Welcome to Michael's Article Collection

The Four Seasons of Publicity - Building an All-Year Publ...

If you’re like most publicity seekers, you probably think one project at a time. You’ve got a new product coming out in April, so you send out a release in March. You’ve hired a new executive, you’ll put out a release when she’s on board, etc.For hard-core publicity insiders, though, there’s a rhythm to generating coverage, based upon the natural ebb and flow of the seasons. Such an approach c. . .

Go To Work In Your UNDERPANTS!

A Step-By-Step Guide for creating imaginative order pulling adverts for both on and offline marketingOK, let’s get started!Rule One - The HeadlineThe headline is without doubt the most important part of your advert, that big chunky text at the top of your ad, if this doesn’t grab their attention then you’ve lost a potential customer/sale. The sole function of your headline is to get the readers. . .

How to Get People to Read Your Ads Like CRAZY!

Rule One :- The Headline The headline should summarize the whole offer. It should grab the eye, and make you want to read the subheading. The headline should intrigue and captivate the reader. It's sole aim is to make the reader continue on to read the body text. You should take great time and trouble over the headline. Let's say we're selling a book on home security, yes, I know, boring and yo. . .

Free Ezine Advertising That Works!

When I say free ezine advertising, I'm not talking about the free ezine ads that some publishers offer, this technique is FAR more powerful than that.One of the best ways to get free traffic to your site, is to write articles for ezines. Now before you shudder and click away, it isn't that hard to write a good article. If you've got a bout of writers block, just search for info related to the s. . .

7 Super Ways To Use Autoresponders To Increase Your Sales

1. Use your autoresponder to publish an ezine. Autoresponders with a broadcast feature are a low cost way to create mailing lists that your visitors can subscribe to including your own ezine that you can use to effectively market your products. Concentrate on making your ezine a source of valuable information for your subscribers and you'll be able to create an ezine that your subscribers look . . .

Online Testing Optimization

Simply put, online testing involves keying each different test variable with a unique identifying code (so each desired response can be tracked to its source), running the test campaign, keeping records, and tabulating and comparing the results. The winning variable then becomes the control, or bench mark, which future ones are measured against. Let's look at testing in more detail... The techn. . .

Press Releases Can Increase Search Engine Positioning

When you write a press release, what is your ultimate goal? No doubt, getting the information to as many publications and on as many Web sites as possible. The focus lies in moving outward… taking the press release to as many *other* sources as possible. We buy lists of journalists, pay public relations companies to distribute the release to thousands of targeted leads, use online press rele. . .

Explaining What You Do in 15 Seconds

You're in the elevator and your friend John introduces you to Barbara who is the CEO of one of the companies you'd like to do business with. Barbara asks, "What do you do?" Here is your chance to make a connection with a prime member of your target market. You want to get her attention, make a positive impression and get her interested enough to continue the conversation. You've got about fifte. . .

Marketing and the Hired Guerrilla

It’s a jungle out there, so know and use your guerrilla marketing tactics! Jay Conrad Levinson wrote the book that started it all, the popular guerrilla marketing series. He has compiled a list of 100 tactics – most of them fr*ee – that savvy business leaders use. One increasingly popular – and profitable – tactic on Levinson’s list is the informative article. Articles are not ads. Articles are. . .

Network Marketing

When a person knows and knows not that he knows. Teach him.When a person knows and knows that he knows. Follow him.I have read a lot about Network Marketing and MLM and I have learnt a few things which you might like to know. And the one thing that I know for sure is that network marketing sells.If you have been in business and your business has turned you into a small tipper, we all know why. . . .

10 Tips On Offering A Free Ecourse

1. Make your ecourse short like 5 - 7 days. The longer the ecourse easy for your subscriber to forget the matter of your previous emails.2. Use double opt-in follow up autoresponders to stop accusitions of spam.http://www.scripts4webmasters.com/arpproadv/index.shtml3. Write one ecourse to promote only ONE product. If you keep ten product links in your ten day email course, it will look like a c. . .

Traffic Exchange Primer

Traffic exchanges are everywhere. A traffic exchange is a clever way to get hundreds or thousands of visitors to your website. The concept is very simple and the exchange process is easy to put into action. First, you join a traffic exchange program that includes individuals with websites to promote. Next, you set up the website you want to promote. Finally, you visit the websites of the o. . .

