has instead opted for the medium which most of us use all day. I think there are some lessons we can learn from this.

4 ways to minimise your risk with Online Marketing

1. Don't piss on the things that are already working - If you are going to take a risk reduce the damage and put it somewhere else. If John posted the video on his website he could damage all of the good or perhaps maximise it. Its unsure yet what would happen. By putting the video on YouTube this has reduced the risk by controlling the potential damage to only the YouTube site.

2. Interesting content and good video quality - I think the video quality is quite good although the content is debatable. I think that is a good thing but. It causes commentary and allows people to discuss their views. The haters and the lovers can fight it out. But the best thing is its all centred around John and that builds his profile coming up to this election.

3. Video is better than text - If you want to try and make some impact these days you are going to need to turn up the power. There is and excessive amount of noise on the internet and its hard to get some airtime. That is why I like the usage of video. 10 years back it would be outrageous for Johnny to release something in print on the internet. Now he has taken a step up and gone to the video content. That was mandatory to get noticed. Otherwise it would have passed through the internet like another HTML page on some distant URL that no one accessed.

4. Feedback and adjust - If there was no way to measure response and instant feedback to the activity it would be doomed to failure. John is getting instant feedback and also quite a bit of PR attention from the main press. This is critical as you can guage activity and also determine success and what to modify in the future.

What do you think?

How will the new changes in Google effect you?

What are the new Google changes (5th of July) and how do You Maintain and Improve Your Rankings?

1. Older domain name means better rankings? - Yes if your domain is older than 1 year it will more likely put you in stand for better rankings. This is a tough gig for any domain that is younger than 1 year and has great content. Best to get those landing pages up quickly and submissions to Google even while you are building the website.

2. More links pointing to your site means better rankings - Before if you had high quality links pointing to your website you would get better rankings. Google has slightly modified this and has given lots of links with little relevance more importance. I would suggest you increase your inbound links regardless of what changes in Google although start thinking about volume now too!

More changes will occur over the weekend and you will see your results move around quite a bit.

Make your opinion count!
Let me know how this has effected you?

How to Decide whether to Overhaul or just Upgrade your Website?

So you know your website sucks but there are still some pots of gold on it that everyone comments about and you don’t want to kill, for fear of losing all of your sales. What do you do?

We have many websites running for our clients and they all have golden elements to them which deliver the leads/signups/sales our clients need, but there are always improvements that can be made. The reason for this is because our clients took on my first principle of getting a website up and running and testing the results. They made sales, saw the potential and kept upgrading. If it died in the ass they dumped it. Your first website needs to be that test pilot that gives very specific users exactly what they need, but unfortunately will have many short comings and some grief for other users. Quickly upgrading your site and evolving it with the feedback from your new users is critical at this stage, but its not a reason to overhaul it.

Decision 1 – Did you figure out what the jewels on your website were?
If you haven’t figured that out yet its not time to rebuild it yet. Save your pennies and make a few imagery modifications, add a few links and push users to the areas of your website that you think might gain interest. Keep the test running. Note down just generally what has tended to provide the best conversions and what has got comments from users. Better still, if you have struck upon some viral elements or written a niche bit of content that is getting a huge amount of search engine traffic keep that and build more onto it. Remember it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be live and getting feedback.

Decision 2 – Do you have the cash?
If you don’t have the budget to make a better website this time around keep saving your pennies and incrementally invest in the site. If you rebuild a site it should be a bigger and better investment than before because you have the insights of what your customers want and you are upgrading these parts. If you are just rebuilding the site just for the sake of fixing some problems but are keeping the same functionality and content, I would pause and wait a bit more time before rebuilding your site. Just changing the 'look and feel' of your website isnt going to skyrocket your traffic or sales. These things might:

1. Building a viral tool - Adding a refer a friend form to your shopping cart thank you page. Creating a free report download form to build a database. Adding a forum.
2. Service - Is what you are adding a new service that your visitors will find handy? If yes, add it, if no disband it.
3. Money - Will you earn more cash from upgrading your site? This is a more crude way of saying is there an ROI in your website upgrade. Since you are a marketing manager and you have been to conferences with everyone screaming ROI. Just give it a thought before you upgrade. Anyone at Freestyle Media could build you a "Space Shuttle" of a website but we would not be keen to take your cash just because you want to upgrade it unless you were going to make more money by doing so.
   

