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› INTERNET UPDATE
The STATE OF THE INTERNET The Upcoming Facebook IPO
two months of testing. Mike Hoefflinger, Facebook’s customer marketing director, disclosed the metrics while announcing his company’s premium ads upgrade - among other items - at the recent Facebook Marketing Conference.
Facebook is set to float its shares through an Initial Public Offer (IPO). It hopes to raise 5 billion dollars through the IPO, to enable it expand its operations and consolidate its position as the world’s premier social media website. Analysts “We are evolving from advertising to stories,” estimate the company to be valued at between 75 Hoefflinger said. “Ads are good, but stories are billion dollars and 100 billion dollars. Its founder, better.” Mark Zuckerberg could easily be worth $28 billion Katie O’Brien, Ben & Jerafter the IPO. ry’s Global Digital Marketing Manager reported on a The move would give the social Facebook business channel network, whose sales almost video that they had expedoubled to US$3.71 billion last rienced a 4x increase in year, a pipeline of more than reach as a result in running US$5 billion in possible borrowFacebook Premium. She ings. That compares with a realso advises interaction ported US$3 billion credit line with ‘Likes’, ‘Comments’ for Google Inc, the most valuben and jerry’s facebook premium and ‘Shares’ are up over two able US Internet company. times. From a marketing mix analysis she reportWe believe that the demand for Facebook’s stock ed that from every $1 they invested in Facebook is going to be so high that most investors will not they saw $3 in increased sales. worry about the fundamentals of the stock because of a want to own part of the Internet Pow- With new ‘Premium on Facebook’ ads, marketers can expand their reach on the social network by erhouse. paying for a video, a coupon or other message to Facebook filed for the IPO last month, pursuing appear on the homepages of Facebook users, on what may be the largest Internet offering on re- the log-out screen and even within users’ newscord. This could place Facebook as the fourth feeds. Until now the newsfeed had been free of largest IPO ever in the U.S., behind companies paid marketing messages. like Visa, General Motors and AT&T Wireless. “Our vision for marketing is that it is as good as any of the content you and I see on our newsfeed from a friend or family member,” Facebook Vice Facebook Launches Premium President of Global Marketing Solutions Carolyn Facebook’s new premium ads have been creating Everson told roughly 1,000 guests in the audito5 to 10 times more click-throughs and a 3X ROI lift rium of Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural when compared to previous units after more than History on Wednesday.
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Allowing paid company posts onto users’ newsfeeds is a risk for Facebook because newsfeeds could get overwhelmed with advertising messages, Williamson added. “Facebook advertising in the past was off to the side,” she said. “Now Facebook is taking the bold step of putting advertising right in the mix between photos of babies and updates on trips to restaurants.”
long as it’s not before the year 1800. For instance, Coke’s Timeline begins in 1886. The new brand pages look and function like the user Timelines that have been rolling out for weeks.
I believe that the business timelines will have little to no effect on business ROI as it’s only a small percentage of consumers who are actively concerned about a companies history. Perhaps Facebook is missing the mark here as the consumers When companies buy a “premium” ad, they are really care about their own ‘wants’ and ‘needs’, paying for their message to show up in several not a companies history, but time will tell. places on Facebook, including on the righthand side of a user’s homepage, when people log out The change will be available to all Facebook usand, potentially, in the newsfeed. Facebook’s ers by the end of March, about 3 months after the algorithm determines whether or not an ad will feature was fully rolled out to personal accounts. show up in a user’s newsfeed, so there is no guarantee for companies that it will. Facebook’s Premium Ads, announced officially at Facebook’s “fMC” on February 29, combines the strengths of Facebook (where connections, conversations, and community flourish) with the triad of marketing disciplines (paid, earned, and owned media so central to every leading brand’s media strategy). Premium Ads not only puts a brand’s page and relevant post in front of the right audience, but it leverages an individual’s connections, i.e., “social context” to amplify its relevance and trust. The result, according to Facebook’s internal testing, is expected to delight advertisers. Specifically, according to Facebook, Premium Ads are:
Magento’s eCommerce Platform Surpasses 4 Million Downloads
Magento, the popular open-source e-commerce platform that debuted in 2007, recently surpassed 4 million downloads of its free Community edition, Roy Rubin, founding chief executive advises. Magento Clients range in size from merchants doing less than $1 million a year in sales to more than $100 million.
• 80 percent more likely to be remembered • Drive 40 percent higher engagement • Significantly increase purchase intent There will be six types of premium ads: Photo, Video, Question, Status, Event, and Link.
Facebook Timeline for Businesses Facebook also unveiled the new Timeline-styled Facebook Pages for brands, businesses, and organizations this week. The pages allow brands to tell their stories going back to their founders – as
magento.com
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Acquired by eBay in 2011, the platform is now taking aim at larger technology providers.
ture.”
do so for the next few years.
Online Ad Spending to Surpass Print for First Time in From the Desk of the 2012 In many cases, companies and Editor independent technology developers start off with the free Community edition to explore Magento’s open-source technology before migrating to the Enterprise edition.
For the first time in U.S. history, marketers are projected to spend more on online advertising than on advertising in print magazines and newspapers.
You will notice a new ‘look and feel’ to Internet Marketing Magazine this month. As our audience continues to grow and evolve we plan to grow and evolve with it. A special thanks goes out to Juanita Field for her exceptional design skills.
