Posts Tagged ‘article marketing; article submission service’

Business Is Always Personal—How to Sell to Strangers

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

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Whether you own a brick-and-mortar store or run a website in which you will never meet your clients, business is always personal. Submitting articles about your company and services grants people an intimate view into how you can help them. It’s very simple—would you prefer to buy from a company you know more or less about?

Since people are more likely to buy from people they know or through referrals, you need to transcend the stranger threshold. Ultimately, the Web is faceless—avatars are cute and profile photos may show prospects your physical face, but they don’t show the true face of your business. You need to inject a personal touch into your business to increase sales. Article marketing provides a unique platform for establishing sales-inciting intimacy. Automated article distribution insures a steady stream of information and communication between you and your prospects and clients. This enables them to continuously learn more about you and how you can help them with their challenges and dreams.

In order to survive in today’s highly competitive marketplace your business must be three-dimensional. An automated article distribution service creates a three-dimensional environment through the regular provision of useful information and value-based content. It provides you with the opportunity to tell your prospects more about yourself and your employees. Get personal! Tell them your dreams, what you’d like to accomplish…your favorite color. Don’t worry—you can still maintain professionalism while sharing your personal side. These elements work together to put your prospects at ease. It establishes a sense of community and makes them feel connected. This is an ideal sales environment.

Regardless of how motivated you are to make money you should never let the almighty dollar blind you. Treat your prospects like your neighbors, offering help whenever possible. People are more likely to spend money with you when they perceive genuine compassion. As part of that, make an effort to actually get to know your prospects and clients. Take notes! Write birthdays down, take note of what they tell you about their family, record insights to their dreams and other such issues. Reference these notes later to ask them about issues they hold dear—show you care. And how thrilled will prospects be when they see their birthday or their kid’s latest sports accomplishment mentioned in your next article?

Maintaining a personal touch encourages your prospects and clients to confide in you. This helps you better understand their needs, which allows you to provide them with the most appropriate solution possible and achieve increased customer satisfaction. Plus, it promotes a more relaxed business environment which lends itself to you having more fun!

In addition, establishing a personal side to your business is ideal for older generations and Web skeptics. Although trends show more people above the age of 65 are now using computers, they’re still hesitant to submit personal information such as credit card numbers. Similarly, even younger audiences still approach the Web with extreme caution. Unfortunately, this skepticism is all too often justified. There are countless unscrupulous entities online that spawn new scams on a daily basis. Frequently providing people with helpful content legitimizes your company not only by providing useful information, but simply by showing that you’ve made an effort. Online scammers usually come in the form of fly-by-night schemes and rarely ever make a concerted effort to fully disguise their evil. The sheer fact that you’re taking the time to write and distribute helpful articles automatically separates you from black-hatters and con artists—a true credibility booster!

Frequent article distribution prevents clients from experiencing a hollow feeling after their purchase. It’s not uncommon for consumers to feel put off by the usual one-and-done sales method. Instead, maintaining continuous contact and a personal touch with your business will promote greater confidence in their purchase of your product or service. Why should you care after the sale is made? For one, it supports greater customer satisfaction which improves repeat business and client retention. It also makes your clients more likely to refer your business.

To your success,

Andrew Rossillo

Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!

Hitting Hot Buttons on the Head Is Key to Selling More

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Buttons
We mean the other kind of buttons!
Creative Commons License photo credit: ahisgett

Marketing plans often fall short of their goal because they failed to zero in on their prospects’ hot buttons.

Your marketing plan must establish finite targets before you launch your campaign. Get a lock on the factors that trigger emotional responses from your prospects and you’ll figure out how to best present your offer.

Bang on those hot buttons

Hot buttons go far beneath the surface. Your product or service is not what’s in question. It’s what they help your target audience accomplish. Look for alternate dimensions to your product to hone in on the best way to present it. Use article marketing to effectively hit hot buttons right on the head.

Hot buttons consist of fears, worries, goals, aspirations and basic needs. They are all directly tied to people’s emotions. Many types of marketing simply don’t have the right platform to thoroughly appeal to emotions. On the other hand, article marketing grants you the perfect opportunity to connect better with your audience. For one, articles automatically have a better chance of digging below a prospect’s surface, since article readers are naturally more attentive. If they’re taking enough time to read your full article, then you’ve got enough time to truly speak to them. Whereas, T.V., radio and online banner ads can only quickly shout at someone and hope for the best.

