DIFFERENT IM STRATEGIES PART 2

6. The "Tragic Story" Strategy
The "I'm going to tell you a personal, tragic story, that I've been
keeping a secret for awhile now..." strategy tells your prospects that you
are going to reveal something personal and bad about your life that
you've been hiding. People will want to see what kind of personal
problems that you've had and how it relates to your product. It could
be a story about past financial problems, relationship problems, health
problems, etc. People will see even business owners have problems and
see how your product got you through or solved those personal
problems.



7. The "Visual Bonus" Strategy
The "Bonus: you'll get the comic book version..." strategy tells your
prospects that they will have a little entertainment when reading your
information. Your information could be in the form of product
instructions, quick start guides, ebooks, follow along guides for
audio/video products, etc. Entertaining bonus pictures, drawings, photos
and/or graphics can visually attract people to purchase your main
product.



8. The "They Are Watching Me" Strategy
The "I can't reveal everything right now because my competition is
watching..." strategy tells your prospects that you will tell them more
about your new product when it's almost released and you don't want
your competition to copy you. You could also give them other reasons
such as they will try to rip you off and steal your profits, they will create
a cheap generic version that will fail to help them, etc. It shows how
evil your competition is or can be and most people won't want to buy
from those types of businesses.




9. The "First To Know" Strategy
The "Bonus: be on our priority notification list..." strategy tells your
prospects that if they purchase your product you will put them on an
alert list that will tell them about new products that come out that could
help them. Of course, it could be related, non competing products that
you could make commissions on. People like to be the first to know and
benefit from new products.



10. The "Cheat Sheet" Strategy
The "Bonus: get the cheat sheet version..." strategy tells your prospects
if they purchase your product you will show them a better way to gain
the desired benefit. It could be that the cheat sheet will show them how
to use your product to improve their life faster, reach their goals easier,
get over life's obstacles effortlessly, gain benefits while they are
sleeping, to find hidden shortcuts that will save them time and money,
etc.

Different IM strategies Part 1

1. The "Money Offering" Strategy

The "(no.) people have already offered us money to reserve the
product..." strategy tells your prospects that your product must be hot if
people are trying to make sure that you hold their spot before it's
released. You can mention that you told the people they couldn't do
that and they will just have to be present when the product goes live so
it's fair for everyone.


2. The "URL Privilege" Strategy
The "don't share this link with anyone..." strategy tells your prospects
that they should be privileged to be on your list/web site because only
they know about the special URL. It could be that the web site has a
free product just for them, a discount to a particular product, a sign up
form to your affiliate program, etc. You can make the link sound extra
special by telling them it's against your terms of service if they share it
with anyone or make the sign/click on/agree to a nondisclosure contact
before they get to see the web site.



3. The "Electric Discount" Strategy
The "I'll take the amount off the physical version..." strategy tells your
prospect that you will be releasing a physical version of your product
that is related to the electronic version they already bought. You are
also saying that you will take the price they paid for the electric version
off the price of your upcoming physical product. So, non buyers of the
electric version will have to pay a higher price for the physical version
and they won't.



4. The "Future Warning" Strategy
The "this may be my only chance to warn you before..." strategy tells
your prospects that they may not face the future without reading your
advertisement. When you warn people about something it's usually bad
so people take notice. You could warn them about your competition's
product, about an upcoming price increase to one of your products, an
event in the world or your industry that could affect them from gaining
their desired benefit, etc.



5. The "Controversial Ending" Strategy
The "this will help end the controversy in your life..." strategy tells your
prospects that your product will relive the tension and frustration they
are personal having or with someone else in their life. People want to
heal mental and/or physical battles with themselves or
arguements/disagreements/bad relationships that they are having with
others. Usually people's controversy is related to a product benefit that
they aren't getting. You just need to show them how your product can
help end their specific controversy

TRAFFIC METHODS PART 20

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is when someone comes across a website and then bookmarks it
for future reference. In the world that we live in, people don’t just want to keep what
they like from others. In fact, the sooner a website is added as a bookmark, the better
it is because that means a lot more visitors will come to your website.


Digg and StumbleUpon are social bookmarking sites, but differences abound in both
of them. Digg is mainly for the general audience, who want o know about various
things. StumbleUpon helps to define niches so that a whirlpool of targeted traffic can
visit your Internet offering.


The world that we live in is the world of Web 2.0. People have got all the options
needed to find out about products on the Internet before they decide to purchase it.
This is where social bookmarking comes in handy. If people genuinely like a product,
they will surely recommend it to others.

TRAFFIC METHODS PART 19

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/) is one more in the league of social
bookmarking sites that intrepid Internet marketers cannot afford to ignore. This is a
site where you can make people stumble upon your blog, regardless of whether they
are consciously looking forward to it or not.