According to a recent study released by eMarketer, online Amazon Lowers Prices for advertising is expected to genit’s Web-hosted Services erate $39.5 billion in sales this year — a 23.3% increase from You will now find the new full Amazon.com Web Services divi- 2011 — compared to a sum of Gavin Merriman eCommerce sion announced yesterday that it Strategy Interview audio in the is lowering the prices of its vari‘Audio Expert Interview’ section ous web-hosted services anyof the member’s area. Gavin’s where from about 10% to 42%. knowledge and experience in the eCommerce area is amazing The price reductions apply to and is well worth a listen as well the company’s Amazon Elastic as a read. It’s free, so if you Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon haven’t been sent your link to Relational Database Service the member’s area please feel (RDS), Amazon ElastiCache and free to register for it today at Amazon Elastic Map Reduce serhttp://internetmarketingmag. vices. Users of the EC2 service, net/become-member/ which allows users to tap into Online ad spend eMarketer graph Amazon’s web-hosted servers Keep a look out in next months for computing power and charg- $33.8 billion on print. issue for an eye opening session es by the hour or on a contract I recorded with Armand Morin basis, will see their rates drop Spending on TV, however, ap- on ‘Doubling Your Sales Online depending on use and region. pears largely unaffected by the in 2012’, that you won’t want to growth of online. Spending on miss. “Some companies work hard to TV advertising still dwarfs online lower their costs so they can ad spending and looks set to still Until next time… Wishing you pocket more margin. That’s a the best of success online strategy that a lot of the traditional technology companies have employed for years, and Greg Cassar it’s a reasonable business model. It’s just not ours,” Amazon says. “We want customers of all sizes, from start-ups to enterprises to government agencies, Greg Cassar to be able to use AWS to lower Internet Marketing Strategist their technology infrastruc& Editor – Internet Marketing Magazine
GregCassar
Online ad spend tv eMarketer graph
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› ADVERTISEMENT
› EXPERT INTERVIEW
GAVIN MERRIMAN
eCommerce Strategy Mastery An Interview by Internet Marketing Strategist Greg Cassar Gavin Merriman is a leading eCommerce strategist with over a decade of digital experience across various industry sectors for major brands in both the UK and now also Australia. Gavin has a proven history of growing visitors and sales, whilst improving user experience. Gavin is also a regular speaker/panellist at industry events around the globe. He is currently the Head of eCommerce of Universal Music Australia. With a background in SEO in the mid 90’s Gavin went on to learn all parts of the eCommerce trade in the 2000’s through consulting roles in the UK with the search agency Stickyeyes and running major digital news sites at the Guardian Media Group. Gavin then went on to be the Group Head of eCommerce Strategy for Shop Direct, which is the second biggest online retailer after Amazon in the UK with approximately $1.7 billion in revenue. Greg: Gavin, when you were with the Stickyeyes Consulting Group in the UK one of the things that really stood out for me was your great wins on the SEO and the traffic front. You took O2’s SEO uniques from 100,000 to 1.2 million in just 12 months, including rankings on the mobile phone type terms. What was your key learnings from that experience?
but they wouldn’t actually want to change the homepage or change the layout of their site to have it so it’s search friendly. Whereas what we were able to do with O2 is that they were going through re-development so they just followed the guidance in terms of the information architecture and the page structure and page titles. And, yes, they reaped the results. I think every major site now pretty much builds SEO into the heart of it. But for back then, it was proof that that was the way we should be doing it. We really identified like some of the main terms, like mobile phone, making sure that they were in the hierarchy of the site, and that there was enough weight that had gone onto the decent folder structure, and making sure that the keyword frequency was correct on the site.
Gavin: The key learning for me was just proof Also going for the long tail. So, instead of just of the value of making sure SEO was built into the focusing on the one or two big terms, optimising actual fabric of the site itself. through the site for some smaller keywords, picking up that long tail traffic really worked well. Back then there were still a lot of the big brands who were trying to build SEO around their site Greg: Often that longer tail traffic can be key instead of thinking about SEO into the heart of buying phrases, especially if they’re searching for the site. So, they’d have their normal site or the exact brand name of something or to the exstore and then, around the edges, they’d get an tent of that. So, yes, that really can work well SEO agency to build content and generate links and convert better.
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pact the design has on sales. Ultimately, the customer does decide because the customer will determine which variant they like best and that’s the one which we go with. It really does let the customer decide what we do.
isme.com
Greg: When I look at all the different things you’ve done in the past, the role of yours that interests me most was when you were working as the head of eCommerce strategy at the Shop Direct Group. There obviously were, under your creative control, some massive eCommerce stores, including Woolworths.co.uk, littlewoods.com, very.com, isme. com and, obviously, the list goes on. Like you said, second only to Amazon as far as sales in the UK. I know you’re very strong in the user experience area. How did you go about engineering a better user experience for these site visitors and shoppers over time so that they enjoyed the site, wanted to stay longer and, ultimately purchased more? Gavin: We already had a usability team in Shop Direct when I joined but they were constantly battling with creative because creative would want to create something that looked high fashion and impactful, with
So starting with AB testing, we then move into the multi variant testing after that, to try and refine down and, you know, make sure that all the variables convert nicely together.
It’s funny actually that often the thing that has the biggest difference is something you wouldn’t expect at all, just like a slight difference in buttons or by dropping a little basket symbol onto the button or changing the colour of It. It’s the small things So the key thing I did really was that seem to make the bigger try and drive through a group impact. You can never secondwide creation of a digital board, guess what’s going to happen. which hadn’t existed before, where you’ve got all of the difGreg: Personalisation - It’s not ferent people, from the buying something that we’ve heard a and merchandising teams to lot about in the past but defithe strategy teams to the brand nitely will hear more and more teams, to the creative teams, about in the near future. I all together so that they then know that it can have a masfiltered in their requirements sive impact on the conversion through this one group. of an eCommerce store. Have you had much success with They were then prioritised and personalisation over time? they would fall into usability testing. So once there were some Gavin: Yes, definitely. We, prototypes created, they’d fall at Shop Direct, tried three difinto some usability testing and ferent personalisation engines. then results would come back, One of them was an in-house so the customers were always version, whereby it was homeput into the heart of it. made really by some pretty bright mass PHD types, and two So instead of it being just usother industry offerings. ability test, it’s then also conversion testing to see what imloads of graphics. And then we were also battling with what the brand teams that wanted. They all shared the same ambitions but didn’t necessarily know the val- ue of the usability or UX.