Start by conducting some market research first to get a lock on demographics (sex, race, age, income, geographical location) and psychographics (attitudes, personality, values, lifestyles and interests). Study these factors  to narrow down your target audience and understand which emotions to appeal to. Don’t try and sell convenience items to single-parent homes—they’re looking for supplemental income opportunities and products or services that will grant them some time freedom. Push the convenience factor with a more affluent audience instead.

Accurately targeted hot buttons create a eureka moment, helping your prospects discover the perfect solution for their needs. Figure out what keeps them up at night and they’ll thank you with their credit cards for the full-night’s sleep. The fun part about crafting these articles for your business is that you won’t necessarily address the actual needs of your prospects. Play to their emotions—get a reaction from their heart and their brain will automatically follow suit. Consumers put their wallets away instead of taking them out when they think with their brain and not with their heart!

Learn to hone in on your audience

One of the biggest benefits article marketing provides is the ability to try again. Even if your market research led you astray and you missed hitting your prospect’s hot button on the head, you can make multiple attempts through an automated series of articles. Track the links back to your site and you’ll know what’s working and what needs to be improved.

And if you just can’t seem to figure out what’s most important to your prospects, feel free to simply ask them. Directly sampling your target audience through tools such as online polls and e-mail questionnaires will provide you with some excellent insight. Provide them with incentives such as discounts on your products to encourage them to provide helpful feedback. This not only increases the quantity of responses it also encourages more direct sales!

Understanding hot buttons not only helps you bring in first-time buyers it also encourages brand loyalty. Among the platforms for building solid business relationships is the understanding of what makes your clients sad or happy, what they value and what motivates them. Automate your article distribution to build an ongoing relationship. Build up value over time and continuously provide them with points that they can use to assuage their hot buttons.

Human behavior is a deeply rooted, almost unchangeable element. Never try to change your prospects’ behaviors. Instead, put yourself in their shoes and adapt your marketing messages accordingly.

To your success,

Andrew Rossillo

Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!

Catch a Whale of a Client with More Marketing Lines in the Water

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Just as it is with a quality financial portfolio, diversity within your marketing plan is ideal. As a classic example of not putting all your eggs in one basket, diversifying your marketing plan protects your business from tanking if one of your main marketing efforts fails. With multiple marketing lines in the water you can still get some bites on your other lines in case you used the wrong bait on one of them. Article marketing encourages diversity in your marketing plan—the more lines (meaning articles) you have in the water, the better the chance you have of reeling in a whale of a client.

Different breeds of fish require different types of bait. Although you may have a relatively uniform target audience, different people will respond to different things. For example, while pay-per click campaigns (PPC) may be an effective tool for capturing leads from certain individuals, many of today’s online users are getting savvier by the minute and choosing to pass on these PPC ads, opting for more information-based ads and marketing pieces. Articles that provide useful information relevant to your business make excellent bait for these savvier Internet users.

Catch bigger fish with article marketing

Article marketing consistently proves to be one of the best ways to market and advertise high-end products and services. In order to get fish to bite at more expensive offers you’ll need to provide meatier bait. You significantly increase your chances for successfully marketing high-end products or services when you provide more information and greater detail regarding your product or service. Article submissions provide tantalizing substance, demonstrating undeniable positives about your offer, clearing doubt from readers’ minds and encouraging them to take a nice healthy bite into your bait.

One of the most frustrating elements about fishing is when there seems to be an entire school of fish just nipping at your bait instead of taking it whole. Likewise, it can be a real heartbreaker to see that your site analytics show you’re getting a large number of impressions, hits and site visitors but barely converting any to active customers or clients. Value-based articles provide enough information and points of interest to actually set the hook and convert those nippers into the catch of the day.

Spread your bait far and wide

Overall, article submission can be thought of as chumming the waters. By taking advantage of mass article submissions you will effectively spread some enticing chunks of information and value throughout the Web. While article submissions can achieve a very specific type of bait through the use of targeted keywords, the large-scale exposure that these articles garner will get more fish swimming towards your business-boat. This gets them close enough to your boat to then feed them more articles and then bring them onboard (Ask us about excellent lead generation capabilities here through opt-in article campaigns.) after they’ve eaten enough of your bait to know that you provide the best quality in the sea.

