Sell the problem
No business buys a solution for a problem they don’t have. And yet, most business to business marketers jump right into features and benefits, without taking the time to understand if the person on the other end of the conversation/call/letter…
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On Gummi Bears And Toilet Paper
“You have to believe in what you sell!” Right? Wrong! I have heard this many times. And it sounds good, a lot of novices and gullible marketers take it to heart. They get “sold” on a particular product, brand, or company, and enthusiastically go out there “selling” it.
The problem is, that most of these people really shouldn’t be selling, they should be marketing. And to market something, you don’t have to “believe” in it, you just have to provide it to a hungry marketplace.
Case in point: Do you think Wal-Mart is really “sold” on Gummi Bears and toilet paper? I don’t think so. But they sell a plethora of it. (A plethora is a really big number.) So what gives? They don’t “believe,” but they sell it like crazy.
It’s all about mindset. A good marketer, or marketing company, can market anything. Often, their passion is not centered in the product or brand, but in the marketing itself. They love moving products to market!
Obviously, I’m not condoning marketing crap or trying to trick people. I’m just saying, you really have to be careful what you get sold on. Many marketers passionately market something that doesn’t make them money, and never will. Good marketers aren’t sales people. They are passionate about moving good products into the market place. And no matter how good the product is, if it doesn’t sell, they move on.
Just food for thought. What are you marketing? Are you sold on it? If so, it could be holding you back from your true marketing success.
Best “Tweet Adder” Software
I’ve played around with tons of “Tweet adder” software packages, and come to the educated conclusion that Tweet Adder is the best. Here’s why:
1. It works. They have thought through all of the bugs and downsides of adding followers, and worked out the kinks better than anybody else.
2. It’s a one time, inexpensive purchase, compared to their competitors recurring monthly fees.
3. It works more “naturally” than others, eliminating the risk of getting your account shut down. Unless, or course, you do something dumb like try to follow 1,000 people a day. Don’t get me going on this! I have more Twitter accounts in the boneyard than probably anybody you know or can name! Trust me, don’t add more than about 200 a day for a while, and over time gradually raise it to 300, but that’s it! Don’t raise it any higher, or if you do, don’t come crying to me when Twitter shuts down your account! (And good luck getting the account back!)
So if your Twitter followers number is low, and you don’t have a decent number of people following you every day, Tweet Adder software is the best way I’ve found. Just click on the link to check it out.
Article Titles: Don’t Make This Mistake!
Pick the best article title:
Article Titles: Don’t Make This Mistake!
Don’t Make This Mistake In Your Article Title!
They both say exactly the same thing, but one is excellent, the other is a complete waste of time. Why? Read this excerpt from Ezine Articles Editorial Guidelines:
- TITLE KEYWORD RICHNESS: Your title should be “Keyword Rich.” The first 3-4 words of your TITLE determines the success of the article in terms of how much traffic your article will generate…so choose the first 3-4 words wisely.Example of a Bad Keyword TITLE:
- Top 9 Ways to Acquire Fractional Jet Ownership
Example of a Good Keyword TITLE:
- Fractional Jet Ownership – 9 Strategies to Help You Acquire Your Private Jet
Wow! Who knew? So look at the above example titles again, and you’ll see how much better example one is. Make sure and incorporate this into all your future articles, or you will miss out on a lot of traffic!
Email Subject Lines: Getting Your Emails Opened!
Email subject lines are absolutely critical to email marketing success. Marketing experts tell us that the number one thing that determines if an e-mail will be opened or not is who it’s from, and the second is the subject line. People check their e-mail quickly, and if you can’t grab their attention in a split second, your mail is deleted real fast.
Email Subject Lines Are Critical To Open Rates
So here are some tips to making sure your email subject lines grab their attention, and gets your letter read.
Create a swipe file. This is simply a place where you gather other peoples e-mails into a folder so that you can refer to them for inspiration or ideas on anything to do with e-mail, whether it’s the subject line, writing style, call to action, whatever. But a swipe file is brilliant for subject line creation, because when you open that folder in your e-mail client, you can instantly scan all of the subject lines, one after the other, to get some great ideas. Simply subscribe to newsletter writers that you respect, and learn real time their techniques as you read their mail then store it in your swipe file folder.
Make an announcement or share news. People love to hear about new things or interesting facts.
Create curiosity. People are by nature curious. If you can get them curious with your subject line, there is a high probability they will click through and read the rest.
Create urgency. “Promotion ends at midnight” or “Only 3 spots left” or “Offer ends Thursday” are the types of phrases that grab the readers’ attention and make them wonder what they might miss out on.
