The Five Hallmarks Of A Truly Effective Video Marketing Script

The heart and soul of marketing video are not the typical belts and whistles that see in such a video. It’s not the diagrams, it’s not the infographics, it's not the layout, it’s not even the very interesting accents of the voice-over actors. It has nothing to do with that. It definitely has nothing to do with how smooth, flawless, or sharp the images are. 

 

Instead, what makes a video truly effective is its content. I am of course talking about its script. Screw up here and you have just wasted your money on creating a marketing video. That video is not going to do what you think it should do. How can it. It doesn't have the tools. It doesn't have the capacity, it doesn’t have the ability because the script is lacklustre. 

 

How do you write highly effective script? How do you outsource it? How can you tell whether the video script that have for your marketing video is solid? It will have the following five hallmarks. Ideally you should insist on all five. 

 

Hallmark #1: Plain English.  

 

There is a reason why really successful politicians speak at the eighth-grade English level. This is quite puzzling to many untrained observers because a lot of these politicians actually have advanced degrees like Juris Doctor or medical doctor and MBA degrees. Why do they speak like eighth graders. Eighth-grade English has very few five-dollar words. Most words are short, easy to understand and very accessible. 

 

This is why politicians and trained speakers speak at this level. It is the lowest common denominator. If you keep it at that level most people would understand. Highly effective video scripts are written in plain English. They don’t try to dazzle or impress the viewer by blasting them with all sorts of jargon terms and acronyms. You come off as somebody who is trying to hide ignorance when you do that. You end up looking like somebody who is trying too hard to impress the viewer. 

 

In fact, if you overdo this and you just blast the viewer with so many long, flowery, or even technical words they might even think you’re pretentious. You might come off as somebody who is trying to be something he or she is not. Plain English enables you to come off as more sincere, authentic, and real.

 

Hallmark #2: They are short. 

 

Let me tell you, most people do not have the time of day to listen to a long speech. There are better things to do. This is the reason why most people don't even read online articles. They just scan for keywords. If see the keyboard that they’re looking for, that's when they slow down and they would read a little bit more of the article. Otherwise, they’re just scanning through. It’s kind of like going through your Facebook feed on your mobile device. You don’t have the time to thoroughly read every link. That’s just not going to happen. You’re too busy for that. The same applies to video. Highly effective marketing videos are short and to the point, but they get the job done. 

 

They tell a very convincing personal story, it communicates a wide range of benefits tied to the solution the video promotes. They do this using many different signals and it operates on many different levels. It operates on an emotional level, logical level as well as a conceptual level. You have to understand that the ability to tell a story quickly enables you to communicate clearly in a very short period of time. You don't have to give a long speech for that. 

 

Hallmark #3: Easy to vocally emote. 

 

Well-written video marketing scripts are very easy to vocally act out. You just need to read a word and read the next word that follows it in the sentence to instantly know that you have to either raise your voice a little bit, sound concerned, sound suspicious, sound excited, and a hundred other emotional signals you can send with your voice. 

 

Great scripts are very clear as to the kind of emotional twists and turns they demand. Bad scripts make you sound like you’re just reading off a TelePrompTer or you’re just reading a book. It’s dull, lifeless, and very generic. You run the risk of sounding like some sort of robot.

 

Hallmark #4: Effective scripts mention case studies or stories. 

 

If you are able to tell a story you, will be able to connect with people on a very personal note. I have yet to see a person who is convinced by just raw data. You have to at least present that data into a form people can engage with. This form is called a story. Believe it or not, people use the story form to make sense of the world. You should do the same with your marketing videos. By including a case study or tool, in the video, you make it clear to the prospect that you’re not just making stuff, but there is some hard science or hard numbers behind the claims of benefits the video is talking about.

 

Hallmark #5: Emotional call-to-action. 

 

Highly effective video marketing scripts tie the benefit the prospect would get from buying a product with the call to action. Effective scripts don’t just say click the order button or click subscribe now. Instead, they talk about the benefit and tying it to that action. For example, the script would say gain the confidence you felt you’ve lost by losing the spare tire around your midsection. Take action today. Isn’t that much better than just saying click here or clicking the link in the description below.