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We tested that against two others, one from ATG, which was obviously the eCommerce platform we were using, as well as one from another well known analytics company.
of social graph. I know people are trying it now but there’s so much rich information within social media about people’s likes and habits that could potentially be mined. Product reviews are important also. For some people product reviews might be an absolutely essential part of their decision making process when buying, whereas for other people it might have very little to no impact. It might actually be seeing bigger, better product pictures and bigger product descriptions.
very.com
We then studied which performed best in terms of the sales generated from alternative products recommended on product page. We saw a big uplift actually. It was interesting. The analytics one performed worse. The version that was the in-house version actually performed second best with ATG Recommends coming out on top. And that same engine then was used within email campaigns. So we sent personalisation of emails out, which had some huge impact on the sales and uptake that went from those emails.
You probably haven’t got quite sophisticated enough solutions but once you start to map in things that monitor mouse position and where people’s focus is going and then you start to do some AB tests that layer that in then I think you get to really interesting sort of personalisation where it’s not just the products and promotions that are personalised. It’s the entire journey that’s personalised.
Greg: So it remembers whether someone’s a male or a female and what sorts of products or services they’re interested in? Gavin: Yes, exactly, and what products they’ve also bought, some collaborative filtering to look at other people who’ve bought similar products, their buying habits and perhaps even if you’ve got some information about family members. I think the main thing for me is not so much how much evidence I’ve seen so far that personalisation works. It’s more the potential of it and I think that’s still relatively untapped, even with some of the bigger eCommerce engines. There’s a lot more that can be done and will be done over time. You very rarely see, for example, that much use
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littlewoods.com
Greg: You said something there that I hadn’t really thought about before which was the integration with the social graph. For those who are not familiar with what Gavin’s talking about, it’s for example within Facebook where there’s the new timeline and people are basically spelling out their whole life and everything that they’re into and not into and all that sort of stuff. It’s all information that can potentially be used and it looks like, from Facebook’s terms and service and privacy, you can pretty much
have applications interact with that stuff without even the user’s permission. Is your understanding that’s the way it works as well? Gavin: Yes, they connect with you. So we obviously want to encourage, and a big part of our social strategy would be encouraging our customers to connect with us through Facebook. So, once they’ve done that connection, then we request their permission and, depending on how they respond to that, you can access more or less information about those customers and, if they allow you full permission and you find a way of incentivising that for them as well, then you have a lot more information.
Gavin: No, we used ATG at Shop Direct and it was an absolutely great solution. It did an awful lot but then it comes with a really big price tag and I think the same is probably true with WebSphere, which I’ve never actually used, but I know a fair few friends who use WebSphere and they seem to share the same sort of opinion that I’ve got on ATG. Magento’s interesting, obviously because it’s like Wordpress but for eCommerce, being far more open source. And it looks like a very good solution.
Greg: Yes, we definitely like Magento, their Enterprise Edition is $12k a year compared to literally hundreds and thousands of dollars a year for the other solutions. I think if you’re building So, although someAmazon then, it might one might not have not be the right solution, signed up for our but if you’ve got a brand REM or our Lady name and you’re transGaga or any other forming your site from a artist’s database normal site to an eComand we don’t know merce store then it’s a that they’re intervery, very good way to go ested, we might and it seems quite robust. Fcebook Sign be able to see that One thing we’ve found is they’re actually a that laying out the design follower on Facebook or, that they’ve Tweeted right from a server point of view is crucial so that something about one of those artists. So then you get your site performing well. we can use that to say, “Great. Okay, we know this person’s a fan, let’s personalise the products Greg: We were talking a little bit before and promotions to make them more relevant to about social media integration and social media them”. definitely has matured and is very much mainstream now, especially following the massive Greg: Yes, which ultimately is going to re- growth of Facebook and, to a lesser extent, I sult in more conversion. But you were talking guess, Twitter. For organisations that want to about ATG before, which is obviously a technol- get into the social space and know that strategiogy that Oracle bought in the last year or two. cally they need to do something there but they The other really big players in the eCommerce want to focus on what’s the 80/20 of it. When space really would be IBM WebSphere and also really thinking about ROI, what are some of the Magento eCommerce, while not as big at the things that can be implemented that can be eftop end of town, certainly is a more cost ef- fective? fective solution, I would say, for the majority of organisations. Have you got any particular Gavin: I guess it really depends on the brand. preference as far as platforms that you really It’s going to be quite different for some fast movlike or dislike? ing consumer goods than it will be necessarily for
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us but I definitely think for retailers. If they’re operating in the space we are then, yes, the focus should be on ‘on site social’ and it’s often overlooked.
leaving. It’s about making sure you strip it down as much as possible.