I would advise that you want to be the big gorilla in your online niche not just a little possum hanging out with their mates. Vision your website as the best in the industry and work towards it.

3 questions to formulate your websites vision

1. Which website is the best in the market?
2. What am I doing better?
3. What do I need to do to take steps to be the best?

If you have 2 No’s from the above, then keep chipping away and rebuild it later. Perhaps just launch a free blog and start testing out those new ideas you had for your site. Alternatively just register a $8 .com domain name, install some off the shelf software with a few mods and plonk it on some cheap hosting and see what happens!

Yes, Its 1:13am! But I have to tell you something important.

If you have subscribed to this blog and have committed to this blog then disregards what I am about to say.

1. Do You Know how you can use online marketing?

Have you checked recently how many people go online vs go and check their mailbox. If not. Here are some stats for you.



2. Welcome to online marketing. I have bad news for you. People have already been where you have been and you need a serious crash course to catch up.

3. Don't worry. What you learnt offline can be applied online. If you have something of value people are going to check you out. If not. Try again.

4. By the way the online marketing dream is dying. Yes! People are crouding every single internet marketing niche. No more sending out random spam letters to people hoping 0.01% of people will respond. 6 other companies in your exact niche are about to do it. Hey, I am being extreme and there are still some niches open, but take some action, stop ignoring online marketing.

5. If you have need help call 02 9818 7300. Ask for Fred Schebesta.

Looking for some ADMA Forum slides?

Download 5 ways to supercharge your online marketing.

FREE Petrol!

The Most Compelling Headlines on the Internet

Yes! No gimmicks, No tricks just Free petrol! Our newest campaign with NRMA Motoring is to give away $25,000 worth of petrol and you get a free weekly email for the cheapest petrol prices in your area.

This is awesome http://nrma.campaign.com.au !

There are only 3 other headlines that could grab more attention than that. I have been reading Michael Kielys post about creating headlines and copywriting. I consider Michael Kiely to be the god of copywriting for direct marketing and kneel at his feet of wisdom.

3 Headlines to top FREE Petrol

1. Free Beer - I think I would do quite a few things for a free beer. I would fill in a 10 page survey just for a free beer.
2. Free Sex - This headline grabs peoples attention by the balls! Literally.
3. Free Money - This is a classic John Caples Headline.
   

Website Template for Search Engine Optimisation

Maximising SEO and Usability on your website

Thank you to everyone who attended my talk at Search Engine Bootcamp! It was super to be with such an engaging audience, I hope everyones palms read good futures!

Website Template to maximise search engine rankings

As promised here is the website template for maximising search engine rankings.

7 Secrets to make your Online Copy Sizzle!

Online Copy secrets shared by Online Guru Copywriter

Want more conversions on your site? Fix your copy! I have interviewed Jon Maxim to help you sizzle your copy to get a better response rate. Jon is a guru copywriter and teaches for ADMA strategy and copy courses.

Here are some of the things you will learn:

1. How to deal with the online medium?
2. Where do you start? _un__ion?
3. How do you get to the point faster, given its online?
4. What tactic should you employ so that everyone understands what you are trying to tell them?
5. What about grammar in the online space? What is so special about “Eats roots and leaves”?
6. How can you improve your copy over time?
7. What increases email readership?
8. BONUS!! Listen to find out!

Listen to the podcast by adding your name and email address:

Name:


Email:

Make your opinion count, post your comments about the podcast below.

Should you optimise your META tags for your SEO?

I get asked at every single SEO conference or talk I do whether or not you should optimise your META tags. Firstly here is my answer:

Title tag <title> - Definately. Probably the most important factor in your SEO

META Description and Keywords tags <meta> - Yes. My reason for this is that although it may not be the most important tag right now it is still a fundamental tag which Google may use more in the future. Below is Matt Cutts (Head of SPAM at Google) view on this.

Matt Cutts on Toolbar Data » Online Marketing Blog: "Let’s take the example in a different context. Meta tags got a bad rap in the early days of search engines because a few people abused them heavily. As a result Google doesn’t use meta tags much in ranking documents. But I’ve learned not to say “We would never use meta tags” because it’s not wise to preclude using any particular signal; in the future, someone might work out a way to use that signal.

