Video Marketing David Ogilvy Style

Thank you to Efrain for finding this superb video by David Ogilvy. I love the straight up no fuss way Ogilvy says it. I would also have to agree that if you substituted the words words "Direct Marketing" for "Online Marketing" although I would leave the "Direct Response" words in there to call David our Ambassador of Online Marketing.

Give this video to your branding colleagues for a laugh at least.

Inspiration is the cure for Depression

Inspiration is the cure for Depression

Persistence at something is how you achieve it. But every now again you feel a bit down and just get confused as to why you are persisting at what you are doing. I have found that at these times it will take something quite revolutionary to change this. Something will just snap you out of that feeling of being stuck in mud. Some people call it depression, but you might feel that is a bit of a strong word to attach to your feelings, so lets just say you are feeling depressed, but not clinically depressed that you are taking negative actions on yourself.

Inspiration cures depression
Personally I go in swings and round abouts, my mood goes from "Allan Bond unscrewing the America's Cup to hoist it above his head!" to "I might just go back to sleep even though I have been sleeping for 14 hours. At least I can ignore the telephone that way." Usually when I find myself in the down patches I know and can eventually self assess that I am a little depressed. Usually I am self aware and start asking myself, "Why are you feeling down?" As a logicaly person I can figure that out can't I. Sometimes I can, by sometimes, unfortunately, I just can't seem to figure it out. The logical side of me becomes stumped and I fall back into a shallow pool of waiting and passing time by. I consider myself quite a motivated person and when I see myself like that I get confused.

What I have realised is that when I feel a bit depressed, the best thing to do is to inject yourself with a bit of external motivation. Normally people who have done something amazing call it their "inspiration". If you are feeling down, get your hands on some material with some super powerful motivation in it. The thing about online marketing is that it can get lonely, sitting by yourself for 8 months can take the wind from your sails every now and again. Things can get really tough when you lose focus of your vision. This is where you need to make a little reboot.

5 ways to inspire yourself out of depression

1. Watch an inspirational movie - "The Last lecture", Randy Pausch was dying of pancreatic cancer and gave this speech on "How to achieve your childhood dreams." The twist at the end will get you.



Other inspirational movies: The Aviator, A beautiful mind and Fightclub.
2. Read an inspirational book - These are the books that inspired me to create Freestyle Media. Richard Branson's autobiography, John Singleton's autobiography "Singo" and the book "How to win friends and influence people" helped me get there. I have heard that "Get the edge" by Tony Robbins is good too.
3. Hang out with your grandparents - For some reason they can give you truths that you can't see at present and it will help give you clarity about the future.
4. Meet someone inspirational and talk to them - Sometimes I have spoken with people who I thought were gods, and they caused me to go home and double my efforts. Some of these people included: Michael Kiely, Wayne Kingston, Peter Steele and Jessica Schebesta.
5. Go back over old photos and notes - Reminiscing helps you see where you have been and gives you a point of reference on where you want to go.

The button that left $10,000 on the table

There is one key thing all webpages need that will make you thousands of dollars every time. Its something so simple but can make or break your campaigns. Let me tell you a story before I let you in on the $10,000 secret.

Would HP leave money on the table?
I have been researching computers recently and noticed on our friendly SmartCompany site a banner ad for HP. See below:

Latest banner ad campaign with pocket hard disk offer got me excited

Essentially you can get a Free 160GB pocket media drive for any order of a specific notebook or desktop. I clicked through and looked at the landing page to see what types of models this would come with. The page loaded up and I could see the offer presented nicely.

The HP landing page for the user to get details and purchase

Landing page of HP special offer
To be honest I wasn’t ready to buy because I wanted to see how much it would cost to ship so I decided I would add it to my cart and checkout till it calculated my shipping price. Unfortunately, HP left me hanging and didn’t give me a button to add it to my cart.

The secret revealed
So there is one button that prevented HP from making their sales. Just like HP have left money on the table do you have a money button on all pages?

