The E-Commerce Blog

More money is wasted on advertising than any other business function. That is not to say businesses shouldn’t advertise but rather people should understand how advertising works. There are many ways to characterize ads, but for our purposes let’s make it simple and separate advertising into two distinct approaches: saturation and emotional.

One of the things I’ve learned over a long career is that business folk invariably take their lead from the wrong sources. Small and medium size businesses look to the mega corporations to learn their tricks and adopt their attitudes when they have little in common – advertising being no exception. Since our clients are mostly medium or small size companies we try to help put some of these issues into perspective.

If you’re big enough and have the money available, there are all kinds of marketing initiatives you can invest in, but if you have a limited marketing budget you need to be smart about how and on what you spend your advertising dollars. And the most effective and cost efficient place to spend those dollars is on your website. Yes you need to attract people to your site, but if once they arrive they find it lacks intriguing, engaging content, then you’ve wasted your money. So what tactical approach should you take to deliver your marketing message?

Saturation Advertising

The first approach is saturation advertising like you see on television. Anyone who has spent an evening sitting in front of the TV set is familiar with what I am talking about: the constant repetition of the same commercials over and over until the ads become an unwelcome irritation. The fact is no matter what you do to avoid commercials they eventually seep into your head. Even fast forwarding through commercials on a recorded program has an effect. Saturation advertising depends on repetition not quality, which is why some of the worst and/or stupidest commercials can still be effective.

There are some great commercials on television that do engage the audience with an entertaining, memorable, marketing message that enhances the brand and generates leads, but when push comes to shove, television advertising is all about repetition not quality.

Does Saturation Advertising Work?

Does saturation advertising work? The short answer is yes it does, at least for a television audience it does. Most people believe that it works on others but not on them, a phenomenon, psychologists call the Third Party Effect. The fact is, repeating something automatically makes it appear more believable.

The majority of people will respond that they don’t pay attention to commercials, but inattention does not protect you from the influence of repeated messaging. In fact bad commercials work better if the audience isn’t really paying attention, and fail when the audience is actually listening carefully. Careful attention brings to light all a message’s conceptual, technical and performance issues.

Will Saturation Advertising Work For You?

But saturation advertising is expensive because it relies on huge media buys in order to get the required number of repetitions needed to worm its way into an audience’s collective consciousness. It’s a messaging tactic that depends on deep pockets and that rules it out for most companies. Advertising that depends on constant repetition just won’t work on the Web unless it’s merely to supplement an existing extensive integrated television and print campaign.

Just as an aside, the music industry uses the same tactic. The constant repetition of a song, even of inferior quality but with minimum rhythmic value and a repetitive catchy chorus, can become a hit if heard often enough on the radio or on television in a music video. And like most saturation advertising it’s controlled by whoever has the most money available to purchase audience access. The same holds true for political advertising. Politicians can get away with the most incredible nonsense if they raised enough money to drown-out their opposition.

The Web is a different communication environment compared to television. Where television and the Web converge is with programming: your website is not an advertisement, or at least it shouldn’t be if you want it to be effective; your website is the equivalent of the program not the commercial, and that is why the key to success is the ability to turn advertising into content, and content into a memorable experience. You need to engage your audience with the same kind of techniques and messaging that is used in the programs you watch and not in the commercials you try to ignore.

If You Don’t Establish Your Brand, You Won’t Have a Meaningful, Memorable Message

If you can’t saturate the market with your brand then you have to find a better, more cost effective way to influence your audience. I use the word brand instead of product or service because that is where you have to start – you have to think ‘brand’ not product/service. What we’re talking about here is advertising intended to promote and grow your company within the context of a long term marketing strategy rather than a promotional ad intended to let your audience know about a particular sale or promotional event. Companies that stick exclusively to a promotional format are basically teaching their customers to only purchase goods and services when there’s a sale, and that’s a tough way to make money on a long-term basis.