So I’m not going to say definitively that Google doesn’t/won’t use toolbar data (or other signals) in ranking. I think what you were picking up on was my long list of “cons” in data like that."

What is the secret to online marketing when technology changes come so fast?

Is Your Online Marketing Becoming Obsolete?

Have you seen Microsoft Surface? If not spend 1 minute and be wowed by their video demonstrations.

Microsoft Surface Videos

So where does that leave your online marketing? Should you start researching how you are going to market to this new platform? Is your online marketing obsolete? Where does it fit in your online marketing strategy? I would suggest leave it the same place it was before. With new technologies and new ideas they are fantastic but unfortunately no one uses them except the innovators and pioneers. So many new and amazing technologies never make it to the mainstream. E.g. electronic Books, Electronic newspapers, ePens etc.. Surface is another media. Its a publicity thing right now for Microsoft to get back into the headlines. Its not mainstream yet. No one is using it. How many people in Australia have an iPhone from Apple? 10? There are only 10,000 people using Second Life in Australia.

Some products make it through to the mainstream like iPods, Personal computers, Mobile phones, pagers etc.. and then you need to think about how that effects your online marketing. My rule of thumb is this, If the taxi drivers are talking about it then its mainstream and you need to worry about it. Otherwise ohh and ahh about it but wait 2 more years. Right now I would suggest to you that you need to get your online marketing happening because the taxi drivers know how to go on the internet now!

6 Places You Are Losing Your Web Visitor

Stop Losing Your Customers from the 6 Most Common Conversion Spots in Your Sales Process

The first time I ever tried to buy my television online I stoppped and just went to another website. I was super keen on the television but I just physically couldn't figure out how to buy from the site. I won't mention there name.. ;-)

I did a presentation on the 6 ways you are losing sales on your website right now at eTail world and I have printed the slides up for your viewing.

Download your copy of the slides to improve your conversion rate

Supercharge Your Online Marketing Conversion.pdf

How to Increase your profits with B2B Integrated Online Marketing Podcast

Podcast 1: Increasing Bottom Line Profits with B2B Integrated Online Marketing

Fred Schebesta interviews Angela Schuster from Integrated research in this podcast. Angela is a guru at B2B online marketing and how to generate leads and enquiries. She takes a very integrated approach using the following tactics to generate qualified leads.

• Search marketing
• Websites
• Landing pages
• Email marketing
• Database profiling
• Podcasts and ebooks

Angela shares her 5 tips to B2B online marketing success at the end of the podcast which will immediately give you a framework to run your online marketing for increased results.

Listen to Podcast
Increasing profits with B2B Integrated Online Marketing

How does Q ltd's Acquisition of Freestyle Media help you?

Supercharge Your Online Marketing with the New Freestyle Media powered by Q ltd!

Yesterday Freestyle Media was 100% acquired by Q ltd. It was announced on the stock exchange and it a lot of trade journals like B and T and Adnews.

Online marketing agency Freestyle Media announced today it has been acquired by Q Ltd, a leading Australasian group of companies that provide services within the interactive advertising sector.

Q Ltd has acquired 100% of the share capital of Freestyle, one of the leading online marketing agencies in Australia. Freestyle works with clients to develop online strategies aimed at maximizing the capture and interaction of a brand with its target consumers.

The founders of Freestyle, Fred Schebesta and Frank Restuccia, will continue as joint Managing Directors under a 3-year employment agreement with the Q Ltd Group. The business will continue to operate under the Freestyle name.

“We are looking forward to being apart of a bigger group,” said Mr Schebesta.

“We will get some more powerhouse campaigns out there that pull millions of customers in for our clients. Keep building great converting websites and keep ranking our clients websites at the top of Google!”

Schebesta said that Freestyle plans on growing to 20-25 by the end of the year and will be opening an office in Melbourne in July.

"Freestyle provides outstanding services to its clients, assisting them to cost effectively target, capture and interact with consumers online, ensuring an ongoing relationship not simply a transaction. At Q Ltd, we believe all brands can benefit from the powerful online interactions Freestyle facilitates for clients and we are delighted that they have joined the Q Ltd team" said Q Ltd’s Managing Director, Paul G Choiselat.

