Tạp trí Internet Marketing Số 10 Apr-2012

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marketing
magazine

The Key
to Online
Success

APRIL 2012

page 17

› AUTOMATING A
PRODUCT-BASED
BUSINESS
PAGE 14

› EASY
ONSITE SEO
PAGE 19

› 7 MARKETING
LESSONS FROM
AD:TECH
PAGE23

› RAISING
VENTURE
CAPITAL

DOUBLING YOUR SALES ONLINE IN 2012
AN INTERVIEW WITH:

ARMAND
MORIN

PAGE 27

› LISTEN AND
EARN
PAGE 32

›› THE ORIGINAL AND BEST INTERNET MARKETING MAGAZINE marketing magazine
internet

DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE IPAD, IPHONE, ANDROID AND THE WEB

april 2012

1

› INTERNET UPDATE

The
STATE OF THE INTERNET

Day in the Life of a Kiva Robot

The Rise of the Robots
Amazon.com is buying an army
of robots.
The online retailer announced on
Monday that it is acquiring Kiva
Systems, a maker of robots that
service warehouses, for $775 million in cash. Amazon, a customer
of Kiva’s, is buying the robotics
company as it builds out its vast
network of warehouses and tries
to improve its margins.

omous mobile robots and sophisticated control software, the Kiva
Mobile-robotic Fulfillment System enables extremely fast cycle
times with reduced labor requirements, from receiving to picking
to shipping. The result is a building that is quick and low-cost to
set up, inexpensive to operate
and easy to change anywhere in
the world.”

You can check out Kiva’s smart
robots in action in the ‘Day in the
Life of a Kiva Robot’ video above
Kiva advise how their system from the Wired Business Conferworks: “Using hundreds of auton- ence in 2011.

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internet marketing magazine
april 2012

Kiva ranks as Amazon’s secondlargest acquisition, behind its
$847 million takeover of the shoe
and accessories retailer Zappos.
com in 2009.
The iPad 3 That’s Not an iPad 3
You would have to have been
hiding under a rock in a cave to
have not noticed in the last month
Apples launch of the iPad 3. The
only thing is that it’s not called the
iPad 3 as most of the population
calls it. Apple refers to the device
as the ‘Resolutionary New iPad’.

The American eCommerce
Dominance in Europe

the most influential local ranking
factors in improving business’s
rankings in Google Places.

Internet Retailer’s just-published
Top 400 Europe, which ranks, Some Key learnings from their
profiles and quantifies Europe’s study:
400 largest e-commerce opera• Not having any Google retions, shows that e-retailing in
views or having an average reApple CEO Tim Cook introduces the new
Europe is booming, which is cerview score of one hurt rankings
iPad. Photograph: Robert Galbraith / REUTERS
tainly different from much of the
• The presence of a busiEuropean mainstream economy.
ness description alone did not
THE world’s best-selling tablet
help ranking, but having the
computer received a major over- Here’s some interesting finding’s
search category in the busihaul, becoming the first Apple from the guide:
ness description did help.
product to connect to next-gen• American e-retailers in Eu• Getting your fifth Google
eration 4G mobile networks and
rope are growing faster than
review significantly helped
gaining a high-definition screen,
European e-retailers. In fact,
ranking, although incremental
more graphical grunt, voice dicmuch of the total e-commerce
reviews between one and four
tation and a significantly better
market growth in Europe is
and above five had a very small
camera for the same price as the
driven by American e-retailers,
impact on ranking. You have to
old model.
led by Amazon.com, which is
get 100+ reviews to again have
the largest e-retailer in Europe
a significant impact on ranking.
It is rumoured that the iPad 3
by far.
• Having the search city
launch had a wider purpose than
• The total e-commerce
in “at a glance” was associintroducing an upgraded tablet. It
market in Europe is larger and
ated with a 1.42 improvement
was Apple’s most coherent effort
growing faster than the U.S. ein rank. For example “Seattle”
yet to bind its family of screens
commerce market.
when searching for “Seattle
closer together, in a way that pre• Web-only
merchants
pizza.”
pares the ground for the world’s
(those without stores or cata• Having photos (at least 1)
largest technology company to
logs), often called ‘pure plays’
was associated with a 0.25 imdisrupt the world’s most important
are growing faster than any
provement in rank.
entertainment medium – broadother type of online merchant
casting.
in Europe with growth of 26%
last year, compared to just 12% Google Takes Aim at OverTim Cook introduced his concept
for retail chains.
SEO’d Websites
of the “post PC era”. With growing
• The fastest-growing mernumbers of tablet computers and
chandising category in Europe- Google’s head of search spam,
smartphones, the humble deskan e-commerce was sporting Matt Cutts, announced as a side
top computer is no longer the
goods, which grew year over note during his panel at SXSW in
centre of our digital world. All our
year about 30.2% to $1.05 bil- March that Google is releasing an
screens have become computlion from $806.5 billion.
algorithm update specifically to
ers, and that revolution is coming
target sites over doing their SEO.
to the television set.
Top Local Ranking Factors “We are trying to level the playing
Google is set to release a ‘Nexus Study
field a bit. All those people doing,
tablet’ to compete with the iPad 3
or lack of a better word, over opand the Kindle Fire, so keep an The team at Bizible.com recently timization or overly SEO - versus
eye out for that one very soon.
did extensive research to discov- those making great content and
er, through statistical analysis, great site. We are trying to make

april 2012

3

GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and
we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too
many keywords on a page, or exchange way too
many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.”

Adwords Express is only available in a limited set of
countries at this time.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the SEO
industry over the months to come.

YouTube has altered its suggested videos algorithm
to favor videos that are watched for the longest periods of time.

Google Rolls Out Adwords Express

Previously, suggested videos — which appear as
related videos on watch pages, or recommended
videos elsewhere on youtube.com, were served
up based on the number of people who clicked on
those videos. Now, YouTube videos that trigger the
longest viewing times will be prioritized.

Google Adwords Express is the next step in a natural progression by Google to try to simplify AdWords
for smaller advertisers who don’t want to spend time
managing an Adwords Campaign.
The general idea is that you set up an incredibly
simple campaign that includes nothing but:
• Your category
• Your ad headline
• Your ad description
• Where to send people (send them to your site
preferably or your Google Places page)
• A maximum monthly budget

YouTube ‘Suggested Videos’ Now Favor Longest-Watched

From the Desk of the Editor
We had a good turn-up to the Bret Thomson ‘Video
Sales Letter Mastery’ webinar in March. The recording of it is now available in the members area in the
‘Webinar Training’ section.
You will now find the new full Armand Morin ‘Double
Your Business in 2012’ Interview audio in the ‘Audio Expert Interview’ section of the member’s area.
The audio interview covers a truckload more content
than what is printed in the magazine. It’s free, so
if you haven’t been sent your link to the member’s
area please feel free to register for it today at http://
internetmarketingmag.net/become-member/
Until next time… Wishing you the best of success
online

The Adwords Express Ad Setup Process

Our take on testing it is that it is great for the small
business owner who wants to appear on Google but
doesn’t have the skills or motivation to go about creating a proper Google Adwords Campaign. It’s not
really designed for the sophisticated marketer who
wants to be able to control all aspects of the campaign.