Diversity within your overall marketing plan also guarantees that you’ll have lines in the water at all times. Since you can’t see your prospects swimming below you, you don’t know when they’ll strike. Even if your PPC campaign has reached its daily bid limit and is shut off for the day, your website is under construction, or your phone lines are temporarily down, your business articles are permanent. Once you have them sent out into the Web waters they’re out there to stay. This type of permanence in marketing will make sure your boat stays afloat.

To your success,
Andrew Rossillo

Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!

The Secret to Article Marketing – A Story

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

John was a newbie to internet marketing. What’s worse for him is that he was also a broke marketer. Since he has more time than money, John was willing to learn how to do Internet marketing. Once he was making some real money at it, then he decided he would simply outsource his marketing.

When John first started out in internet marketing, he learned how to build simple affiliate web sites. He bought a few domains and some hosting space. He tried search engine optimization, but he found the advice, especially on the forums, to be so conflicting that he finally decided to try something new.

Next John decided that he would try some of the easier “newbie” types of marketing he had heard worked for others. He signed up for several traffic exchanges, as well as several safe lists. Since he didn’t have any money, he decided to at least try the free versions of each before trying something else.

What he learned is that even though these techniques are free, and they could help him build traffic to his sites, they were also very time consuming. John needed to recruit members into his down lines from these sites to help him leverage his traffic building efforts. John didn’t know anyone else in business. Instead, what happened was that he spent hours clicking through others’ sites just to build a few visitors to his own.

About this time one of John’s friends recommend that he try “bum marketing.” Bum marketing is a term coined by internet marketer Travis Sago, and it was supposed to be so easy that even a bum could do it. What bum marketing largely consisted of was writing articles and then submitting them to article directories.

John decided to try writing articles. Although he had taken some English classes in high school and he decided that it was rather fun anyway to write articles. He felt a sense of accomplishment from writing. Although writing articles initially started out being time consuming, John finally wrote enough articles that he learned how to write his articles quickly and created hundreds of articles to drive traffic to his web site.

Although John discovered that writing articles was easier than he thought, he nearly quit using article marketing because it took so long to submit his articles. Finally, he discovered that using an article submission service could help him automate the process of submission, get his articles out to hundreds of article sites very quickly, and all he had to do was copy and paste the article into a form.

What John learned from this experience is that giving his readers useful information would help him drive targeted traffic to his web sites. He didn’t have to become an expert marketer to market his business. The secret to getting the click and succeeding at article marketing was to write as many informative articles as possible and submit them to as many article directories as possible. Ultimately this allowed him to connect with his readers, build credibility and make the sale.

Mike Lawson is a freelance consultant to internet marketers. His Professional Writing Service provides quality content for article marketing automation programs.

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The Salesman’s Step by Step Guide to Article Marketing

Monday, January 18th, 2010

For the marketer who doesn’t want to sell, article marketing is the ideal solution. Article marketing allows you to provide your readers with quality information that helps them decide whether or not you can solve their problems.

Find a way to solve your readers’ problems, and you will make the sale. Not only that, but you will also keep your readers coming back to buy.

Not only does article marketing help you promote your products, it also allows you to add further value to your products or services. The following steps will help you get started in article marketing.

Step 1: Do your research. Find the right keywords to help you market your products.

Choosing the right keywords is important because your want your readers to find you. By correctly choosing your keywords, you will select keywords that help your target market find you.

Your keywords will also help you optimize your web sites for the search engines, as well as drive targeted traffic to your web sites. Don’t neglect this step.

Step 2: Use your research and keywords to formulate an outline for your article.

Use bullet points. Three to five main points is all it takes. Add two sub points to each main point. Once you have an outline, then it’s time to flesh out your article.

Step 3: Flesh out your article. This is where you add additional information. You want to use each sub point to explain each of your main points. Add any additional information you think your reader needs. Just make sure this information is relevant to your topic and keywords.

Step 4: Write your beginning and conclusion. Your beginning needs to summarize what you will talk about in your article. Your conclusion is also a summary. The difference is that in the conclusion you tell your readers what to do next.

Step 5: Write your resource box. For those of you who like to sell, here is your chance. Never sell within your article. An article really isn’t for selling; it’s for giving your readers useful information.

