Online Marketing Sydney, Internet Marketing Australia Freestyle Media

Video Marketing David Ogilvy Style

2008-08-01T20:09:00.003+10:00

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

2008-07-31T04:24:00.005+10:00

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

2008-07-18T11:47:00.003+10:00

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

2008-07-10T17:49:00.003+10:00

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

2008-06-25T00:42:00.003+10:00

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

2008-05-24T23:56:00.001+10:00

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

Its all aboutYou - Done well!

2008-05-06T14:31:00.005+10:00

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

2008-03-20T18:51:00.002+11:00

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

2008-02-27T23:57:00.001+11:00

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

Are you Struggling to Write your Online Marketing Business plan?

2008-02-24T11:17:00.003+11:00

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

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.
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.
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.
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!

2008-02-07T00:46:00.000+11:00

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

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.
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.
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.
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
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?

2008-01-30T00:02:00.000+11:00

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

CommBank Hacking on Sydney Morning Herald Website?

2008-01-24T11:29:00.000+11:00

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

2008-01-14T07:00:00.000+11:00

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

2008-01-13T22:41:00.000+11:00

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

2008-01-08T13:54:00.000+11:00

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):

Online Christmas Game in Flash

2007-12-19T15:17:00.000+11:00

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

2007-12-19T14:13:00.000+11:00

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

2007-12-02T19:05:00.000+11:00

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.

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.
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:

Major keywords bringing you traffic
Which websites are bringing you the most traffic
Number of unique visitors on your website per month

Test your website – Just click around it and pretend you are a customer. You are looking for:

Quick improvements
Spelling mistakes
Errors
A reminder of where you are at with your site.

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.
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:

Pickup a your trade magazine and write about what your take is on the industry and what your predictions are for 2008
Write a “How to Choose a ‘your profession’” e.g. How to choose an online marketing consultant.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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

2007-11-26T01:00:00.000+11:00

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:

A website – You need somewhere to send the traffic you will get from the search engine.
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

2007-11-01T12:27:00.000+11:00

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:

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.
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.
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:

Who am I trying to persuade to take the desired action?
What is the action I want them to take?
What does that person need in order to feel confident taking that action?

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.
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

2007-10-16T09:51:00.000+10:00

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

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/

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.

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

NSW Young BizStar Entrepreneur Competition

2007-09-24T10:00:00.000+10:00

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:

Starting Freestyle Media while studying at University in 2001
Building it up to group revenues exceeding $2M in the past financial year
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!

2007-09-22T06:11:00.000+10:00

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

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.
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.
Put your details on Google Maps - Update your Google map details immediately so that people can quickly and easily find your premises.
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

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.
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.
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!

2007-09-11T17:12:00.000+10:00

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:

Overall search engine optimisation performance of a website
Keyword research and selecting profitable words
Structuring your website for keywords
Code optimisation
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

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