4

april 2012

GregCassar
Greg Cassar
Internet Marketing Strategist
& Editor – Internet Marketing Magazine

› ADVERTISEMENT

april 2012

5

› EXPERT INTERVIEW

DOUBLING YOUR SALES ONLINE IN 2012

an Interview with Armand Morin
An Interview by Internet Marketing Strategist Greg Cassar

Armand Morin is a self-made multi-millionaire author and best-selling recording artist. He is one of the
most well known Internet Marketers in the world today. Having started online in 1996, his personal businesses alone have generated over $80 million in revenue. Armand is known for revealing his latest
epiphanies, his wildly successful no-nonsense strategies, and his proven marketing models.
think about doubling
your sales, they think
the easiest way is to
double your traffic.
And while that can
work, certainly it’s
one of the higher cost
ways of going about
it because the cost
of traffic is growing
exponentially. What
are your thoughts on
that?
Armand: Like you
said, there are two
ways of doing it. With
traffic itself, I think
there’s
alternative
forms of traffic that
ArmandMorin.com
people can utilise and in some ways I think some of
Greg: We met about two years ago when you were the traffic methods that they’ve been utilising in the
in Australia doing the Armand Morin Live and we past have, I wouldn’t say outdated themselves, but
had a good chat over coffee about all things traffic the companies that they’re using have really made
and conversion, so hopefully we can do some more it difficult. Probably the primary example of that being Google.
of that today.
Armand: Yes, absolutely. There’s a lot of things
changing in 2012 and I think a lot of things that people have done in the past just simply isn’t really cutting it anymore.
Greg: If we talk about ‘doubling your sales online in 2012’. I know that most people, when you

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april 2012

Google has done everything in their power to make
sure people don’t use them for advertising and so
now you see more and more people leaning towards Facebook – they’re on track to hit a billion
users shortly. Alternatively there are different types
of Ad networks available now for advertising your
products for achieving more reach.

But either way, driving more traffic can certainly be expensive; it’s also worth it. But the one thing, that many
people aren’t really focusing in on, which is really the
fastest way to increase your income, is to work on the
conversion of what you currently have and often that
is the first step that people neglect, so therefore the
majority of their traffic is actually wasted.
Greg: So you’re saying get that conversion piece right
and then worry about ramping up the traffic?

page has a really big job in front of it because it is talking to everybody and trying to convert them.
Where as if you speak directly to the end user, such
as, for example, post pregnant women, you know,
they just had a child. They typically have gained some
weight during their pregnancy and now they want to
lose that weight.

Well, if we created a landing page that targeted specifically post pregnancy women, so we can create a
Armand: Yes, if you don’t know what your conver- headline that would appeal directly to them, we can
sions are, it’s instantly going to make your traffic much use optimised keywords for that or better search enmore expensive because it’s going to take more visi- gine rankings, and also at the same time the end user
tors in order to convert into a sale. If we can reduce is feeling that we’re having a conversation not at them,
the number of visitors necessary, then we don’t need but to them. And so they feel that we’re talking to
to drive as much traffic to reach the same amount of them and, as a result, they’re going to be more likely
income. So the first thing anyone should really do is to do what we need to do, meaning either capture their
really focus in on their actual website and the conver- name and email address possibly, or go directly for
sions and what they are really trying to achieve out of the sale.
their traffic.
So if I see a page and if I’m a woman that’s looking to
Greg: Where they send their traffic is impor- lose post pregnancy weight, I’m going to see a page
tant, too. A lot of people just send the traffic to maybe instead of an image of a woman in a bikini
the homepage of their website, which when opti- which has really nothing to do with me. I might see a
mised well can work. However sending traffic (non picture of a woman that has just had a baby and that
Google traffic) to specific landing pages, so you page is going to have sales copy to the extent of “I
can do landing page design can be more effective just had a baby 6 months ago and now have lost 31
because then you can do all the split testing.
pounds”. It’s talking about people that have just had
a baby and this diet product appears it’s targeted for
Armand: It’s really interesting. I’m glad that you men- people that have just had a baby.
tioned that because one of the things and one of the
ideas that I’ve been really a heavy proponent of is the Greg: Yes, ‘just like me’ type of thing, so they can asfact that it actually happened to be when I was in Aus- sociate with it.
tralia, oddly enough, the last time we met really. I was
sitting in my hotel room there and I was like, “Why am
I trying to force this one page to try to appeal to everybody?” And at that point in time it kind of hit me - why
not make a bunch of landing pages to appeal to different demographics, different types of people, different
reasons why. Let me give you an example of that.
Let’s say you’re promoting a weight loss product. If
you have a weight loss product, there’s obviously
different types of people that would want to buy that
weight loss product. But what typically people would
do, and most people still do this very day, is they have
one single landing page and they drive all the traffic to
that and try to capture everybody. So that one landing

april 2012

7

Armand: Exactly, they can associate very quick. Now what also happens is that as a result of that our
conversions increase dramatically.
We’re talking double, triple, and
quadruple in many cases because
we’re simply targeting it better.
But in a diet scenario we’re talking
about the same exact product. We
could have one landing page pair
that’s focused on men with what we
call here in the US beer bellies.
You can target different demographics, different types of people, and
speak directly to them. So
instead of having one landing page, you might typically
have 50, towards 100 landing pages, depending on the
different types of people.
Now, that also helps you in
another area, the advertising.
Before with you’re advertising you could really only advertise one landing page, so
you were really limited on
the keywords that you would
use. You were also limited as
far as how much traffic you could
drive because you can only speak
about really one topic.

Greg:
That’s very clever. And I
guess how we were talking about
display traffic, which is banner ads,
you could figure out exactly where
post pregnant women hung out online or do Facebook ads, directly to
that profile of people who are women who have just had babies.
Armand: Exactly. So you’ll be able
to target that advertising really, really well and in many cases also decrease the cost of your advertising
because we’re targeting a smaller
niche market.

But now it’s like having now 50 websites, even though they may not be
separate websites. So now you’re
running 50 campaigns and your
traffic just increased essentially 50
times over and your conversions
have increased.

Greg: Your ad will get a better clickthrough rate as well with your Facebook’s, etc, because it’s going to
be more relevant to the market. As
we know in those sorts of situations
where you’re getting a better clickthrough rate, your cost of your traffic is going to come down because
they want to reward relevant advertisers.

Effectively you’re making a lot
more money because you’re getting more traffic and you’re making a lot more money because
you’re increasing your conversions, and you did both at the
same time

Armand: I think most of the time
when we’re talking about traffic
and we’re talking about conversion,
what happens is people have different views of each where traffic is exciting and traffic is something you can brag about. But

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april 2012

conversions, no one sits around
and says, “Hey, I have an 8% conversion rate.” But that is exciting
to me.
What most people don’t understand
about traffic is traffic is not about the
amount of visitors that you send.
Traffic is 100% about conversion,
that’s it. I can show people a couple
of different techniques and you can
get a bunch of traffic, but it’s not going to do you any good, especially if
it’s not targeted traffic for what you
have.

ence here?

