Internet Marketing Tips & Strategies

What is a favicon? As the name implies, a favicon is a “favorites icon.” They’re used to identify bookmarked websites.

Favicons can give your website exposure in multiple ways:

• Address Bar
• Desktop
• Favorites
• Links Bar
• Start Menu

Do favicons work? According to one statistic, 64% of traffic is direct traffic, which includes bookmarks and people typing domain names from memory. Coincidentally, just yesterday when I asked a customer how he found us, he said through a bookmark. Proof that my trusty favicon did its job in that case.

How to Create Your Own Favicons Free

With that said, it’s easy to create your own favicons. There are a number of free icon generators. One favorite is: http://chami.com/html-kit/services/favicon/ . With it you can generate your own favorites icon in seconds from any image on your computer, including animated ones.

Once you’ve created your favicon, place it in your website’s root directory. Although that’s sufficient in most cases, to ensure it’s availability from every page, add code like the following to each page you want people to bookmark:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” type=”image/ico” href=”/favicon.ico”>

To confirm that you’ve set up your favicon correctly, visit your site with a browser that recognizes favicons (such as Firefox or Internet Explorer). If you see your favicon displayed in the address bar, you’re all set.

Enjoy the extra traffic.

Marty Foley

Join Ebiz Mastermind now to get instant access to proven traffic conversion tactics, strategies, and resources for turning more website traffic into buyers, leads, subscribers and higher profit. Choose from free or paid membership levels http://EbizMastermind.Com

Want to know the fastest method I’ve ever used to build an opt-in email list?

Hint: It’s faster than I could have normally done it by myself.

It’s explained in a post I made about this on the Ebiz Mastermind Internet Marketing Forum.

Copyright Marty Foley, ProfitInfo.com

Here’s a tip for systemizing and increasing the profits of virtually any business: Create and use a marketing calendar.

As P.T. Barnum reportedly said, “Without promotion something terrible happens: Nothing.” Since marketing is one of the most critical components of business success, a marketing calendar helps ensure that time is regularly set aside for it.

Just as with money, if time isn’t budgeted properly it’s more likely to be wasted or spent on less important things.

Without advance planning and preparation, marketing opportunities are more likely overlooked, less time is available to take advantage of them, and quality decreases as mistakes increase, according to the adage, Haste makes waste.

A marketing calendar helps systemize planning and preparation, minimizing such problems.

How To Create Your Marketing Calendar

Some develop their annual marketing calendars near the end of the year, in preparation for the next. Regardless of the time of year, if you’re not currently using one now is a good time to start.

To create your marketing calendar you can use an Excel sheet (my preference), a desk or wall calendar, a day planner, or any other tool or system you’re comfortable with. How you set it up is less important than that you set it up, and that you use it.

What you might record on your marketing calendar:

1) Specific day, week, or month assigned to each marketing project.

2) Project description.

3) Project cost.

4) Project notes or comments.

5) A rating of the results of each project (A = Excellent, B = Good, C = Fair, and D = Poor).

You don’t have to list each task of multi-step projects on your calendar. Instead, you can describe projects briefly on the calendar and list the individual tasks comprising each one on a To-Do list (which you probably keep anyway if you’re a productivity minded person).

Or you may assign different tasks of a project to separate consecutive calendar dates.

Give priority to proven marketing avenues that pay off best for you, allowing them ample time for completion.

Periodically add projects related to marketing avenues you haven’t tried before. You may discover some that yield dramatically better results.

What’s more, marketing diversification reduces risk. Just ask those whose businesses have nosedived as a result of adverse changes in an advertising medium they’ve relied too heavily upon.

For best results, include projects related to testing new approaches to marketing avenues you’re now using, or have used before. Small changes can yield substantial response increases at little or no extra cost, possibly turning C- and D-rated projects into A- and B-rated ones.

Locate your marketing calendar for easy access. Consult and update it regularly, as needed.

When creating next year’s calendar, recycle winning elements of your current one, especially A- and B-rated projects. Expand on what works, and test and tweak, or eliminate, what doesn’t. As you develop, improve, and use your calendar it will become an increasingly valuable business asset.

Now that you understand the value of a marketing calendar, create and implement one right away and start enjoying better business results from it.

More Helpful Resources

Free FREE help and advice with your online business, check out the Ebiz Mastermind Internet Marketing Forum.

If you’re an Adwords advertiser, perhaps you’ve recently noticed more impressions, more clicks, and higher ad costs in your Adwords account, with no corresponding increase in sales or other conversions. Listen up to discover how this may be costing you, and how to solve it.

