7. February 2007 by Damian Petrini.

Wow, I don’t know about you, but what the hell were advertisers thinking this year with their ads for the Super-Bowl?!

The ad agencies and the marketing departments at some of the biggest companies in the world have either run out of all of their creative ideas or they have truly lost sight of the purpose of marketing and advertising.

It is absolutely amazing how much money corporations spend on advertising that is not based on direct response marketing principles. At this year’s 2007 Super Bowl, CBS got on average of $2.6 million for a 30-second spot.

Knowing what kind of actually sales emanate from the types of ads you saw during this year’s Super Bowl would be very interesting to know and I bet it would not be as much as most people might think.

If you are going to spend your hard earned capital on advertising, you should do so not to win fancy awards for humor and creativity, but make your advertising guide the viewer or reader to take some sort of action towards buying your products or services.

The worst part about this year’s ads was that most of the ads were some of the worst Super Bowl ads of all time. The media coverage about how awful the ads were has been all over the TV, in the newspapers, and all over the internet.

Does all of this buzz about the ads still help the advertisers get more sales?!

It may get them more mileage out of their advertising failures, but very few, if any of the ads this year were that persuasive and probably won’t lead to windfall profits and sales.

Case in point, did you feel compelled at all to run out and buy any of the products and services that you saw advertised?

Some people argue that it doesn’t matter that the ads generate lots of extra sales because it is good branding strategy for the various advertisers.

That is a lame excuse for poor advertising and marketing! Try going to the bank and depositing “branding” into your account and see what happens.

Don’t ever spend money on advertising and marketing that is NOT focused on direct response marketing principles! ALWAYS HAVE A CALL TO ACTION!!!

Robert Collier summarized it best in his book, The Robert Collier Letter Book:

“What is persuasion? Nothing but finding the motive that will impel your reader to do as you wish, then stirring it to the point where it is stronger than his inertia, or his economical tendencies.”

“Summed up, arousing the right motive comes down to making the reader want what you have to offer, whether that be merchandise or money or credit or merely a clean bill of health—not merely for what it is, but for what it will do for him!”

–Robert Collier (The Robert Collier Letter Book)

Take this as an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of big companies, so you don’t have to break your bank in the process of growing your business. And since you will always be focusing on ads that generate profits, you can sit back and laugh at next year’s Super Bowl while watching them on your new 52-inch flat screen TV!

Damian Petrini
www.marketingpotential.com

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20. December 2006 by Damian Petrini.

Most businesses are missing out on a huge opportunity to dramatically increase their sales this holiday season with the use of gift cards and gift certificates.

Here is an article “Online Searches for “Gift Card” Increase as Holiday Shoppers Panic” from an email I received from Direct Newsline (December 20, 2006 issue).

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Source: Direct Newsline
December 20, 2006
http://directmag.com/

Online Searches for “Gift Card” Increase as Holiday Shoppers Panic

Internet searches for the term “gift cards” more than doubled as online shoppers, faced with the imminence of several December gift-giving holidays, turned to the Internet for one-size-fits-all gifts.

During the week ending Dec. 16, lookups for the term “gift cards” rose 109%, while searches for more specific searches strings surged as well. “American Express gift cards” rose 184%, “iTunes gift cards” was up 69%, and “Visa gift cards” was up 19%, according to
Hitwise, an online competitive intelligence service.

Additionally, Hitwise reported that “iPod” was the leading product-related search term that sent visitors to Web sites within its Shopping and Classifieds category during the week.

Visits to Hitwise’s Retail 100 Index sites were up 4.3% for the week, compared with the week that ended Dec. 17, 2005.

Amazon.com was the most-visited site last week, receiving 13.96% of all visits among sites on the Retail 100 Index.

Link to Article [http://enews.prismb2b.com/enews/direct/newsline/2006_12_20_direct_newsline/display]

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This time a year people are fighting for parking spaces, waiting in long lines, stretching their budgets and pocket books, and running from store to store in search of the perfect gift that they hope the gift recipient won’t want to pawn, return, exchange, sell, or be disappointed with.

And as more and more people are working longer hours, and having less and less free time available, the thought of having to jump in the car, fight for a parking space at the mall, wait in long lines, and deal with the lack of customer service friendly employees makes most people cringe.

That’s where gift cards and gift certificates make everything good again!

The easier you make it for your clients and prospective clients to buy from you, the more sales you will end up with.

Gift cards and gift certificates have been around for many years, but I am always amazed at how few companies offer them, or let alone make sure that their clients know that they even exist.