Greg: With
Facebook traffic, obviously from a conversion
point of view you can
send it two ways: off
to a Facebook landing page, as well as
off to a traditional
web landing page. I
know there are a lot
of people that prefer
to send it to a Facebook landing page.
Do you have a prefer-

Armand: We do both. In certain
cases it’s appropriate for us to send
it to a web landing page of some
sort, maybe on an email opt-in or
something of that nature. In some
cases that works well. In other
cases, we send them directly onto a
Facebook landing page.
There are a lot of reasons for keeping people on Facebook. Number
one, it’s less expensive. There’s
been a study not too long ago that
proved your advertising costs would
be 46% less expensive if you keep
people on Facebook landing pages
on average.

But what this game is all about is it’s
about conversion into an actual sale
or depending on what you’re going
for, it may be an opt-in. What we
found out is that if you’re going to
sell something then the rule that we
follow is you send them off of Facebook. You send them to your landing page. If you are trying to build
likes or perhaps if you’re trying to
build an opt-in list, as an example,
then keep them on Facebook because it’s not going to really matter
that much at that point.
Greg:
We’re driving them off
Facebook or any traffic source to
landing pages. We generally start
with A/B split using Google Website Optimizer in a round robin
and over time Website Optimizer will figure out which
page the winner is.
We generally do a series of those and then
once we’ve got it down
to a fine art we then look
at things like multivariate where it rotates in
and out headlines and
calls to action, that sort
of stuff. Do you take a
similar sort of approach
when you’re optimizing
landing pages?

to test a maximum of three things at
the same time.

conversions are going up, up and
up and then all of a sudden take a
downturn when they were all comBut the fact is that in the end you’re bined on one particular page and so
coming out with more a true form of it is that same type of effect that you
what is working and what is not.
will find out with multivariate split
testing.
Greg: was at Google on Friday
I
last week, the other thing they were Greg: It’s interesting, with split testtalking about on multivariate was it’s ing we can think we know what the
actually how the things interact with answer will be but it doesn’t always
each other. Because say, for exam- work out that way. I’ve got a couple
ple, it’s rotating out two headlines hundred split tests under my belt
two images and two calls to action. now and so generally I think I know
The ultimate best converting ver- what’s going to work but the market,
sion of the page ends up being this the customers are ultimately right
headline, this image and that call to and they definitely do surprise us. I
action - that sort of thing. You can’t did a split test in the last week with
necessarily see that result with A/B adding benefit-ridden bullets besplit tests.
side a webform that I thought was
definitely going to make a difference
and it worked worse than
having no benefits there at
all. I was thinking ‘how is
that?’ But that was the result we got.

Armand: So when it
comes to conversion, we
need to test each one of
the different elements, but
we also need to look at the
very minor details as far as
the words, the placement,
Google Website Optimizer Split Tests
the layout, and there’s so
many factors to consider and
Armand: That’s absolutely correct. that’s why we actually have to test
Armand: Yes, we take almost the I have done tests in the past where these things. Because to one indiexact same approach. We do the I’ve found what allegedly is the best vidual it may look okay, but when
split test; kind of get an overall idea headline and I found allegedly what we start looking at masses coming
as far as what’s converting. We’ll is the best, let’s say, image and I there and they don’t have the knowlget it to what we would consider a found allegedly what is the best call edge or the background behind that
reasonable conversion rate and to action. And individually those landing page, all of a sudden they
then what we do is, we then can do were the best of those three ele- get a different feeling. And, let’s
a multivariate split test on it and we ments, but combined together my face it - people go by feelings when
can test multiple things. Maybe it’s overall conversion rate wasn’t as they’re making a decision, especiala headline, a button and an image, good as maybe when I started.
ly in most cases a rash or an instant
whatever it may be, but typically on
type of decision in order to buy a
a multivariate test we’re only going I’ve seen cases like that where my product or a service.

april 2012

9

“

So now you’re making a
lot more money because
you’re getting more traffic
and you’re making a lot
more money because you’re
increasing your conversions,
and you did both at the
same time.

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april 2012

“

Armand Morin

Greg: One thing I wanted to ask
you about that’s been a major
learning for us in the last year or
two is really looking at things like
form design. We’ve seen that by
maximising form design sometimes you can double a business
just by fixing their main call to action form.
Here we are talking about getting
more people to click on the call
to action to get them over to the
main form that’s on the side and
the second one of just reducing
the number of fields
or changing it so that
it’s got a much more
logical flow and it’s
trustworthy. Have you
had similar experience
with form design and
the amount of difference it can make to a
business?
Armand: Absolutely. I
look at all kinds of studies every single day
regarding
everything
about a website, but
form design is one of
those things that people don’t really realise how much
it’s impacting their sales. As an
example, two-column form designs
actually have a higher abandonment rate than a one-column and
by keeping things in a single column
going down, straight down through,
it’s easier for people to understand.

the point instructions. In some cases, giving them an example inside
the field of what should go in that
field will increase the conversion of
what it is.
It’s an art within itself. We’re getting ready within this next week actually, oddly enough, to implement a
new order form that we’ve created
in order to accomplish many of the
things that we’re just talking about.
Greg:
One thing that’s changed
the game over the last two years
on the web is the ability to remar-

single one of our pages we have
a remarketing campaign going in
some shape or form. There’s some
really cool tricks regarding how to
use remarketing to make it more effective.
For example, by putting your remarketing code on your most popular landing pages, but not just one
code, putting multiple remarketing
codes there would actually trigger
other pages re-marketed banners to
show up to individuals as they navigate around the web.
What a lot of people do
is they have a general
remarketing banner set
for their business in their
remarketing campaign.
If you have a remarketing campaign and set
of banners for each of
your products then it’s
going to be much more
effective.

As an example, I went
to Zappos.com not too
long ago and I was looking at a particular brand
and style of shoe. Well,
I left that site. I went around, did
Zappos.com Re-Marketing Banner Ad Example
whatever else I was doing that day.
ket people. So where traditionally I went to a new site that I frequently
if they turned up to your site and read and discovered that not only
they didn’t opt in or they didn’t was I getting Zappos ads, but I was
take their primary course of ac- actually getting Zappos ads showtion you wanted them to take, ing me the exact shoe that I was just
then you may not ever see them looking at. That in itself is extremely
again. These days giving them a powerful.
By increasing the field size of the remarketing cookie and following
actual individual input boxes, you’re them around with banner ads can Greg:
On your landing pages,
going to make it easier for people have a positive effect on traffic you’ve changed from long form
to understand. Also simply putting and conversion. Have you tested sales letters to video sales letters
simple instructions in case a person remarketing in your business?
over recent years. I know we cerdoesn’t understand it. And not long
tainly do the same as well. Not
verbose, instructions but short, to Armand: Yes, absolutely. On every everyone loves them because

april 2012

11

a bit, so my speaking in the US has decreased. My
speaking in other countries has increased quite a bit.
So in order to replace that income that we’ve had from
the US market, what we’ve simply done is replace that
by doing webinars, where I’m taking the same presentations that I would have typically done and do those on
a webinar so people literally from all over the world can
watch at the same time.

Armand Landing Page Example

they don’t necessarily look as pretty as professional video, but from our experience they sure do convert like crazy. Is that the reason why you changed
a lot of your marketing over to using video sales?

Greg:
One other trend that I’m seeing across a
whole bunch of different market segments is email
open rates going down. I think its just because people are getting so much email. And I’m seeing more
and more marketers getting trouble from the Infusionsoft’s etc, of this world for spam complaints,
but they’re not really spam. They’re just above
their threshold. Have you seen much of that going
on?