Kevin Campbell, Q Ltd’s Chairman said "Freestyle compliments Q Ltd’s expansion with services that continue to add value and breadth to the interactive advertising and marketing services of the Group. We believe there will be strong synergy gains between Freestyle and the rest of Q Ltd and we welcome Fred and Frank as part of the Q Ltd team."

The purchase price comprises an upfront payment of $1,362,000 in cash and Q Ltd shares, with deferred consideration tied to the future earnings of Freestyle through to 31s` December 2009. The deferred consideration is to be paid in a combination of cash and by the issue of ordinary Q Ltd shares.

-ends-

For further information or interviews please contact:
Catriona Pollard
CP Communications
P: (02) 9969 9668 M: 0411 023 974
E: cp@cpcommunications.com.au


About Freestyle Media
Freestyle Media specialises in driving traffic to websites and converts online customers into purchasers of products and services. Freestyle specialises in the integration of online strategy through a combination of web site development, search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimisation (SEO), online advertising and marketing. Some of Freestyle's leading clients include Sanitarium, Laser Sight, Rabobank, PMI Mortgage Insurance, Goodman Fielder, Computer Associates and The University of Newcastle. www.FreestyleMedia.com.au
Fred Schebesta's Blog www.OnlineMarketingSydney.com.au

About Q Ltd (ASX:QXQ)
Q Ltd is a leading Australasian group of companies that provide services within the interactive advertising sector.

The Q Ltd Group is engaged in providing interaction between a client's brand and its target audience via websites, search engine marketing, permission marketing, email, mobile, and list marketing.

Q Ltd subsidiary companies are specialists within their respective specific sectors of the advertising industry and are leaders providing services to marketers in targeting, capturing and interacting with consumers (B28 and B2C) via interactive channels.

Let me just say its business as usual here. Q isnt going to split up Freestyle Media and move us around the country. We are actually working with them to open up in Melbourne in July to better service our existing clients in Melbourne and hopefully work with some new ones.


3 ways Q ltd will be able to help your online marketing

1. Enhanced performance from better access to expertise - You can now gain better and more effective expertise and access to online media, mobile marketing, lists, search and technology than before. Freestyle will be working very closely with its partner companies to leverage their offerings and enhance your results. (I am very excited about the whole mobile marketing thing!)
   
2. Easier access to Freestyle Media team - You will be able to access Freestyle Media's service offering in Melbourne, New Zealand and eventually other parts of Asia Pacific through Q ltds expansion of the business. Better access means more love for you from Freestyle! More love = better online marketing results.
3. Better creative for your campaigns - If you are already working with one of the Q ltd companies then you will now have access to Freestyle Media's creative services of banner, website, landing page, flash game and Content Management production services. You will get faster campaign production and better results from an integrated approach from your agency.
   

How to test the conversion rate of your website design

Increase your New Websites Conversion rate

Designing a website can be very subjective - everybody seems to have an opinion, even the mail boy. Through years on the job I have developed this fail-safe methodology which makes things a whole lot easier. Firstly, set an objective. Most simply, your objective with each page should be to persuade the user to take “Action”. Your job is to determine the role of your website and the desired action that users should perform.

Whilst this process is best performed on a new site design, it can also be applied to existing sites. Follow these 9 basic steps to analyse the performance of your website and design it right.

9 Quick Questions to test your website design

Take a close, fresh look at your homepage. Here’s how: Pretend you are a new visitor to your website. Make your website is full screen (Press F11 on your keyboard). Look away from your screen and pause for a second. Look back at your screen and ask yourself the following questions.
The ideal answer follows each question. If your website does not match these descriptions then its time to get to work!