It’s as if most business owners think that people will somehow just learn through osmosis that they offer gift cards and certificates.

Unless you take the time to educate your existing and prospective clients on the fact that you have such things available, and how they can benefit from purchasing them, most buyers will not take the initiative to purchase them on their own.

One of my favorite phrases by Jay Abraham is “People are silently begging to be led.”

Think about that statement. If people generally like to be led, then you have a moral obligation to them, your staff, and your business, to make sure that your clients are aware of everything that your business offers and are educated as to how they benefit.

With regards to gift cards and gift certificates, most businesses don’t offer them, and those that do rarely offer them to their buyers on a consistent and systematic basis.

And by the way, don’t just offer gift cards and gift certificates during the Christmas season. Make them readily available all year long. For ever holiday and day of the week that ends in “day.”

But don’t stop there!

Create an ongoing, systematic process or program, specifically designed for marketing gift cards and gift certificates to your existing and prospective clients on a regular basis.

13 Ways to Promote Your Gift Cards and Gift Certificates

• Post signs by the cash register and throughout your store (retail stores)
• Mention them in your newsletter
• Talk about it on your website
• Give online buyers a chance to add on a gift card or certificate to their purchase
• Train your staff to ask every person who buys from you, at the point of purchase, no matter how many times they come back and buy.
• Promote them in your direct mail promos
• Call up your clients and tell them about it
• Use them as bonuses and incentives
• Give them away in promotional contests
• Use them to get buyers to buy more at the point of purchase
• List them in all of your advertising and marketing materials
• Use them as rewards for getting referrals from your clients
• Enclose them with your client’s orders, invoices, statements, thank-you letters, and any other type of communication with your clients and prospects
• And many, many ways that are only limited by your creativity

If you just tried to implement a couple of these methods into your business, what kind of impact do you think it could have?
How many more sales will be created by your efforts?
How much more money will you make?
How much more loyal will your buyers become?

I think you will be amazed at the results that will occur, if you follow through and create an ongoing, systematic process, engineered for the purpose of marketing gift cards and gift certificates to your existing and prospective clients on an ongoing basis.

If you are already offering gift cards and gift certificates, but aren’t happy with the results you have been getting from them, I guarantee that there are things that you can do to dramatically increases your results by slightly changing your approach.

To learn more about how to get better results from your gift cards and gift certificates, or to learn more about ideas and strategies that you can use to dramatically increase the profits and results of your business enterprise, go to www.marketingpotential.com

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1. December 2006 by Damian Petrini.

Ask any business owner, executive, or entrepreneur how many ways there are to grow any business, and most of them will tell you that there are dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of ways.

You may be relieved to know that there are only three ways to grow any business, in any industry, with any product or service. Those three ways are to increase the number of new clients, get them to buy more, and buy more often.

I first learned this concept from master marketer, Jay Abraham, which Jay refers to as the “Three ways to grow a business model.” The beauty of this concept is that it can be applied to any business, in any industry, offering any type of product or service.

Increasing the Number of New Clients

The one area that every business spends time on is increasing the number of new clients that can use their products of services. The downside of this method is that of the three ways to grow a business, this is the most expensive, the least profitable, and the most time consuming.

The more ways you make available for prospective and current clients to do business with you, the more likely people will buy your products or services.

You can use websites to capture prospective client information, build email distribution lists, and encourage people to make contact with your company to learn more about your product or service. All of which will allow you to build up your client base.

Here are a few things that you can do to your business to get more clients:

• Create systematized referral programs
• Build a network of strategic alliances and joint ventures to create joint marketing efforts and share the client acquisition cost
• Implement a search engine optimization (SEO) and a search engine marketing (SEM) strategy to leverage the power of the internet
• Offer special first time buyer discounts and incentives
• Identify what types of companies exist that are already marketing to your ideal prospect and offer to do a revenue share with those companies for any of their clients that purchase from you
• Offer free samples, trial memberships, and money back guarantees
• Give people additional bonuses when they make their first purchase
• Offer free informational reports on what to look for when buying your product or service

Increasing the Size of Each Client Transaction

Just step inside any fast food restaurant and chances are that you will hear the clerk behind the counter ask you if you would like to super-size, up-size, or jumbo-size your order at the time of purchase. Same thing applies to the internet.

Up-Selling, Cross-Selling, and Re-Selling

Whether you are buying a hamburger from McDonald’s, ordering a latte from Starbuck’s, or getting a book online from Amazon.com, you will be presented with a chance to add more to your order.

