Jason Cardiff Marketing Tips for SEO

Read the latest Jason Cardiff Tips article that highlights the 3 key components of direct marketing according to Jason Cardiff. These are marketing tips and web copywriting strategies that your competitors ranked on the search engines do not want you to know about.

Make a Statement with Headlines

The header statement is arguably the most important piece of text in your direct mail letter or advert. It will grab the reader’s attention and encourage them to read the rest of your copy.  Web visitors like details, but they love benefits.  Give them a reason to do business with you or buy your product or service.

Call to Action

What do you want your website visitors and readers to do?  Read the Original Jason Cardiff Article > 3 Direct Marketing Tips for SEO

Website Optimization and Testing

Online testing is all the rage right now. At a recent conference I asked the audience how many people worked for companies that do online testing (A/B, multivariate, or behavioral targeting); roughly 5 to 10 percent of the people raised their hands. That is about twice as many people who would have said yes 12 months ago. Then I asked how many people work for companies that plan to start a testing program over the next 12 months and nearly everyone raised their hand.  On-site testing makes sense. It focuses on making incremental site performance improvements in a very measureable way. It is a great way to increase revenue or profit and a great way to justify budgets managed by Web teams. While more people are getting comfortable with testing, it is often treated as a whole new approach to marketing. But testing is not new. Direct marketers have been performing tests offline for years.

Think about the idea of someone doing direct mail and testing 15 different versions of an envelope to increase the chance that you open that piece of mail in your mailbox. Direct marketers try all sorts of different paper and offers on the outside. They test making the envelope look formal, making it look like it is hand addressed, or adding an actual stamp so it doesn’t look like it’s been stamped by a meter. And that is just the envelope.  Direct marketers test all sorts of versions of the content as well copy length, price points, and offers. We have all also seen it in catalogs we get as well. Is it better to offer a 10 percent discount, a free add-on, or free shipping? Which offer will return the greatest revenue and ultimately profit? Marketers have been testing these things for years to maximize their conversion rates.

Let’s take a look at the definition of direct marketing. I found several, but the definition on Wikipedia said it best:

Direct marketing is a sub-discipline and type of marketing. There are two main definitional characteristics which distinguish it from other types of marketing. The first is that it attempts to send its messages directly to consumers, without the use of intervening media. This involves commercial communication (direct mail, e-mail, telemarketing) with consumers or businesses, usually unsolicited. The second characteristic is that it is focused on driving a specific “call-to-action.” This aspect of direct marketing involves an emphasis on trackable, measurable positive (but not negative) responses from consumers (known simply as “response” in the industry) regardless of medium.

Let’s break down this definition a bit, looking at the two key elements:

Delivering Messages Directly to the Consumer

Online, more companies are tuning their messages or Web sites based on a visitor’s profile, previous activities, or anything else known about that person. While many sites are still “one size fits all,” more companies are getting smarter about the way they communicate with Web visitors. Think of some customized experiences you see at Amazon or timely calls to actions you see on other sites when you have been there before.

Driving a Specific Call to Action

This is a big one. What is it we want people to do on the site? Realistically there are a number of things that could define success for any given Web site. When you start to segment your audience, the number of things we want visitors to do on the site can get narrowed down. Your site can be more successful if you narrow down those choices based on your visitors and really look to drive interest in those activities. Think of a banking site when a visitor lands on the home page. If it knows that a visitor has previously logged onto its Web site during a previous visit, it should not dedicate 50 percent of the homepage to getting the visitor to sign up for online banking. It isn’t applicable and she won’t respond. Rather, the visitor may already have an account and the banking site may want to inform her of an add-on service or helpful piece of information about it. Just as the online banking promo might not be applicable to someone who is not a customer, the add-on service promo might not be applicable either. Because the message isn’t targeted, it won’t be successful. More important, the banking site is missing an opportunity to give each audience segment something that makes sense to it. Go back to the definition of direct marketing: the banking site is not giving the audience an applicable call to action to respond to, and thereby, not advancing the visitor as a customer.

But again just like the envelope examples above, the beauty of direct marketing is the idea of testing what works and what doesn’t in order to maximize ROI (define) and profit. Read the original Click Z article online.

Voice Broadcasting for Increasing Leads and Sales

In a recent article, Christine Harrell writes about the benefits that voice broadcasting can have for boosting sales and leads.  

Author is a writer for Unix USA which specializes in fax broadcasting and generating sales leads. For additional information about these services you can visit http://www.unixusa.net.  Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christine_Harrell

Ben Stein on Cash Really Is King

The night before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, he gave a memorable, inspiring speech. At its end, he said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen with me now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead….”  Unfortunately, this is true now about the American (and global) economy. I wish I could say I knew what was going to happen in the future. I have learned that I do not. I was not given the gift or the burden of foresight. I thought that our government would not let the bottom fall out. I was wrong. I am sorry.

So given that I do not know the future, what can I tell you that will be useful? Actually, quite a bit.

Cash Really Is King

First, taking the advice of my dear pal Ray Lucia, rock and roll star and investment guru, I can tell you that, no matter what happens, it will be good to have a nice chunk of money in cash or near cash. Yes, I know we may soon have inflation. But if we do, the rates on money market funds will rise. Cash is just a lovely thing to have in almost situation. Cash or near cash offers a level of comfort that even a large portfolio of stocks does not offer.

Taking a cue from my dear pal Phil DeMuth of Conservative Wealth Management, I can tell you that, if you think we are definitely at a bottom, you might be fooled. While Phil’s research tells us that we may be near a bottom by postwar metrics of price, price to earnings, and price to dividends, we may have ( as Phil puts it ) “jumped the tracks of history.”

My own view is that we have been fooled so much in the past 15 months about what real earnings are, what real book value is, that we cannot trust the data given to us. Yes, by current price-earnings measures, stocks look fairly reasonable. But we don’t really know what true earnings are. That is the vicious truth. So if we are in the quicksand of not being able to rely on the data our companies give out, then anything can happen. Yes, we may be at a bottom or near it. Or we may not be anywhere near a bottom.

Anything Can Happen

Just to illustrate, who would have dreamed a few weeks ago that Citi would be in the kind of trouble it is in, even after a $45 BILLION infusion from the federal government? Anything can happen in the treacherous world in which we find ourselves.

Third, taking counsel from my pal Barron Thomas, very possibly the best salesman on the planet, I will tell you a rule of indisputable value in this or any economic situation: WORK.

Barron is in the real estate and private plane businesses. These are both highly impacted by the economic slowdown. How does Barron deal with it? He gets up at 5 a.m. every day and works the phones from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., goes home, makes notes, and then sleeps well until he starts all over again. And he closes the deals. There are still plenty of people who will make the deal at the right price.

Keep on Working

Next, from yours truly: Work is deeply therapeutic. It makes us feel better. It gives us a much better attitude about ourselves. It makes us feel as if we are worth something. A middle class person who works has a far better self image than a rich person who does not work. Work is a gift, a sacrament, a true blessing. Plus, people who work are generally going to have higher incomes and higher standards of life than people who do not work.

If times are tough, work harder than ever. You will get through the rough patches and learn how strong you really are. Do not seek to avoid work — embrace it.

Then, finally, I will tell you something I do when I feel buffeted by the markets. I dig into the 12-step program that has saved my life for the past 20 years. Using its precepts, I say to myself, “I am powerless over the stock market. It is all up to God. I do the very best I can, and after that, it’s up to God.”

Read the original article> http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/135453

Jason Cardiff Video Discussing Kelly Media Marketing in 2009

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