1. What is the first thing you look at? – The attention grabber is a picture or a strong headline at page centre. It should be something which immediately engages, enticing the user to want more.
2. What did you immediately think the company did? – Your users should be able to see immediately what your company does and how it can help them. State your products’/services’ core benefit up front.
3. What is the second thing you look at? – Offering support to the headline (generally subheads or product thumbnails) these statements should now be leading the user towards the desired action. Often they will be entry points into your major product/service categories.
4. What is the last thing you look at on the page? – This last item catches the user’s eye before they click and is often found in the side columns. Use these takeaways to start building trust and credibility.
5. Where is the first and second place you would click? – These optimal click-points should be taking the user one step closer to the ultimate desired action on your website – whether to call, engage, make an appointment or buy. The role of your website will determine which of these actions is most appropriate. For instance: is the site a brand-building exercise (engage), an online shop (buy) or an information portal helping build your sales channels (call, make an appointment). Every website will suit one, perhaps even all, of these options and a successful site will drive appropriate user actions.
6. What would you expect to be behind those links? – Take a look at your sitemap before you ask this question and look at what page sits behind each of the clicks. Then look back at your design and ask, “If I landed at the page, would the content satisfy me?” i.e. has the promise in the call to action been lived up to? E.g. If you sent a user to a page that said “Free whitepaper” can they get the free whitepaper? Secondly “Does this page help convert the user to a customer?” i.e. Is it continuing the user along the buying process?
7. What did you spend the most amount of your time looking at? – Whatever it was that kept catching your eye, make sure that has a strong invitation to interact. Thousands of visitors are going to be doing what you do so try and persuade as many of them as you can to take the action you require. Don’t make your users search all over the page for ways to get into your site. If its too hard they’ll give up before they get started.
8. What did you expect to be behind each of the navigation buttons? – Do a sanity check and make sure that there is relevant content behind each navigational link. Don’t use obscure language or untitled imagery as click-throughs. Time is precious and few users want to waste theirs trying to second guess your creative interpretation of content.
9. Did all of the questions match your answers? – If yes then you are on your way to internet marketing success, but beware, there are going to be more tests when you actually launch the site! If no, note the changes required and chat with your online marketing agency to create a results-driven website.

Make your opinion count. Post a comment.

This article was also features in SmartCompany Website http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Blog/Fred-Schebesta-list/NEW-Fred-Schebesta070528.html

Seven Steps to Online Success (As seen in Marketing Magazine)

One of my articles just got published this month in marketing magazine so here is the sneak preview. Its all about the elements that make you successful in your online marketing whether you are a big or small company they all apply.

Did you see?
I had a bit of fame in The Australian's Entrepreneur section on Friday. Anyone catch the photo in the printed version?

Quick Website Sitemap Creator

Just a quick one, thought I would share this great little Google Sitemap creator with you. Its fabulous as it quickly updates your sitemap and produces your sitemap into XML and HTML.

Let me know what you think?

How to write a website article to increase search engine traffic

How to write a Search Engine friendly article for your website

By applying this formula to writing website articles, you will get great success with the search engines. Follow these 5 easy steps and experiment for yourself now.

Fred Schebesta’s Article Writing Formula

Step 1 - Choose your Keyword
To begin, choose your article’s keyword target. I suggest focusing on getting results for just one keyword for each article. Use a keyword selection tool or check your web stats to figure out which keyword you want to rank highly for.

Step 2 – Research what is out there
Go to Google and research: type in your keyword and figure out what other people have already written and see what websites they are referencing. The internet is filled with plagiarism so you will usually find common source articles. Once you have the core idea, give it your own spin. I include my own experiences to talk directly to my intended audience.

Step 3 – The idea and the benefit
After researching , I come up with my article’s main theme. It usually comes from extending another article, a wacky idea I have been thinking about applied to the topic, or a question a client has asked me during the day. From this idea I focus on what key benefit a person could get out of this information and make that the title of my article.

Step 4 – Title, article, links, pictures and resources
My next steps just flow:

Title – Write the title of your article. I might adjust this during this process or at the end, depending on what might work better for the target market and what type of content I write.

Article – The actual body of the article. I try and write like I am writing to one person. I think about that person reading it and also imagine myself reading the article and what I would want to know. I try and use dot points and bolding to communicate key points.

Links – Links to related pages are gold because you don’t have to rewrite supporting information, allowing the focus to remain on your core subject. I try and keep these to a minimum so as not to distract the reader.

Pictures and Diagrams – I love putting a picture or a diagram in because it brightens up the piece and makes it less boring. I hate big wads of text. I want pictures and diagrams because I know a lot of people are visual people.

Resources and Call to actions – At the end of the article I normally include either related resource links or a relevant call to action. Normally if you write an article a call to action to browse another page of your website is easy to sell because you have built trust and credibility.

Step 5 – Proof read, send it live and promote it
I always give my articles to someone else to check. Other people see things you don’t and their final finesse can turn your article from being good to great. Also consider how you might promote the article.

