Do you compromise your standards for the sake of a sale and making more money? I know there have been times where I have been tempted to put aside my values because the deal seemed “worth it”. But in hind sight, is it ever really worth it?

I have a strong belief that a successful business is built based on long term relationships with customers or clients. They place their trust in me to provide the solution to the problem that they have purchased my product or service to solve. When that trust is honoured, there is the foundation for building that long term relationship.

Recently, I have noticed an increase in slick and tricky online marketing and promotion activities. Some of these have left me feeling decidedly uneasy and I have moved away from the site without making the purchase. These sorts of promotions and activities have a tendency to damage the reputation of the seller, and all other internet marketers.

Just yesterday, I stumbled upon a site that discusses internet marketing sins. Given my recent experiences and concerns, I was glad to find a site that was taking this issue seriously. They have written an open letter to all internet marketers seeking to address the unacceptable tactics being employed by some of us.

If you are an internet marketer, I strongly suggest that you visit Internet Marketing Sins and read this open letter. There are no strings attached and the letter is a free download. Check it out and leave your comments below – I’d love to know your thoughts.

Regards,
Kevin.

Click here to visit Internet Marketing Sins.

Internet marketing is a powerful advertising option which is becoming increasingly popular. The internet has a global reach and twenty-four hour availability. As a result, increasingly people are turning to the internet for information, sourcing products and services and to be a part of a community. With more and more people becoming reliant on the internet, it is vital for businesses to develop an online presence. In fact, businesses that fail to do so may well be giving business away to competitors who make internet marketing an integral part of their overall marketing strategy. However, before jumping boots and all into an internet marketing campaign, it is important to understand that off-line advertising principles are still relevant and cannot be ignored. It is of absolute importance to identify, understand and market to your target audience. You must take the time to learn how to reach this audience.

Market research is the first step on the road to internet marketing success. If at all possible, it is best to hire a research consultant who is experienced in both conducting and evaluating market research. You should be able to obtain fundamental demographic information about your target market from your research results. If you can’t afford to pay for this expertise, you will still need to conduct your own research to obtain this information even if it is only through surveying your current clients. Although your results are not likely to be as in-depth as a specialist will obtain for you, you can still get a good idea about the best ways to market to your niche.

Once you have a good understanding of your target market, your internet marketing campaign should be designed to appeal to this audience. By simply modifying different online communication variables, you will be able to direct your message to your specific audience in a way they are likely to understand and relate to. Your internet marketing campaign can be adjusted to suit different niches by altering website page design, creating the right headlines and body copy for advertisements. You can also include audio, visual or interactive technologies in your online communications.

How a website looks can strongly influence how your target audience interprets your offer and your company. For example, if your target audience comprises primarily over fifty, conservative individuals, your website should be constructed with softer colors, simple design and conservative images. Making these adjustments will ensure that your readers are more likely to spend time on your site and see your marketing message. On the other hand, if your target audience are young people with liberal points of view try using bold colors, unusual designs and attention grabbing graphics.

Your website text also needs to be written with your target market in mind. In the same way that an older, conservative readership differs in preferences to a young liberal readership with regard to website design, so too will they respond differently to the way you present information on your site. A more conservative audience can be better reached by using more formal language. For these readers, it is important to back up your statements with facts that can be checked. However, a younger, more liberal audience will usually respond to less formal language and are more likely to be influenced by emotion than facts.

Finally, if you are designing a website for the purpose of marketing to a specific target audience, it is important that your end product actually appeals to that audience. If you choose to include audio or video clips on your site, make sure they appeal to your niche market. In other words, if you are selling skateboards, it might be more effective to include rock music rather than country music melodies. No doubt there are skateboarders who love listening to ballads, but for the most part rock or punk music is more representative of the skateboard culture. These sorts of details make all the difference when it comes to internet marketing success.

One of the most important skills in direct marketing is being able to create attention grabbing headlines. Marketers are always looking for a new slant or technique that allows them to pack more punch into their headlines.

Why are headlines so important? Because it has been proven that an effective headline can improve your response rate by as much as 1800%. If your response rate can increase that much with a good headline, it only makes sense to spend as much time as necessary to work on your headlines until you get the results you want.

Your headline is what draws people’s attention to your advertisement. It is their introduction to your offer and their first impression of your company. If you can’t get readers’ attention, you can’t make sales, so it is vitally important to create compelling, effective headlines. Here are some tips to get you started:

1. Appeal to greed or self interest.
The old “what’s in it for me” approach works for a reason. A good headline will cause a reader to keep on reading to find out how you will meet their needs.

2. Grab the reader’s attention.
A great way to get attention is to offer something free. The word ‘free’ gets attention fast.

3. Appeal to the reader.
Keep your headline simple, avoiding overly clever, cute or unnecessary language. Appeal to the reader to act in their own best interest by highlighting a significant benefit he or she will gain from your product or service. Keep your language and printing style simple but powerful.

4. Communicate to your niche market.
Effective advertising requires that you know your market and directly appeal to that market. This means you need to specifically target your headline to meet the needs of your niche.

