Resident Funk Blog

How can you take a basic product and add pizzazz to your marketing? How can you add buzz to your simple product and elevate yourself above the competition and begin to build a brand from such efforts? There are ways to do this of course and no it is not easy, it takes a little strategic thinking, some luck and some marketing creativity.

For instance lets say your company sells ice. Recently while traveling in the Northeast after taking the Ferry back from Nova Scotia to Maine I found myself in about the worst weather I had ever experienced in that region. It was hot and thunderstorms with wind and this was the third week of raining, it was flooding everywhere. My freezer in my motor home could not keep up making ice for my Ice Tea and drinks. So, I stopped in a Wal-Mart to buy ice.

Ice was $1.25 and I thought okay, no big deal. But then I looked at the bag and it said Premium Ice. You see, I do not need premium ice; I just want some frozen water you know what I mean? Nevertheless, I looked at the ice cubes, they were smaller than normal, which is nice, because I can eat them as I drink, remember the weather was mega hot and humidity was 100%, as it was raining.

There was nothing Premium about this frozen water except it was more expensive than at most Wal-Marts. Premium Price I thought and had a laugh over it. No harm, no foul really. Then after pouring the ice I noticed that the other end was a zip lock bag? Cool, I thought, so I tied off the other end used the zip lock until it was used up.

Ice is frozen water and lets face it; it does not get any simpler than that in the way of products. By changing the bag, they gave me more value as a customer and really that is a Premium worthy of the extra $ .25 for the ice, and yet that bag difference did not cost them $ .25 so they made additional profit and I am a happy camper in the motor home. Consider all this in 2006.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington

Want to make money while you sleep? I bet you do! Then you have to advertise your website and get it in front of targeted visitors. Millions of people all around the world at ALL times of the day come to the internet and use search engines to search for information, products and services. You can have access to a constant stream of visitors 24 hours a day.

Pay per click (PPC) is a type of advertising method that allows your website to be displayed at the top of the search engine results. Pay per click website promotion is very popular because it can quickly bring targeted traffic to your website. You will pay a pre-determined amount (bid price) every time your ad is clicked by a prospect. You have total control of the amount of clicks you are willing to pay for so you can adhere to your advertising budget. Some website owners exclusively promote their website using pay-per-click and make a very good profit.

Pay per click advertising is by far the fastest and shortest route to getting traffic to your website. If your website theme is gardening, you can bid for the keyword “gardening” and your website will show up at the very top! You will be listed before any of the free listings.

You should be getting excited now! You do have other free options such as article marketing of getting your website to the top of the search engines and you should be employing those methods also. While those methods are free, they also take more time. Pay per click search advertising gets you results instantly and the best part is that you are only paying for results!

The main idea here is that if, for example, you have to spend $1 for a click that produces a $50 sale, that is not bad at all. You are spending LESS money to make MORE money. Determine the maximum daily amount that you are willing to spend so you can grow your business in a manageable pace and stick to your advertising budget. Otherwise, you will be spending MORE money to make LESS money and that is completely backwards!

You are probably saying, “Sign me up now!” Hold on a minute though, now the downside. Unfortunately, you can also lose money by using pay per click advertising. While it is easy to get started with pay per click advertising, you must learn techniques to maximize your profits. If you can master these techniques, you will be on your way to a very profitable future. The key to success with pay per click is bidding on profitable keywords and writing effective ads. Use a keyword search tool to help you with keyword research.

Google AdWords is probably the best pay per click advertising opportunity available on the internet. However, there are other good pay per click search engines that are great when you are on a small budget. It is possible to pay as little as one cent for a click with some of them so include some of them in your pay per click advertising campaign and experiment to see which ones gives you the best results.

Nina Greene is owner of BennettWealthSystems.com and writes on a variety of subjects. To learn more about this topic Nina recommends you visit: http://www.BennettWealthSystems.com

After Setting up many successful adwords campaigns for Australian businesses, I have noticed these common Adwords mistakes:

1). Not enough keywords. Too many people have less than 100 keywords. I have built huge lists out using free software as this: Or even better software here. Give your ad a chance.

2). Not using [exact match] or “phrase match” here is a free tool to use with your new keyword lists. Most people have the keyword without wrapping.

3). People use only 1 ad. You have to write at least 2 ads, so you can constantly dump the worst performing one. You need to measure what is going on. Split testing is a major key for success. You need to rewrite every ad once a day.

4). Daily budgets are too low. Rarely does your daily budget hit maximum level. So by increasing it you will appear more daily.

5). Not enough keywords in the ads themselves. Many business owners only have the major keywords in the headline, and many more do not even have the major keyword headline. This is a major mistake.

6). Lack of understanding of impressions. Impressions are the amount of times that people are searching the internet per keyword. Click on the impression on the top, look at all time history and find out which keywords are searched the most. Then make sure those keywords appear through the ads.

7). Not using popular impressions for 1 campaign. Say you find that the keyword “making money” is popular (it is). Make a new campaign just for that one keyword. With exact match [make money]. That’s it. 1 keyword in the campaign.

8) Having too different many keywords in 1 campaign. You should have one base keyword per group. Wealth keywords being in one group for example, make money keywords in another group.

Then delete it out of your big list campaign. You will know exactly what you will have to bid to be on top spot per campaign. I always drop it down so I am not paying top dollar.