For a tablet, you’ve obviously got far more space... and you’ve also got to think about the I think there’s a tendency to try and build Face- times these are likely to be used. For a mobile book likes and see Facebook likes as the be-all it’s far more likely to be dead time where someand the end-all whereas, actually, really, it’s en- one’s perhaps sitting on a bus and they thinks “I gagement that’s important. It’s when you’ve got may as well utilise this to buy the CD I was thinkyour advocates, your fans talking to each other ing about” whereas, with a tablet, they’re probacross your Facebook page or across your plat- ably more than likely sitting at home watching TV form that you’ve really sort of hit the bingo. and think, “Okay, actually I want to buy.” You hear a track or something or you want to go and Our focus definitely in terms of the 80/20 where buy some clothes. So it’s you want a more pleayou get the most value is building ‘on site social’ surable sort of shopping experience on a tablet and gamification so we can get our customers rat- device. ing the products and services and talking to other fans of artists - which really helps generate SEO Greg: What can you tell us about the Get Music as well and creates a site and really it’s a platsense of community. form, isn’t it, because it It’s not trying to build publishes music to other a social network like In terms of the 80/20 where you places, and how you’re Facebook. It’s just going to grow that at Uniget the most value is building trying to build user versal because it really generated content and ‘on site social’ and gamification is an interesting project some of those tools to so we can get our customers that one? create a better shoprating the products and services Gavin: Yes, it’s a music ping experience. and talking to other fans. store where we sell and Greg: I notice you stock music from all artdo a lot in the mobile ists, both digital and physspace, and when you ical. It’s really, the whole do designs from a mobile point of view, that ethos behind it is ‘it’s by music fans for music you do very much two designs. So one is for the fans’ and it’s a place to get exclusive and deluxe tablet format and one for the Smartphone for- products. So we’re not just trying to be JB Hi-Fi. mat. What sorts of technologies or design considerations do you really believe are key when We’re trying to really appeal to the super fans nailing a mobile strategy for a site or a store? and allow those super fans to connect with other fans. I think it’s about two years old now but I Gavin: I think in terms of the technology, mean I’ve only just joined about four months ago. we’re using a rendering engine, which takes a So we’re going through what is the brand position product feed and site structure for the eCom- on it at the moment and inputting every bit of merce engine and creates a nice user experi- the strategy for rolling out, which includes all of ence for each different device. the things we’ve talked about today – personalisation, social, mobile, making sure we’ve got the So for a mobile, obviously, it’s far smaller. You right products – and hopefully we’re going to be need to design some things like flat forms and able to create a really good brand there and a rejust keep it really simple. It’s more important ally good site. about what you’re taking out than what you’re
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getmusic.com.au
Greg: That’s an interesting project. I wish you the best of luck with that one. I see you’re a keynote speaker at the upcoming iMedia Online Retail Summit in May. What will you be covering at that event?
Also from the Shop Direct experience and what impacts we saw there but then as well as what direct results you can get from social and mobile and how they fit into the broader eCommerce strategy.
Gavin: I think the core focus of it is going to be on talking about some results and what we’ve seen from our social media marketing and also mobile marketing. So by that point, we hopefully would have launched our iPhone, our android apps, our mobile optimised site and Facebook store. So we’ll have some results to share about what impact that’s had and what return on investment we’re seeing from it.
Greg: Thank you very much for your time. We really do appreciate it and wish you the best of luck with both the Get Music store that you’re relaunching and your career in the future online. Gavin: Thank you very much. It’s been my pleasure, and it’s a pleasure to appear in Internet Marketing magazine.
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12 › ADVERTISEMENT
internet marketing magazine march 2012
› EMAIL MARKETING
The Day You Should
NEVER SEND AN EMAIL You Must be Offering Great Value on a Daily Basis Naturally, some won’t like it, and they’ll unsubscribe. And that’s okay, because they were unlikely to buy anything anyway. What will happen is you’ll polarise your prospects. Some might hate you. But you’ll develop raving fans at the same time. And that’s what really matters, because these are the guys spending the money. Oh, I know what you’re going to say... It’s too much. I couldn’t do that. My customers would hate it. That’s what I thought too. Until I started doing it. Most people worry about contacting their customers too much. “I don’t want to annoy them” they say. But the reality is... Virtually every business keeps in touch with their customers too little. Having said that, there is a day when you should NEVER send an email. It’s not Monday. It’s not Tuesday. It’s not Thursday.
Ok, let’s get down to the HOW... How do you come up with ideas to send out DAILY. It’s very simple: You make a decision to do it and then you let this little device in your brain called a Reticular Activating System (RAS) go to work. The RAS is the same thing that makes you notice a particular type of car after you’ve decided to purchase it. All of a sudden that car is everywhere, when it was nowhere before.
It’s any day when you wake up and say… I DON’T WANT TO MAKE ANY MONEY TODAY. So if you’re selling an eBook on ‘How to Grow Organic Food’ and you see the news talking about Think about it: your customers have subscribed to the new stop smoking ban... your service, whatever it is. That’s a reason for an email. A rant about why For instance, let’s say you run a beauty salon… smoking is bad, which leads into the fact normal Don’t you think your customers want to know all food is also bad (and why)... and why organic food your different make-up tips to make them look is best. more beautiful? Then show people how to get it inexpensively – Don’t you think someone wanting to buy property YOUR PRODUCT. in a particular area would want to know everything they could… if they were truly serious? Or you might hear a story about a celebrity eating organic food. Of course, the caveat is... internet marketing magazine march 2012
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Or you might go to Google News, punch in organic gardening and come up with a dozen other ideas.
Ok, let me give you 3 examples of openings that have worked extremely well:
Or you might go out for dinner and get a nasty Example #1 addition in your food, which triggers off a rant asking the question: what other crap is in your food. SUBJECT: 3 business decisions: Are You Making Don’t fall for it – but organic. Them Based on Fear? Now I am not suggesting that you are in any way This happens no matter what your business is in. sitting around quaking in your boots, but if you are like me you have probably at some stage in your Ideas Begin to Come From Everywhere business... And the more emails you write, the better and FASTER you get and the more it just... FLOWS. You should be able to eventually punch out an email in 15 minutes. What’s more, after you’ve been doing it for a while you should have more ideas than you can poke a stick at.
1. Accepted staff that were performing below par, just because you were too scared to replace them (better the devil you know) 2. Put up with vendors who were sloppy. 3. Or accepted clients that ate up too much of your time and weren’t worth the effort you put in, simply because you didn’t have enough deal flow.
Here’s a handful of email concepts I’ve used over the years: We’ve all done it. We’ve all made this same mistake at one time or another. • A rant about something that made me angry. So what’s the answer? • An idea / concept I got from a book which I’ve shared. Example #2 • A nasty comment from a subscriber – i.e. your emails are crap. Explaining why SUBJECT: How to Out-Earn Your Competitors: the they are not and referencing all my recent #1 Secret emails which were delivering value. • Current News. i.e. relating to recent elec- Let me ask you a question... tion, giving opinion and segueing it into the interest of your group. i.e. a fashion consultant What’s the difference between you and a doctor? could comment on the fashion mistakes made Why can he heal people and you can’t? by those in the election, Golden Globes, etc. • Common question: send out a questionnaire He knows something you don’t. to get to know what questions your customers have. Then answer them. What’s the difference between you and an accoun• Throw in your opinion about industry gos- tant? sip. • Interesting fact – find out an interesting fact Why can he save people tax and you can’t? and then use that to segue into your main point. For example, did you know the most dangerous He knows something you don’t. month to fly is in December? Want to know why? You’ve gotta keep reading, don’t you? (and by What’s the difference between you and a lawyer? the way, it’s true). Why will people pay him / her $300+ per hour to There’s a ton more, but that should get you started.