Money buttons
Money buttons mean different things to users, its important to connect the action you want them to take with the text on the button. This plays into what convention has taught people and increases your conversion rate.

• Buy now – And easy action to take which also includes some time pressure.


• Apply now – Not everyone can join this particular item and instead you are required to apply.


• Free Instant Download – Get this whitepaper for free, immediately and straight to your computer. No need to wait for the boys at the snail mail factory.


• Book Now – There are quite a few people and tend to be limited places so you will need to register your interest. Usually a confirmation will come back after this.


• Apply online – Complete a form but do it online, there is no offline method to get this benefit.
  
  

Ads that lie

There are some ads out there that are offending me:



1. Sensis - Yellow pages - You are lying, people don't look at the yellow pages anymore. Tricking people into doing things just because that is how they have always done them is offensive. Companies are not going to lose any business from not advertising in the yellow pages. Instead, they are going to save $10,000.

2. Mother - Coca Cola - You lied to us before because your product tasted like crap. Now you want us to believe that you have fixed it. Why should we believe you?

3. Which ads are giving you grief?

Too aggressive

I have a phrase that I use when I want to describe something as a little over the top and a little bit challenging to people. Generally if you are doing something and you are described as too aggressive its a good thing.

Examples:

• If you found a way to send out 1,000,000 emails for the same price as sending 100, thats too aggressive.
• Americans are too aggressive when they do sales pitches.
• Time Life daytime "old music" repackaged up and sold as classics is too aggressive with the words they use to describe the product.
  
• If someone cuts in the line at the bank when you wanted to bank a cheque just because they didn't consider you, that's too aggressive.
• For girls they would prefer to be described as being assertive as opposed to aggressive.
  
• If you go to someones house and do something a little offensive, like spill something on their couch that they just bought, that's too aggressive.
  

You get the idea.

Let me tell you now whats too aggressive in online marketing.

Spending more money on your PPC than on your SEO is too aggressive.

Investing in SEO is like putting money into a savings account. Sure the interest is small at first, but if you get enough cash in there, you can pull in some serious dollars.

Just investing in PPC is like spending all of your pay cheque and not saving a single cent. (too aggressive)

My advice, get the SEO book. Aaron Wall is a golden SEO'r who can actually write down the techniques. I knew SEO and I bought it because I wanted more traffic. I got it, read it and now dominate. Buy it, read it over time, implement the techniques and save $10,000 in SEO fees that some consultant will charge you.

It will help you generate new ideas for campaigns, build a robost SEO site, fix problems with your rankings to get more traffic and actually help you understand technical things that most of us don't get.

P.S. The ADMA Forum campaign at present is too aggressive. Sex sells, but I don't want to pick that thing up at work, what are my colleagues going to think? I reckon a simple up the centre, "ADMA Forum, Make your DM pull better, June 25 - 27th 2008, Sydney Convention Centre. Register Now" would work better. The die hards will already go, they just need to know when it is. Spare me your creative mumbo jumbo just give me a simple benefit with some golden copy for this one, the authority is al.

Rob Edwards, if your reading this, invite me to speak and I will help you get some more bums on seats.

Online Marketing Traffic Formula Fred Schebesta

This presentation will help you get new traffic to your website.

Its all aboutYou - Done well!

This Advertisement Just Rocks

View now

If Gen Y are all about me me me. Then this ad delivers it! Made me want to get out there and kick some ass!

Getting Married

I will be away for 2 weeks getting married.

For more details see www.JessicaAndFred.com

I will return with new and invigorating ideas to supercharge your online marketing.

Bring the Love Back

"Coupons, you want coupons don't you!"

Are you Struggling to Write your Online Marketing Business plan?

Breaking through Online Marketing Business Plan Block

When I started my business everything I read, everyone I spoke to and my own logic told me that I needed to write a business plan. But I always struggled to write one. I never knew why until 5 years on, when I can look back with a bit of perspective. Sure the time was always hard to find although I would find the time and just start writing. I realise now that the real problem was because I didn’t really understand how a business worked nor how it grew, I lacked experience. I honestly didn’t know what to plan for.