3 quick ways to promote your article:

1. Post it on a free articles site – www.goarticles.com is an example
2. Send it as an enewsletter – Send a mail to your database describing a problem your article will solve.
3. Give it away to a related website

How to use Google to brainstorm your popular keywords and increase your traffic

Keyword Discovery with Google's Free Tool

Mervat is starting a new website called “Viva La Frock” and is struggling to brainstorm her website keywords. She wrote me an email below:

“Hi Fred

I attended the seminar on Tuesday about Online Marketing which you did a great job of presenting!

I wanted to ask you, I am currently in the process of setting up my website and would like to start brainstorming my keywords for search engine optimization, and you were talking about some stats Google provides regarding most popular search words?? Did I hear this correctly? Or were you actually suggesting we jump on and search each of our own keywords to see what result it yields?”

Quick step guide to brainstorming your keywords

Here is a step by step guide to help you out:

1. Yellow Pages Technique - To begin open up Microsoft excel and write down in the cells all the keywords you can possibily think of that might be relevant to your business. An easy way to do this is to imagine all of the categories your business might fall into in the Yellow Pages. They are normally pretty relevant keywords.
2. Use some tools – Mervat when I said to use Google’s free tool what I was suggesting was that you use their free keyword suggestion tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) . It basically provides you with suggestions on what keywords are related to a keyword you enter and what keywords other people are typing in to search for with that keyword. If you use the keywords you brainstormed above and type them into the tool you will get a huge number of ideas.
   Google’s keyword suggestion tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
   
3. Related keywords – Use a thesaurus or a lexical dictionary to figure out words that your target market might be interested in that you might want to also target. Like if you were selling “golf clubs” you might want to put “golf ball reviews”. Anyone who buys golf balls will need a golf club to hit them with!
   

I hope that clears some things up and points you in the right direction?

Resources
Another Keyword Discovery Tool
WordTracker is a more professional tool for keyword discovery although you need to pay for it. I would highly recommend it.

Women in Business Network

Thank you

A big thank you for attending my talk at the Women in Business talks put on by the State and Regional Development. I just thought I would provide some links to some of those resources:

1. To make a blog go to www.blogger.com
2. To get an affiliate campaign go to www.clixGalore.com.au
3. To read about what to look for in an online marketing agency read this article

Consultations on your business

A few people asked me about how they could work with me. If you have a bigger business then you might want to consider working with my Online Marketing Agency Freestyle Media. Alternatively if you want to just get a consultation if you email myself fred (at) FreestyleMedia.com.au or call 9818 7300, I can quote you my prices for a full day and half day consultation to get all of your website strategy organised. Some companies just get a refresh and suggestions day for their online marketing from me every month to keep them on their toes and attracting more customers from the internet.

You can signup to my email newsletter that will provide you with thousands of tips and ideas on the right hand side of this page.

How Does the History of the Internet Affect Your Internet Marketing?

The history of the internet and how it affects your marketing

Remember back to when you first logged onto the internet and the first types of things that you used to do. Compare that to the things you do with the internet these days. Now think about the internet as an object and think about the feelings that come about it? When you start something you have initial experiences and these experiences tend to guide your feelings about it. Notice how you still have some latent feelings about the internet and how to use it. I can assure you now that many users are the same. What I have discovered is that these feelings also tend to guide the way in which you use the internet and therefore dramatically effects what marketing you are exposed to.

Here are my first impressions of the internet:

1. Slow to download things
2. Sent emails and wanted someone to send me one.
3. SPAM was always in my inbox.
4. I would search the search engines for basic terms trying to find information or things of interest.
5. Normally I would be given a homepage and the extent of my browsing started and finished with that website I began on.
6. Banner ads opened my eyes to different things that were available on the internet.
7. I looked at pictures and quickly scanned for links.
8. I was always in search of something that was out of this world that would interest me. It was like there was a treasure hunt on for things which were undiscovered on the internet.
9. When Google became available the results were much cleaner and so I decided to set it as my homepage. Cleaner in that less spammers came up in my results.

What were your first impressions of the internet? I met a girl yesterday who said she bought 20 minutes of the internet and just sat in front of her computer and waited for something to happen!

