Now before you start counting I am not talking about employee legs or any other type of leg you may have around or in your business, I am talking about marketing legs. How many different marketing methods do you have supporting your business. Imagine you business is the table top and each method of marketing is a table leg.

There are many business out there who are supporting their table top with very few table legs, in some cases there could be just one table leg. Now I’m sure you’ll agree with me here, but a table with only 1, 2 or 3 legs is not going to be too stable when one leg is removed.

If you are solely dependent on 2 forms of marketing, lets say existing customers and pay per click advertising. If one of these two marketing methods is removed, for what ever reason, your table is highly likely to come crashing down to the ground. Just because everything is running happily right now, you have only limited control over pay per click advertising.

To prevent your table becoming un-steady all you need to do is add more and more table legs to it, by adding more marketing methods to your business you increase your stability incase one or marketing methods start to lose their effectiveness or are stopped completely.

Now at this point I relies you might be sat there racking your brain for other marketing methods to try, I know I did when I first heard about this concept. But don’t worry many of the marketing methods out there are not difficult to do and in many cases do not require you to risk your hard earned cash.

I would recommend that you try and aim for around seven different marketing methods to give you business a high degree of stability. If you lose a marketing method it will not lead to crunch point, giving you time to rebuild another marketing method to replace that leg.

I suggest that you consider the following marketing methods to support your business. There are many methods out there but these are ones that I have endured prolonged success with and some I am just getting started with.

Natural Search Engines

Getting a first page position on Google can give you steady stream of traffic, it however doesn’t happen overnight and requires a lot of time. The results are worth it.

Pay Per Click such as Google AdWords

Google AdWords allows you to reach 100 million people in minutes, however if not managed correctly it can be costly, steep learning curve.

Email Marketing

You can use email marketing to both your existing and prospective customers, although you cant just simply send emails out to anyone anymore. Have a look at my article on emails and Auto Responders here…

Direct Mail

For many companies direct mail is a big source of income, but it has to be done right. You can’t predict the results so start small scale and focus on the exact type of person you want to focus on.

Press Releases

This is a bit of an un-tapped market, if you can write a press release about how your product saved another company time and money. PR websites, Local newspapers, business magazines are all potential targets.

Video Marketing

Video is huge on the web, 50% of web traffic is video. You can create videos for your products and let them lose on the likes of YouTube and Viddler. Check my article on video marketing here…

Social Media

There has been an explosion in social media on the web, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Linked In. Its all about building relationships, use this to your advantage to meet prospective customers.

Not all these marketing methods will work for all business so try and pick and chose, but remember just because non of your competitors are ding it, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Now its your turn to jump a head.

When I’m browsing the web looking at products or services I often find myself saying “I don’t care!”. Now don’t get me wrong I might be very interested in the product I am looking at, but am getting frustrated but why! I am willing to bet you have felt like this too.

What’s even more annoying is that I encounter this mistake on a day by day basis when browsing the web, reading my emails or even flicking through a sales catalog. The problem is that I am bombarded with information about the seller and features about the product.

When I first view a website the sellers information is not my primary interest, the number of sites I see that say Trading since 1995, or 20 years experience. To be honest “I don’t care”, I have only just found your website I don’t wish to be bombarded about information about you. By all means have a about us page where I can get this information but it does not want to be the first thing I see.

When I am looking for a product, the chances are that I have a problem that I need to solve or if you will, an itch to scratch. So when I find a product that I think may do what I want, I don’t wish to be overwhelmed by a list of features as long as my arm about it. Look at your existing website, does this sound like you, if so don’t worry you are not alone this is very common mistake.

If you want to increase your sales you need to start selling your products based on their benefits. If you can tell me how your product or services will help me, you make my buying decision easier. Think of it this way, lets saying you are buying a new product unlike anything you have purchased before, would you prefer a list of detailed features for each product that may all appear very similar or would you rather get a clear list of benefits that explain how the product will help you.

I’m not saying you should go out there and rip down all the features from your website, there is nothing wrong with some features, but put your benefits first. Sell using the benefits, then if the visitor wants to learn more they can read the features.

This method doesn’t work with all products out there, if you are selling a commodity product such as a digital camera you are going to get customers comparing the features of you product against the next product. Likewise if you are selling fridge freezers the benefits are obvious but the features may set your product apart from the rest.