 

Whether you are writing your own video or having it written by somebody else, make sure the five hallmarks listed above are present in the script. Otherwise, you are just wasting your time. 

 

This is the Secret Ingredient of Highly Effective Marketing Videos

How many times have you seen an online video that has motivated you to buy something? Chances are, you can count those experiences with two hands.

 

While the internet doesn't have a shortage of interesting, quirky or memorable videos, these qualities, in and of themselves, don't necessarily mean that you would buy a product that these videos talk about.

 

Often times, the videos that you personally enjoy really don't have any sort of commercial agenda. They are not pushing anything. They are not promoting anything. They don't want you to do any kind of action that puts dollars in the bank account of the people behind these videos. They are just for fun.

 

And this is the reason why a lot of people are confused about video marketing. A lot of video marketers out there are under the impression that as long as their video gets shared and a lot of people talk about their video or find their video cute, memorable and interesting, that somehow, some way, this would lead to dollars appearing in their bank account.

 

I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you, but that kind of thinking is magical thinking. You might as well start imagining rainbow-colored unicorns raining down from the sky, each grabbing a pot of gold with their horse teeth.

 

You have to think clearly when doing video marketing. There are really no two ways about it. Because it's too easy for you to crank out one video after another and have very little to show for it.

 

In fact, if you run a company, it's very easy for you to devote thousands upon thousands of dollars on video marketing, only to see your brand continue to struggle. This is due to the fact that people really have their wires crossed when it comes to videos' effectiveness.

 

Here's a short list of people's misconceptions regarding "effective videos." Effective videos are: cute, memorable, quirky, funny, interesting, weird, awesome, fascinating, earth-shattering, insightful.

 

What's missing? It should be obvious. Highly effective videos bring home the bacon.

 

Even if the video looks amateurish, even if it looks like it was shot and edited by somebody who is eight years old, at the end of the day, effective videos bring home the bacon. Dollars and cents rule the day.

 

Sadly, a lot of the online marketing conversations regarding video marketing lose sight of this fact. They focus on how many likes it had on Facebook. They get all excited about how many times the video was retweeted or whether a celebrity mentioned the video.

 

It did not occur to them that a video that is shared throughout all four corners of the globe, but doesn't generate one cent of revenue is a money loser. That's the bottom line. It really has to go back to conversions.

 

The secret to video marketing is conversion. The video has to lead to conversion directly, or must be part of an online supplemental content that eventually makes conversion possible.

 

On top of this, great marketing videos also establish solid brands. When somebody's watching a great marketing video, they know where that video came from. They know that when they go to that source, there's a lot more where that video came from.

 

They also have the expectation that when that source produces video after video, they can expect a certain level of quality. They can expect a certain range of benefits. That's how powerful brand-based videos are.

 

But as insightful as this discussion may be, and as important as conversions and branding are, if you really want to get down to the nuts and bolts of highly effective marketing videos, you have to get to the secret ingredient.

 

This secret ingredient separates brand videos that don't really go anywhere and brand-building videos that develop solid brands. This secret ingredient also explains the difference between marketing videos that explain a lot of information and are great resources but make very little money, and videos that are able to generate a profit.

 

What is the Secret Ingredient? PRESENCE

 

Highly effective marketing videos pack a lot of presence. You can tell that this brand stands for something. You can tell that the product being endorsed, explained, outlined and discussed by the spokesperson truly speaks to your needs. This is only possible when the video has presence.

 

Now, one of the most common misconceptions regarding presence is that only human beings can have presence. In other words, the video has to have a person looking at the camera and connecting with you eyeball to eyeball for presence to ooze out of the video.

 

Absolutely wrong. Seriously. Even an animated video using talking animals can have presence.

 

Presence is that human state of mind where you feel that the content that you are engaging with is speaking to you on so many different levels. That is presence.

 

And unfortunately, a lot of marketing videos, and these are videos that are specifically written, produced, edited and crafted to generate dollars simply overlook presence. They think that as long as they have the "formula," conversions will happen. Completely wrong.

 

They think that as long as they mention certain concepts, the money will appear. Absolutely false. You have to create videos with presence. Otherwise, you are wasting your time.