After all my experiences with building and continuing to grow Freestyle Media, I feel I could easily write a business plan for a new business. I could probably estimate expenses and predict revenues quite easily. I have learnt that I won’t be able to predict to 1 decimal place since business is dynamic and things change. I have learnt that businesses grow slowly to be sustainable and they tend to grow at the speed of experience the people running it have.

Throughout my journeys the way in which I learnt what to plan for in the business was through asking other people who had already been down the path. I also hired more experienced people to guide me and give me insights as to what to consider.

Is your 2008 online marketing plan like your business plan tough to write? Do you feel you need some more experience? Online marketing experience is rare to find although easily learnt.


4 Tips to Quickly Build Your Online Marketing Experience

1. Read voraciously – Consume books, videos, dvds, articles and whitepapers to fuel your hunger for knowledge. Normally, you will take out 3 or 4 things from each piece of material. Most of it is usually filled with filler or things you already knew. Read it quickly and skip over areas that you feel are not valuable. Because you have so much information to read try and be conscious of how fast you are reading and try and speed it up.
2. Test your new knowledge – Create experiments and little websites, emails, buy small amounts of paid search engine marketing or tinker with a current website. Your experience will grow in the mistakes and wins that you get from these and your real experiments. Copy a competitor's tinkerings and create a similar experiment to learn from what they have done.
3. Talk to people in a similar situation – Other people in other niches will have brilliant ways of solving problems that you experience right now. Sometimes they can illuminate a long way down a knowledge path. For example, how do they use analytics and what program have they put in place to manage and maintain it.
4. Go to events – The difficultly with just reading is its 1 way learning its not 2 way, where you can ask questions and immediately solve that little problem in your mind. After you read things on your own you tend to build up a series of learnings but also a whole knew series of other questions. If you can solve those then and there on the spot that is when you get speed learning.
   

If you want to help points 1, 3 and 4 perhaps consider my online marketing seminar “Online Traffic Power” on the 28th of February. Meet other marketers in your position, share experiences and ideas and most of all improve your online marketing knowledge to gain more traffic and leads from your website.

Website Traffic Problems Solved!

Has your website traffic hit a plateau?

Let me tell you the story of how websites get built. You get all excited, you burst out of the starting blocks because finally you have decided to build a new website! Your team buys into the project, everyone is pitching in to get this project live. You are so happy and relieved at the same time that it goes live. You tell everyone about it – ‘go take a look at it’. It’s new! It’s sparkling! It’s marketing your business!

Normally at this point you check your website stats and you see a good progression of increased visitors! It’s great news! But as the first visitors to the site leave and the developers stop testing it, you notice your website hits a stage I call, Buy Out. Six weeks pass and nothing has changed on the website. The news section is now not news at all, its old content. People start buying out of the project and the website project loses its shine because you start to realise that you need to maintain it and send new people to it. Essentially, people start buying out of the project. The website is tiring, it’s boring and no one wants to be involved anymore. Now it’s not marketing your business and you have a website traffic problem.

How to solve your traffic problem

Increasing traffic is a sign of a traffic problem solved.

Above is what you want to see with your website traffic. Movement, up or down, preferably up is best. The reason why movement in your traffic is so important is because it is a sign that there is activity. The website is doing something.