The way to begin with StumbleUpon is to first have a blog that is rich in content and
information. It is great if the blog is set within a particular niche. Once the blog is
ready, StumbleUpon is used on it. This is in the form of a toolbar that you download
and install from their website.


Once the StumbleUpon toolbar has been installed on the blog, people will begin
rating your blog on it. The higher the rating it gets, the better are your chances of
getting noticed on the Internet.
StumbleUpon is very close in outlook to Digg, but while Digg is broader in nature,
catering to all sectors of society, StumbleUpon is mainly used by niche marketers.

TRAFFIC METHODS PART 18

Digg

Digg (http://www.digg.com/) is a social networking website with a difference. The
main hero here is the content, which are routine articles. Digg is a site where people
can find things that they like and then recommend them to other people. These
people generally promote things that they think their friends or contacts would like.
If you think about it, Digg can be exploited to the hilt if you have great content that
you are sure people will be talking about.


There is an internal ranking system on Digg. The higher the number of times your
content is dugg, the greater is its popularity and the better are the chances that it will
make the front page of Digg. The system is to put up your content and then wait for
24 hours to see how many votes it gets. This is the decider for it to be displayed on
the main page or not.


The amount of popularity that Digg can bring about for your website is astounding.
Getting a jump of about 10,000 to 15,000 visitors is quite natural, but there are
people who have got as many as 200,000 extra visitors through Digg.


The content that you put up on Digg is in the form of an article. The article should be
something that people like to read about. Some of the best things that you can put up
on Digg include:-


→ Breaking News
→ How-to Guides
→ Informative Lists
→ Stories
→ Facts and Figures
…and such. 


You could write anything as long as it is relevant to your industry and
you are sure that people will like to read about it.
Once they do, you are in the reckoning. People will digg what you have written, which
will make it popular to others and you will gain better visibility.

TRAFFIC METHODS PART 17

Craigslist

Craigslist (http://www.craigslist.com/) is a highly reputed classified ads site which is
a formidable marketing tool because it can bring in a huge volume of traffic. Today,
Craigslist is widely known as the most popular advertising website known to humans.
It is a city specific classifieds search, but it has a huge approach – at current
standing, Craigslist ads are specific to more than 450 cities and new cities are
constantly added. There are about 7 billion page views on Craigslist every month and
about 20 million people visit the sites advertised on Craigslist every month. All this
makes it very easy to see why Craigslist is one the most favored marketing tools.
When you make a Craigslist ad, most of the same rules apply as they do for other ad
websites. You have to make sure that the headline is catchy, you have good meta tags
defined, words are few and to the point, etc. With Craigslist you can build a back link
to your main website and you can use a Do Follow tag. When you link the ad to your
main website, you have to provide an anchor text. The anchor text is selected after
careful consideration and is very much relevant to the ad website.

Google Analytics (http://analytics.google.com/) is an important tool that you can use
in conjunction with Craigslist. It helps you know where your traffic is coming from.
Once you know which your traffic hotspots are, you could exclude the ads that are
not bringing in a good amount of traffic and focus on those that do.
Posting ads on Craigslist does not just help in making your website visible on the
Internet; it also helps in improving its SEO. That is because as more people begin to
click on your ad, your popularity on the Internet increases.
Craigslist is one of the best things that a marketer can do; you must surely not miss
out on this one.

TRAFFIC METHODS PART 16

USFreeAds

A lot of Internet marketers speak very favorably about USFreeAds
(http://www.usfreeads.com/) and not without reason. This is a classified ads site
that marketers use to drive traffic to their website. The site is used for promoting
almost any kind of product. You create an HTML code for your ad and post it on the
site from where it gets promoted. This is where the site brings the visitors from.


You will need to become a member on USFreeAds; it is not a free service. In order to
become a member, there are three different methods. There is a gold membership
that costs $10 a year and a premium membership that costs that amount a month.
The third method is a free membership but that is very restrictive in the way you can
generate traffic through it.


The ad is no different from other ads that you create around the Internet. Even here
you make a headline and tag the ad so that the search engines find and rank it. There
is also a content part in the ad where you put the main body of the ad.
One of the reasons why USFreeAds is great for generating traffic is that the ads that
are created on this never expire. Also, the website is held in high esteem by Google,
often shooting the ads to number one position in a short time.

Traffic Methods Part 15

Squidoo

Though Squidoo marketing is a very new concept over the Internet, people have
warmed to it pretty quickly, because of the various benefits that it has. The novelty
factor is one of the prime benefits because not many marketers are using Squidoo yet
and hence competition through this method is low. There’s also the point that
Squidoo has got an amazing rank on Google already. If you have a Squidoo page, or a
Squidoo lens as they call it, the chances of it getting ranked well are high.
Squidoo (http://www.squidoo.com/) is basically a website where you can put your
own content and promote your product or service. The page you create is called as a
Squidoo lens. You post content here, with your website link and then wait for the
people to come to you.