 

What complicates matters is that presence is defined in many different niches.

 

If your niche involves kid's athletic gear, presence is going to have its own specific form. If your niche involves academic admissions, then presence for your videos is going to be nuanced a little bit differently.

 

That's what is tricky about this. But it's kind of like looking for the needle in a haystack. But believe me, it's a golden needle. It is worth the search.

 

This is the secret ingredient that will turn your marketing videos into gold-digging machines. It's definitely worth figuring out the secret ingredient of presence in your particular niche.

 

Why Do Most Marketing Videos Suck?

One of the most potent forms of punishment I ever inflicted on myself involved a time when I intentionally sought out and searched for all the marketing videos on YouTube. Believe me, it was an endurance. I was basically whipping myself going through all that stuff.

 

I don't mean this as a joke, and I'm not exaggerating here. A lot of that stuff is really, really bad. If you think some Hollywood movies are all too forgettable cinematic disasters, well, check out a lot of the marketing videos on YouTube.

 

It is no surprise that they only have less than ten views. It's no surprise that a lot of these materials have basically been buried in the guts of YouTube. Some of these were actually uploaded as long as the founding of YouTube.

 

What's going on? Why do most of these marketing videos suck? Why do they have to suck? How can they drop the ball that badly?

 

Well, after I went through video after video, certain patterns started to emerge.

 

I'll be the first to admit, I'm not a rocket scientist, nor am I a brain surgeon, but it's very easy to spot these patterns. It's very easy to trace these patterns back to the failure of these videos.

 

I'm not speculating on their failures because video has failed when it only has less than 100 views. You can't escape from that conclusion. You can't dance around it. I mean, even if your video converts on a one-to-one level, a hundred views for an 8-year-old video is failure.

 

Why do they suck? Here are some clues based on my very painful personal research.

 

Mass Quantity

 

It's obvious that a lot of the videos that I was going through and viewing were mass uploaded. In fact, it looked like they came off the same template. It's as if somebody took the same script, created video after video using the same script.

 

The results were really sloppy. It's as if this person didn't even bother to actually watch the video produced. They probably just used some sort of software to crank out one video after another. Totally weak. Totally worthless.

 

There they are, lying in the gutter of YouTube. No views. Not even digital rats to chew at them.

 

No Presence

 

Another common feature that I observed among these sucky videos is the fact that they did not create presence.

 

Now, please understand that a lot of these videos don't look like they suck. Some have clever discussions. Some even look like they spent a tremendous amount of money on high level animation.

 

But regardless of how slick certain elements are, and despite the fact that sometimes these elements came together to produce a really nice effect, at the end of the day, there was no presence. It felt like the video wasn't speaking to my needs.

 

The video didn't really go a long way in making the brand behind the video come to life. It wasn't doing any of that. It was just lying there. It was flat.

 

Remember, they had cute parts. Some parts may even look like it's working. But in the big scheme of things, it had no presence.

 

Doesn't Fit a Niche

 

One of the most annoying class of videos that I ran into during my painful research on YouTube involves videos that try to be all things to all people at all times. As you can already tell by my description of it, these videos are doomed to fail.

 

As the old saying goes, you can please all the people some of the time, but you cannot please all people all the time. That's just not going to happen. It would be foolish of you to even try.

 

And unfortunately, a lot of videos produced out there that are supposed to be marketing a particular product and trying to make money, don't even bother to create a tight fit between their product's niche and their video. They don't even go through the motions. It's as if they have forgotten the whole concept of niche.

 

Let me remind you, if you select the wrong niche, you're probably going to lose money. If you no idea what a niche is, then you're probably just taking shots in the dark and are wondering why you're not achieving any kind of success selling stuff online.

 

Niche is everything. And these videos just committed the cardinal sin of being clueless regarding their niche, or failing to address their niche adequately. Whatever the case may be, they missed the mark.

 

They Don't Build Brands

 

Finally, a lot of marketing videos out there suck because they don't even bother to create brands. They really don't. They just drop video after video, hoping against hope that somehow, some way, somebody would load the URL mentioned in the video.

 

Nobody does it. That's why there are only ten views.

