I like to publish e-books from time to time.  Here is the latest offering:  Business to Business Marketing 2012  – New Kindle Book

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This is the one question that every marketer is seeking the answer to. If you know how to motivate people to buy, then you can increase your sales and your conversion rate. And wouldn’t that be good for your profit and your business?

So what motivates people to buy?

It is often said that you should give people what they need, because that is what they are going to buy. That may well have been the case once but sadly today society has changed and people no longer buy what they need.

Instead they buy what they want and what they crave – hence people struggling to put food on the table, but have a 42” plasma TV, satellite system and a bottle of Jack Daniels.

You need to pitch your product not as something they need, but as something they absolutely must have; make it so they crave your product and absolutely must get their hands on it.

People also buy because they want to get pleasure from what they buy. Someone doesn’t walk into a car dealership and buy a top of the range Mercedes because they need it; a Chevy or Toyota would have done the job just as well.

They buy the Mercedes because they want the pleasure that goes with it. Whether this is the comfort of the car, the joy of all the gadgets, or the fact that it is a status symbol – they drive a Mercedes! Whatever their reason it will be because they have associated pleasure with owning a Mercedes and so they buy one when they could have saved tens of thousands of dollars and bought a cheaper car.
Another reason people buy is because they want to avoid pain. Volvo are one of the best selling cars in Europe. Why? They are not the prettiest of cars, nor that expensive, nor are they of the perceived class of a Jaguar, BMW or Mercedes.

Volvo’s sell well because people want to avoid the pain associated with car accidents. Volvo’s are some of the safest cars on the market and as such appeal to people who want to protect their family and passengers.

These are three of the main ways that people are motivated to buy. If you can work out how to use this in your sales copy, your emails, your newsletter and your website, then you can convert more visitors into paying customers.

Identify your target market and learn their pain – what problem are you solving for them with your product?

Understand this and your sales copy can become smoking hot and you can boost your conversion rate!

A couple of days ago, a colleague of mine asked what websites I use for idea generation.  I use quite a few, but I narrowed the list to just a handful.  Here are the links.  If you have any suggestions, please send them along.  Thanks.
http://www.imediaconnection.com/
http://www.adweek.com/adfreak
http://www.adweek.com/topic/digital
http://www.creativitypool.com/#pool
http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com/
http://www.marketingpower.com/Pages/default.aspx
http://www.entrepreneur.com/businessideas/index.html

Keyword internet marketing strategy is something you need to understand very well before you begin your online business. Everything online is geared to getting as much traffic as you can and to do that you need to know which keywords your would be customers are searching for and target those keywords.

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? And, in reality, it’s not rocket science but before you jump in to the deep end you need to understand that more goes into good keyword research than just finding out which keywords your customers are using.

For example, let’s say you have a website that sells baby strollers. You would assume that anyone interested in buying a baby stroller would use keywords like “baby stroller” “cheap baby stroller”, “baby stroller sales”, “baby stroller on sale”, etc.

But do you have any idea how many people search for those terms? Do you know how many other competitors are trying to get their websites to rank for those terms (how competitive they are)? Do you know what other terms people may be searching for?

In order to make the most out of your keyword internet marketing strategy you need a full picture, not just an “idea” of what keywords will work and which ones won’t.

Targeting a keyword that gets 100,000 searches a month sounds like a sound strategy and a great way to make huge money. But, not so fast, if it were that easy everyone online would be a millionaire.

The problem is that the keywords that get hundreds of thousands of monthly searches also have a ton of competition. All of these other websites are fighting over that one little keyword crumb. Many of these sites have full time staffs dedicated to optimizing their website so they can rank well for that keyword. Most beginners and small online business owners simply can’t compete.

Not to worry, though, there are many other very viable strategies to follow. The simplest one is to find longer keyword phrases (longtailed keywords) and target those instead.

It’s true, they may only get a few thousand searches a month but they will also have far less competition. And, you can target as many of these long tailed keywords as you want.

So, why fight over the scraps when you can target a dozen or so long tailed keywords that are all getting a 1,000 searches a month? By using this strategy you could very realistically get about 12,000 visitors a month to your website! Not too shabby. Let the big boys fight over the other keywords while you just quietly go about your business.

Ultimately, your online business will live or die by the quantity and quality of the website visitors you get to your site. No matter what method you use to get those visitors, you will need a solid keyword internet marketing strategy. I hope I’ve shown you that trying to go after the highly competitive keywords is more work and most likely won’t net you much reward.”

Here are a couple of keyword search tools

Google Keyword Tool

WordTracker

Have a Profitably Day

A well-designed signage program can instantly and effectively communicate the style, professionalism and overall presence of your business, it conveys to people who you are, where you are and what you do. Vehicle signs are one of the most cost-effective advertising tools available to maximize the potential of your business. With unique and effective design, your shop car becomes a moving billboard and connects with your customers in a way that no other advertising medium can. It sends the message to potential customers that your company is expert and professional and is also established and reputable. Vehicle advertising is long lasting and works 365 days a year.

Exterior and interior signs are also important marketing assets in promoting your business and enhancing its representation. How your directional and informational signs are presented and function together with attractive storefront or forecourt signage are important to a positive customer shopping experience which will in turn create more sales and leads. Advertising banners and displays can be used to announce new products, promote special events, advertise sales, generate excitement or attract and motivate customers.

One of the initial things to do when choosing a sign company is to find one that specializes in the sort of sign you want. Although the majority of companies will not refer to any specialty in their advertising, many will actually be mainly proficient at making a certain type of sign.