Armand: Email itself has been kind of a Wild West type
idea for many years where you just get a person on
Armand: Yes, the reason why is for conversion. We your list and you emailed them consistently over and
know that it’s going to convert better than our long-form over again, and what people don’t understand is the
sales letters. A lot of people say that long-form sales idea of how to manage your emails and how to get your
letters are dead. I don’t think so. I think it really de- emails through. This is something that we heavily fopends upon the product or service that you’re market- cus on literally every day now and it’s really due to the
ing, but in most cases, video sales letters will convert last couple of years of what’s been happening.
more.
What we have been able to do is really create a formula
that works for us as far as presenting the product, answering the questions, and then ultimately getting the
person to buy. Our videos, they’re not extremely long
videos but they’re not extremely short either. They’re
somewhere between 7 to 15 minutes.

We consistently watch every single day the email deliverability. We use companies like Sender Score. Sender
Score tells you exactly what your IP address is doing all
the time, so we watch that. We subscribe to all the different ISPs, what they call feedback loop, which means
if there’s a bad email that gets sent out, we get those
emails back and we unsubscribe those individuals immediately.

Greg: Do you do much selling from webinar as a
general rule?
When we have bounces, we look at the bounces. If
they bounce more than three or four times on a soft
Armand: Yes, we do. We do a huge amount of selling bounce, then we remove those emails, and this is an
on webinars right now. In fact, I spent three days work- everyday activity. It’s not a sometime activity. It’s an all
ing with a team of people to even increase that. We the time activity. And so we’re very, very keen on that.
just set up 32 sites to sell via webinars.
But if you look at most marketers, they just don’t do that
and that is why they get themselves into trouble.
Occasionally we’ll do the live webinars, but the reason
why we don’t really do that a lot is because I have to be We’re probably a little bit different to most because we
there in order to do it.
manage our own auto responders from our own servThe fact is that in the US seminars for the Internet Mar- ers. We manage our own lists and so we’re probably
keting industry have really kind dwindled down quite more hands on with auto responders than other people.

12

april 2012

We have to be in order to get our messages through.
Greg: Do you have any thoughts on what are
the right and wrong amounts of emails to be delivering to your list?
Armand: I think it kind of depends upon your list
and what the original promise actually is. I think
you have to stay in touch with at a bare minimum an
email to the list at least once a week, because if you
don’t, what will happen is people will forget who you
are and therefore report you as spam.
I know twice a week is not going to be as bad, but
when you start getting anything above three or four
or five times a week, then what’s going to happen is
you’re going to have a lot more people unsubscribe
as a result of hat. Not because of what you’re saying, but just because of your frequency. So once or
twice a week is perfectly fine.
Greg: That’s good advice. We’ve covered a lot
of stuff right from traffic through to conversion

› ADVERTISEMENT

and split testing, follow-ups, remarketing, and a
whole bunch of stuff. Thank you very much for
your time. How can people find out more about
you and your products and services?
Armand: It’s very simple, anyone who is interested
can go to ArmandMorin.com. You can find out pretty much everything that we’re doing there, whether
it be our blog, or my speaking schedule, or certainly
even about our new products that we’re releasing
from time to time.
There’s a lot changing in the world of marketing and
marketing on the Internet specifically; it’s just a matter of kind of staying in touch with what it is that
needs to be addressed. We talked today about a
lot about split testing and we talked a lot about
conversion, so if you understand those ideas
and you consistently advertise your products
and services, your business is bound to succeed.

april 2012

13

› SELLING PHYSICAL PRODUCTS

8 Tips To Automating A
Product-Based Business
plex. This work will
manifest in a variety
of operational ways
i.e: manufacturing,
shipping, fulfillment.

means it will take longer for the
enterprise to become profitable.
It also creates a larger risk position for the entrepreneur. Things
like trademark registration can
wait until the enterprise is off the
ground. The start-up entrepreneur should spend cautiously.

2.
Keep
the
product small. By
‘small
products’,
I mean anything 5.
Publicity is better than
smaller than a shoe- advertising.
box. Smaller products generally cost
• Publicizing is usually free
less to mass pro(unless you hire a publicist,
duce and mass diswhich I have never done).
tribute. This means
• If something is in the news,
lower risk position
that means it’s time relfor the start- up
evant, and consumers love
entrepreneur with
time relevance. If it’s timegreater overall porelevant, they’ve got to have
tential to hit it big. Small products
it.
Building a successful automated
usually leave more resources for
• News loves news. Publicity
product-based business is like
marketing.
can be leveraged. Advertisbaking a cake. The right ingrediing cannot. You could get inents need to be added in the right
3.
Own the niche. This is a
terviewed by a news station
way, which need to be baked uncrucial strategic marketing pofor a feature in a magazine
der the right conditions. I learned
sition. Create value through a
about your product. You will
this the hard way, through trial
unique offering. The product
rarely be interviewed about
and error. Here are 8 tips on
gains momentum because peoan ad you did.
automating a product-based
ple and media talk about how it
• Consumers love news. If
business that every start-up
solves an everyday problem. Idea product is affiliated to a
entrepreneur should know:
ally the product brand name will
trusted news source, the
become synonymous with the
product becomes trusted in
1.
Keep the product simproduct type i.e.: how all tissue is
the consumer’s mind.
ple. One element + packagreferred to as Kleenex.
• You probably could not buy
ing is best. The entrepreneur
the amount of traffic you will
is creating work for them-self by
4.
Keep costs down. Spendreceive with a news feature.
making their product more coming a lot to launch a product

14

april 2012

Consumers don’t buy from home-made websites. It
takes a lot of work to set up a site that will actually provoke people to buy. This requires resources to create.
In order to offer the right price point for the product on
the website, the entrepreneur will need to source fulfillment and manufacturing. The entrepreneur is already
heavily committed at this point.
The product is really only part of the total business
equation. Where fulfillment (a website/method of distribution), marketing (method of driving traffic to the site)
and start-up equate to 75% of the total business equation, the product itself equates to just 25%. With this is
mind, it seems like more of a risk of both money and
credibility to test 75% of the total business equation (fulfillment, marketing - website, but no product) with no
monetary benefit, than test 100% (fulfillment, marketing, product) with full monetary benefit.
Publicity Shares Your Message for Free

• An incoming link from a trusted site with heavy
traffic is incredible for web site real estate value
and SEO (search engine optimization).
6. Use your product as currency to acquire
publicity, and for other marketing purposes.
7. Employ a fulfillment service from the start.
Don’t try to fulfill the first 50 units yourself. Due
to the volume of mailing done by fulfillment houses,
they enjoy huge volume discounts on shipping through
FedEx, DHL, UPS and other couriers. Most fulfillment
houses extend this savings to the seller (entrepreneur),
which is reason enough alone to deal with a fulfillment
house.
8.
The best way to test a product is to commit to a minimum order quantity and a minimum
risk position for the enterprise. If the entrepreneur
doesn’t commit to producing and selling their product,
it’s unlikely that consumers will commit to purchasing it.
Setting up a mock website that will take potential customers all the way through the buying experience and
then deny them any purchase at the end because the
product doesn’t exist yet is not a good idea, or realistic.
It seems like a good way to reduce risk, but in fact it’s
more risky in the long run.