However if you are selling a specialist product or product range you should really consider using benefits, allowing your visitors to quickly understand how the product will help them and which product from your range will be best for them can make big increases to your sales. If you have a software product that automates certain tasks then your benefits need to be along the line of saving time and effort.

Try to look at your products from the perspective of the customer, how can you product help them, what can it do for them. If you can start thinking about selling how this product will help, using the benefits you will have an edge over your competitors and reap the rewards.

Every time I setup a new group of Ads in one of my Google AdWords campaigns I seem to stick to the basic formula I have always followed. This formula is basically a rule for each line of the Ad.

In the headline I try to include the searched for keyword, in context if possible. Description line 1 contains a benefit about my product. Description line 2 contains a feature about my company and finally I try and include the keyword in my URL.

I have been using formula for many years and had good success, sometimes switching the benefit and feature around can make a small difference but it depends on the Ad and the product in question. I have however been experimenting with two alternative methods that break these rules.

Focus On The Pain, Not Just The Keyword

The first tactic is to do with the keyword itself, think about this simple scenario. If Mr Smith needs to make a hole in his wall he knows that he will need a power drill, so Mr Smith searches “power drill” into Google and will no doubt have every DIY company appearing in the sponsored results offering latest models at reduced prices.

We need to understand Mr Smith’s motivation, most purchases are made due to pain. Mr Smith’s pain isn’t “I want to purchase a drill”, his pain is “I need to make a hole”, the power drill is the fix for that pain. So from this you could create a Google AdWords Ad that said “Holes Made Perfectly Every Time…”.

Rather than give just giving the visitor or Mr Smith the solution, you are telling them the problem and showing you can fix it for them. You are proving that you understand the pain and know what needs to be done to fix it. The power drill scenario is a little bit simple for this example but think about how you might be able to do this, what is the customers pain? Include this is your headline and explain how you can help.

Just Because You Have 95 Characters To Use

The second tactic is regarding the length of your Ad. Your headline is limited to 25 characters and the descriptions lines each contain 35 characters. Search in Google and look at the Google AdWords result, what do you notice? All the Ads are using up every single character to get their message across. I do it myself, when designing my Ads I will chop and change words to make them fit and maximize the available space.

As human beings we notice things that break the mould, it is these things that attract our attention. Think of when you visit a website and your see a moving or rotating banner, your eyes are drawn to it. If everything else on the page is static, the banner stands out as it breaks the mould.

We can use this technique to draw more attention to your Google AdWords Ads. Consider what would happen if you left description line 2 blank with just a full stop or even a single word. Your Ad would look different to all the others, by leaving white space in your Ad you will draw attention because your Ad breaks the mould.

As again with the first tactic this will not work in all cases, but if you have an Ad where you are struggling to fill your Ad with text, try this out, split test it against your current Ads and see what happens.

Articles, this word just keeps springing up as soon as you mention getting up the natural search engine results or anything to do with search engine optimization or SEO. But why?

First we must understand why one website appears on the first page of Google while another containing similar subject matter is way down the ranks. It all comes down to popularity, if you have a very popular website you will have more chance of achieving a first page position on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

OK, so you now even more confused, how does Google decide if you are popular. Think of this in the same way as when you were at school, how did you know who the popular kids were, easy they were the ones with the most friends following them around. This is the same scenario on the web, but instead of friends your popularity is determined by the number of other websites that link to yours.

If you have thousands of other websites linking to your website, just like friends following you around the playground Google determines that your website is popular. If all these other websites are following you around then you must have some valuable and interesting content. This is where articles come in to it.

An article is a short information based document about a certain aspect of your chosen niche. Now before you start worrying again, you do not need to be an amazing author or writer too do this, all you need to know is something about your chosen niche. You may not realize it but you are already an expert.

Lets say you had a website about fishing, without too much thinking you could string together a few articles about fishing. To me, who is somebody who doesn’t know the first thing about fishing you would indeed be an expert.

There are lots of different ideas you can use to create your articles, you can create information articles, like the one you are reading that educate the reader. You can write a review about a new product you have used, or even a case study. Even if you think that your subject matter is boring there will many people in your niche that will enjoy it.

An typical article is made up from 3 main parts, the first is a headline. Try and chose an interesting headline that will get peoples attention. The second part is the actual content of your article, this is usually around 400 to 800 words. The third and final bit is your signature. This signature gives you opportunity to advertise your site, for example for a free 5 part email course on fishing please visit YourWebsite.com, try to offer benefits for visiting your site.