 

You have to build a brand, otherwise, your business is a commodity. It's just another face in the crowd. It's just another cog in the machine. Totally replaceable and, unfortunately, totally forgettable.

 

Make no mistake, if you are serious about taking your video marketing results to the next level, you cannot take any of the factors I raised above lying down. You have to roll up your sleeves and do some hard planning and some hard work to make sure that your videos deliver the brand-building niche presence they need to truly make an impact.

 

The Best Way to Earn a Passive Income

There are many ways to generate income online and a passive income is one of those ways. Being able to generate a passive income takes a special skill. Your audience can be fickle. If they feel you are more concerned about the money than them, you will fail. Your intent needs to be about helping others. 

 

Initially you are going to need to put in a lot of time. It’s hard work to get a passive income flow going and to build that success. It doesn’t come overnight, although many would like you to believe this. Just because you have your product it doesn’t mean you can sit back and relax. There really isn’t a 100% passive income, because you always have to be managing what you are doing. You need to build automation, but to do that you first have to create trust with your followers or audience. That’s where initially you have a lot of time invested, which will decrease, but you will always be involved.

 

You will need to find a market that works for you. You will need to find a niche market that you can help based on your experience and passion. How well you serve your audience will dictate what your earnings are. Don’t just pick a niche because it’s currently ‘hot.’ You are going to need to continue to build, write articles, and market that product and new products that fit under that initial niche for years to come, so make sure it’s a niche you can handle, otherwise you will not enjoy success. Instead, try to fill a gap in the market in the niche that interests you.

 

You will need to build a platform so that you can start to share your product. This could be YouTube, it could be a blog or whatever other market interests you. You don’t have to reach everyone. That’s a waste of effort. Instead, focus on reaching the audience that would be interested in what you have to offer. 

 

Determine which products are going to serve you best and then offer your audience value. In fact, offering them something of value for free helps to establish trust and interest so that they are far more likely to buy whatever else it is you have to offer. They now know you have expertise in your niche and something that’s worth listening to so they are ready to pay.

 

As your passive income builds and you become comfortable in your business, make sure that the profit never becomes your main motivation, because when it does you set yourself up for failure. 

How to Generate a Real Income Online

Every time we jump onto the internet you hear all the get rich schemes, calling to you. “Make a million your first year.” “Work an hour a day and earn $30,000 a month.” Trouble is people are still falling for these schemes. Yes, you can make a good solid living online and yes, you can be an e-preneur, but you must be willing to work hard and put in the time. There is no free ride to making money online. Let’s look at some legit ways to make a real income online. 

 

#1 Sell on Ebay or Etsy

 

There are many people that make a full time income selling stuff on e-Bay or Etsy. Whether you want to sell your vintage clothing, cool new jewelry or anything else, one of these venues could be right for you. 

 

#2 Teach Online

 

If you like to teach but would rather do it from your home, you could think about teaching for one of the online schools. There are a number of opportunities online. Take the time to explore the online schools and find a good fit for you. There are books and reports available to help you get setup to teach online.

 

#3 Videos and Webinars

 

The internet provides a terrific opportunity to teach viewers about all kinds of things from how to knit to how to train your dog, and everything in between. You can create a video or webinar to help those interested and you can charge for these. It’s a far more lucrative service than print material is and it's also still very untapped so the opportunity is there.

 

#4 Create/Sell Products Online 

 

This ties in with #1. Look at your own creative talents and what you can do and then take advantage of them creating a product you can sell. You can sell crafts, jewelry and vintage items on Etsy. You can use other sites to handle printing needs or to sell your photos. There are plenty of options for selling depending on the product you have for sale. 

 

#5 Provide Writing or Content Services 

 

If you like to write and you feel you are good at it, you can offer those writing skills to others. You can find work as a technical writer, content writer, editor, proofreader, and the list goes on. Sign up at one of the many sites that provide a way for writers and clients to connect and start selling your services.

 

There are 5 ways for you to make a real income online. Pick one and start becoming an e-preneur.

 

7 Ways to Make Money Online

Making money online is a reality for thousands upon thousands of individuals. Now you too can make money online. Here are 7 ways you can do just that.