We all know how popular the Google AdWords program is and we all know how expensive it can get in order to gain access to the keywords that trigger your ad placement. The Google system is basically relying on the same principle as television advertising: big audiences and lots of placements equals lots of leads.

The problem in addition to the continual expense is that even if you attract a large initial audience, that audience will not stick around long enough to get your brand story if that story is not at least as interesting and entertaining as the television programs they watch. And even if that audience manages to stick around a while, if your site isn’t interesting enough, they will never come back and that reduces your chances of being remembered. Unlike television where the audience is captive to the commercials, a Web audience is not. Unlike television where the experience is generally a compromised group decision, Web viewing is not.

For most Web-based businesses their website is their best and potentially most effective advertising venue, but people only go to websites that interest them, and they will leave in an instant if a website doesn’t engage, inform, and entertain them.

Emotional Advertising

“People forget what you say, but they remember how you made them feel.” – Warren Beatty

Everyone likes to think of him or herself as a rational, intelligent human being, but in truth, we are all motivated by the same hardwired emotional triggers. Our brains are marvelous, malleable organs that absorb information without us even knowing it; they process information, massage it, and produce instinctive responses to external stimuli. Our survival and dominance as a species depends on this ability. Our brains are not cameras that just record input; they are interpretive instruments that produce gut-instinct. As a consequence, successful long-term marketing strategies depend on an emotional brand association with basic Maslowian needs.

No matter who you are or what you do your competitors will undercut your price, add new and better features, or come up with superior alternative solutions. The business world is littered with the corpses of once proud companies that owned their market until someone came along with something better, or cheaper, or just different. No one wants a Polaroid camera when digital cameras are all the rage. Once proud Kodak has been humbled and downsized considerably because they saw themselves as a film company and cameras as merely a way to sell more film rather than tools of human creativity. Products and services come and go, but brands are forever, and brands are defined by their emotional appeal.

Coming up with the right brand message can be tricky. We know the motivational triggers that people respond to, so the objective is to find the right trigger for your company’s strategic vision and to frame it in terms that your target audience will accept. Knowing that your audience sees itself as rationally motivated is not an impediment to emotional motivational triggering. It is all a matter of framing the brand and providing the right context and subtext in your advertising and messaging initiatives, and most importantly on your website.

A Final Word

A company without emotional subtext is a company without soul, and it’s one that will eventually be superseded by those who understand the importance of brand and how emotional advertising works.

About the author
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit www.mrpwebmedia.com, www.136words.com, and www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

I believe if you asked any webmaster or online marketer what their most important aspect of running a site would be, you would get an answer that’s some way related to traffic. Mainly because traffic is your site’s lifeblood, actually without traffic you really don’t have a site at all.

Traffic is King

Traffic brings in the leads and the sales. Quality traffic is what produces your online revenue, whether from advertising or from sales on your site. Now, I have sites which get less than 50 visitors a day, I have a few sites which get around 200 visitors and I have one site which gets around 2,000 visitors a day.

Don’t jump to any conclusions, some days the site getting 50 visitors can make just as much as the site getting 2,000 visitors. It all has to do with the quality of the traffic and how well it converts into a sale. And of course, it all depends on what you’re selling… an LCD cleaning kit for $20 bucks or a gaming laptop which sell for $2000+.

Regardless, you have to get that traffic in the first place if you want to earn an online income. The more traffic you have, usually, the more you will make; at least this has been my experience. Since traffic is very important to me, I keep a lot of records and stats on where my traffic is coming from on the web. I have to know what produces the quality traffic and how to get it.

So below I have listed down my 5 most important traffic sources and/or the marketing techniques I use to get that traffic. This list might also help you with your own traffic and how you can increase it. Here are my 5 main traffic sources…

1. SEO and the Search Engines

The majority of the traffic to my sites comes from the search engines, mainly Google. It is my high rankings for my targeted keyword phrases which brings in the most and the best quality traffic to my sites. Get the SEO right and build a lot of quality one-way links from related sites and you will get the traffic. Another tactic, don’t just create a website with only 10 or 20 pages – create one with 1000 to 5000 pages. I know this takes time but consider your site like a long-term business which you will keep building for years. Produce plenty of quality content and you will get plenty of quality visitors in return. Works for me.