5. Communicate a clear message.
You will get the best results from communicating a complete and clear message in your headline.

6. Encourage the reader to read the body of your advertisement.
Your headline should be so compelling that the reader is drawn into reading the whole of the advertisement. Tactics such as humor, intrigue or mystery have been successfully used to achieve this end.

7. Headlines should be straightforward when dealing with clear cut products.
In particular, if you are selling high interest products or offers that will cost the consumer over time, it is important that you are clear about what you are selling and the cost involved. This is not the occasion for humor, wordplay or holding back information.

8. Your sales pitch can be unique and compelling.
Creating a headline which expresses the main idea in a fresh or compelling way or with a difference, can be very effective.

9. Use your headline to announce new product information.
If your product has been improved, won an award, or if you have any other news about your product, you can use your headline to announce it.

10. “How to” headlines can attract readers to read and respond to advertisements.
When you offer to teach the reader something beneficial, offer them important information, guidance and solutions, you are likely to get an improved response rate.

11. Be provocative.
A headline which asks a provocative question or one with which the reader can empathize, will usually attract attention. When your headline is in the form of a question, make sure that it focuses on the needs and likely wants of your target audience.

12. Guide customers to take action.
Don’t leave your readers hanging. Make sure you let them know what you want them to do. Headlines that tell your readers to take specific action including ‘buy now’ are known as “command headlines.”

13. Reason with your readers.
One of the easiest and most effective methods of writing advertisements is to list the features or benefits of your product or service. You can introduce your list of benefits with a “reason why” headline.

14. Use a testimonial headline.
When your headline is in quotation marks, it grabs readers’ attention. When someone else speaks well of your business or product, it is a form of proof that customers are happy.

15. Combine Words and Graphics.
Headlines often work best with pictures because the combination creates a more powerful impact than either the words or pictures on their own.

16. Don’t be too clever for your own good.
The purpose of advertising is to educate your target market or directly sell a product or service. It is not a platform for showing off your creative talent just to provoke interest and attention.

Finally, be willing to test your headlines and let the market decide which is best. By playing around with your headlines and advertising copy, you can obtain significantly different results. Obviously, you would keep using advertisements that obtained the best results. For the same cost of advertising, your response can improve by ten times or more by simply evaluating response to changes in your ads.

When you ask someone to subscribe to receive emails from you, you are asking them to add another regular contribution to an already overwhelmed inbox. These days, to inspire someone to commit to receiving emails from you, you need to offer something significant. It is important to make it easy to sign up and communicate in an easy to understand manner. Your website needs to be easy to navigate and your opt-in mail form should be easy to fill out and submit. The most successful online businesses in electronic communication such as Google Adwords and Turbo Tax make communication with readers as smooth as possible.

You’ve no doubt heard the saying that “It’s easier said than done.” Well, if you try to make it easier for each new website visitor to subscribe, you’ll soon find out how true that is. After all, everyone is unique and different people find some things easy and other things difficult. So, it can be difficult to make things easy for everyone.

It is important to make it easy to contact you as well as to fill in and submit the opt-in form. By including a link to your company’s email address on every page of your website as well as in every promotional email, you make it easy for people to communicate. It is also a good idea to include a “send to a friend” link so that you can take advantage of viral marketing. Graphics can sometimes take a long time to load due to slow internet connections so make sure every button has a written description such as “Buy Now,” “Subscribe,” “Submit,” etc.

You can make the subscription process quicker and easier by designing your pages well with links, email IDs, contact and opt-in forms, and other information in easy to see fonts, colors and positions. Make sure every email you send has a subscribe link to encourage readers to opt-in because it is so easy and convenient to do so. Everything you require your reader to do should require as little effort as possible. In fact, in a reliable survey, it was found that when the subscription process was simplified from nine steps to only three there was a three hundred percent increase in the subscription rate.

The key to successful opt-in forms is to ask enough personal information to be able to send the most appropriate information to a subscriber while not asking for so much information that people are turned off responding. Mark the mandatory fields on your form with an asterisk with other fields clearly labeled as “optional.”

Allow someone filling the form out to make changes to their information by including a “reset” or “update” button. The registration process should also make it easy to set a password and include a link to retrieve or change the password. These links should be visible and easy to follow on the relevant website and e-newsletter pages.

When you send emails ensure that your subject line grabs attention and clearly identifies you. So that your emails can be read by most recipients use text as well as html and also include a link to the web version of your information. Printer friendly versions of your emails are best or alternatively ensure that a print friendly version can be opened via a link.

After going to so much trouble to make sure that you have created a user friendly subscription and contact process, many people make the mistake of not testing their links. When readers click on a link it is very important to your reputation that the link works. It is as important to be customer friendly in an online environment as it is face to face. This means companies do well to anticipate and respond to their readers’ needs and expectations. It is a mistake not to include an “unsubscribe” link in the emails you send because you will lose the trust of your recipients. In fact, you should make it as easy to opt out of your subscription list as it is to opt in.