 

1. Social networking - Social networking has become very popular and many businesses are recognizing the value of making sure they have a solid social networking program in place. They will pay people to manage their social media and make regular posts. 

 

2. CPA marketing - Cost Per Action or CPA marketing is much easier to make money on than affiliate marketing. As long as the person clicks the link and goes to the merchant’s site and carries out the action required, such as signing up for the newsletter, you will earn your commission. Most times there is no need to generate a sale in order to earn commission. What makes CPA marketing so lucrative is the at no money has to be spent for you to earn money and that makes it very attractive. 

 

3. Sell your art or craft online - If you create stunning works of art or you love to craft you can sell your wares on sites like Etsy where you set your price, or Ebay where you auction off your items or set a fixed price. There are tons of other sites so find the niche for your product.

 

4. Dropship - There are tons of online sites that allow you to create a free storefront and be a dropshipper. You don’t have to do anything but get the customer. The rest is taken care of by the provider.

 

5. Money exchangers - Convert online money through money exchangers. They take a fairly big cut when converting currencies. You need to have a store front, you get to invest money, and you can do it all online with little hassle. A simple website, and you can start making money making conversions.

 

6. Job referrer - Unemployment numbers are staggering and it has never been more difficult to find a job. So here’s a job opportunity for a few that want to make their living online. Sites like Referearns or WiseStepp will pay you for referring new employees. Refer the right person and earn up to $1000. Wow!

 

7. Blog commenting - For a blog to rank well there needs to be comments and interaction. Bloggers are busy creating blogs so they will often hire a person to comment on their blog and generate good conversation that leads to sales.

 

Out of 7 different ways to earn money online, one is bound to catch your interest.

 

How to Make Money With Online Content

Online content offers a great way to make money, to earn an income online. Let’s look at a few of the top ways to do that. 

 

#1 Freelance Designing

 

As a freelance designer your income potential is good. Create a website for yourself that showcases your portfolio. Find work online in the classifieds and begin to build your profile. It will take you some time to get established, but it is well worth it as there is a lucrative income awaiting you.

 

#2 Sell Your Music

 

You can sell your music directly from your own website. Radiohead did it a few years ago and raked in tons of money just by asking for donations. It made news headlines. As an independent you can do this. Many are now. You don’t need a middleman and you don’t need a big label to sell your music. 

 

#3 Sell Stock Photos

 

If photography is your hobby this is an excellent way to make money from it. People constantly are searching for stock photos by keyword, so find your best photos, upload them to a site like ShutterStock or Fotolia and start making money. It isn’t a lot per sale, but if you have enough photos up there you can build a nice side income that will surely come in handy.

 

#4 Sell Your Articles

 

Websites, marketers, small businesses - they all need top notch content that integrates their keywords so that they can drive traffic to their site. Initially you won’t make much, but as you build a reputation you can start to charge more for your services. You can even submit your work to a few formal publications. 

 

#5 Sell an App

 

The apps marketplace includes millions upon millions of users and so $1 or so per sale can generate a lot of money, if it’s an app that there is demand for. If you have a really good idea, but you aren’t a programmer it might pay to hire a programmer. Just make sure that you retain all rights. Also make sure the idea isn’t already out there or it could make it much harder for you to make money. A good app can make you rich, pretty darn quick, so if you think you can fill a niche and you don’t see a solution on the market that fills that niche the way your app would, then go with it and don’t miss your opportunity. 

 

How You Can Make Money With Online Sales

Are you ready to generate some extra income, perhaps even give up your day job and become an e-preneur. If you answered yes, chances are you are hunting for ways to make money online. There’s tons of scams so you need to be careful. There’s also tons of legitimate ideas that are either already flooded in the market or just don’t generate enough revenue to make it worth your time, so make sure you do your research. One thing that always seems to work is online sales. With the right product you can make money, with a really good product you can make tons of money and of course, with the wrong product you’ll make very little money, so make sure you do your groundwork before you jump in. 

 

It starts by finding the product or service you are going to sell. Do your market research. Learn what’s in demand right now, see if the market has room for a new competitor and then consider how you can make yourself stand out from your competition.