Further, this will scare away the ‘innovators’, the segment of the market who are willing to take a chance on
a brand new product before the rest of the mainstream
jumps on board. This is also disrespectful to the innovators, who are an integral group of consumers that every
entrepreneur should covet.
Moreover, if the product is great, this gives copy-cats
time to beat you to market. First to market wins. First to
market means niche ownership and niche ownership is
king.
Bob Maydonik
is a Vancouver-based entrepreneur
who owns the UG Group of Companies.
He has been featured on Tim Ferriss’,
4 Hour Work Week Blog.
His businesses and products include:
Urban
Green
Enterprises
Inc.,
landarchsuperstore.com,
Xystems
Enterprises Ltd. (Square36 - Oversize
Yoga Mat, New School Entrepreneur
Business Press, Reclaim Recycled
Products and Forms & Concepts Park
Furniture.
He is the author of Creating Products: How To Implement
Ease of Automation and The New School China Trading
Secrets. www.newschoolentrepreneur.com

april 2012

15

› COPYWRITING & CONVERSION

CONNECTION

The Key to Your Online Success

...and How You Can Create It for Your Website

The Key to Success

It was November 2009 and we were walking the glitter strip at South Beach in Miami, Florida on the last
leg of a memorable world tour. Funny how things
happen but I recall thinking nothing of it at the time
but this incident in Miami with my then 8 year old
son was pure marketing gold... but it didn’t hit me
till we were half way across the Pacific on the way
home.
No, this isn’t a written version of “Come and see my
holiday slides” so stick with me here because there
is a massive, possibly business changing pay-off
for you.

So there we were, on the glitter strip in South Beach.
It was a typical humid Florida day. We were walking
along (me the wife and four kids) just looking in the
shop windows eating an ice cream.
We came to one of those novelty T-shirt shops.
Now if you’ve ever been to the US you’ll know there
are lots of three things: people and cops, Starbucks
and novelty T-shirt shops.
We stopped outside this shop and started looking.

april 2012

17

Wall to wall and floor to ceiling novelty T-shirts. Funny, profane, downright rude... cool pictures... you
name it this shop had it.
Kind of reminded me of the marketplace you’re selling to... clutter and
so much to look at nothing really
stands out.
Then my 8 year old starts
laughing. REALLY loudly.

hooked him.
Here’s what caught his eye...
“Boobies Make Me Happy”.

For 8 year old boys,
clearly the word “boobies” is gold (if only we
could sell Boobies Bubble Gum and Boobies
skateboards we’d make
a fortune!).

When I asked what it was,
he couldn’t speak and just
pointed.

Ok, you may not have a
“boobies” T-shirt at your
disposal, but your prospects will have the dominant emotion and key
words or phrase they instantly resonate with.

From all the t-shirts with all
the humorous, profane, offensive and downright ridiculous ditties, photos and
slogans, his 8 year old boy’s
eyes had focussed squarely
on the prize T-shirt.

mates and being the ever-so-coolIt was incredible but his keen 8 year kid in his group for the day or he
old boy’s eyes had cut through the simply found it hilarious.
clutter.
The point is, from all that clutter, all
I couldn’t see what it was. Neither those other t-shirts, he saw this one
could any other member of the fam- and it resonated.
ily.
His second favourite by the way
was a similarly plain one, “I Pee in
“There, there... down the bottom,” Pools”, but that’s for another time.
was all he managed to get out between fits of laughter.
You see, this whole experience is
just like marketing your products or
Eventually I saw it.
services... you have to find some
way of standing out from all the othWhat caught his eye in a sea of other “t-shirts” out there to reach your
er T-shirts?
prospects.

18

april 2012

Every market, every niche has
these “magic words”.

Now I’m not sure if he instantly saw
himself wearing it in front of his These “magic words” usually focus
on the dominant emotions they feel and instantly create connection
and get their attention.

One of those deep belly
laughs you know in an instant to be genuine and
which is more than a little
contagious.

It was a plain white T-shirt, with
big black writing. One word only

find what their magic words are
(their “boobies” words if you like)
which instantly connect with them.

You have to dig deep enough and
know your market so well that you

It’s your job to dig deep
enough to find it and then find
the right way to tell your prospects all about it. Only then will
you cut through the clutter and
create connection.

Steve Plummer
is
the
personal
c o p y w r i t e r
for
Australia’s
“Millionaire Maker”
Mal Emery. Steve’s
marketing
and
writing savvy have
resulted in hundreds
of thousands of
dollars in extra
sales for many happy clients. Follow
Steve’s blog at steveplummeronline.
com

› SEO

How To Do

BASIC ONSITE SEO
Pennant Hills’ and so on.

On-Page Optimization
Now it is a matter of placing the
keyword in the right places on each
page of your site. You should place
the keyword once in the ‘Title Tag’
and once in the ‘Description Tag’.
If you don’t know how to edit tags,
ask your webmaster. It should also
appear in the headline and once or
twice in the body of the text.

Headline:
Economical
services.

cabinet

making

You won’t need to struggle to
place your keyword in your copy
if you have written well, because
it will just naturally fit in there. If
this isn’t the case, you may need
to rewrite parts of the text until it
does flow smoothly.

Now, are you starting to get the
hang of it? However, if you are the
When it comes to doing onsite SEO, You don’t want the placing of entrepreneur type then you should
it’s really all about finding the your keyword to make the copy just let a professional SEO team
keywords to best optimize your read awkwardly or uncomfortably. optimize your website.
website with and knowing where Think about the flow of the content
to place them. Keep on reading to as we discussed in the previous
understand this better.
chapter.
David Jenyns

Know Your Market
This is about choosing the right
keyword for your area of business.
If you are a carpenter in Pennant
Hills, you might choose ‘carpenter
Pennant Hills’. If you want to widen
your search a little you may want
to choose ‘carpenter Sydney’. This
will be the keyword for your home
page. You might have another page
on cabinet making, so you could
go for ‘cabinet making Pennant
Hills’, and another on Pergolas,
where you could choose ‘Pergolas

Here’s an example of how you
could naturally and comfortably
include your keyword in your onsite SEO.
Title Tag:
Cabinet Making in Pennant Hills
Description:
We provide a cabinet making
service to residents in Pennant Hills
and beyond. We design and build
cabinets for kitchen renovations,
bathroom renovations and laundry
fit outs.

has many stories to
share, from selling
the
Melbourne
Cricket Ground for
$24.95 to setting up
a chain of punk rock
clothing franchise
stores, he is more
than just another
Internet Marketer
– he’s a business
builder. Most recently, David has
started the almost overnight success,
Melbourne SEO Services – one of
Australia’s leading online marketing
companies. Now he’s looking to help
you, small and medium sized business
owners, grow to the next level.
Discover how he can help you: www.
MelbourneSEOServices.com

april 2012

19

› ADVERTISEMENT
20

april 2012

› COPYWRITING & STRATEGY

REASONS
WHY THEY BUY
When a client pays me my outrageous fees and I
write him a killer of a letter, and he chokes, thinks
it’s too outrageous, well too bad. He’s paid me to
get results, not to create feel-good drivel. So I tell
him to test the damn thing first. If it fails, I’ll take a different angle. You see, I don’t really care about other
people’s opinions when it comes to the kind of stuff
I write.