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defend them in court.
Because he knows something you don’t.
Here’s the bottom line when it comes to money:
Example #3 SUBJECT: Don’t be Played a Fool by Marketing Experts: What You Must Know I am currently reading a book by a guy called Gene Landrum who has studied some of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time. One of the chapters is about the oil magnate J. Paul Getty and in it he talks about the importance of having the right information. Here is what he had to say... “I learned that the one who had the most information was the one likely to get the most information in return... after my experiences in Tulsa I knew all the nuts and bolts of the oil industry.” Let’s look at that quote a little more closely...
Take This Challenge
But first you’ve got to do it. So let me issue you with a challenge. Your mission if you choose to accept it is to: • Write down 7 concepts for emails (go on, do it right now). • Create one a day for the next 7 days. (do it first thing in the morning). Odds are, you probably won’t. But if you do, you’ll build extraordinary relationships, sales and a solid business. Oh, and if you don’t have an email list, master the conversion and traffic tricks in this publication... and get one.
Scott Bywater Do you want to learn the easiest way to get more customers fast? Leading advertising copywriter, Scott Bywater, has just completed his brand new guide “7 Ways to Get More Customers” where he outline everything so it’s as easy as 1, 2... 3. Download it for free by visiting http://www.copywritingthatsells.com.au
Sending regular emails can transform your business, because sales are made based on trust.
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› COPY CORNER
The Secret Ingredient For Belting Out A
HOMERUN On Your Next PROMOTION I was chatting to one of my copy-cub students this week. He was struggling with a piece of copy that wasn’t converting. He couldn’t put his finger on it… So he asked if I could run my masterful eye over it. He was hoping I could spot the leaking crack that flowed into the dark abyss of lost sales. Smart move. So I checked it out. And there it was. Staring me in the face like a flashlight stunned Possum in the veggie patch. You see… everything else in the copy was great. He tapped into the dominant emotion of the market with a crunching headline. Pulled them into a story from the get-go. Dug up all their objections, fears and desires. Transitioned into the solution like a seasoned pro. Drenched the piece with some undeniable proof to back it all up… But just couldn’t drag them over the line… So what was missing? Here’s what the missing ingredient was
So let’s kick it off… Okay, before I get started, let me drill this into your mind one more time so it sticks. Remember this… Anytime You Can Show Your Prospect A Return On Investment In Your Copy… DO IT In fact, go the extra mile to show them. This is one of the most powerful “copy clicks” you can ever use. Period. To prove it… The kingpin of direct response copywriting, Dan Kennedy, rates the “ROI click” as one of his top five copy-clicks he uses every time he writes sales copy (as if you need any more convincing than that) Think about the psychology behind it… Keeping in mind that the majority of your prospects are secretly looking for reasons NOT to buy from you…
He didn’t show them an R.O.I (Return on Investment).
What do I mean? Well, let’s be honest here… Your prospects don’t spring out of bed in the morning looking to spend money with you, right?
Big mistake. Huge.
Reality check:
Showing your clients an R.O.I is a critical, powerful weapon to use in your copy to close a sale. Don’t forget this. Let me show you how. To drive the point home… I’ve even added in some examples from a couple
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of winning sales letters that I’ve personally written.
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If they can get the solution for free, they’ll take it every time, no question. So you need to knuckle down and work harder in your copy if you want them to part with their money.
Beware of the dangerous little voice in their head that whispers, “I don’t really need to spend money on this”. It’s your job to silence that voice.
ROI Cost-value Graph
then it could seal the deal.
Good news is… the ROI click can totally swing them around. If you can demonstrate (as simple as possible) how quickly and easy they can recoup the money they spend with you,
with a litter of 11, that’s $11,000 for doing something I love. Then my mind really started ticking over… I could do this several times per year and pocket around $30,000 and stay at home and enjoy life, instead of selling my soul to an unappreciative BOSS!” That example is pretty short and sweet – Probably all that’s needed for a $27 eBook. In hindsight, if I had taken the time to create a visual graph or table showing the profits, then it would convert even more.
Please see another short example below. You may That little voice will now say, “What have I got to need to zoom in if it’s hard to read.. lose? I’ll get my money back in X days/months, then I’ll be in front after that.” NOTE: If you hear more then two voices at the same time, please see a doctor immediately or stop smoking those “special” hand-rolled cigarettes. Moving on… Let me give you an example of a ROI click. The first example is from an ebook sales letter.
ROI copy click Sample
For more complicated sell processes or for high price tickets I put a lot more emphasis on diagrams and tables to show the ROI. Use the demonstration of ROI where you can. It works.
If you’ve seen me present on stage before… or watched my free-gift-DVD “How to write a win- Till next time… ning sales letter”… then you may remember this example from the ‘Dog Breeding’ letter. Think big. Be different. Here’s how I used the “ROI click” for this $27 eBook.