 

Some entrepreneurs set up an online store to help expand a business that has a physical location. This way you can generate an increase in revenue. If you aren’t website design savvy, you can always hire someone to do it for you, or choose the services of one of the sites that is designed to allow anyone to design a website with absolutely no experience needed. However, you don’t have to have a physical store, you can run your online store as its own entity and have no physical location at all. Your stock can be stored in your home or if you are offering a digital service your stock is on your computer. You can make a full time living selling the right product online.

 

You can also create a virtual store. An online store and a virtual store are different. A virtual store sells virtual items, often from within online games and they make ‘cold hard cash.’ You create an avatar, set up shop and do business with other players. You can even advertise your real business if you like. It begins by finding a game that allows this type of store and then pay the fee to set it up. Once you are in, you have a lot of people within your reach from different locations and age groups. MMORPGS or massive, multiplayer online role playing games are a great place to set up this type of store. 

 

If you are good at sales, like the environment related to selling, why not try your hand with an online store or virtual store.

 

How Do Search Engines Work - Web Crawlers

It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. Hence it is better to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the customer initiating a search.    

 

There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders. 

 

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A ‘spider’ is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site's Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages!

 

The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.

 

A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.

 

Example:  Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Google.

 

When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices. 

 

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.

 

Keyword Density

Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page. But mind you, keywords shouldn’t be over used, but should be just sufficient enough to appear at important places.

 

If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site.

 

Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a given web page.

 

Suppose you have 100 words on your webpage (not including HMTL code used for writing the web page), and you use a certain keyword for five times in the content. The keyword density on that page is got by simply dividing the total number of keywords, by the total number of words that appear on your web page. So here it is 5 divided by 100 = .05. Because keyword density is a percentage of the total word count on the page, multiply the above by 100, that is 0.05 x 100 = 5%

 

The accepted standard for a keyword density is between 3% and 5%, to get recognized by the search engines and you should never exceed it.

 

Remember, that this rule applies to every page on your site. It also applies to not just to one keyword but also a set of keywords that relates to a different product or service. The keyword density should always be between 3% and 5%.

 

Simple steps to check the density:

 

• Copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Word or Word Perfect.

• Go to the ‘Edit’ menu and click ‘Select All’. Now go to the ‘Tools’ menu and select ‘Word Count’. Write down the total number of words in the page.

• Now select the ‘Find’ function on the ‘Edit’ menu. Go to the ‘Replace’ tab and type in the keyword you want to find. ‘Replace’ that word with the same word, so you don’t change the text.

• When you complete the replace function, the system will provide a count of the words you replaced. That gives the number of times you have used the keyword in that page.

• Using the total word count for the page and the total number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density.

 

Must Have Features Your Web Site

Just don’t focus on the home page, keywords and titles.

 

The first step to sales when customers visit your site to see the products they were looking for. Of course, search engine optimization and better rankings can’t keep your customer on your site or make them buy. The customer having visited your site, now ensure that he gets interested in your products or services and stays around. Motivate him to buy the product by providing clear and unambiguous information. Thus, if you happen to sell more than one product or service, provide all necessary information about this, may be by keeping the information at a different page. By providing suitable and easily visible links, the customer can navigate to these pages and get the details. 

 

Understanding Your Target Customer.

 

If you design a website, you think will attract clients, but you don’t really know who your customers are and what they want to buy, it is unlikely you make much money. Website business is an extension or replacement for a standard storefront. You can send email to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey or even while they are browsing on your website. Ask them about their choices. Why do they like your products? Do you discount prices or offer coupons? Are your prices consistently lower than others? Is your shipping price cheaper? Do you respond faster to client questions? Are your product descriptions better? Your return policies and guarantees better than your competitor’s? To know your customer, you can check credit card records or ask your customer to complete a simple contact form with name, address, age, gender, etc. when they purchase a product.

 

Does your website give enough contact information? 

 

When you sell from a website, your customer can buy your products 24 hrs a day and also your customers may be from other states that are thousands of miles away. Always provide contact information, preferably on every page of your website, complete with mailing address, telephone number and an email address that reaches you. People may need to contact you about sales, general information or technical problems on your site. Also have your email forwarded to another email address if you do not check your website mailbox often. When customer wants to buy online provide enough options like credit card, PayPal or other online payment service.