In your resource box thought, you want to give your readers a reason to click through and visit your web site. Offer additional free information. In other words, give your readers an incentive to want to visit your site.

Step 6: Format your article for submission. This is where you create a text file to make it easy to submit your article. Include a summary, your resource box, title, article, etc. Put your elements in the proper order so they are easy to locate.

Most forms are as follows:

Title
Summary
Article
Resource Box
Keywords

Step 7: Submit your articles. You want to choose article directories that get a lot of traffic. The more traffic a site gets, the more opportunities you have to be read. Remember though, you also want to submit to as many article directories as possible to build backlinks and raise your rankings in the search engines.

Article marketing is an effective way to market your business online without selling. You give readers the information they need to make their buying decisions. By giving your readers valuable information, you increase your chances of making the sale.

Mike Lawson is a freelance consultant to internet marketers. His Professional Writing Service provides quality content for article marketing automation programs.

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The Salesman’s Article Marketing Checklist

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

If you are using article marketing to promote your business, you want to make sure you include all of the appropriate elements in your articles. This will increase both your traffic and sales, as well as help you build credibility. Articles will also help you provide valuable information for your readers so they don’t feel they are being sold to.

Use this checklist to make sure you include everything you need to make your articles as effective as possible:

-Research the appropriate keywords for your articles and business.

-Before writing your article, select the software you will use to write your article. A text editor is best because it won’t add unnecessary characters.

-Decide what type of article you want to write. There are many types, but the most effective and easiest are tips, lists, and step by step.

-Choose an appropriate title for your article.

-Include your keywords in your article title.

-Outline your article. Include three main points and two sub points for each main point.

-Flesh out your information packed article by writing two to three sentences per point.

-Use your sub points to emphasize your main points.

-Include your keywords in your article.

-Don’t keyword stuff. A little goes a long way.

-Write an attention grabbing opening.

-Write an attention grabbing conclusion.

-Make sure that your article is not a sales pitch. You want to pre sell your readers.

-Write your resource box. Give away something for free.

-Make sure your resource box makes readers want to click.

-Make sure the web site you are driving traffic to is relevant to your readers.

-Verify that your link is working and that you have spelled your domain correctly.

-Leave out any information that isn’t relevant to getting the click. For example, avoid using personal information. No one cares unless you’re writing an article on grief.

-Proofread and spell check your article. Nothing is more embarrassing than an obvious error.

-Prepare to submit your article to article directories. This means writing a summary, adding keywords, resource box, etc. to your text file.

-Format the various article elements in your text document. This will make it as easy as possible to copy and paste into the appropriate sites.

-If you have a blog or web site, post your article there first.

-Choose an article submission service. A good service will automatically submit to top article directories, as well as many lesser known directories to help you get lots of backlinks.

-Consistently write and submit your articles. The more articles you have to offer, the more likely you are to connect with your audience.

-Submit to as many article directories as possible. The more article directories you submit to, the more backlinks you will build and you’ll increase your search engine rankings.

Article marketing is easier when marketing your products or services because you don’t really have to do traditional selling. You allow your readers to use your information to help them decide whether or not you can provide the solution to their problems. Solve their problems, and they will buy from you.

Mike Lawson is a freelance consultant to internet marketers. His Professional Writing Service provides quality content for article marketing automation programs.

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How to Sell Your Products and Services Through Article Marketing

Friday, January 15th, 2010

If you want to learn about selling through article marketing, then this article will help you. Specifically, you’ll learn that the secret is to simply offer your readers valuable and useful information up front, and then send them to your web site for more information.

You’ll also learn that being an expert in your topic will get you more readers. Writing as many articles as possible about your niche will help you increase your readers and make more sales because readers will come to trust you. After you’re done with this article, you should be able to use article marketing to increase both your readership and your chances of making the sale.

Giving useful information is vital to selling through article marketing because you aren’t actually using your article to sell; you are using it to draw readers to your web site. The process is actually two step, like advertising: you offer information to your readers up front. Give them just enough information that they need to click through to your web site to get more information.

In other words, what you are actually doing is a pre sell. You don’t sell within the content of your article; this is the job of your resource box. Your resource box is where you give your readers instructions on what to do next.

The quality of information is also paramount because readers are more likely to click through to your site if they believe you can solve their problems. This increases your chance of making the sale because you are actually getting your readers to visit your site.

