There are two main streams of thought about building email lists and how to market to them. In the marketing area you have those that tell you that once you get your leads, then hammer them hard until they either buy or unsubscribe from your list.

The other school of thought is that you woo them and start a slow, long-term relationship that gains trust and lets them know you're human and what is you're all about.

The first way of doing things is usually done with people with more money to burn than others and endlessly do exactly what they say: hard sell. This works, but short-term. They don't mine their customers over years, they get a couple of sales out of them and their done. There are some big name online marketers that do this that you may even be on their ezine list.

The greatest challenge to online marketers when they want to expand there horizons by creating new online businesses is how to get viral marketing working quickly for them.

Unless you have a lot of money to spend on SEO, or have an inhouse expert, that's not going to help you in the short-term very much. Also because it takes a long time for you web site to be found by search engines, other than buying an old domain name that already has traffic going to it, this is going to take time also.

One of the best ways to get things going virally for you is to build your community. The best way to do that is to get your visitors and consumers empowered to talk.

According to a recent Burst Media survey, 37.4 percent of teens aged 13-17, say they spend 3-4 hours each day on the internet - this is in addition to school.

Teen males who spend that much time number 39.9 percent while teen females are at 34.7 percent.

Another 17.9 percent say they spend from 2-3 hours online outside of school; 25.1 percent spend 1-2 hours online; and 19.6 percent spend less than an hour a day online. Still the numbers are quite impressive on how important a role the internet is playing with teens.

A common thread that runs through their usage is that the majority of teens are also consuming some other form of media while they are online. That is the key problem to solve in marketing to teen online users. Marketers must come up with compelling ways to minimize the distractions and disruptions.

We have heard talk of the e-newspapers for close to 30 years and how it is just about read to be introduced to the consumer. The time for its arrival may finally be here.

Some of the biggest newspapers in the world are planning on offering some form of an electronic newspaper that will enable users to download the online editions to flexible, reflective digital screens that is said to be much easier on the eyes than current laptop or cellphone devices.

The flexible versions of these readers could possibly be available in 2007.

The early forays into this area failed because of high prices and there not being enough online content to justify its price. That and the non-flexible devices that didn't suit consumers. Now there are inexpensive digital screens that will be able to be rolled up and put in your pocket.

Research has confirmed what hopefully most of us already know, that in your email campaigns you get far better conversion rates when offering one choice of services versus multiple choices.
 
One recent test sent emails focusing on one product with one service and another that offered four separate services.

What were the results of the test? The email sent with one offer ourperformed the other by over 450 percent!

We talk about the need for compelling content in our writing and ad copy at thealphamarketer.com, and it's true how much we need that.

There is one area in marketing that is changing almost overnight and that is that marketing is no longer the in-your-face, take-it-or-leave it method anymore. That is the old push strategy. Now consumers are demanding more of a "pull" marketing model in advertising.

What is "pull" marketing? It is making the offering unintrusive to the point where the consumer isn't really sure that they've just been marketed to. It is making the ad so it doesn't obstruct what it is the consumer is trying to do. That's why Tivo and other DVR products are so popular. But finally it must be very appealing to the point where the consumer 'requests' your message. That's the end of all of what "pull" marketing is: pulling the customer into the process so much that they want to see what it is you're presenting.

The Alpha Marketer

If you're anything like me in marketing and business, you're always looking and searching for another tip and idea to give you an edge.

In our information age, there is, well, too much information. How many times have you started doing some research and found that two hours later you've been reading and bouncing back and forth between an endless array of interesting stuff and not getting any work done?

So how can we do our research, stay on topic and sift through all the noise? Here are three things you can do to keep focused and not get overwhelmed by data and information:

1. We must know absolutely what our purpose for our business is. What is it that makes us unique. This will help you to stay focused and look for only that which applies to you.

One thing that doesn't change, whether you're marketing online or off, is the need to grow your network.

In the online world, I think there is even greater opportunity to connect with other people, whether you may end up doing business with them or not. A good point to keep in mind concerning networking is that even if you connect with someone who you don't see yourself doing business with, you never know who they may know or may be talking to the next day.