Mobile marketing insights for your internet marketing

I spoke at Cebit last week and met a mobile marketer there and I learnt something that will help you clarify this idea of the internet. He was telling me about the early people who are using mobile as a content source and what types of things they do. He said most of them are just starting from the website they are provided with and clicking on links. The reason I would infer from this is that most people who use a new medium are not quite sure how to use it and what is possible. They are more just thrown into the deep end and just asked to have a crack. People don’t know what is possible and how to locate places that are of interest to them. Super early users are less likely to search for things and find them, although with the internet as they have become a little more experienced and seen how some other people use the internet they will learn to search. This brings into play search engines and I can imagine the first search engine to crack the mobile market perhaps only spidering .mobi domains will be a real winner. The key here will be having a very light page weight and being exceptionally fast as these users will be on the run.

3 insights to consider for your online marketing

1. Target your marketing to where the fish are already swimming - Are your users basic or advanced? Do they search.. If not cover those early portals and websites that users are provided when they join an ISP or first get a computer. Usually in Australia that will be Ninemsn or Any of the ISP websites.
2. How can you take advantage of the mobile revolution on our doorstep? Is there are part of your business that will adapt well to people on the go. Is there a little niche that your business can own? Just like with the internet the first movers have done the best. Google may not be a better search engine that Yahoo although now it has the brand and people use it because they THINK it’s the best. Remember that a mobile website is just like an internet website only its smaller, the same principles will apply to getting traffic and getting repeat visitors.
3. What is the history of your market that everyone remembers and still perceives your market to be like? In the website development game our first clients used to come to us not knowing why they needed a website or what they were going to do with it but they knew they just needed one. A lot of businesses are still at that point and haven’t learnt much more and that is why we give seminars to teach marketers how to use the internet as a tool for their business. When I first got a mobile phone I thought text messages were impersonal until I realised they were a quick way to tell someone what is going on without disturbing them now as they might be in a meeting.

What other insights have you gained from this idea?

* Picture from The History and Future of the Internet

Even the almighty David Ogilvy had call to actions in his print ads

The Man From Schweppes is here with a Call to Action

Look at the mastery of this ad. I stand humble at the feet of the master of copy and direct response. Look at the story value of this ad. I believe that man exists. Look at this call to action in this ad.

David Ogilvy Quote: "P.S. If your favorite store or bar doesn't yet have Schweppes, drop a card to us and we'll make the proper arrangements. Address Schweppes, 30 East 60th Street, New York City."

I just want to flag 1 line "make the proper arrangements." David Ogilvy always said, "Turn your clients into premium brands, make them a first class ticket." This ad encapsulates that for me.

More Ogilvy Gold

Include your Sitemap in your Robots.txt

Search Engine Optimisation Update for Sitemaps

Did you know as of April 11th there was no longer a need to manually submit your sitemap to search engines. The major search engines agreed on a sitemap format. You can now add a simple line to your robots.txt file and let the engines know where your sitemap resides on your website.

Iinclude a similar line to this:
Sitemap: http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

Here is a forum post about this

Robots.txt has traditionally been used to tell search engine spiders where go and where not to go on your website. This change in the robots.txt file allows you to tell the spider where to look for the sitemap file.

For more information about a robots.txt file just go to www.robotstxt.org

Market Research & Consumer Insights 2007

Do You Learn Best At Seminars? Are you Struggling with Consumer Insights?

When you can sit in a crowded room can you point out who your customers are just by looking at them and listening to a few random conversations? That is when you are 100% in tune with what your consumers are thinking, marketers call these consumer insights. Once you hit that pinnacle of understanding its easy to market your product because your ads talk straight to what your target market is thinking. They also stop being your target market and more just become your mates. You know them. You don't need to guess. You can here me speak at the Consumer Insights event and I recommend attending if you are struggling to get into the mind of your customers.

Hey, I am the first speaker at the event and I am going to be pulling out some of my secret golden stash of tricks and tactics of how I get consumer insights!

Here are some more details:

25th – 27th June 2007
The IMAX Theatre Complex, Sydney
www.iir.com.au/marketresearch

Optimising Market Research & Translating Insights for Bottom Line Results

Market Research and Consumer Insights 2007 is the next in IIR’s successful marketing series. It has been specifically produced to provide you with a perspective on Australia's challenges and innovative approach to shopper segmentation, research methods and analyzing and translating insights into fresh marketing strategies.