Why You Should Write To Inform And Not To Sell

Advertising is key! Unfortunately most people waste their money on advertising unless they can play by the numbers. Playing by the numbers is simply spending enough money on advertising and saturating the market so much, that percentage wise, enough people will want to see what you have to offer. In the long run your ad will pay for itself. Although costly, it may just be the best investment . . .

How to Avoid the Marketing Blues with Your Offers

"Here's a little tip I would like to relate Big fish bites if ya got good bait."To attract more prospects and clients, you need what Taj Mahal calls "good bait" in his song the Fishin Blues. One of the biggest mistakes you can make, as a small business owner, is forgetting to use good bait in the form of your offers. Whether you use direct mail, a web site or media advertising to market your bu. . .

How To Get More Business During The Winter Months

Business seems to drop, slow or even stop during the winter months. As tourist traffic slows or stops during the winter months so does the incomes of many local business owners. The first step in overcoming this problem begins in your brain (don’t they all?)To begin with, don’t see these slow months as a dead time. See them for what they are , a time to build customer relationships and prepare . . .

Developing a Formal Brand Messaging Document

Ensure everyone in your company sings from the same sheet of music when it comes to communicating a consistent brand message.Imagine one of your customers calling six different people in your company. The customer asks why they should consider purchasing your product. What do you think these six people would say? Would their explanation be consistent?That’s where brand messaging comes into p. . .

Interview With Josh Epstein of Vision Music USA

Vision Music USA is a proactive and progressive music service firm with the interest of their clients the driving force that makes them successful. President Josh Epstein and CEO Nick Stamoulis are focused on helping the Independent artists to maintain control of their career by saving them time and their hard-earned dollars. Josh took some time from his busy day to talk to me about their growi. . .

What Your Click Tracking Script Should Tell You?

You run an ad spending $100.00. How could you possibly know how many people bought your product? If you don't know your ROI on that particular campaign, how will you spend another $100.00 on it?Simple is You have to track your advertising campaign. This is done by - By keeping specific URL in that specific campaign Ex: http://www.yourdomain.com/ezinead.html By giving '?source=campaign1' tag to . . .

Growing Your Brand Assets

Okay. Raise your hand if you think brand management is just for BIG companies (like Target, McDonalds or Ford.) Wow! That's a lot of hands! Well, guess what? You're all wrong.Brand issues are important to ALL companies for the simple reason that people buy from other people. People have personalities. Branding establishes and communicates a company's personality (sometimes referred to as compan. . .

Selecting The Title Of Your Link Exchanges

I want to touch base with selecting the title of the links that are added to other sites. Adding your link on another site is very important for your search engine saturation and rankings.More importantly, what title do you chose?Many seo firms our there now believe that web sites are getting penalized from link swapping. Even today, I had an seo company that wanted my company to link to his si. . .

Top 10 Lessons for Small Business Success... As learned f...

Small business success is very similar to learning to walk, talk and spell. The basics have to be understood before moving on to the next step. I am blessed to have twin 3 year old girls in my life and am amazed constantly how much I learn from them on a daily basis. As I watch them run around and explore, I find myself realizing just how much my observations apply to being successful and happy. . .

The Financial Power of Gay Weddings – Q & A

The Financial Power of Gay Weddings – Q & A Q. Why should people consider gay unions financially profitable? A. Gay weddings may not be legal just yet, but commitment ceremonies occur regularly throughout the United States. According to statistics from Girlfriends magazine 31% of couples do intend to settle down into a committed relationship. Lesbians and gays who choose to formalize their rela. . .

8 Common Marketing Mistakes

Advertising can be one of the fastest ways to market and grow your business or it can be one of the quickest ways to go out of business. With the right ad you can attract clients to your business and increase your profits. With the wrong ad you can spend your way into bankruptcy.To grow your business you need to attract the attention of your prospects, advertising can help you do so if used cor. . .

Search Engine Marketing: Are You Accidentally Hiding From...

You may be hiding if the search engines can’t ‘see’ all of your site’s relevant content.You’ve invested a great deal of time and effort carefully crafting compelling, helpful website content for prospective customers. It’s well written and contains the appropriate keyword phrases that prospects will likely use when searching for this type of information on the Internet. For some reason, thoug. . .

Need Ezine Content - Think Holidays

Publishing an ezine certainly has its benefits and rewards, but even the most prolific publishers often need more content ideas, topics and graphics.One of the best resources for newsletter and ezine publishers is holidays; they are a true gift because they can provide an overall theme, a topic, graphics, as well as content. They can add a little spice to your usual, consistent branded newslett. . .