Emphasize a benefit. People buy benefits, not features. If you can put the major benefit of your e-mail in the subject line, your open rates will improve.
There is a healthy debate about whether to personalize the subject line or not. Research conducted by Pinpointe dot com suggests that length of the subject line is more important than personalization, and personalization makes the subject longer, so it’s generally better to not include personalization. But other marketers would argue this, and the fact is it probably depends on your niche. But the bottom line is, if you thought personalization was mandatory, you’re probably incorrect. It’s definitely optional.
The last point I want to make on subject lines it to test! Make sure you test every letter you send out, for open rate and click through rate, so that you know exactly how effective your e-mails are. Remember, these metrics can’t be measured perfectly, so don’t assume that the number of opens and click-throughs is an exactly correct number, it isn’t, but it is accurate for comparing e-mails to each other.
Over time, you will learn a lot as you scan your results and see which subject lines pulled best for you.
This worked so good I stopped doing it…
Content Marketing.
Have you ever had one of those “just kick me in the head now” moments when you realize you’ve made a major marketing blunder? I had one of those recently. I was on a webinar with Don Crowther, one of my social marketing mentors, and he casually mentioned that his mortgage is completely covered from adsense revenue from his hubpages sites.
Doh! Here’s the thing. He told me about hubpages TWO YEARS AGO. Why do I do an annoying “all caps” on that? Because two years ago I tried it, and it worked. For example, one of the first “hubs” I created was for a network marketing play, and I got two new distributors the very first month I published it! Not bad.
Then… not so much. Over the last two years I have published a grand total of 17 hubs, while Don just cranked one out every single day, and now makes a few thousand smackers a month.
And during that time I could have easily produced a plethora of hubs, but I just , well (fill in excuse here).
So, I’m back in action, and recommend you get into action too. Hubpages are great on so many levels. They are fun to make, you aren’t limited in what topics you can cover, and it forces you to write- and let’s face it, content is king online, and if you can’t produce content about your subject you’re in trouble. Hub pages is a great place to learn. Follow other hubbers to see what they do, and get into action! Not only can you get the following benefits:
-Links back to your blog or website
-Direct traffic
-Improve your marketing skills
-Earn 60% of the adsense revenue generated on your hubs
-Learn some great stuff from the community at large…
But it’s also a free and fun marketing method for whatever it is you’re selling, or even not selling! You can make hubs about whatever your little heart desires, and sure enough, the mighty Google will find a relevant ad to stuff in your hub and get you some cash.
And btw, follow my hubs, and tell me your hub ID, and I’ll follow you back! I’m at:
Daily Inspirational Powerpoint On Abundance
I created this inspirational powerpoint, and put it to music, to help me be more successful, more grateful, and more abundance minded. I share it with you too, feel free to download it if you like it! The only thing I do ask is that if you use it for commercial use or on a website, please give photo credit to: davesherwin.com. I hope you enjoy it!
5 Great Forum Marketing Tips
Here’s 5 great forum marketing tips for you. Purists would say that blog commenting is different than forum marketing, but I don’t care, they are so similar I lump them into the same box. So here you go, how to get traffic and “link juice” from an easy, and free method- leaving valuable comments on forums and blogs:
Tip 1: Leave comments all day long, not just when you are actively doing active forum posting marketing. Almost every website you go to now has a forum, or a comments area, and throughout the day as you cruise the web it’s easy to drop relevant comments or posts! So slow down just a little bit, and every time you visit a site that allows you to, leave a relevant comment and link. They add up over time.
Tip 2: On Blog Comment boxes, use anchor text in your name! This is a sneaky little tactic, but as long as you are leaving a high value comment, and not just being a spammer, good bloggers will let it stand. Here’s an example. Right now I’m marketing the Social Marketing Blackbox heavily. One of the keywords I’m after is “social marketing software.” So in the name box I put, “Dave The Social Marketing Software guy.” Then in the link box I put http://socialmarketingblackbox.com. I now have an anchor text link back to my site! Here’s how that looks:
Forum Marketing Tips: Use Anchor Text In Name Field
Do you love me now? 
Tip 3: Create a memorable forum signature. If you are an active member of some forums you participate in, you are often allowed to use an automated signature for every post. Unfortunately, most of these look like hypy, desperate things and aren’t appealing to people. Don’t let that be you! Instead of something with seventeen exclamation marks, try for something that states a major benefit of clicking on your link, or something that makes them like you, and want to click. For example, I remember a signature I saw a few years ago that included the words “All round swell guy.” I liked it. I clicked. Being personal and inviting is much more interesting than most of the over-stated, trumped up signatures most marketers create.