How this $27 eBook can make you $30,000 “Then I got to thinking… now I know all the facts on dog breeding, and seeing that I LOVE the process… this little $27 eBook could make me some extra cash on the side. My calculations told me I could sell each puppy for around $1000 each, so
Bret Thomson
Bret Thomson Is a master copywriter and profit strategist. He is the one of Australia’s premier Copywriters, Entrepreneur and Speaker. Bret made $125,000 in his first 5 months copywriting alone. You can get a free copy of Bret’s DVD ‘How to Write a Winning Sales Letter’ at BretThomson.com
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› FEATURED ARTICLE
The Lowdown on Raising
VENTURE CAPITAL This article is the 2nd in a series from Venture Capital Expert Tony McAuslan and follows on from the first article in the February 2012 issue of Internet Marketing Magazine. Access to capital for growth has always been one of the major hurdles confronting a business Founder, and events such as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), and an ongoing European market meltdown certainly don’t make it any easier. In last month’s issue, I wrote a piece explaining that there was still money to be had, and I highlighted the market ‘Hot Buttons’ that VC Fund investors were on the lookout for. Since that time, I’ve had a number of meetings with what I’d term ‘Top Tier’ Fund managers, and I can assure you that despite the current world situation, many of these funds are still awash with cash - and believe it or not, they’re telling me that the biggest problem they have is finding suitable start-ups worth taking a punt on.
up 35% of your company for the their invested companies (that’s paltry $500k he is planning to on 2 out of 8) need to return invest is such a great deal. an annual compound growth of around 30% per annum. So in othBut first, a quick snapshot of how er words, 8 out of 10 investments your basic VC Fund works. usually fail, but they are hoping for those other 2 to be sold at Most funds are set up as ‘Limit- a multiple of around 10x and (if ed Partnerships’, and therefore they’ve done their homework) have a predetermined ‘Life’ re- maybe even get the odd sale at a garding how long the fund will 100x multiple. run for (usually 10 years). The fund starts ticking once the final amount of money is raised and the round is ‘closed off’.
Money is raised from high net worth individuals, other investment portfolios (think superfunds), some investment banks, and sometimes other Funds. The Board and Senior Management Team of the fund charge around 2.5% of the value of money held by the fund, as a management fee, and they are often further This month I’d like to talk about incentivized with bonuses for some of the tricks of the trade successful investment ‘exits’, you can learn, that will give you i.e. a trade sale or market listing at least a fighting chance to (IPO). keep control of your own destiny, should you suddenly find Most Funds have an objective to yourself in a bare-knuckled return at least 20% per annum, fight with an interested inves- but given that about 80% of intor, who is probably doing his vested companies never make best to convince you why giving the big time, the other 20% of
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So that’s the prism through which a Venture Capital (VC) investor is looking at your company - can he:
in order to make sure there are no sudden changes in direction or wobbly management decisions.
A). Turn your fledgling company (or idea) into a booming business with enough critical mass to make it an attractive purchase for another larger company, or can he make it look good enough to enough ‘mum & dad’ investors to have them clambering for stock in the event of an IPO?
In terms of #1 - Maintaining their share, this issue is approached through the scramble for equity. Which is why they are so keen on you to give up as much equity as you’re willing to part with in their initial round of funding. And more importantly, why they usually put additional money into your company in further funding rounds - even at a higher valuation. Something you are unlikely to be able to do, i.e. have the cash to match them.
B). Do you, as the Founder, come across with sufficient drive, enthusiasm and product knowledge to warrant putting his reputation on the line to his Board, Investors and fellow Management Team members? C). Is your Intellectual Property sufficiently locked down to ensure there will be no lawsuits along the way? D.) Are you operating in a growth market sector? E.) And most importantly, is your business/idea scalable across a global market to ensure that millions of people will want and be able to purchase your products? Given that the answer to all off the above is a resounding YES!, then there’s a good chance your VC investor is considering reaching for his cheque book. BUT WAIT! The (often unspoken) but primary objective for any VC is two-pronged - these being to 1.) Have as large a share as possible of your company AND 2.) Have as much control of your company as possible And therein lies the rub. While they want your company to grow exponentially, they also want to make sure that when that big pay day comes, they are sitting on as much of the equity as possible - in order to maximize their investment. Secondly, their reasoning is that if they are going sink several million dollars into your great idea, they’re going to want as much ‘control’ as possible,
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In terms of #2 - Gaining Control. This is in part dealt with by the equity issue. The greater the equity the greater the voting rights you bring to the table. But is also usually approached from the ‘Management’ side, e.g. A VC will probably insist on at least one seat on the Board, and have also been known to install their own CEO on the premise of adding some “’experience” to the management team. So, back to some tips for controlling your own destiny in the event of an investment offer. Here are some of my favorites: • Hold on to as much of your equity as you can, for as long as you can. Giving away 30% of your company when you are only worth $1m doesn’t seem like a lot. But if you go on to become one of those 100x companies, 30% of $100m is suddenly a large chunk of cash. • Make sure you have the same divestment rules as your VC. I have seen a number of Founders shocked to discover that at the next round of investment they are expected to give up another 20% of their equity, yet the VC has only got to give up 5% due to some tricky clause in the Term Sheet. • Make sure you get all of the money promised, upfront, and NOT paid in on the drip feed as you reach various ‘milestones’. This is also known as ‘Death by a thousand cuts’ - extremely painful.
• Finally, insist on any investor providing you with a written business plan that indicates the type of changes to the business they are intending to implement, well BEFORE you agree to sign up for their terms. • A well-written Term Sheet that sets out all of the terms of the investment is akin to a modern day ‘PreNup’ that you put in the bottom draw, and hopefully never have to refer to again. Next month I will be giving you some insight on how to value your business in the event that you are con• On a similar theme, make sure that ALL of your equity is vested from Day 1, and not vest- sidering raising some funds from an investor. In the ed over a period of years as you reach various meantime, thanks to all those readers out there who have taken the time to get in touch with me targets and milestones. to discuss their fund raising adventures. There are • When it comes to Board appointments, in- some great success stories out there, as well as sist on an ‘Independent’ Chairman (useful for some badly burned entrepreneurs. Maybe we can breaking deadlocked votes) - and then make share some case studies in a future issue! sure that this ‘independent’ Chairman is vetted by you, or even better, an associate of yours. Tony McAuslan Perhaps a former boss or mentor from within is the epitome of a modern day your industry. There’s nothing like being able to ‘Entrepreneur’. After working for some phone up the Chairman and asking him to help of the world’s largest companies in you ‘pre-sell’ an idea or radical change to the Advertising and then Gaming, Tony Board on your behalf. launched his own start-up business in • On the subject of Board meetings, make sure that either you, or someone you trust (your CFO?) is the person taking the minutes. This is the corporate version of the old Roman adage that ‘The victor writes the history’. Any slightly unclear points can be written to your advantage, and you also avoid that terrible moment in every CEO’s life when you read the minutes and see that you have somehow agreed to a whole raft of actions that you have absolutely no recollection of never having agreed to. Believe me, this happens a lot more than you may think.