You realise that most people aren’t the innocent
angels you thought they were.
You’ll realise people are still swayed by the most fundamental emotions no matter what their education
or income levels. (Even the most reserved character
can turn into a raging mass of emotion when money
is involved … no-one is immune!)

The only opinion that counts
are from those
special people
that give you
money… your
customers!

You’ll
realise,
folks are motivated by other
people’s opinions
of them. They are
concerned about
how they look in
other
people’s
So let the mareyes. Deep down
ket decide I
in their unfulfilled
say. My ego
souls they desis nowhere to
perately
seek
be seen. If my
“the thing” that
piece fails, that’s
will make others
a damn good
green with envy.
lesson. I’ll then
Sure they buy
rip apart that
for benefits and
piece and find
problems solved.
out why it didn’t
But, deep down
People Buy Based on Emotions
work. Once I have
lurking in their
that info the mistake never gets repeated.
emotional core lies frustration and envy and a fierce
desire to get the leg up on certain people be that
As a marketer you’ve got to see things for what they work mates, spouses, brother-in-law etc.
really are. Not how you want them to be. Not how it
should be if everything was fair. No. You’ve gotta see If you understand this, and not try to judge on any
through all the B.S. and open your eyes to what’s re- moral levels, your level of persuasion will jump a few
ally going on. As marketers, we can’t afford to live life notches and you’ll truly understand the core concept
at the shallow end of the pool. We’ve got to go deep. of sales.
And sure, it gets messy down there sometimes.

april 2012

21

So get this: Emotions and Feelings sell in all markets. And for your message to be successful you better get in there and stir those emotions up to a red
hot pitch. So what’s the point of this ramble? Three
points…
Number One: See things as they are. You can’t afford to base your marketing decisions on hunches.
You’ve got to go deep to find the answers. Hunches
are for amateurs. Do your detective work and let the
numbers speak for themselves.
Number Two: Know your market. All people are
driven by emotions … love, fear, envy, greed, selfpreservation, selfishness and so on. Each and every
one of us is a bundle of seething emotions. Doesn’t
matter how sophisticated or educated your market is,
the same basic principles apply. So your market is
no different. Find out what are the HOT emotions of
your market and then stir those emotions to a fevered
pitch.
Number Three: Outrageously Tell Your Story. You
can’t be wimpy here or your message will be lost in

22

april 2012

the crowd. You’ve got to be outrageous, tell a story,
and hit your market with a message that stirs that
passionate sweet spot in their souls, that HOT button
that gets them wanting to buy.

Pete Godfrey
With more than a decade of
experience in the marketing arena,
Pete Godfrey, AKA “The Wizard
of Words”, has developed a keen
eye as to what it takes to succeed
in business. As one of Australia’s
most successful and highest paid
copywriters/sale
strategists,
Pete’s client list contains many of
the world’s savviest entrepreneurs
including Mal Emery, Greg Milner,
Pat Mesiti and many others. To
get to know Pete better and see how you can profit
from his hard-won copywriting advice go to http://
www.petegodfrey.com/blueprint and grab his new FREE
report “Business Profits Blueprint: How to Profit in The
New Economy”. Valued at a very real $97, it’s yours
FREE for a limited time.

› MARKETING TOOLS & STRATEGY

7 MARKETING LESSONS

from ad:tech

In March 2012 I received an all access media pass
to attend ad:tech in Sydney. Ad:tech is an interactive advertising and technology conference and exhibition. The event moves from city to city worldwide
with a blend of keynote speakers, topic driven panels
and workshops. The aim of the event is to provide
attendees with the tools and techniques they need to
compete in a changing world.
My take is that ad:tech is not necessarily for the average information marketer as there is very little covered on the direct response side. Ad:tech is ideal
for larger players such as brand advertisers, media
agencies, corporates, marketing managers, advertising executives and eCommerce retailers.
Here is 7 Key marketing lessons from the recent
Sydney ad:tech event.
1.
Social is not a campaign, social media marketing should be there as part of your marketing mix
on a permanent basis – it is a commitment, not a
campaign. Social media is just another channel for
you to communicate with. The best way to approach
it is:
a. Listen and research what is being said about
your product, service or market place
b. Gain insights from that research
c. Develop an overall Social Media Strategy
d. Implement Tactics on individual social platforms to deliver the strategy
2.
Google+ Ripples are a great way of seeing
visually who your biggest influencers are in your
marketplace. It shows how posts were shared across
Google+.

Google Plus Ripples

In the example above, the Dali Lama posted and this
is the ripple effect his content created by the other
users sharing the same content. You can see who initially shared it from the Dali Lama’s profile, followed
by the people who shared from the initial sharers.
3.
Paid, Earned & Owned Media are ways of
classifying the different media types and the value of
the content you produce.
a. Paid Media is any type of advertising or other
traffic that you pay for to leverage a channel. Examples include Pay Per Click search advertising,
display advertising etc
b. Earned Media is something that you earn as
your brand. This is really about when the customers become the channel. Examples include viral video’s, blog comments and ‘buzz’ about your
brand.

april 2012

23

Blackmores community content

5.
The Rise and Rise of Marketing Automation
toolsets. In many cases in the past marketers have
been limited with what email and other marketing automation they could do by how marketing savvy their
CRM was. The issue with this is that many CRM’s like
4.
The Growth of Community for Content, Per- Netsuite or SalesForce are not really designed with the
sonalisation and Re-marketing. Adding groups and marketer in mind and can do very limited marketing auforums to high traffic sites can have several main ben- tomation.
efits. The first of these is to make your site ‘sticky’ to get
the site visitors coming back again. The user-generat- New breeds of marketing automation tools are on the
ed content helps build your site as an authority site so rise. These tools allow you to implement quick agit is seen favourably from the search engines. Person- ile webforms, follow up sequences and event driven
alisation engines and also re-marketing cookies enable marketing campaigns without being restricted by your
you as a marketer to then laser target your promotional CRM. These marketing automation tools then synch
emails and display advertising to the right people. A with with your CRM like a database mirror so that your
good example of this is shown with Blackmores above CRM always remains the ‘center of truth’ for your corwhere the community aspect of their site also functions porate data. The 3 market leaders in this ‘marketing
as an enabler of personalisation.
automation’ space are Marketo, Silverpop, and Eloqua.
c. Owned Media is content assets or channel platforms that you have developed and ‘own’. Examples
include your website, white papers, free reports, your
blog, your Facebook Fan Page etc.

24

april 2012

Dell Social Media Listening Command Center

6.
‘Right Message to the Right Person at
the Right Time’ has now changed. The above
mentioned is a saying that has been going around
in marketing circles for many years. This has now
evolved to be ‘The Right Message to the Right Person at the Right Time on the Right Channel’.

you can engage with your customers and assist
them with any questions, issues, or concerns that
they may have.

The addition of the ‘Right Channel’ is key because
there are so many different media channels to
speak to your prospect with, and you need to communicate with the prospect where they are handing
out, and speak to them differently depending on
the channel. An example is that via email you could
use terminology like ‘Buy Now’ but via social media
like Facebook you may say something softer like
‘Check it Out’.