One last thing, if you are not using your own designer, you may want to think about the completed projects of graphic designers working at the sign company. This may well be your best investment.

According to a survey from the Association of National Advertisers and the Mobile Marketing Association, 88% of client-side marketers say they’ll utilize mobile marketing in 2011. Read More

This was a great article on a Gatorade marketing program.  Give it quick read.

Click Here

Cool app from Twitter 3rd Party Developer called Small Rivers. Create your own newspaper on Twitter using a hash mark, tag name, user name and by lists. Visit this one I created using #marketing. Visit the Newspaper by clicking this sentence.

There is a great deal of direct response copy writing in the world today. Direct response copy writing can take several different forms. It could encompass a direct-mail campaign as well as direct response ads. Within this article today on direct response copy writing, we will look at what this entails and where you can find more information about direct response copy writing.

To learn more about direct response copy writing, you should look at one of the masters: Dan Kennedy. He has written many books which you should look into. Dan has done many different areas of copy writing but direct response copy writing is one of his specialties.

When you talk about direct response advertising, there is a great deal of competition. Many companies employ direct response copy writing so you must make sure that you have different ways for your advertising to stand up. When you are doing direct response copy writing, you should make sure that you are writing to your prospects as you would write to a friend. This will be slightly formal but informal in the sense that you are writing to the person in a conversational tone. You do not need to stick to a certain length of space within your writing but rather write until what you need to say has been said.

Direct response copy writing is a complex subject so you should read more about this subject because a formula has been developed that you can use. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel when you’re copy writing because that involves more work on your part and people have taken the time and effort to test the different parts of the letter to maximize the current formula and wring out the most sales possible with a direct response copy writing campaign.

There are three main parts usually to a direct response letter. These are the headline, the offer, and the postscript. The headline is the most read part of your sales letter so you must make sure to grab your prospects’ attention immediately. If you do not grab their attention, you’ll find that your direct response copy writing letter is at the bottom of the trashcan along with many other junk letters. The second most important part of the letter is the postscript. This is where you will be giving an incentive for someone to respond immediately to what you have to offer. With the offer, you want to make sure that this explains in great detail what a person will receive if they take you up on your offer. The postscript will offer further incentives so that the person will respond immediately.

Hopefully this article on direct response copy writing has benefited you. The key behind direct response copy writing is that you want the person to immediately respond to the offer that you have presented. Good copy writing is done by following the formulas that have been established. By focusing upon the three main parts such as the headline, the offer, and the postscript, you will be setting yourself up to have a high success rate. Direct response copy writing can be very effective and produce great sales for you or your clients if you do it correctly so be sure to continue to learn more about the subject.

To learn more about direct response marketing master Dan Kennedy – click here. I subscribe to his monthly newsletter and it is invaluable. This is not an affiliate link and I make no money recommending the newsletter. But if you want to make money, I would recommend you subscribe.

Utilizing online distributions methods to promote products is known as digital marketing. This approach is both time saving and cost effective. Digital marketing is done through items such as cell phones, SMS, MMS, instant messaging, websites, emails, banner advertisement and digital billboards.

Digital marketing involves some of the techniques of direct marketing and Internet marketing. In digital marketing traditional methods of promotions are executed digitally. It involves marketing in two forms, pull and push.

Pull digital marketing requires the user to pull or extract the content directly. The customer has to approach the promotional matter and see the matter by himself. Examples are websites, forums and web logs. All these require clicking on a URL in order to view the content. The content that is being displayed doesn’t have to follow any guidelines. Effort is required to only display the content on the website or forum and there is no additional cost of sending the information to the customer, but the customer has to make the extra effort of reaching to the content .The customer doesn’t have to opt-in for such kind of promotion and one message is being viewed by all and it cannot be personalized. The customers who see the content cannot be traced, although the click through rate can be considered which give details about the number of clicks the message received. This is be done by enabling the click though tracking during the campaign, which records the information.

Push digital marketing technologies requires the effort of both the marketer and the customer. The marketer has to push or send the content to the customer and the customer has to make the effort of receiving it. This is a very effective kind of marketing and the investments surely earn a big return as it creates brand recognition. SMS, MMS, emails, RSS podcasting are examples of push digital marketing. Since the content is sent to individuals, it can be personalized according to the intended recipient. Whether the message has been opened and viewed by the customer or deleted it can be tracked and reported. Information related to the customer such as name, geographical location could be traced. But when sending this king of message, certain criteria should be met as the SMS and emails sent are monitored. If the marketer doesn’t follow the rules and regulations properly, there is a possibility of messages getting rejected and blocked, before they reach the targeted audience and the message is considered to be spam. Bigger consequences involve marketers getting blacklisted temporarily or even permanently. The number would be blocked and they won’t be able to send any messages at all. Messages sent to the RSS feeders require a mechanism with an application to reach, when sent by an email marketing system.

Both forms of digital marketing should be used in consonance to achieve positive results. A smart marketer sends out emails along with SMS and uses multiple channels to market his products. The type of messages being sent should also be different from one another. They should not only be text, but animations, audios and videos. There is a possibility of using pull and push message technologies in conjunction like the email sent to a potential customer can have a URL or a banner ad, which on clicking downloads information. If there is enormous group of people to be reached via email, Email service providers can be hired who sends loads of emails to the customers on behalf of the marketer and they take measures so that the messages are not considered as spam.

Although much of the marketing is opt-in, federal laws, such as CAN SPAM Act, have been passed to protect the customers from unscrupulous marketers who would go to any extent to promote their products or hackers or spammers who have a bad intent i.e. like harming the computer or installing adware, spyware on people’s computers.