In a nutshell, Google Adwords broad match is “broader” than it once was. The algorithm now triggers ads for a wider variety of search queries it considers relevant to your keywords.

Problem is, they’re not always relevant.

Expanded Broad Match Can Mean Less Targeted Traffic

To quote Google’s help system: “With broad match, the Google AdWords system automatically runs your ads on relevant variations of your keywords, even if these terms aren’t in your keyword lists.”

Though it’s nothing new for expanded broad match to show your ads for keyword terms you’re not even bidding on, what is new is that your keywords can be matched to a wider variety of terms, including single-word terms. Experienced PPC advertisers know as a general rule that single-word terms are less targeted than multi-word terms.

This change can expose your ads to a wider audience, but the traffic from those terms can be much less targeted. Which means lower CTRs, conversion rates, and quality scores, with higher CPCs and overall ad costs.

Are Your Adwords Results Being Affected?

Here’s my own personal experience: Before I discovered this, in about 3 weeks I paid over $158.00 for 170 clicks from one untargeted, single-word term that wasn’t even in my keyword list. In the past it wouldn’t happen, but the current version of expanded broad match now makes it possible.

This could be hampering your Adwords results too, without your knowledge. But it’s easy to find out, and there are multiple ways to fix it.

How To Optimize Your Broad Match Keywords

First step is to determine which actual keywords are triggering your Adwords ads. You can do this with Google’s “Search Query Performance Report” feature, under the “Reports” tab in your Adwords account.

As you examine the report, look at the broad match terms in the “Search Query” column. Look for single-word terms and others that aren’t well matched to your product, service, or offer.

For the next step, you have a few options. Some avoid using broad match keywords entirely, focusing only on phrase and exact match. However, that can also filter out desirable, targeted traffic.

You can strike a balance between the two extremes by using broad match along with a well-researched list of negative keywords. Even if you’re already using one, as I was, I suggest updating it periodically.

In addition to Google’s “Search Query Performance Report” feature, you can use their Keyword Tool (in your Adwords account), to find more terms the Google system considers relevant to your keywords. Use irrelevant terms you find as negative keywords.

Keep in mind that negative phrase match and negative broad match are available options, but if used incorrectly can also filter out targeted traffic. For more precise control, use negative exact match.

For example: -[keyword] will block your ad from showing when ‘keyword’ is used in a search query by itself, but will not block it when used with other words in a query.

By refining your broad match keywords with these tips, you can gain a number of benefits: Higher CTRs, increased conversion rates, reduced click costs, improved profitability, and better ad performance than those of competing advertisers who don’t know about, or don’t address, this issue.

Shocking Breakthrough Blasts Adwords Sales Amazingly Higher: AdwordsMaximizer.Com

Copyright Marty Foley, ProfitInfo.com

If you do business through permission based email marketing, your list management solution can be a powerful asset for making money online.

Or it can cripple your sales, reduce your credibility with your lists, cause a lot of wasted time and frustration, and worse. The one you select will have a big impact on the quality of your results.

You have three types of list management solutions to choose from:

1) Desktop software: Installed on your own computer, with emails sent through your ISP.

2) Self-hosted list management: A “stand-alone” script or software is installed on your own web server.

3) List hosting services: All areas of list management are outsourced.

Let’s look at some pro’s and con’s of these options.

Email deliverability problems.

Deliverability is a crucial component of successful email marketing. Obviously, subscribers who don’t receive your emails can’t act on them. Problem is, sending mass emails without professional systems and expertise can hurt email delivery rates, in multiple ways.

To maintain higher delivery rates, you should work with major ISPs and blacklists to stay “whitelisted” and keep your messages from being blocked (”blacklisted”). And list management systems should be designed and updated in line with current legislation and technological advances related to email delivery.

With do-it-yourself list management solutions, you have to deal with all deliverability problems and updates in-house.

Dealing with spam complaints.

Even if all your lists are confirmed (double) opt-in, occasional spam complaints can occur.

When you manage your own lists, dealing with spam complaints falls on you, even if only to prove they’re false. With outsourced list hosting services, professionals can handle these sensitive issues on your behalf.

Bounce management.

Over time, a percentage of email addresses become undeliverable as users move, change ISPs, etc. Some stats indicate “churn rates” of about 25-35% per year. Unfortunately, some list management solutions are not configured to manage bounced emails properly, such as by removing hard bounces immediately and soft bounces after a few failed delivery attempts.