4 ways quick ways to increase your traffic

1. Write new content – Add some new content about some recent news, a review of a latest trend or even review the content and add to some of your services pages. This will give Google some new content food to eat and hopefully give you another chance to get more traffic.
2. Start search engine marketing – Get yourself on Google and run a little test of Google adwords. (Free guide at www.StartSearchMarketing.com.au) If you want to take it to another level hire a search engine marketer and do an audit of your website.
3. Send an email – Sending an email to your database with links back to new content on your website will get you instant traffic. People in your database already know who you are and have already shown interest in what you have to offer. Give them another reason to come back and you will see an increase in traffic.
4. Audit where you promote your website – make sure your website address is listed at every promotional opportunity such as :
   • Business card
   • Email signature
   • Print advertisements
   • Business shirts
   • Promo cars
   • Brochures
   • Blog comments
   • Proposals
   • Whitepapers
   • TV ads
   • Signatures in forums
   • Facebook profile
   • And every single other interaction you have with the web
   
5. Bonus Tip! – Swap databases with a partner and promote your content in their newsletter. If you are a florist partner with a wedding planning company and include a little snippet promoting your article on “How to choose the perfect wedding flowers for your wedding?”
   

If you need some more help putting together your online traffic plan you might be interested in our up coming workshop “Online Traffic Power”. Explode your websites traffic with this quick 3 hour workshop and get hands on advice from the expert - Fred Schebesta..
Learn how to send traffic to your website at Fred Schebesta's Workshop - Hurry only 5 places remaining!

How will Your Online Traffic Perform in 2008?

Free Report on the Current State of Online Traffic in Australia

I have prepared a report about some recent trends and some of the big challenges you will be facing in 2008. You will probably planning your online marketing at present and be faced with some of the following problems:

• Traffic prices are increasing
• Banner advertising isoverpriced
• The quality of rented databases is decreasing

Download your copy of the Free report

Name:
Email:

CommBank Hacking on Sydney Morning Herald Website?

CommBank, Who is Your New Online Marketing Agency?

If you see the current banner campaign on SMH and a Commbank banner comes up you will notice a request to fill in your banking login details pops up over the screen. I almost filled in mine!

If I were the media agency for Commbank’s online marketing I would be expecting to look for a new financial services client. The creative agency sends the banners to the media agency. The media agency is the last person with them and therefore should take responsibility because they put them live.

Plan for Search Trends In Advance

For many websites the Christmas/New Year period is a quiet time of year and most people managing them look back at how well they did in the last year.

Take advantage of this by looking forward. Try to predict upcoming trends for the new year and use these trends to build related content to attract visitors to your website.

For example the Simpsons movie was a big release in 2007.



As you can see above there were several important events for search trends about the Simpsons movie (source: Google Trends):

• A: First newspaper previews of the movie


• E: Movie released to theatres worldwide


• F: DVD released for sale

If you had a website with lots of movie related content the way to attract lots of visitors to your site would have been to be the first to publish a really indepth article about the Simpsons Movie, ideally several months before event A (newspaper previews).

Even if your article is mostly rumour and innuendo if it has:

• Plenty of often updated text content


• Using targeted keywords


• Images of Simpsons characters with proper alt attributes etc

Than being first to publish will mean your page will already be ranking well and be "reputable" to search engines by the time event A occurs and will still rank well compared to the big movie review sites when the movie and subsequent DVD's are released.

Have you had success using Google Trends for content ideas?

Want Free Cricket Tickets

Free Cricket Tickets!

We just launched a new competition for 3 Mobile Cricket where you can win a free cricket ticket for each of the one day international tests! Its Free to enter.

Other prizes to be won:

• A bbq with Gilchrist and Brett Lee and 4 signed cricket bats for you and 3 mates.
• 100 Signed 3 mobile hats
• If you refer a friend you could win a Australian cricket team signed cricket bat
  

Google's Matt Cutts explains ALT attributes for images

Google's Matt Cutts recently posted a video about how to use ALT attributes for images

The ALT attribute provides alternative or substitute text, for use when the image cannot be seen by a visually impaired person or by a search engine.

In both cases they can't see the image so you have to describe it in a way that tells them what the image shows. For example if it's a photo of a Siamese cat than you might use:

<img src="cat.jpg" alt="siamese cat">

This is great for the visually impaired person and also for SEO purposes because the search engine engine has a label to attach to that photo for use in their Image search.

For more information, I'll handover to Matt's video (3min 10sec):