Why does Squidoo work? For many reasons actually, but one of the reasons is that it
relies on content more than anything else. Various other methods have become
popular for traffic generation and then have fizzled out, but the novelty with Squidoo
is that it goes back to the past when content marketing was king. It still is, and that is
amply shown by the popularity of Squidoo in bringing traffic.
Of course, the general content rules apply. Write great informative content and
consolidate it by using great keywords.

TRAFFIC METHODS PART 14

Yahoo! Answers

Yahoo! Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com/) is a place where people ask questions
and other people answer them. In return they get points. The points that they get can
be used for asking more questions; they have no real world value. However, this is an
amazing way to get your queries answered, because you are mostly asking experts to
help you out with things that you don’t know.


This is also a great place for marketers because they can flaunt their knowledge. If
someone asks a question pertaining to your line of business, you can answer them
and improve your credibility. You also get business exposure, which is the most
important thing, because you can post your business link in the answer you provide.
If you have a Yahoo! account already, you can use the same for your Yahoo! Answers
campaign. You have to merely search for questions (which you can do with
keywords) and then post your replies on them.
Make sure that your replies sound like an expert’s view on the subject. This is a great
way of convincing people about your expertise; don’t let it pass by.

Traffic Methods Part 13

Giving Away

Give, and you shall receive. Now, where have we heard this before?
Whether this adage works in all aspects of life or not is a matter of personal opinion,
but on the Internet it always works. When you give something away, it helps in
bringing in better prospects to your online business.


But, what can you give away? It is highly important that your giveaway is something
or value. It should be something that a receiver would cherish, because this is what
adds to your credibility as a service provider.


You might be having a question in your mind right now – how does a giveaway help
in bringing traffic or business to your website?


This happens through lead capture methods. When you give something away, you
put a link where people can download the product from. This link takes them
through a lead capture page, also known as a squeeze page. Here they are asked to
opt in with their email id so that they can get more such freebies in future.


Assurances are made to the effect that their email id won’t be sold over to anyone
else and that spam won’t be sent to them. People usually give their links because they
know they will be getting something valuable for free. When you get these leads, you
can market them through other ways such as email marketing.


So, what are the things that you can give away? Even giveaways undergo surges and
ebbs in their popularity on the Internet. Currently, the best things to give away
include the following:-


→ eBooks
→ Newsletter Subscriptions
→ Free Offers on Products from Partner Sites
→ Informative Listings

Traffic Methods Part 12

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is not just an Internet-based concept; it applies to the real world
also. Fundamentally, viral marketing happens when someone who has used a
product speaks about it favorably to another person. If you watch a movie and
recommend it to your friend, you are virally marketing the movie. On the Internet, if
you post a favorable comment about a product or a service, you are virally marketing
it. In fact, on the Internet even if you criticize a product, you are virally marketing it.
There’s a reason behind that. Whatever your comment is, positive or negative, it does
one thing – it increases the recall value of the product. People begin to identify the
brand better. The product becomes more searchable over the Internet. Hence, viral
marketing always works.


All social networking sites are avenues for virally marketing products. Your blogs are
places where your product gets virally marketed. This also happens on forums and
video and photo sharing sites. Your articles are tools of viral marketing too. So, you
see that viral marketing is not an isolated method. It is, in fact, an umbrella term for
the various marketing practices you employ.


Viral marketing works because it tells potential buyers about the product so that they
begin thinking seriously about buying the product. It improves the recall value of a
product and makes it more visible. On the Internet, a product that is visible is a hit.

Traffic Methods Part 11

Podcasting

Despite the fact that podcasting has been around for some time now, not many
marketers are using it yet. Due to that reason, there is still the newness factor
associated with it, which works to your advantage actually. This is still a new age
technology which can bring a lot of targeted traffic to your door if you would let them
in. Here is a brief look into how podcasting works.


Basically, podcasting is like having a radio channel of your own on the Internet. You
do not have to bow down to any rules and regulations because none apply. You
simply have your audio content which you are beaming to a lot of people on the
Internet. These people are your audience. They have, in fact, asked to be marketed.
They want to know about your products. When you podcast to them, there is a very
high chance that these people will convert to being your visitors.


So why are these people hot traffic for you? The reason behind that is that podcasting
works only for people who have subscribed to your RSS feeds. When you put up an
audio segment, those audio files automatically get downloaded to the audio devices
of the people who have subscribed to the feeds.


You need special software to create a podcast. This software is simply known as
podcasting software or a podcasting mixer. Basically it is a tool that converts an
audio file into a file into a digital file that can be downloaded over the Internet. The
following is a list of two of the most popular podcasting software:-


Feed for All (http://www.feedforall.com/)
Podcast Studio (http://thepodcaststudio.com/)

Using podcasting sets you apart from the usual breed of Internet marketers. This is
certainly a method that you need to seriously consider to improve your prospects.