2. Article Marketing

Another very effective way to bring in quality traffic to your site or sites is article marketing. Just write short articles related to your site’s keywords and place your keyworded links in the resource box. Distribute these articles all over the web. Right now, what is working for me, is writing unique articles which I only place on one important site. I am using this technique with sites like SiteProNews, Buzzle and many more. Article marketing is still one of the most effective ways to get quality traffic, just try it.

3. PPC – Pay Per Click Advertising

I know, I know, this can be very expensive, but PPC can be the quickest way to get quality traffic to your sites. Just be careful and approach it with kid’s gloves until you find campaigns which work for you – then scale them up. Microsoft Adcenter and Yahoo Marketing have now joined forces and I find this is producing good traffic for me. Google Adwords is probably better, but they are a real pain to work with and have become too expensive, at least for my keywords. But if you have the resources, don’t rule out Adwords or any of the PPC programs.

4. Social Media Sites

From Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn, social media sites can provide a lot of traffic and word of mouth advertising for your site. For me, even though I haven’t worked these sites to their fullest potential, I still get traffic from them. Getting your pages bookmarked in some of these sites can bring in a flood of traffic overnight, while most of this traffic will be temporary, you can get a lot of sign-ups to your newsletter and different follow-up lists. While not exactly in the same group, I have had some success with YouTube videos which also bring in targeted traffic. Don’t ignore these social media and video sites in your traffic strategies.

5. Email Marketing and Follow-up Lists

This is another one of my major sources of “repeat visitors” to my sites. You must be constantly building up your different contact lists for further follow-up. This will bring in more visitors than you would expect, especially if you put some simple viral messages in your emails. If you supply valuable information, people will recommend your content to friends and co-workers; again word of mouth can bring in a lot of traffic especially in this age of Facebook and Twitter.

Of course, there are many more traffic sources such as Press Releases, Banner Ads, RSS Feeds, Off-line Advertising… and if you have your own products to promote, affiliates and joint ventures will be your most valuable source of traffic. Over the years I have picked up a lot of information on traffic and traffic tips… some of the best places/people for this has been:

freetraffictip.com – run by Tinu Abayomi-Paul, one of my best sources for free traffic tips. Excellent.

trafficology.com – this site and newsletter gives you off-beat ways to build traffic to your site. Highly Recommended.

About the author
The author is a full time online affiliate marketer who operates numerous niche sites, as well as two sites on Internet Marketing: internet marketing tools or try here free marketing courses. Titus Hoskins Copyright 2010.

You simply must get the SEO part right. Mainly because proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will increase your chances of obtaining those all important top rankings in the search engines. Besides, a well optimized site or page, will go a long way in weathering any abrupt changes on the web.

Google Instant is a perfect example of how things can change overnight. While it didn’t change SEO per se, it did change how people use Google and how the results are shown. Searchers don’t get the same chance to type in their long-tail keyword phrases because they are constantly and instantly being bombarded by suggested links… so much so that getting those top positions for shorter root keywords has gotten more important and this has increased everyone’s competition because those popular shorter keywords have always been the most competitive.

Probably every webmaster or online marketer knows that in order to get top rankings in the search engines you have to have quality one-way backlinks from other high ranked keyword-related sites. This will more than likely be the main determining ranking factor for most search engines, especially the all important Google. You simply need good quality one-way links and plenty of them to rank high.

However, there are many more SEO factors which come into play, especially if you’re in a very competitive niche and targeting highly cherished lucrative keyword phrases which bring in the big bucks. Then in these competitive situations, you must get all your SEO ducks lined up proper, if you want to be a player.

