A Free eZine for Business Owners & Professionals by MediaPower & Mediastreams.ca

January 2010 issue

Wishing all our subscribers & customers the Very Best for 2010

with an Exclusive Half-Price Promotional Offer (see below)

After SEO, What???

Why 'Conversion' is Still King!

Focusing heavily on Search Engine Optimization may be a great way to get visitors in your door but ignoring the quality of your presentation and the communicability of your message is downright catastrophic - what will your visitors find when they get there and will they stay long enough to listen, understand and take the action you want them to take?

Read On...

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TOP 10 ONLINE MARKETING TRENDS FOR 2010

Read the article from the latest online issue of ENTREPRENEUR MAGAZINE which gives you the latest advice on where to INVEST, what to TEST and which method deserves a REST!

CLICK HERE to read the full article which gives you crucial advice on where you should be investing your precious marketing dollars

Article by John Arnold, Author of Web Marketing All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies and Email Marketing for Dummies

in this issue...

• Main Story: Life After SEO

• Marketing: YouTube Marketing

• Our VideoBlog - Is Email Marketing Finally Dead?

•  

• Sales & Marketing: Using Press Releases for Marketing

• Tip of the Month: Online Video Tips

• Did You Know... What People Remember

• NEW YEAR PROMOTIONAL OFFER for Our Subscribers Only...

• Our Corporate Responsibility: Helping People while Helping The Earth

• Contact Us

Visit our YouTube Channel to watch our Streaming Video Collection

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Feature Article

Life After SEO

Imagine opening a store on a prominent street in one of the best shopping areas in town. There are literally thousands of people (viewers) walking by every hour - you probably think you have it made!

But what if your shop window is dark, dingy and unviting? What if the interior is moldy with torn carpets, water-stained ceilings and peeling wallpaper? What if your salesperson has no customer relations skills and doesn't bother to encourage or facilitate a sale?

Businesses spend a lot of time and energy driving traffic to their websites using search engine optimization (SEO) while ignoring the website itself.

Focusing heavily on search engine optimization may be a great way to get visitors in your door but ignoring the quality of your communication and the functionality of your website is downright catastrophic - what will your visitors find when they get there?

You need to put your money where it counts...

When you're on a budget, as most businesses are today, you really want to spend your money where you're likely to get the greatest benefit. Unfortunately, money isn't always spent on what is actually the most beneficial, but rather what is perceived to be. While SEO can drive traffic to your website, if what's on your site (and especially on your home page) doesn't live up to your visitor's expectations, you've basically flushed all your money down the drain!

There is nothing wrong with investing in SEO to drive traffic, but SEO is not the bell and end-all. This is what so many business websites are doing today - they are focusing way too much on SEO and ignoring their website design and how it communicates their message to the visitor - they are ignoring "Conversion"  

Conversions is Still King!

Recently we undertook a major site redesign for an old client. Their rankings were pretty good but the site design was getting dated and was also quite inefficient.

The client listened to advice on improving the communicability of their site and invested in a major redevelopment, including creating a streaming web video on their homepage, which resulted in their conversion rate jumping by nearly 20%!

Obviously, this increase in sales was not the result of any new optimization or keywords, since those hadn't changed at all. The jump in conversions was directly related to their site becoming more appealing and communicating their marketing message in a more powerful and persuasive fashion.

The site redesign plus the video production cost them less than a years worth of SEO services but with a much more user-friendly site, the message was being communicated so much better to the visitor, that there was a lowering of the bounce-rate and an increase in the click-through and conversion rates that resulted in higher sales.

Of course we shouldn't ignore the fact that having a streaming video on their homepage also made their site much more attractive to search Engines like Google.

Placing that same streaming video on YouTube and on other video-sharing sites resulted in even more traffic being drawn to their site through the higher exposure.

Getting a page-one placement for your keyword phrases is undeniably powerful, but not if your site itself is a turn-off or your messaging doesn't do its job.

Most small businesses are completely ignorant of the many deficiencies in their websites when it comes to marketing, messaging and promotional factors - factors which any competent design professional could point out in minutes.

Bringing traffic into the slums isn't all that difficult - getting someone to buy from you while they're there, is. Conversions matter and when all is said and done, they are the bottom line - they are what matters most.

Conversion is the result of a series of small decisions and tiny steps that all fit together to help viewers along to reach your stated objective. By reducing the failure factors and increase success factors you will tip the scales in your favor and  "Convert Visitors Into Customers"

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Video Marketing on YouTube

As You Tube becomes increasingly popular, internet marketers are increasingly realizing the power of video marketing to generate free traffic, to get free exposure for their products and services.

Despite the advent of hundreds of new video-sharing sites, YouTube is still growing at a phenomenal rate and is still one of the most viewed sites on the world wide web. It has changed the way people view videos online and is almost synonymous with online streaming video.