Tip 4: Avoid Cliches. Don’t use words like, “Great post!” or “Wow, keep them coming!” or any other trite, meaningless statement that any spammer can make. Instead, ask questions, comment on the topic, respond to somebody else’s question in the thread, add a missing fact… anything that adds value to the conversation is great.
Tip 5: Treat the forum like a real live social event. For whatever reason, we say things online that we would never say to a stranger at a party. Remember that every member of the Forum is a real human being out there somewhere, and some of those people could become your next top affiliate! So don’t be negative! Ever! Avoid “flame wars” like the plague, and use the Forum to meet new people and build new relationships.
Forum Marketing is a great guerilla method of generating sales, so if you aren’t getting sales from it, you’re either doing the wrong things, or not doing enough of the right things!
10 Social Bookmarking Sites That Have “Do-Follow” Links
If you’re posting anything online, but not social bookmarking it, “you crazy.” Why? Because it’s free traffic and links back to your site! And guess how much it costs? Not a dime.
But not all social bookmarking sites are created equal. Some will get you more traffic, but others, while getting more traffic, will get you better “link juice.” Some of the bigger social bookmark sites don’t pass link juice because their links are no-follow. But here’s a list of 10 great sites with do-follow links:
1 – http://slashdot.org (PR9)
2 – http://digg.com (PR8)
3 – http://technorati.com (PR8)
4- http://www.furl.net (PR7)
5 – http://www.backflip.com (PR7)
6 – http://www.hugg.com (PR7)
7 – http://www.mixx.com (PR7)
8 – http://ma.gnolia.com (PR7)
9 – http://www.connotea.org (PR7)
10 – http://mystuff.ask.com (PR7)
So get bookmarking! Or better yet, think like an entrepreneur and outsource your social bookmarking, and get a ton of other great services, so that you can keep doing what you do best: sharing your message as often and as well as you can!
Top Five Blogging Marketing Mistakes
Before I list the top five blogging marketing mistakes, I just have to tell you that having a blog with multiple posts ranking on the front page of Google is amazing on so many levels. Unfortunately, very few people will every know what it’s like.
But with just a little bit of effort and education, you can have great success, and fun, with a ranked blog.
So, here are the top five blogging marketing mistakes:
1. Using the wrong blogging platform. And the answer, in a nutshell, is wordpress. A proper hosted wordpress blog.
And I’m definitely not alone in this assessment. Jack Humphrey, a very successful and famous blogger, says:
Jack Humphrey on WordPress
So don’t waste your time on the freebies, a hosted blog is very inexpensive, but much more powerful.
2. Wrong Permalink structure. Here are the different permalink options in wordpress:
Blogging Marketing: Correct Permalink Structure Is CRITICAL!
Of all of these, the only correct one is the last one. In other words, it displays the keyword that the blog is about in the URL, which is vital to getting posts ranked. In wordpress, you can edit the permalink structure to be correct by pasting this in the Permalink custom field: /%postname%/%post_id%/
3. Not creating a title, description and keyword list before you get started. Why is it so important? Because when your post is ranked, and a searcher sees the results in the search engines, all they can see is the title, description, and URL of the search results. Like so:
So your title, description and keywords all work together, to get your blog ranked, but also must read like a Pay Per Click ad, enticing your visitor to click on your site rather than your competitors.
4. Lack of keyword research for each blog post. Sometimes we are so excited to post to our blog that we just publish it as quickly as we can. But slowing down just a little to research the keywords, makes all the difference.
For example, when I got the idea for this post, I wrote out the top five mistakes, then I did a search in the free Google research tool for the words “blog marketing.” One of the keywords came up, “blogging marketing” as getting 2,600 searches per month. It’s a little weird to use “blogging marketing” in a sentence, but hey, if 2,600 people a month search for it, it sounds like a great “long tail” keyword to go after, so I incorporated it into my title and first paragraph, then again a little bit throughout the post.
I suggest that you choose the keyword that is best suited to your content, and has anywhere from 500-20,000 searches per month.
5. Lack of activity. Laziness! Most people don’t post nearly often enough. And you don’t have to post more than once a day to get a front page Google ranking, I only post to this blog 3-5 times per week, and it’s got a #1 Google ranking! Generally, 3-5 posts per week is great, more is better, the key is just committing to it and getting it done!
There are some great courses and help, and even a full service suite of tools, including blog creation, hosting, posting… at our social marketing software service, check it out. But however you do it, just get started, it’s easy, fun, and very rewarding.
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