Once you have written your first articles you need to upload them to an article website such as Ezine Articles or Go Articles, once you have setup your free account, you are free to upload your articles. Once uploaded your articles they will be checked by the submission team and if you article meets their terms it will be published on their website. So this is the first website linking back to you, or if you will your first school yard friend.

Now this where the true power of articles starts. Many other website in your chosen niche are looking for free content to use on their sites, they can take your articles from the articles site and use it own their own. They must however leave your signature. This means that if you have an article on a article site that is then used on another 20 website you will have 21 links pointing back at your website.

This has multiple benefits, for each article you write you may get multiple links back to your site, the exact number depends on your article but anywhere from tens to thousands. The other benefit, is that with your content spread wide and far across the web you are highly likely to get people visiting your site who have read your article on another website and want to find out more.

If you want to spread your articles even further I suggest you check out this neat tool that lets you submit your articles to 680 articles sites and directories at the touch of button, the best parts its FREE. You can download it from Free Article Submitter

An Auto Responder is one of the most important business tools, however it is also one of the most overlooked. Even if you have not heard of an Auto Responder the chances are you have seen one in action.

If you have bought a product online from the likes of Amazon, you will no doubt receive emails maybe every one or two weeks offering you information on the upcoming releases, latest special offers or personalized recommendations. These emails are not sent out by hand, they are generated and sent automatically using an Auto Responder.

Auto Responders make light work of looking after your existing customers, once a customer has made a purchase from you they will start receiving your emails. You can create these emails in two different ways, the first is to create a sequence of emails that will be sent out according to a preset time scale.

For example you might chose to send your first email a week after the initial order, it could read something like. “Dear Mike, Thank you for your recent purchase we hope everything is going will with xyz product. Please spare one minute to tell us what you think of our product and service etc.” You can supply a hyperlink to a survey page allowing the customer to give you a quick testimonial.

Now for the clever bit, in that example email we used the name Mike. An Auto Responder not only stores your customers email address but any other fields you require, so in this case the customers first name. This means that every time your Auto Responder sends an email it will be personalized. If your email is personalized you stand a much higher chance of the customer reading it and buying more of your products.

You may then send a second email out a week later, offering a special offer on add-ons or consumable products to go with their original purchase. The major benefit with this is that when you get a new customer they automatically begin this sequence with no interaction from you. Once you have created your initial sequence of emails you don’t have to worry about them.

But not only can you send out emails in a pre-planed sequence but you can schedule a one off email to be sent at a certain time and date. For example if you had a sale starting from Monday you could send out an email to all your customers on Sunday and then again maybe during Monday alerting them to this fact.

Not only are Auto Responders great for looking after your existing customers, but they can also be used to manage potential customers known as prospects. In the old days it was perfectly acceptable to put a form on your website that said sign up for our free newsletter, unfortunately things are no longer that simple. You have to give your visitor something in exchange for their details, this something can vary depending on the kind of products you sell. In the internet marketing world people give away something like a free report or ebook, maybe a video course or email course.

Why do this, in the visitors eyes you are giving them something for nothing but in reality it is a little different, you are getting their email address. Once this new prospect gets their free gift they are added on to your Auto Responder, you can then send them emails. These emails should not be cold pushy sales emails they should be information based, giving the prospect more information, recommendations or case studies. The idea is to build up a relationship with your prospect so that when they chose to make a purchase the will have more chance to buy from you.

Just remember the majority or people out there do not buy something the first time they see it. Keep in touch with them and reap the rewards. If you are currently not using an Auto Responder I recommend that you check out Get Response, its a fully featured web based service and costs less that $18 a month. Bargin.

You can get more information on Get Response Here

So you have your great idea for your business, you may have a great product or a service to offer. So what are the essential internet resources you need to make a success of your new business.

1. A Website

In the current business environment your website should be the hub of your business even if you are not directly selling an online product.

The type of website depends entirely on what your business is going to do. Choosing the correct type of website can be tricky but they can generally be divided into easy to understand categories.

If your new business has a range of off the shelve products you should consider an e-commerce site as this will give your customers the ability to buy online. This has the added benefit that you are creating a sales process that does not require your involvement every minute of the day.

Maybe you have a range of products or services that are not off the shelve or are bespoke to the customers requirements. In this case you are better having a website that feels like a catalog or a portfolio to showcase your business. You can create explanations of your products and services just remember to sell your products with the benefits, not the features.