Giving your readers a reason to click through is also essential. If you don’t get your readers to click through, then you have wasted your time writing the article in the first place.

The important thing here is to focus on information instead of selling. If readers feel you are selling to them, they will click away and look for someone else to solve their problems. Becoming an expert in your topic will convince your readers that you know what you are talking about, and they are more likely to read your articles.

Becoming an expert in your topic is also vital to selling through article marketing. You want to clearly demonstrate to your readers that you know your topic inside and out. By thoroughly knowing your topic, you make it easy for your readers to see whether or not you have the expertise to solve their problems.

Ultimately this is what readers are concerned with: does your solution solve their problems? If you can show your readers this within the article, then you are more likely to get them to ask for more information, information that should be on your site.

It is not enough to write articles that demonstrate your expertise. You also need to write as many articles as possible. By writing as many articles in your niche as possible, it increases your chances of being perceived as an expert.

You will also increase your chances of connecting with your target audience because web site owners are more likely to publish your articles when they see that you know what you are talking about. The more sites you are published on, the more like your readers are to find you.

Submit to as many directories as possible. The more directories you submit to, the more likely you are to be found. Also, this gives you a greater chance of being syndicated as most web site owners tend to use their favorite directories to find content. Make sure your content is available in as many places as possible.

The more articles you write the more traffic you will drive to your site, and the more likely you are to make your sales. Write articles regularly and keep submitting them to as many directories as possible. Article submission services will help you keep this from becoming too time consuming.

If you really want to sell more of your products and services, providing information through article marketing is one of the best ways to do it. It allows you to connect with your specific market, which is targeted traffic. Article marketing will actually increase your chance of making the sale.

Mike Lawson is a freelance consultant to internet marketers. His Professional Writing Service provides quality content for article marketing automation programs.

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The Salesman’s Essential Article Marketing FAQ

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Regardless of what type of business you are in, and whether you run it online or not, you will need to sell. The problem is that most people online are not interested in being sold to. They are looking for information.

This article will teach you how to make the sale by educating your readers with the essential facts about your business without selling to them. You will learn how to make article marketing an essential part of your business and get sales.

Question #1: Why is article marketing better than selling, especially online?

As I mentioned before, most people aren’t looking to be sold to; they are looking for information. By providing information, you are not only adding value to your products, but you are also offering value to your readers. You are “giving before you get.” This allows you to build credibility with your readers, as well as show them whether or not your will be able to solve their problems.

The traffic that you get to your website will also be more targeted. If you provide just enough information in your articles to get your readers’ attention, they are more likely to click through to your website. Save your sales pitch until the resource box. Then, show your readers how you will help them.

Question #2: How can article marketing help me with the search engines?

First, if you submit to enough article directories and use the article directories to build backlinks, then you will raise your rankings in the search engines. This will also increase your page rank, which will help your search engine rankings. This is also another place for visitors to find you.

Search engines are targeted, and free, traffic. When visitors search for what you have to offer, your articles will help them find you even if your site doesn’t rank well because many article directories rank high in the search engines. The more high traffic high ranking article directories you use, the more credibility you build. It’s like a vote for your site.

The bottom line is that the search engine traffic is targeted and free. Article marketing will help you improve your rankings in the search engines.

Question #3: What is a pre sell and why would I want to use it?

A pre sell is a writing technique that is frequently used to promote affiliate programs. The affiliate offers additional information about the product to convince readers to click through the link and buy the product.

Articles are a great way to pre sell your own products because it allows you to provide additional information for readers. This, in turn, also build credibility for you, as well as value for your products and services.

Question #4: Since I’m not selling directly, how do I get readers to visit my site?

With your article, you only have to provide good information. Offer information that tells readers more about your business and products. Show how you will solve readers problems.

The actual selling takes place in the resource box. The resource box comes at the end of the article. It allows you to tell readers about your business, how to get more information, and how you will solve their problems.

Give your readers a reason to want to click through and visit your site. Frequently, the best way to do this is to offer a free incentive.

Article marketing allows you to offer more information to your readers, pre qualify your traffic so it’s targeted, raise your rankings in the search engines, and get more sales. It’s a way to make the sale without selling.

Mike Lawson is a freelance consultant to internet marketers. His Professional Writing Service provides quality content for article marketing automation programs.

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