It allows videos to start streaming very quickly regardless of the type of internet connection you have. However, one of its most useful (if under-used) features is that it allows users to easily embed videos on their own web pages without having to actually host them on their own website.

This lets you add video content to your blog or website making it much more interactive and allowing your visitors to watch and listen to your message instead of just reading text - a powerful feature that keeps people on your website so much longer.

And the great thing is that YouTube is free to host your videos and you can now advertise your business, gain free exposure and drive traffic to your website at no extra cost. So once you have created the video and uploaded it to YouTube. it will continue to generate traffic for months and maybe even years. If you do it right, you can even target specific keyword phrases to generate free targeted traffic for your website.

Everyone wants more exposure for their website and these days its possible to do this without breaking the bank on advertising or SEO costs. Every business needs to seriously consider using streaming video as an integral part of your marketing campaign. Apart from being a persuasive communication medium that has a high "Conversion Rate", it is one of the easiest ways to generate traffic for free on the internet.

Is Email Marketing Finally Dead?

Because email marketing is one of the oldest forms of Internet marketing people think it is outdated - but it's anything but dead!

Click the PLAY button to watch the movie

Video courtesy of WebPro News

As it happens,  email is still one of the most popular ways that people, both young and old, access information on the Web.

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Sales & Marketing

Using Press Releases for Marketing

Press releases are not only great ways to spread the word about any announcements your business might have. They can also drive traffic, particularly from search engines. This is not new, but it's a commonly overlooked fact.

"Search engine rankings are arguably the most important small business marketing tool available today because it drives Web traffic - and potential prospects - to a small business' Web site," a PRWeb spokesperson once told WebProNews. "However, because improving search rankings is desirable, achieving results can be both challenging and highly competitive."

Back in the summer, PRWeb did a case study involving a firm that typically sees a boost in search engine rankings and a 50% spike in web traffic after they issue a release. In fact, for one release in particular, the firm saw a spike of 400% on two different Web sites, and the firm doesn't believe they were from the same users. They also incorporate social media tools like Twitter to extend the "shelf life" of press releases, and say that drives additional traffic.

"When we included a link to our press releases on Twitter and other social media networks, we saw these both expanded the scope of distribution and the extended the longevity of the announcement," the CEO of the company behind the case study had said. "With other news releases we saw an initial spike in Web site traffic on the first two days and then it dropped off. With these features we've seen increases in traffic up to five days after the news release was issued."

In a study from Arketi Group, also back in the summer, journalists were found to use the web in the following ways:

95% Search
92% Reading news
92% Emailing
89% Finding story ideas
87% Finding news sources
75% Reading blogs
64% Watching webinars
61% Watching YouTube
59% Social networks

You've got to wonder if that social networks number has gone up by now and it probably has.

Social media has since become more important to search, particularly with the inclusion of real-time search results in Google and Google's social search experiment (which may eventually move beyond experiment status).

Marty Weintraub, the President of aimClear shared some great tips and insight into the use of press releases for search in a recent interview with WebProNews. Among other things, he noted that when you do a press release, you're "hitching a ride" in the search engine results and news results. You can use outbound links in press releases, and perhaps more importantly, you're out there where the journalists are looking.

Here are some press release distribution sites (some are paid and some are free):

• Business Wire

• PR Newswire

• PRWeb

• 24-7 Press Release

• PR Zoom

• PR Leap

• I-Newswire

• Webwire

• ClickPress

• PR.com

• PR Log

• eReleases

• MarketWire

Beyond the distribution sites, don't forget to include your releases on your own site. Journalists like being able to find the most up to date information from the source itself.

Your site should have a section for press releases, and that should be up to date with the latest release when it goes out. You'd be surprised at how often these go without being updated even when a press release has been spotted elsewhere. It is also a good idea to link to any company blogs, Twitter accounts, or any other place where company announcements are made.

Article by Chris Crum courtesy of Web Pro News

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Tip of the Month

Online Video Tips

Sell the Sizzle Not The Steak - Sell Features Not Benefits

Give Your Viewer Clear and Concise Benefits in plain language to keep your viewers attention.

Use public domain footage from Government, NASA & other sources to produce an extremely effective video.

Short Marketing Videos Are Better - a two minute video generally succeeds where a 10 minute video can fail.

Use Testimonials To Sell - Video testimonials are some of the most powerful forms of persuasion.

The cost of advertising on your local cable channels is very affordable and much more effective compared to print advertising - and has much more impact.

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Did You Know...

PEOPLE REMEMBER...
3% of what they read
5% of what they hear
15% of what they see
BUT 50% to 70% of what they see, hear, and read combined!!

VIDEO RULES!

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Humour

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Helping People by Helping The Earth

Let's all of us take some corporate responsibility to keep our world clean and help the underprivileged at the same time

Click here and donate your old electronics to a worthy cause

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Contact Us

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