If you are going to make your money by selling advertising or by selling other peoples products through affiliate marketing, you should consider a blog. You can create regular posts and constantly add new content. You can fill your blog with articles, reviews, testimonials and your experience with the product in question.

2. Tracking Software

When you start getting visitors through into your site you need to know where they came from. Using tracking software you can determine how you visitors came to your website. This is really important as it will let you now which of your traffic sources and marketing methods are giving you the best responses. Using this data you can then spend more time working on getting visitors from the most successful places.

Other features of tracking software allow you to track the geographical location of the visitor, which pages they viewed on your site, how long they spent there etc. You can even see some really cool stats such as the visitors operating system, web browser, screen resolution, speed of connection etc etc. This is info can be really useful if you are running location based campaigns. The more technical is used a lot by web designers so they can design websites that can be viewed by the maximum amount of visitors.

3. Auto Responder

A auto responder is a automatic email marketing tool that is essential for your business, its job is to collect and manage the list of email addresses from your customers and prospects and automatically send out emails.

This can be used in two ways.

First for exiting customers. When a somebody buys one your products or services they are added to your list, this means you can send them emails on new products that would be relevant to them. How often do you get emails from Amazon and other internet giants.

Secondly for picking up prospects. When a new visitor comes to your site you need to capture their name and email address so that you can email them with product recommendations, newsletters etc. However the days of just putting a box on your website asking for details have long gone. You have to give something away to entice the visitor to join your list, you can give away a free ebook, report, mp3 audio, video etc. Essentially you have to give them something for nothing. The more you can give them the more likely the chances of buying your products.

These resources can be the backbone of your business and overtime can save you a lot of time and effort.

About 5 years ago, if you basically knew what was going on, you could sign up for a Google AdWords account and get TONS of cheap traffic to your website. Clicks were cheap then.

They’re not now. Actually they’re kind of expensive. Upwards of $5 per click in some markets. Plus it’s hard to break in. Google penalizes you for poor Quality Scores, gives you high minimum bid prices, slaps you down because they don’t like your landing pages and won’t tell you why.

Still, for those who crack the code it can be really good. Having a solid place in Google Advertising brings you hundreds, maybe thousands of visitors every day as reliable as clockwork.

To help you get over the AdWords learning curve, Perry Marshall is offering a 12 week intensive training program, delivered online, starting September 30. Perry is author of The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords, which is the world’s most popular book on Internet advertising. He and his team guide you through the minefield of not only Google ads, but the ingredients on your website, emails and pricing strategy so you squeeze the most from every visitor.

Perry offers a bold guarantee:

“If you’re accepted as a team member in my 12 week “Bobsled Run” and if you complete the homework assignments, you’ll recoup your tuition by December 2008 (through AdWords cost savings and increased sales), and you will make at least $25K more in 2009 than you would have without my help, or your money back.”

Watch as Perry explains his program and his guarantees - and why he’s so careful in the way he guides you in investing your marketing dollars:

Watch Your 4 Bonus Videos

P.S. This program goes live on the September 30 and is strictly limited, make sure you get registered early.

Perry Marshall’s Bobsled Run

OK the first question you are probably asking is, what is DKI? DKI or Dynamic Keyword Insertion is Google AdWords method of using the searched for keywords in the actual Ad itself. This has lots of benefits such as improved click through rate known as CTR which can lead to reduced costs. This sounds good however there is a common pitfall out there waiting for you.

Most people encounter this pitfall due to the improper use of keywords. You will have no doubt already seen many examples of DKI, have you ever seen an Ad that says “Find (your keyword) on ebay” or “Buy (your keyword) at Amazon”. These are examples of Ads using DKI and are great when you are trying to cover a large range of generic keywords. It’s this list of keywords that can cause the problems.

I once saw an Ad that said “Find God at AuctionSite.com”. This is a classic example of when DKI goes wrong and it’s all down to your initial keyword selections. DKI works only if your keywords are suitable, if you have a large online store with a wide product range you can create a set of keywords that cover all your products. Another good use is for large numbers of keywords, for example if you sold printer cartridges you can use the individual item numbers from all your cartridges along with maybe a second campaign for the manufacturers names.

The benefit of this, your Ad is targeted to the search term. It’s much better to have an Ad that’s says “Buy AB1234 Printer Cartridges from Website.com” as opposed to “Buy Any Printer Cartridges from Website.com”. The first is a more targeted Ad and will most likely give you a higher CTR and therefore you will pay less for each click.