2001. Starting from a base of only 3 staff, Tony raised over $25m in venture capital and grew his company to over 80 staff with offices in Sydney, Los Angeles and London. After exiting the company in 2005, Tony went on to work as a Business Development Manager for one of Europe’s largest private VC firms, where he helped raise over US$80m for a wide range of start-up ventures. He now splits his time between mentoring various startup firms, and consulting for clients who are seeking venture capital funds. He is based in Sydney and can be contacted by email at tmcauslan@hotmail.com
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7. Always provide an affiliate program for any product or service you sell online. Without affiliates and JV partners (higher paid affiliates), I wouldn’t be where I am today.
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› PINTEREST MARKETING
5 WAYS TO LEVERAGE PINTEREST FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Over the last few months a new site has taken the Internet by storm. Sending more referral traffic to websites than Google+ and LinkedIn combined! And racking up an astonishing 11 million unique visitors per month and counting. This site is called Pinterest. Pinterest is a virtual pinboard to organize and share the things you love. Pinterest can credit it’s rapid growth thanks to the help of mostly women, but more and more men are joining the site everyday.
The 5 Ways To Start Leveraging Pinterest It doesn’t matter what business you’re in. Whether you are an affiliate marketer, a digital information product creator or an offline brick and mortar business, you can use this plan to gain traction. But you need to identify your market and their needs first. Be exact. The better you do this, the more results you will get. So find some related images online (make sure you are not infringing any copyright laws) and get ready to start pinning.
While ‘Pinning’ is fun, businesses and marketers from around the world can benefit greatly from this monster of a site. After all, leveraging your re- #1 - Optimizing Your Pins For Search sources is good practice when trying to grow your business and gain exposure to your offers. Yes, you can actually rank your pins. It’s actually really simple to make sure your images are optiBut Pinterest is still brand new to some and many mized correctly. There are a few things you need people have never even heard of it... so to help to do. you get started on Pinterest, let’s focus on 5 ways to leverage Pinterest for your business. internet marketing magazine march 2012
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First, you’ll need to know your keywords. I’m going to assume you know how to do your research for that. But you will need to know which keyword you’re going for. Once you’ve got that you can optimize your boards and pins. • Make sure you pin your images in the correct category. • Start with your broad title. When you go to name your board make sure you include your main keyword in the title.
The Internet is quickly shifting into a social based space. Lucky for us, Pinterest is a social content curation site. Currently, it has a page rank of 6 which is 3 times higher than the average website and has a root domain authority of 92. Now, acquiring links from Pinterest is very beneficial and they are super easy to get. You can acquire a link from a few places and point them to anywhere you’d like, such as your companies site or affiliate sites.
• Also, if you have control over the name of the image file, name that image your main keyword.
•
Ping your new pins.
#2 - Back links Every online marketer with some type of content on the Internet knows the importance of using back links for better rankings. Even though Google makes changes to its algorithm some 400 times a year, back links still hold weight and always will.
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Next, you can click on the “edit profile” button in your account and leave a link in the ‘About’ and ‘Website’ box. Last but not least, once the board has been created you can go back to that board and edit it. In that description you can also drop your link and a keyword for better optimization.
#3 - Get People In Your Niche To Follow You As soon as you start with Pinterest and set up your account you will notice that a few people will start following you. This is fine but these people aren’t targeted. You want and need targeted followers.
• For your actual pin you need to insert your main keywords in the description text.
• Don’t be afraid to point a few back links from other social networking sites to your image or interlink you pins together for a little more link juice. This will help push your pin to the top of Google.
the image came from.
Editing a Pinterest pin
When pinning an image you can edit any pin on any board. You’ll want to do that for just about any image to make sure you are getting some link love. First, when pinning an image and editing it you’ll want to put a link in the description (important) along with your main keywords. Then, on the same pin you can enter a link in the URL field. You can also acquire back links to your site when you actually pin an image from a site that you own. Pinterest will automatically put a link to the source where
And this all starts with interesting images. The more interesting it is the more people will start to follow you or your board, ‘like’ your image and comment. The more interaction you can get the more people will start to see your stuff and follow you. A great way to do this is with Infographics. Infographics are all the rage right now. When you can present information to people in a fun, unique way they are sure to pass it on... Of course, there are other things you can do to position yourself in a way for others to find you.
est users. Besides, videos are a great way to turn a cold visitor into an interested customer. On a side note - Ever since Pinterest became so popular there have been several other sites to follow in their footsteps. Specifically, a site called http:// www.chill.com Chill is a site just like Pinterest but for videos. It allows you to post videos to your account from people you like. On the flip side, you could post your own videos for more expo-
Examples of Infographics
Now I say “views” loosely. We sure. don’t want views on our videos Things like... from just anybody. That’s why 1. Find authority figures in it’s important to follow the right #5 - Consistency Creates you niche who are on Pinterest people and get the right people Conversions to follow you on Pinterest. and follow them. I see a lot of people make this 2. Follow all the people who The total number of views on mistake when it comes to marfollow those authority figures. a. Re-Pin other people’s your video gives it more cred- keting on Pinterest or any other pins. They will get a notifi- ibility. People land on your video social site for that matter... They cation saying you re-pinned and say, “Hey - This video has a get the ball rolling, post a bunch their stuff and hopefully lot of views. It must be good”. of stuff about their business, get This will help keep people on a bunch of followers and then they’ll follow you back. your video, watch it all the way just stop. through to the end and hopefully This is a huge mistake! #4 - Promote Your Videos follow your call to action.