This is just a small handful of the many insights
and learnings from the ad tech events. Ad:tech is
still to be held in San Francisco, Singapore, London, Tokyo and New York later this year. Check it
out.

7.
Listen is the most important aspect of
social. More and more companies are waking up
to the fact that social media is not just a platform to
blast your content out by, it’s most important function is to listen to what your customers and prospects are saying. Then armed with that information

One of the best examples of this is Dell with their
Social Media Command Center.

Greg Cassar
is
Australia’s
leading
Internet
Marketing
Strategist.
With
InternetMarketingDoneForYou.com Greg
& his team provide traffic, development
and conversion optimization services
for medium to large businesses,
enterprises & eCommerce stores looking
for serious growth online. 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.

april 2012

25

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› 26
ADVERTISEMENT

april 2012

› FEATURED ARTICLE

The Lowdown on Raising

VENTURE CAPITAL
This month, in the third part of my series on raising venture capital for your business, I’d like to give
you some insight into various ways you can establish the value of your business ( or idea ) before you
decide to give up a chunk of it in return for some much needed funds.
potential investment
through a prism of
‘stages’.
Various
VCs use slightly
different terms, but
these are generally
classed as follows :
- Seed
- Proof of Concept
- Commercialization
- Early Growth
- Expansion

In general, most businesses
seeking venture capital haven’t
been established for long (if at
all) and as such, don’t have a financial track record that can be
evaluated in the traditional manner by a hard-nosed accountant
with a calculator. It’s more likely
that you’ll be coming up against
a hard-nosed venture capitalist,
who is likely to be valuing your
company by a set of criteria all of
his own making.
In order understand where he’s
coming from, you first need to
understand that most VCs view a

destined to crash and burn before $1.00 of revenue is ever realized, so there is a good reason
that they are rated as extremely
high risk. But that’s not to say you
can’t raise money for them, and
many big funds having a policy of
sewing a handful of ‘seeds’ in the
hope that the odd one will sprout.

However, if you need to take on
an investor at this stage, you
need to steel yourself for the
fact that they are probably going
From their point of to want a big chunk of equity in
view, the earlier you order to offset that risk - and I’m
are in the stage pro- talking anywhere north of 40% ,
cess - the greater and maybe even much more. At
the risk for them. this stage, talk of becoming the
This makes it tough when you are next Facebook or powering a car
just starting out, but conversely, with recycled sewage is cheap,
the further you are along in the and until you actually get some
stages, the stronger the bargain- runs on the board you are at the
ing position you will have when it mercy of the markets.
comes to cutting a deal.
In the Proof of Concept stage,
As a general rule of thumb, a you are usually looking for funds
Seed investment is exactly that. to help roll out enough of these
You have a concept, you’ve done babies to prove that the concept
your research, you may have de- actually works, and more imporveloped a broad framework for tantly, that someone will actually
your concept, but you need cash pay real money for it. A big step
to actually build it. From long ex- up the ‘Stage’ ladder, you might
perience, I can tell you that at this well argue, but hardly enough to
stage, even the most compelling, get your average VC popping the
“can’t fail, gonna sell a million of champagne corks just yet. His arthese” business ideas are usually

april 2012

27

gument is likely to be that while the
concept “appears to work”, it’s still
a long way from actually selling
enough of them to call it a viable
business. So once again, a ‘Proof
of Concept’ stage company, while
further up the food chain, is still
likely to represent a ‘high risk investment’ in your VCs lexicon, and
as such, they are still more than
likely eyeing up a goodly sized
chunk of equity if they are going to
get on board at this stage. Don’t
be surprised at expectations of
around 35 - 40% of your company
in return for an investment.

moving into its Commercialization
stage will probably be expecting to
take out 25 - 35% in equity in exchange for enough capital to kick
the Commercialization stage into
top gear.

Early Growth stage usually means
just that - everyone is focusing on
growing the business and capitalizing on the company’s commercial success. This is the stage
where you start looking at better
plant and equipment, more servers, more staff, and better ways to
grow the business and streamline
your processes. Any fund coming
in now will at least be able to see
tangible allocations of capital, and
improvements to either sales and/
or the bottom line. Expect to have
to give up 15-25% depending on
the financials and how much the
VC likes your business model. If
they can see ways of polishing up
a business model that is already
showing promise, there’s a good
Moving along to the ‘Commercial- chance they’ll be elbowing each
ization’ stage - this is where the rub- other out of the way. From an enber hits the road, and people can trepreneur’s point of view, this is
begin to get a much better sense often your best chance to cut a
of your business and it’s likelihood deal that will allow you to grow the
of success. In the Commercial- business and still come out the
ization stage, you are looking for other end with something to show
funds to help roll out your business for it.
across various platforms, markets
or geographic regions. A history of Finally, in the Expansion stage,
sales figures will have been estab- you’ve pretty much proven your
lished, early developmental hic- concept and now your just looking
cups will have been identified and to take it to the rest of the world
( hopefully ) ironed out, and you be - think “Global Domination” - you
starting to build a decent pipeline may as well because that’s what
of potential customers or markets. any VC coming in now will be
Naturally, from your flinty-eyed thinking!
VC there is still plenty of scope
for failure, but at least many of Money for expansion usually
the risks will have been mitigated means international offices, bigger
, or at least quarantined off, A VC marketing budgets and of course
fund coming into a company that is - even more staff. But remember,

28

april 2012

just because you’ve done it all in
your own country, doesn’t mean
it will be a ‘shoe-in’ somewhere
else. There are the vagaries of different cultures, different logistics,
possibly language barriers, and
of course a seemingly endless
stream of new local laws you’ve
never even dreamed of. So yes ,
a business in ‘Expansion’ mode is
probably a good bet, but trends,
markets and weird things out of
left field can all turn a successful
business on its head these days,
so as far as your flinty-eyed VC
is concerned - every business is
a risk. However, if the planets are
in alignment, and the wind is blowing the right way’, there’ a good
chance that several VCs will be
competing for the chance to put
some money into your rapidly expanding business - but still be prepared to give away 10 - 15% to get
them over the line.
Tony McAuslan
is
the
epitome
of a modern day
‘Entrepreneur’.
After working for
some of the world’s
largest companies
in Advertising and
then Gaming, Tony
launched his own
start-up business in 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 start-up 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

› GOOGLE ADWORDS

How to Add
NEGATIVE PLACEMENTS
Managed Placements are exactly what they sound
like – placements (websites) that you manage. You
give Google a list of the sites on which you want
your ads to show & Google puts them there.
This gives you more control (you know exactly
where your ads will show), but also limits your reach
(you have to think of every site yourself)
The alternative (& often a great way to run campaigns) is to make use of the power of Automatic Placements. Now Google will decide where to
place your ads based on information you give it
(more on this later).
The downside here is that Google is in control &
your ads may show in places (or next to content)
that you don’t want associated with your brand.
Google Adwords Campaign Placement Exclusions

Reading the news this morning I was surprised to
see an ad for The Age on, you guessed it, The Age!
Clearly someone at Fairfax doesn’t understand
how to control where their ads do & don’t show on
Google’s Display Network. And they’re not alone.
So if the phrase “negative placements” means
nothing to you, read on…
The sites on which your Display ads (typically text
or image ads) show are called Placements in the
AdWords system.