Since email systems of ISPs and other networks can block mailings from emailers who send too many bounces (as spammers typically do), improper bounce management only makes deliverability problems worse.

Other drawbacks include extra load on mail servers and increased bandwidth usage.

Server compatibility problems.

Server-side software compatibility problems may not become apparent until long after installation. In some cases, for proper compatibility you may be forced to spend more for a different web hosting service.

Problems with ISPs and web hosts.

Some web hosts will shut your web site down and/or fine you for spam complaints triggered by emails sent from your domains on their servers. They’re understandably just trying to protect their business.

The use of desktop software to send mass emails is not allowed by many ISPs. You risk Internet access cancellation if detected.

Hidden costs.

Although do-it-yourself list management software or scripts may only require a one-time purchase, be alert to other possible hidden, and potentially recurring, costs:

1) Software installation fees.

2) Upgrade fees.

3) Decreased productivity from extra time spent to manage lists in-house.

4) Reduced profit caused by deliverability problems.

So be wary of “one-time investment” claims, which can be more expensive than you might think.

The Seeming “Advantages” of Do-It-Yourself List Management

At first glance, the seeming advantages of do-it-yourself list management are appealing: No recurring fees, more control over your email lists, and operations are kept in-house.

The frustrating, time-consuming, and costly problems described above make a pretty clear argument against do-it-yourself list management. Fortunately, those same problems can be reduced or eliminated by outsourcing your list management to competent, knowledgeable professionals.

What’s more, outsourcing your list management can free up more time for you to work ON your business, rather than IN your business.

Aside from the above points, let me say from real-world, “school of hard knocks” experience that do-it-yourself is not the best list management option for a professionally run online business. It took me a while to learn that lesson.

More Helpful Resources

OptInZip is a professional autoresponder service offering unlimited autoresponders, follow-up emails, broadcast messages, and among the highest email delivery rates in the industry! Get details or a free test drive now!

Here’s an easy tip to find synonyms and related words for keyword research, and use them to improve PPC advertising response rates.

For instance, to find synonyms and keywords related to “marketing”, enter your search word or phrase, preceded by the tilde sign (”~”) without any spaces, into Google’s search field.

Example: ~marketing

As shown by the bolded words in Google’s search results, synonyms and words related to marketing include promotion, business, market, communications, media, etc.

This tip can also help in writing PPC ads. If you don’t have enough room for a certain word in an ad, you can try a synonym or related word with fewer characters.

Testing may even reveal a synonym that generates better response than the original word. Just one word can make a difference in PPC ad response.

Additional Tips

* Once you’ve found and noted a synonym, you can remove it from additional searches by preceding it with a hyphen. This makes it easier to find additional keywords in the search results.

Example: ~marketing -promotion

* To display more search results per page than the default of 10, adjust this setting through the preferences link.

* Consider adding keyword synonyms that don’t pertain to your product or market, to your negative keywords list.

Shocking Breakthrough Blasts Adwords Sales Amazingly Higher: AdwordsMaximizer.Com

Copyright Marty Foley, ProfitInfo.com

What I’m about to reveal is almost too embarrassing to admit. But I’ve decided to come clean about it, “warts and all.” If it helps some of my audience avoid the same mistake, it’ll be worth it.

In a nutshell, the biggest email marketing mistake I’ve ever made was choosing the wrong list management tool.

Rather than outsource my email list management to professionals from the start, I chose a popular self-hosted autoresponder software script, run on my own web host’s server.

It seemed the smartest choice at the time and I was happy with it at first, when my email lists were relatively small. But I didn’t realize the negative impact it was eventually going to have. Like a ticking time bomb, it was only a matter of time before the consequences of my email list management choice caught up with me.

As my lists grew and I reviewed the problems I’d encountered, I realized that self-hosted autoresponder software scripts and other do-it-yourself options are not the best email list management option for a professional Internet business.

The server-side autoresponder software I used will remain nameless to protect the guilty, but the hard lessons learned apply to any type of self-hosted email list management software or script.

If you’re still not convinced that self-hosted email list management software scripts can give you expensive but avoidable headaches, stay tuned for more details on the pro’s and con’s (mostly the latter) of this list management option.

It could potentially save you a lot of time, money, and hassle.

More Helpful Resources

• Free FREE help and advice with your online business, check out the Ebiz Mastermind Internet Marketing Forum.

• OptInZip is a professional autoresponder service offering unlimited autoresponders, follow-up emails, broadcast messages, and among the highest email delivery rates in the industry! Get details or a free test drive now!