How To Fire Up Your Link Popularity

When I first started out in Internet marketing, reciprocal linking was one of the techniques that I was required to master. Left, right and center gurus were telling me of the importance of having my website link on as much websites as possible. But most did not say how to go about doing it. After contacting several webmasters with the aim of exchanging links, all flatly refused. Maybe it was b. . .

How I Turned $1.05 Into a Growing Business

I wanted to share this story, as an inspiration to others, and to show the power of eBay and a little creative thinking.A few days ago I was talking with a friend of mine that lives, breathes, and eats fishing. He told me he'd designed a new fishing lure, and was wanting to try and sell "a few," maybe on eBay. But, he said.. he wasn't that sure about how eBay worked, and wondered if I'd help hi. . .

Creative Marketing Tips … “Simple Things You Can Use In Y...

The single most important activity you can do in your small business is create a unique marketing strategy and plan. When was the last time you saw a company marketing themselves in an outrageous way? In this day and age it looks like everyone has read the same book on marketing – and sorry to say – that book doesn’t work!What does work – is a little creativity, a little personality and a lot. . .

Vision Music USA Takes Their Services To The Next Level

March 1, 2004- Vision Music USA, LLC an independent musician’s resource specializing in Artist Development is now offering many new services to help musicians, including Merchandise, Graphic Design, Website Design and CD Duplication to name a few. Vision Music USA is a one-stop resource for independent musicians that can assist you with every aspect of your career, whether you are just startin. . .

Are You A Marketing Octopus or A Marketing Worm?

One of the greatest challenges to effectively marketing a business is determining which marketing method is best suited for your business.Most people look at what their competitors are doing to market their businesses and then simply imitate that, whether good or bad. The best marketing strategy does not involve selecting only one or two marketing approaches that we see others using. The best m. . .

When Is An Ad Not An Ad?

One marketing technique used by advertisers old and new is to conceal sales pages as something else.The Infomercial, for example, extends the TV Advertisment into something that prentends to be an informative program.Likewise, newspaper and magazine advertisments often mimic the style of news reports or editorials.In Internet Marketing we can also make use of this technique, in a number of ways. . .

Is a High Search Engine Ranking Important for YOU?

In the process of designing a website for clients the question inevitibly arises "How do I get a good search engine ranking?". This is a very good point and the answer is not as clear cut as you may think.A high search engine ranking means that your website will appear on the first page of a search engine, when someone searches for the subject of your website. For example if you were a babysitt. . .

How To Blog, And Why You Should!

First, a quick definition for those who do not know what a Blog is. Quite simply, it's a Web Log. In other words, a regularly updated page of your thoughts, ideas, links - whatever.It's very easy to publish a Blog these days and today I'm going to show you how in a few easy steps. Don't worry - all the sites, services and tools involved are fr'ee.Before we go ahead I should first explain why a . . .

Ten Secrets of Super Successful Meeting Planners

Whoever said that being a meeting planner was easy, lied! Rather, it should be classified under the tough and demanding job category. But, along with being tough, it’s also fun, exciting, exhilarating, stimulating, and never, never boring. You have the opportunity to go to exotic places, stay in luxurious hotels, and experience life from a totally different angle. Who could ask for anything. . .

Cutting Down Your Trade Show Budget

Whenever a recession or volatility threatens the economy, companies immediately look at where they can cut budgets. Without much forethought, the first to hit the block is inevitably training, followed closely behind by marketing. Why? Both are viewed on the balance sheet as expenditures rather than income generators, so obviously they’re hot contenders for elimination.This is a very myopic . . .

Guerilla Marketing Lesson 2: Why Do People Call Me?

Before we begin, I want you to think about how many times you actually sought out an advertisement. How did you know where to look for it? Why did you choose that one? Whether you know it or not, the number of times you were exposed to the message has a huge impact on you. Also, the message and how it made you feel had a large influence on your response.On the other side of the table, how. . .

5 Steps to Build Your Own Subscriber List

Let me ask you this ‘Who can you sell your products or services to over and over again?’Your subscriber list is an unlimited source to market your products to. You can test your products, run surveys, do anything that might be of interest to your subscribers. You don’t even have to spend any advertising money, your list will do the job. But what should you do if you don't have your own subscrib. . .

Ebook Rebranding - The New Ebook Marketing Power?