The most significant issues across industry will be addressed, including retail initiatives, collaboration & co-creation, market research fundamentals and fundamentals of quantitative methods.

Key speaker include:
• Lisa Wellington, Senior Manager, Marketing Science - Knowledge & Insights, The Coca-Cola Company – United States
• Peter Davenport, Head of Consumer Insights, Sensis
• Fred Schebesta, 2006 ADMA Australian Young Direct Marketer of the Year, 2006, Director, Freestyle Media
• Chris Dawson, National Strategy Manger, Australian Radio Network
• Yu Dan Shi, Head of Marketing, Harris Technology
• Sam Plowman, General Manager, Fairfax Digital Online Real Estate
• Colin McLeod, General Manager - Marketing & Communications, AFL
• Camilla Kimpton, Consumer Insights and Effectiveness Manager - Petcare , Masterfoods Australia and New Zealand
• Simon Curry, Group Manager Communications and Media, Intel Australia
• Sue Murray, Chief Executive Officer, National Breast Cancer Foundation of Australia
• Jennifer Reddington, Consumer Insights Manager, Yahoo! 7
• Simon Hammond, Chairman, SEE, Author, ‘Be Brands’ & ‘All It Takes to be Successful In Business (And Life)’
• John Mathews, Resident Research & Consumer Insights Expert, Landor

PLUS!
3 practical, expert led workshops:
• Leveraging on consumer segmentation to optimise research methods
• Advanced Techniques and ROMI - The Coke Side of Global ROMI
• Advanced tools to translate consumer insights into innovative marketing and product development strategies

Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to debate and discuss all the key issues in the field of Market Research & Consumer Insights – register today!

Online – www.iir.com.au/marketresearch
Tel (02) 9080 4090
Fax: (02) 9299 3109
Email info@iir.com.au
Download a Brochure

Googleplex in Sydney drink Up and Go

Google Recommends Up and Go as a Healthy Snack!

Photo gallery: Googleplex in Sydney: News - Hardware - ZDNet Australia: "The Sydney Googleplex keeps plenty of healthy snacks on offer."

One of our Clients products Up and Go from Sanitarium is considered to be a healthy snack by Google!

FREE Online marketing articles

Give me some more Online marketing gold!

I have written a few new articles and they are on other websites right now. You can find them below:

Search Week » Blog Archive » Do those little blue ads down the right hand side work?:
"Google search marketing it very alluring when you first look at it but if you jump straight in people normally experience some of the following problems...

SmartCompany.com.au Win new online customers, influence existing visitors:
Do you feel disappointed when you look at your website stats and see that 5000 visitors looked at one page, then exited? ..

What does Wikipedia have to say about Internet Marketing?

Internet marketing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Internet marketing is a component of electronic commerce. Internet marketing can sometimes include information management, public relations, customer service, and sales. Electronic commerce and Internet marketing have become popular as Internet access is becoming more widely available and used. Well over one third of consumers who have Internet access in their homes report using the Internet to make purchases.(Devang, 2007)"

I find the 4 components it has split it up into:

Information management - I see this as being almost like content management, information structuring and usability.

Public relations - Article PR, Blogging and search engine optimisation have got to fit in here.

Customer service - This is really about eCRM, call centre interaction and basic customer service principles.

Sales - I see this having Persuasion, advertising and marketing strategy under its umbrella.

Which places could you work on?

Web marketing Course For Serious Marketers 26th April

How do you Absorb Online Marketing Information the fastest?

Personally I find that when I do something immediately as opposed putting it on my To Do list it gets done. Thats why I like attending seminars and buying videos of them. I find it the fastest and quickest way that I take in and develop my information base from which I work from. I have put together a 2 hour Online Marketing seminar for you that is chock full of examples, concepts and ideas to supercharge your website.

Anzac day is on the 25th of April and that makes Thursday the 26th of April. If you want to do some learning on your day before the weekend, come and join me at my Online Marketing Seminar. I have had a great turn out for each event over 70 people each time. Everyone learns a lot about how to market online in the power packed 2 hours.

Note: This seminar is only for people serious about online marketing.

Get your ticket now as the price goes up in 7 days time!