Personally, I have even searched all over the place in my online wanderings to find unique interesting things for my ezine list and other contacts. The reason I do that is to find interesting things for my readers and customers. So when you contact someone, they could very well not need what you have to offer, but know others that would love to take a look at it.

If you contact another marketer, here are 3 things you can to when contacting them the first time:

The Alpha Marketer

Continuing our conversation about offering higher priced products or services, let's look at one of the great benefits and competitive advantages of doing it.

More Marketing Money

If you were offering a $300 private online membership, and you had a competitor offering something similar for $50, who do you think has more money to spend on marketing?

You can spend up to $300 and your competitor can only go up to $50. Why is that such an advantage? Because you can go out and get all of those looking to resell, and they will want a piece of a pie that is bigger. Do you want 50% of $50 or 50% of $300? Not too hard to figure out the math is it?

The Alpha Marketer

Many online marketers have an insecurity streak, and as a result don't put together products and services in the higher price ranges.

Obviously its not something you just decide to do regardless of what you're offering. When you offer high-end products you not only must deliver, but you must over-deliver.

What are some of the benefits of offering high-end items?

First of all, you deal with a lot less customers. Do you want to deal with customers who you've sold 50,000 pieces of your product or service at $20 or 100 customers that you've sold your offering for $10,000 each. The result of both is $1 million. Let's face it, it's easier to deal with 100 customers than 50,000.

There are a couple of new Adwords features that are definitely worth trying out. The first one called... "Position Preferences" which is in the advanced options area under the edit campaign settings - lets you keep your ads turned off until they reach your position criteria.

For example, if you don't want your ad to ever reach the first position, but also don't want it to be shown if it is lower than position 8, you can now input that you only want your ads to show in positions 2 through 8. This is a great feature as a number of online marketers do better in the lower positions than on top.

Another feature that Google has added is called "Content bidding" - if you have your "content targeting" turned on (ads shown on websites related to your keywords, not the actual search results), you are able to bid less by enabling "content bidding" and submitting lower bids for the content inventory. Those that have used this before know how hard it used to be.

A couple more ways to enhance your campaigns.

The Alpha Marketer

According to an article in DMeurope.com, more than half of European internet users have purchased items online in the last year, citing a study by European research agency InSites.

In the survey it was found that 70 percent of Swedish and Danish respondents had purchased goods or services online, more than any other country measured.

Right behind them came the Netherlands and France with 67 percent and 64 percent, who were also among the top online shoppers.

The Alpha Marketer

Does a place like Alexa have any value since it's powered by Google. If you do one search don't you get the same results. If that's the case why bother?

Alexa does have one little thing that adds great value to online marketers: It's called "Site info." Once you get the search results just look for it next to the cached url. You don't even have to click on it, just roll over it and it'll show you what other people also like to visit in connection to the topic your researching. It'll say "People who visit this page also visit."

What's the value of that? It provides instant information that can show you what the overall marketplace in interested in. This allows you to write content, make products or add information to your products or writings that you know readers want to know about.

The Alpha Marketer

If you have a lot of people looking at your site and offerings without buying, one of the things keeping them from making the decision could be your testimonials.

A new company called Trusted Testimonials has been formed to deal with this specific issue.

Dave Taylor recently asked one Trusted Testimonial executive about the new service. Here's what he said:

"If you haven’t already done so, you can increase your testimonials’ effectiveness by including the full name, city, state and country of the customers providing testimonials (with their permission of course). Photos of your satisfied customers and testimonials from experts in your industry are also great site conversion boosters. Once collected, in addition to your testimonials page, you should sprinkle testimonials throughout your site to maximize impulse purchasing.

The Alpha Marketer

We've talked about a number of web design mistakes before. Here are a few more that I continue to find in my online surfing.

Web Pages way too long - One way of getting somone to leave your site very quickly is the long, continuous page. When they scroll and scroll to get to the bottom of your page, you've already make them irritated and want to leave. Research has also shown that most people will not want to read articles more than 1000 words. They will scroll just to make sure it is a short piece that they can read quick.

The exception to this rule is in ad copy. When you're selling something it needs to be long enough to get your message across and assure the visitor. People don't mind long ad copy at all.