Well, it is definitely yes! In the early day of internet marketing, giving away ebook free was a very good list-building strategy. It worked extremely well. But it is no longer the case in TODAY scenario. Giving away your ebook free is just not enough for your online business. You’ll need to do something different. The net is so saturated with the free ebook because every one is giving aw. . .

7 BIG Ideas for Better eMail

More about eMail from BIG Mike McDaniel.1 Empty your In-Box daily. Don’t use it for storage. Check incoming eMail at least once a day and deal with it. Move unread mail into folders for later viewing. Free detailed article on how to create and use filters and folders available by eMail. Send blank message to Folders@BIGIdeasGroup.com 2 Don’t Set Fire to Outgoing eMail Hastily typed angry words . . .

Real Estate Marketing, Do You Use Direct Mail?

Prospecting for leads is by far the most difficult part of being a Realtor or small business professional. In fact, lead development is by far the most expensive and time consuming aspect of your job. However, you level of success in lead development will determine if you succeed or fail as a real estate agent or small business professional. So how do you develop leads? Well top selling profess. . .

Better Copy: The Interview is the Key

Most of us spend our days persuading others to buy our service, product or idea. Here is how to create powerful marketing copy to make your job easier: INTERVIEW YOURSELF.If you hired a writer to create the copy for you, he/she would likely start by interviewing you. He would ask every question he could think of about your subject and keep probing until he found illuminating answers. You could . . .

As a Realtor, How Do I Attract Listings?

Have you ever noticed that despite the massive number of Realtors in your area, only a hand full are making a fortune selling real estate? Regardless of who these realtors work for; GMAC, Century 21, REMax, they are extremely successful where others in their office are barely scraping by. What is the secret to their success? First and foremost, it is their approach to marketing themselves an. . .

Organizing Your Data to Write Better Copy

Last quarter I talked about interviewing / gathering data. So now you’ve got several thousand words of notes, hopefully digitally recorded. What comes next?GETTING ORGANIZEDI suggested organizing your interview questions into 4 groups. I’m going to label them for you A, B, C, D. ·what is the business problem? = A ·what is the high level solution? = B ·can you tell me more about the solution? =. . .

Finding Your Client's Business Problem Leads to Better Copy

WHAT’S THEIR PROBLEM?How do you begin a dialogue with a prospect, be it in person, on your website or in print? You talk about your client’s business problem. What IS your client’s business problem? Answering this question is the hardest part of marketing. What we all do instead, is focus on our solution, i.e. “what we do.” “We sell network management software.” “We are a business-oriented law . . .

Cleaning Up Your Copy

When you are beginning to write, you gather as much data as you can. You continually add allied thoughts. . You use your right brain, the creative side. So when you have an idea and your mind says, “not relevant to my core subject,” you ignore the doubt. You don’t cross anything out. You behave as magpie. To polish your copy, you do the opposite.Here’s how: shut the door and banish distrac. . .

Why Split-Run Testing Does Not Work...

There is a wealth of information out there about the benefits of split-run testing or how to conduct such tests, and a huge selection of software solutions that help to implement it. I'm am not going to attempt to describe the concepts of testing, nor will I pitch any software solution. I want to talk about why so many people fail in their attempt to improve the conversion rate of their . . .

Mobile Marketing A New Age Strategy

More and more companies seem to be looking for new and innovative ways to market their products. Overlooking most of the traditional marketing techniques, more companies are pioneering the relatively new mobile marketing campaign. Mobile event trailers and vehicle graphic wraps are bringing the products directly to the consumers. With an array of games, giveaways, contests and twenty-five foot . . .

10 Classic Ways To Successfully Use Autoresponders

1. Use your autoresponders to conduct simple polls. Your polls can give you valuable information that you can use to make your ezine, site or product better. They can also help you to make decisions concerning making changes to your product, site, or ezine. You can also make your ezine more interactive by running a poll in each issue and then publishing the results in the following issue. Using. . .

PR Works! 15 Ways To Make Your Press Release Stand Out Fr...

Do editors of newspapers, magazines and online news sites really use press releases? Too right they do. In fact, the press release is one of the most effective forms of publicity. But many businesses, both online and off, underestimate the power the press has to promote their business and get their product or service noticed by potential customers.There are no figures that show how many news st. . .

Lead Generation Using Traffic Exchanges

Leads have always been the lifeblood of any business. If you have no leads, you have no business. Everyone knows that, but the thing killing everybody out there is how to get leads for your business without going broke in the process. There are many ways to drum up business, but the focus of this article is the use of viral techniques you can use to create leads for your business. Viral marketi. . .