The amazing thing about the process of up-selling, cross-selling, or re-selling is that it is not hard to do; all you need to do is ask. Try it today in your own business. Every time one of your clients makes a purchase, ask them to buy a larger quantity, add-on an additional product or service, or to pre-buy in advance more of the items they just bought.

Ok…so besides asking, what else can you do to get your clients to buy more?

BRIBE THEM! Offer them incentives that reward them for making a larger purchase, adding on additional products or services, or signing up for future purchases in advance.

The best time to ask someone to buy something is immediately after they make a commitment to a purchase.

Here are a few things that you can do to your business to get your clients to buy more:

• Make a list of products and services that people buy before, during, or after purchasing your product or service and contact them about offering their products and services to your client base
• Create a list of every product and service that your business offers and then make a matrix of all of the possible cross-selling opportunities that can be offered with every purchase
• Bundle products and services into packages
• Offer bonuses when they purchase larger quantities
• Create pre-paid packages
• Offer tiered level service or warranty packages (e.g. - gold, silver, bronze, etc…)

Increasing the Frequency of Each Client Transaction

The third way to grow your business is to increase the frequency of purchase transactions by getting your clients to buy more often. For example, if your clients typically buy from you once every six months, how can you get them to buy four times a year, or once a month?

The answer…Simply give them more reasons as to why they should.

Offer incentives that encourage your clients to come back to your store or contact your business on a more frequent basis. Look at the success of frequent buyer programs that reward people for making additional purchases.

Here are a few things that you can do to your business to get your clients to buy more often:

• Set up frequent buyer or reward programs for your clients
• Offer bonuses when they making purchases on a regular basis
• Create monthly membership program
• Make sure that you make offers to your clients on a consistent and regular basis

The Power of Exponential Growth

If using one of the three methods to grow your business can increase the profits of your business, what would happen if you worked on improving all three areas simultaneously, imagine what kind of explosive growth you can achieve.

Imagine that you have 1000 clients, spending on average of $50, two times a year. That’s $100,000 in revenue. If you got just a 10% increase in all three areas, that would turn into 1100 clients, spending on average of $55, 2.2 times a year into $133,100 in revenue.

Do you see the power of exponential growth? Instead of a 10% increase in revenue, you end up with over a 33% increase in revenue!

Once you start to spend time proactively focusing on and implementing strategies that increase the number of new clients that use your products or services, get them to buy more, and get them to buy more often, you will be amazed at the amount of profits that your business can make and how quickly your business will grow.

The most important thing to remember about these methods is that they will never do you or your business any good at all, if you never take any action on proactively implementing as many ways as you can in each area of business growth.

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Learn more about marketing strategies and business growth techniques that you can use to increase the of new clients you add to your business, get them to buy more, and get them to buy more often.

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Copyright © 2006, Damian Petrini

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16. August 2006 by Damian Petrini.

Below is Google’s answer to the question everybody on the internet is asking, “How can I improve my site’s ranking?”

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“Sites’ positions in our search results are determined automatically based on a number of factors, which are explained in more detail at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html. We don’t manually assign keywords to sites, nor do we manipulate the ranking of any site in our search results.

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. For more information about improving your site’s visibility in the Google search results, we recommend reviewing our webmaster guidelines. They outline core concepts for maintaining a Google-friendly website.”

Source: Google.com
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34432&hl=en

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At first glance you will feel somewhat cheated by the answer, perhaps because you were looking for the holy grail of answers to the question that everyone claims to know the answer to, but fewer actually achieve it.

The biggest take away lesson you should learn from Google’s definition can be found in the first sentence of the second paragraph.

“In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.”

One of the most powerful strategies to improving your website rankings is to get as many other higher ranking websites to link to yours. The higher the ranking of the other websites linking to yours, the better.

1. Buy or Rent Links – Find high quality, high ranking websites, and pay them to link to your website.
2. Reciprocal Links – Identify the most relevant websites to your product, service, or industry and contact the webmaster of those sites to arrange a link exchange between both sites.
3. Read “10 Easy Ways to Increase Links to Your Website” for more ideas on how to get more links pointed to your website.

Learn more about how to get greater leverage out of your online marketing activities or how to put together and implement powerful marketing strategies.

Posted in e-Commerce, Direct Response Marketing, Email Marketing, Online Marketing, SEM, Sales, Search Engine Opitmization, SEO, Marketing | No Comments »