On Pinterest
Not a whole lot of people actually take advantage of this. Pinning your videos on Pinterest is a great way to increase your video views.
You can post videos to your boards from just about anywhere, but with the most popular being Youtube and your own sites. Videos get a lot of views, comments and likes from Pinter-
You have to keep your posting and engagement consistent. If you start pinning images to your boards and stop, you can’t stay in front of your audience.
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manually upload the image. The site doesn’t want their stuff shared. Respect that or they may take some sort of legal action. Install the “Pin It” button to make it easier to pin images from your site or things you like. This is a huge timesaver when you need to post some content for your followers. If you sell anything online and have the ability to create and accept coupons, Pinning images is very easy. You could easily pin make a few and pin them to your boards. In times something everyday and only take a minute or two where the world’s economy is suffering, people out of your day to do it. This will keep your brand, love to save a dime on items that they want. Plus, product or name in front of people’s faces at all coupons can spread virally like a wildfire. This times. works for both physical products and digital. Pinterest.com
You can’t let them forget about you. In today’s fast moving marketplace, people are constantly hammered by then next new shiny new thing. It’s cluttered to say the least. But consistency creates a following and ultimately conversions.
There you have it... Just a few ways you can leverage Pinterest to help propel your business forward. And just a little FYI, there are way more than 5 ways to leverage Pinterest. You just have to get creative.
Pin something everyday. It doesn’t even have to be your images. In fact, I have a rule. This rule is simple. Don’t make every pin about you. Spread your pin to promotion ratio out. I only like to post something about my business or an affiliate promotion maybe twice a week. The rest of the time I am simply re-pinning things from other people or sites.
Bottom line... Pinterest is wide open for marketers to leverage their business. If you’re not using Pinterest as a part of your overall strategy, you should be.
Derek Allen
Even though, you need to stay consistent with your pinning, you don’t want it all about you. You can easily come across as a spammer of sorts. You don’t want that associated with your name. Become a part of the community and the conversions will come.
is a popular teacher in the Internet Marketing community, local business consultant, established affiliate marketer, software developer and a statistics maniac. With over 5 years of digital marketing experience Derek has been called an Internet Marketing innovator. He loves to help, teach, and coach. Derek has a website where he shares tons of valuable information at http://ultimateimclub.com
Other Things Worth Mentioning
He also came out with the first official Pinterest marketing course.
I can’t stress this enough... When you are finding images to pin, make sure the site you are pinning from is cool with it. If you are using the “Pin It” button and a site has blocked access to it, don’t
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If you would like to learn more about using Pinterest to help build your business please feel free to check it out.
› FEATURED ARTICLE
The
$18 MILLION WEBSITE Luxury Hotels and Resorts brand ‘Four Seasons’ recently re-launched their FourSeasons.com website for an alleged $18 million.
enough to seamlessly choose a location and order without having to scroll up and down several times to do it. The developers may have made a conscious decision to not worry about these resoluWhile this seems like a lot of money for a site re- tions of screen because of the trend for higher and launch, it is an international brand with 84 hotels, higher screen resolutions over time as technology and the $18m may cover more than just a rede- develops. sign. For any screen resolution of 1080 or higher the site Let’s check it out with a quick site review to see works perfectly and the primary courses of action how effective the new design is. of the screen can be seen without the need to scroll. The imagery that you are hit with on the sliders the instant you hit the site is breath taking and The individual hotel landing pages also sport that luxurious as it scrolls through location after loca- same widescreen, stunning photography. On these tion of beautiful scenery and location shots. individual site pages the content goes down well below the fold: presumably the thinking is that If the intended audience are impulse buyers and once a customer gets to a specific hotel page, they are likely to see the imagery and then decide to are interested enough that they will scroll down choose a location and travel there based on what for the info. Our heatmap testings in the past they have just seen then this strategy could work across many industry verticals show this is often very well. not the case, but one would assume that they are testing this. four seasons above the fold
The primary desired course of action of the site is to ‘Make a Reservation’ with the secondary course of action is ‘Select Your Destination’. They’ve done a good job of making those buttons highly visible while still keeping a very classy look and feel to the site.
four seasons primary courses of action
If the site visitor is using a smaller resolution screen display like 1280 x 800 as many of the older affluent community may use, then the ‘Make a Reservation’ system does not work ideal because it is obscured off the bottom of the screen. The button can be seen but clicking the ‘Make a Reservation’ button makes the screen scroll up slightly but not
When making a booking if you select a room that is not available you are greeted with “Search executed but no availability returned”. This feels like more of a system error message than a customer service message as I would have expected a “sorry we do not have any rooms available for those dates” or similar customer centred response.
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fourseasons.com
The mass affluent consumer is obviously a consumer who is on the go and would make searches and site visits from mobile devices. Our testing from both the iPhone and iPad provided seamless perfect user experiences for the mobile consumer with their mobile optimized sites.
search engines except for organic results. Microsoft adCenter reports that they have 78 million potential customers (searches) using Bing so it may be worth looking into. Would it be cheeky of me to offer to get them dominating in Yahoo and Bing PPC for a cool million? :)
From a traffic point of view the site is doing very well with 30 million site viewers in 2011 and domi- Greg Cassar is Australia’s leading Internet nant rankings in both SEO and Google Adwords for Marketing Strategist. With I n t e r n e t M a r k e t i n g D o n e F o r Yo u . c o m ‘Luxury Hotel’ searches. The Yahoo and Bing Pay Per Click via Microsoft adCenter seems to have been missed though, as during our site testing we were not able to find the luxury hotel brand by searches from those two
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he provides traffic and conversion optimization services for medium to large businesses and enterprises. You can follow Greg’s latest updates by subscribing to Internet Marketing Magazine at InternetMarketingMag.net for the new members area and the latest issue updates.
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