Then you can repeat for the top 20 words. Make sure you put the keyword in each ad, and have at least 2 ads per campaign.

9). Not using excitement in their ads.. fast.. amazing tips.. secrets.. inside information.. fast track..

10) People are using exact amounts in their clicks. Most people did at 10 cents, 20, 30 , 40, $1.00. Try increasing to 0.11, 0.21, 0.32.. You get the idea. 1 or 2 cents extra puts you higher than the guy stuck on the exact amount.

11). Not capitalising their display URL. Have a look what’s stronger.. www.australianonlineseo.com or www.AustralianOnlineSeo.com Your eye gets drawn to the one with the most capital letter. Just a note only use caps for the start of each word.

12) Do it themselves. One of the most deadly mistakes is that many Australian businesses do their own Adwords. They burn a lot of cash and most often the campaigns simply are not effective. They must seek Adwords management from a team that has runs on the board. That way, the business can concentrate on what they do best.

Australian Adwords Management Is a service that Andrew Clacy provides to his clients. He has helped many Australian businesses with http://www.australianonlineseo.com/adwords.html he has helped many businesses with Web Services. To reach Andrew or to book him at to speak at a business, please go to his website http://www.australianonlineseo.com

I took it for granted that people implicitly understood the difference between Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. However, I had to change my thinking when, in a meeting, I got asked this very question; what’s the difference?

In my view the root of the answer lies in the early days of the Search Engines. We did not have the Google AdWords and AdSense or the MSN AdCenter or Overture. What we had were Search Engines and the art of making it to the top of the pile was a very technical one, hence the phrase Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization by definition is therefore a mostly technical skill which revolves around ensuring that what we code, how we code, ensures that our site appears as high on the search rankings as possible for our given keyword or key phrases.

The landscape changed quite dramatically with the introduction of paid advertising. With products like Adsense and AdWords we now enter the realm of Search Engine Marketing. Advertisers now have the ability to drive their visibility on the search engines right to the top of page one on Google, simply by bidding for their respective keyword.

Search Engine Marketing by definition is therefore no longer a technical skill, but now has all the aspects of marketing a product or service. You are faced with the same questions as you would be if you were marketing in the physical world. Factors like brand, price, positioning and unique selling point become much more important.

A business who wishes to establish an online presence would be silly to ignore the basic fundamentals of Search Optimization even if they have the budget to drive traffic to their site through Search Marketing. My recommendation to any company who are going to create a web presence and intend selling a product is that you need both.

The other question we need to answer is whether the two are mutually exclusive, inclusive or is there some overlap? There is a definite overlap between the two and the easiest way to look at this is the “keyword” link. In classic Search Optimization one would optimize based on selected keywords which one wants to rank for. Often use would be made of tools such as Keyword Density Analyzers to determine what percentage of total text does a specific keyword or phrase take up.

In Search Marketing we still focus heavily on keywords, since we need to bid for those same keywords in terms of our online advertising. In fact the entire keyword scenario moves up a gear as we try to uncover a broader base of keywords that will bring in targeted traffic at a reduced cost per click. The key to Search Marketing becomes exploiting the “long tail of search”, which refers to the larger selection of less frequently searched terms.

Ken Metcalf is a professional engineer, also holding a business commerce degree. He writes articles in his spare time on technical topics ranging from low level programming to The SEO Blog which deals with search engine optimization. For more information on using Search Engine Technology visit The SEO pages here

Companion marketing can make money online for you. All you need is to stretch your creative wings. The trick to companion marketing is trying to look at the big picture. By all means you need to focus your efforts on advertising in places that are directly related to your product or service. However, don’t stop there! You can make money online by advertising tag along or side services.

Think about a few of the things a new gardener would need: tools, seeds, top soil, fertilizer and plant food, pest control, watering tips, planting tips and even gardening clothing. Anyone who is interested in growing great tomatoes might be interested in knowing that companion planting lemon basil will enrich the taste of their tomatoes and possibly protect the tomatoes from some pests.

Companion planting and companion advertising work the same way. They are not the same thing but they work together for the same end. That end is, of course, helping you make money online. It is in your perspective at least. The tomatoes probably don’t care if you make money online or not.

Seriously, do not limit your creative juices just to your product or service. Chances are you have put a lot of thought into what you are offering and it will sell itself. However, if you want to “make money online” and really make money online to support your family then you need to be even more creative with your marketing.

There is one cardinal rule about advertising, know your audience. When you are placing the ads for your business, are you placing them in appropriate places? Are you trying to sell necklaces where people are talking about camping? That is not going to make much money online for you. You need to place your ads in appropriate places.

However, what constitutes an appropriate place may surprise you. If you are selling jewelry to women, you may find that ads places on other beauty sites like cosmetics or nail care can make money online. If you are selling information about workshop tips and tricks, the obvious choice would be to go to places where people are talking about woodworking but what about places where people talk about exotic wood or the fine points of particular tools? If you are offering home decorating tips, a place that works with home organization might be very lucrative. Home office ergonomics might offer a great place to offer home office organization services. Tips on growing organic vegetables would make money online with Vegans, vegetarians and environmentally friendly groups. Products associated with fashion can cross-sell with jewelry, hair trends, nail care and other personal care places.

Find out more on how companion marketing can make money online effectively.