Some of these SEO factors may be minor but in very tight keyword races, it could possibly mean you get ranked above your competitor. Believe me, for some very lucrative keywords, just moving up a few notches can make a significant difference in your traffic and sales. The number one spot is what you’re aiming for, but even landing or moving up to the top five positions can make a big difference.

But you probably already know the significance of getting top rankings for your site and marketing. It can simply make or break your online endeavors. So here are some SEO on-page or on-site factors which you should have in place if you truly want to compete in the ranking wars.

1. Place your main keyword phrase in your Domain Name and over time you will see higher rankings for that phrase and keywords related to it. With Google going to Instant Search, I believe you will see these keyworded domains playing a much greater role in what is listed first. You still have to get those quality back-links, but having a good keyworded domain will be half your battle.

2. Place your keyword phrase in the URL for your webpage. Place it in the title, description and in the H1 tags on your page. Also place this keyword phrase and variations of it throughout your page, including at the very bottom. As for keyword density, try to keep it under 6%, this is the limit that Ezinearticles puts on their contributed content, go above this percentage and they won’t take it. I usually aim for around 2% to 4% but don’t get too hung-up on this issue, just write helpful easy-to-read content for your visitors.

3. Place related keyworded interior links on your page. That is, keep all your content and links keyword-related to one another. This makes it easy for the search engines to index your pages and content. I like building keyword-related traffic hubs or sections on my sites, for example I could have a whole sub-directory just on all the “affiliate marketing” info pages on my site. These would be all linked together and back to the homepage.

4. Make sure you have an XML Sitemap which the search engines can use to quickly index your new pages. I also like adding an HTML sitemap which goes into more detail and lists all the pages and their content. This is not only for the search engines but to help your visitors more easily navigate your site; never leave a visitor stranded.

5. Make sure all your pages load quickly. Reduce any large images that you have and break content/articles up into different pages to reduce load times.

6. Make sure your site handles 404 mistakes and your visitors are directed to your sitemap or another page on your site. If you don’t know how to correct this problem, just do a Google search for “how to set up a custom 404 file not found page” or contact your web host support to fix this issue.

7. Don’t have duplicate content on your site. Do a proper 301 redirect for the www and non-www versions of your site, since this may fool some of the search engines into believing you have two versions of your site, one with www and one without the www in the URL. For Apache servers I simply place this bit of code in the .htaccess file on my server.

Code example from non-www to www: RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule .? http://www.example.com {REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

8. Link out to other high quality keyword related sites. I don’t believe webmasters use this very much, but linking out to high quality sites have helped my rankings. Search engines, especially Google, want to see you’re connected to quality content and besides, pleasing your visitor is what it’s really all about.

9. Keep all your interior site navigation as simple as possible. Make it extremely easy for your visitors to find their way around your site. I usually don’t have any pages more than three clicks away from my homepage. All main categories or sub-categories of my site are not only listed on my home/index page but also on every page of my site. Again, never leave your visitors or the search engines stranded.

10. Don’t know if this is a ranking factor or not, but I like placing my YouTube videos on my content pages. Sure you will lose some visitors to YouTube, but it also connects your content with this very popular site which is owned by Google. We all know Google says it doesn’t promote its own interests, but what publicly traded company doesn’t? In that same light, I like using many Google products such as Google Analytics, Google URL Shortener, Google Profiles… and the list goes on. Completely inter-connecting all your pages and content with the countless Google programs will ensure your content won’t be missed.

There are probably many more on-page factors but these are the major ones which you should have on your site and done properly. If you want to check the SEO quality of your site or page, here is a handy site which will check some common SEO factors: www.pearanalytics.com and for checking out your keyword density try this one: www.webuildpages.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/

About the author
The author is a full time online affiliate marketer who operates numerous niche sites, as well as two sites on Internet Marketing: internet marketing tools or try here free marketing courses Titus Hoskins Copyright 2010. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.