 

Some other Keyword Research Tools

One need to choose those keywords that are frequently searched for and which is in high demand, but not being already used by many other websites and competitors, and thus has low competition. There are a number of keyword research tools that can help you find them.

 

Apart from the Wordtracker which was already discussed in an other article, we have some more equally important research tools like the Overture, Google AdWords Keyword and Guidebeam. 

 

Overture's http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ keyword suggestion tool is free and much quicker to use than Wordtracker. It works more like the Wordtracker but doesn't tell you how many websites are targeting each keyword phrase. For example, if you type ‘Computer’, the Overture search suggestion tool will tell you that during the last month the word ‘Computer’ was searched, say for example 459550 times at overture.com. Similarly, 'computer game' was searched 302210 times. Also, given one word it will tell you all relevant combinations of that word, which are based on actual searches done by people. If the word you keyed in is not a common search term then you will not get any results. It means that very few people have actually searched for that word during the last month.

 

Even Google Keyword Tool generates potential keywords for your ad campaign and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends. Features of this tool include:

 

• Sorting the results of your desired keyword search by popularity, past performance history within the AdWords system, cost, and predicted ad position. 

• Easy keyword manipulation where you can select a few keywords here and there or add them all at once. 

• Searches for keywords present even in any webpage URL specified by your search. It can also expand your keyword search even further to include those pages that are linked to or from the original URL page.

• More keyword results are generated based on regularly updated usage statistics database. This helps you to get new keywords or phrases.

 

Guidebeam http://www.guidebeam.com/  is an interesting resource. Type in a phrase and it will suggest a large number of related searches. The numbers generated against each phrase are Guidebeam's estimation of how relevant that phrase is.

 

These softwares are useful for researching how people search the web and then optimizing your own web pages so that more people find your web site.

 

Submitting Your Website to Search Engines

If you have a web-based business or if a significant portion of your business is done on the web through your website, then the best advertising and marketing is done by submitting to a search engine. No amount of press release, newspaper or radio ad, banner ad, spam email or newsletter will achieve the same results, although, maybe effective in a small proportion.

 

Beware of companies that promise automatic submission of your website to hundreds of search engines which are but only false promises. The best way to submit your website for search engine ranking and inclusion is to do it yourself or to hire an expert to do it manually, by contacting the search engine companies and directories.

 

Before you begin to submit your website to search engines ensure your websites are thoroughly designed to the professional quality using the right key words, good graphics and pictures and the relevant content. Don’t submit websites that are incomplete. While submitting to a search engine, make sure to provide information about your website, keywords and any other information that may be pertinent, including the name and contact information of your business. 

 

Mere submission to search engine companies does not guarantee that your site would be immediately listed and the ranking will be high. Because there are thousands of new websites coming up every day and it may take quite sometime before they take up your site for review by human editors. One important factor to remember while submitting site is to include a site map of your website which makes the crawling easy for the web robots. Search engines like ‘http://www.google.com’ hardly considers submissions without sitemaps.

 

There are many online companies that accept search engine submission services. You can choose to do it yourself with a software package and service like this one:

 

• http://www.webposition.com/order/trial.asp?WT.mc_id=google%3A%7Bifsearch%3Asearch%7D%7Bifcontent%3Acontent%7D%3A%7Bcreative%7D%3Atrial%3A%7Bkeyword%7D&WT.srch=1

 

Or if you want professional help try the following sites:

 

• http://www.addpro.com/professional_submission

• http://www.submitawebsite.com/aboutus.html

 

Don’t use the automatic submission services.

 

Here is a list of the most popular Search Engines and directory companies:

 

Search Engines

 

• Go.com/InfoSeek AltaVista

• Google, HotBot

• Excite/Webcrawler

 

Directories

 

• AOL Search Inktomi

• Lycos Open Directory

• MSN, Yahoo!

• LookSmart Snap

 

Apart from the above there are thousands of search engines and directory companies, where you can submit your website to as many companies as possible. The following links gives info on other search engines and directories:

 

• http://websearch.about.com/library/searchengine/blsearchenginesatoz.htm

• http://websearch.about.com/library/tableofcontents/blsearchenginetableofcontents.htm