When using lots of generic or product keywords it is important that you do your keyword research for negative keywords. These are keywords that when searched for cause your Ad NOT to appear, this is particular useful if there are other products that could be found under very similar keywords. The last thing you want is for your Ad appearing under the wrong keywords, this has two negative effects, 1. It lowers your CTR, which can mean you pay more for each click. 2. People click on your Ad thinking you offer the relevant product, realize they have made a mistake and hit the back button, costing you money.

We’ve discussed the advantages and disadvantages so how do you set up DKI. First research your keywords as normal and then create your Ad. Where you want to position your keyword you simply insert {keyword}. This means that the keyword will inserted there. If you want to CAPITALIZE the keyword simply enter {KEYWORD} or if you want to Capitalize the first letter of each word use {KeyWord}.

So far so good but there is one more you thing to consider, your Google Ads with DKIs are still restricted by the normal size constraints. So if someone searches a search term that is too long the keyword will not be displayed. To get around this we can add a backup keyword like this {KeyWord:Backup} this way if some searches a long keyword phrase your backup keyword will be used rather than leaving an unsightly gap. This way you get the best of both worlds.

Search engine optimization is getting more and more difficult by the day. The search engines are evolving at an incredible speed, making it harder for us SEOs to rank our websites highly.

With that said, there are a few tried and true principles that we need to do when optimizing our website. The first of which, and the one that I always tell people to concentrate on is getting quality, 1 way links pointing to your website.

The more quality links you can get pointing to your website, the higher you will rank, period.

While there are many black hat tricks and tactics that you can do for short term gain, I would suggest NOT spending your time on those things. I would focus my entire effort on figuring out how to get other websites to link to yours without you linking back to them. That is the biggest key to ranking well in Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Doing this is easier said that done. One of the easiest known ways to get quality, one way links is by finding website directories and then submitting your website to them. This can be a very tedious process, but always a very rewarding process at the same time.

You can either submit your articles to these directories manually, pay someone to do it for you, OR you can use one of the article directory submission programs out there. The best program for the money that we’ve found is a program called “Article Submitter” created my internet marketing expert, Brad Callen.

This program allows you to submit your articles to over 700 article directories and can save you an incredible amount of time in doing so. You simply enter your article details into the software once, and then select the directory you would like to submit to. The software will then, automatically fill in all of the submission criteria for each directory and allow you to quickly submit your articles.

Not only does this save you time in submitting your articles, but it saves you an incredible amount of time in just finding these free directories online. I highly suggest grabbing an article submission program if you decide to take advantage of one of the easist ways to get quality, 1 way links to your website.

You can learn more about Article Submitter and how you can download your FREE copy here

In a couple of my previous articles I have talked about the importance of the landing page your Google AdWords Ads send your visitors to. For example if someone searches for a specific product, your Ad should match what has been searched for and when they click to enter your page the visitor lands on a page containing the relevant product.

I spend a lot of time on the web researching products, buying products and I am pleased to say that is quite rare I encounter a Ad that doesn’t take me to the page I want. Don’t get me wrong there used to be many times I would end up on a non-focused webpages, but I thought things had got better.

That was until yesterday, after reading a review in one of the major UK computer magazines about miniature laptops that are great just carry around, internet laptops I think there called. They look a good idea and much more compact than my 17″ MacBook Pro.

The winner of the test was a model by Advent so I searched Google for “Advent Laptops”. In first place in the sponsored listings was an advert from PC World, one of the UK’s biggest high street and mail order retailers. The Advert read “Advent Laptops, Windows Vista, Latest Features etc” and even the URL contained Advent Computers so all looking good so far.

This is where it all went wrong, after clicking the Ad where did I end up, not on a page containing Advent Laptops, nope. A page containing Laptops, again no. I ended up on the standard products page, asking me to choose what category of product I was interested in. So having searched Google I then had to search through PC World’s website to find Advent Laptops.

The result is that I waste my time, I have to think more and make more clicks of my mouse. When I have searched through Google and see a Ad regarding my search I expect to land on the correct page.

You might think big deal, its only time and few clicks but for many people the back button on the browser is an easier option. They simply click back and try one of the many other sponsored results. This is a real life example of elementary mistake that can cost you money. Don’t make the same mistakes.