That’s where Negative Placements come in.
They give you a way to stop showing ads on certain sites. For instance, a negative placement we
use a lot (on 99% of campaigns) is adsenseformobileapps.com which we’ve found to generally give
poor results across the board in many different industries.
So, it would make sense for whoever’s running the
Fairfax Digital campaign to exclude theage.com.au
from the campaign showing ads for The Age.

Sure they’ll make a few cents if someone clicks
There are typically 2 types of campaign you might their own ad – but why pay for the click/impression
in the first place?
run: Automatic & Management Placements.

april 2012

29

you may want to exclude them from
your main ‘automatic placements’
campaign & run them in their own
managed placement campaign – so
you can more easily see their performance & adjust bids as needed.
Sometimes these sites work very
very well for clients, other times they
suck. It’s just one more thing that you
must test if running ads on Google’s
Display Network.
Our standard list of Aussie newspaper sites follows – feel free to add
any others in the comments below.
news.com.au in particular often gets
very poor results & is usually worth
excluding:
Google Adwords

‘Far better to save that space for an ad that makes
them money (assuming they have covered their online properties with ads to make money!).
Maybe it’s some warped idea of brand-building…
but c’mon who really thinks they need to interrupt a
user with an ad for their own service while using that
service!
If you want to get a bit more advanced, you can use
‘Placement Exclusion Lists‘. A newish feature that
Google quietly rolled out recently that allows you to
create lists of sites & exclude them from campaigns
more easily. This is great if you’re also running other
types of Display Network campaigns such as topic
targeting, interest targeting or remarketing campaigns.
Sadly there’s no way to easily share your lists between client accounts if you’re running an MCC account – maybe Google will add that one day. But
given negative keyword lists aren’t even in ADWords
Editor yet, we may be waiting a while!
Last tip…
If you are running ads on Aussie newspaper sites,

30

april 2012

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

theage.com.au
smh.com.au
theaustralian.com.au
news.com.au
heraldsun.com.au
theherald.com.au
couriermail.com.au
adelaidenow.com.au
perthnow.com.au
dailytelegraph.com.au

Mike Rhodes
is WebSavvy’s founder and is a
popular international speaker,
best-selling author & consultant.
With
over
seven
years’
experience of managing & running
Google AdWords campaigns; he’s
considered by many to be an
innovative leader in Australian
Pay Per Click marketing. He’s
also a coach for the global leader
in PPC training: Perry Marshall.
Formally a qualified E-Myth Consultant he’s been
building small businesses for over ten years &
considers online marketing a tool to grow businesses,
not just to drive traffic to a website. Visit WebSavvy.
com.au for your free 30 minute PPC Strategy Session
consultation.

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.

”

WE CARE
ABOUT
YOUR ROI

”

Building Websites that
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Providing Traffic and Conversion Optimization
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› ADVERTISEMENT

april 2012

31

› FEATURED ARTICLE

LISTEN AND LEARN...
PROFITING FROM ONLINE FEEDBACK
Online Feedback – Making it Easy to Enhance competitive prices, offer a “great user experience”,
the Customer Experience and Increase ROI
and success will automatically come.
With the online environment becoming the main venue for conducting business, competition to provide
the best customer experience is fierce. As a result,
online feedback has become one of the major trends
in promoting customer satisfaction and increasing
digital ROI.
The question I often hear is how exactly online feedback positively impacts customer satisfaction, conversions and sales. A related question I get from
marketers is why traditional focus groups or even online surveys are insufficient tools for influencing the
customer experience. They feel that once they know
what the target market “wants”, all that needs to be
done is launch a marketing and promotional campaign, provide the desired products and services at

These are valid question, but the reality of online
and mobile commerce requires ongoing customer
engagement to ensure positive growth. Our experience working with thousands of businesses worldwide has clearly shown the absolute necessity of
customer feedback for delivering value in the following areas:
Reliable and Real-Time Insight Leads to Informed
and Profitable Action
In the online environment, the myriad customer
touch-points, interactions and the constant digital
change presents a unique challenge. Focus groups
or traditional surveys – even when delivered online
– can’t hope to accurately and reliably capture a true
snapshot of the customers’ satisfaction level
during every point of their online journey. Additionally, by asking too many questions on
too many (often irrelevant) topics, surveys
are not mindful of customer time constraints.
To really get to know your customers, you
need have your “feedback door” open at the
right time and place. You want to collect feedback while your customers are actually engaged with your website pages or processes.
This provides a much more accurate and reliable picture of what your customer really is
experiencing.
Providing your customers with an easy, nonintrusive way of sharing their feedback with
you (while keeping them in the funnel) is key
in accomplishing this.

An example of a Kampyle Feedback Form

32

april 2012

kampyle.com

An example of this was highlighted in a recent webinar
where we hosted Markus Eberhard, Head of Selfcare
and Digital Support at Swisscom, (Switzerland’s leading Telecom). Markus shared how Swisscom, instead
of using a focus-group to test their new mobile app, inserted an unobtrusive feedback button in the app and
just went live with it. Right away they received hundreds of qualified feedbacks from real mobile customers that helped them focus and prioritize optimization
efforts.

like shooting in the dark.

According to Markus, this proved to be far more effective, economical and reliable than traditional usability
tests that typically engage only a handful of testers.

As an example, Hotels Combined, an international hotel comparison site noticed on their Google Analytics
account that one of their search features was hardly
used. So they assumed the feature didn’t provide real
value, and removed it. Immediately after, Hotels Combined began receiving feedback from a small, but highvalue group of users stating that this feature was one
of the main reasons they liked using the site and that
they wanted it back. Without this incredible feedback,
the online travel site would have no doubt alienated
those important users (and their wallets), all the while
thinking that they had done the right thing.

Gaining Competitive Knowledge that Drives Increased Conversions and Revenue

Feedback-Driven Inbound Marketing and Lead
Generation

When designing and strategizing your site, the best
usability experts are your customers. Without their
feedback, you might think you know what they want,
but you could be way off. The success of your site’s
funnels – from search to checkout – all depends on a
high conversion rate. But lacking real insight from your
customers, getting conversion rate optimization right is

Quality leads are the lifeline of sales. Companies are
willing to pay small fortunes for lists and databases of
potential prospects. But there is a much simpler and
effective way to generate leads. Businesses have begun successfully using online feedback for lead gen
eration and inbound marketing. With around 50% of
feedback including the online visitors’ contact details

april 2012

33

distributed to the appropriate teams, such as sales or
IT, ensuring that the right level and correct type of
support is given to customers who really need it.
Key Takeaways
In closing, let’s recap all the areas where online feedback impacts the customer experience and your ROI.

An example of Kampyle at the bottom of a site

– either email, phone or both – these feedback submissions are an excellent lead source for sales and
marketing as over 45% of them ultimately convert
into sales.
In a similar vein, with over 800 million Facebook
users, the social media giant has been integral in
transforming customer feedback into inbound traffic
and leads. When your online customers share their
feedback, you can offer them the option to post a
promotional message or link about your product or
service on their Facebook Wall. These posts are a
very effective way to extend your brand reach and
drive traffic from your customers’ Facebook Friends
to your site.
Cost-Effective and Personalized Customer Support
Customer support has become a huge differentiator
as shown by companies like Zappos and Rackspace,
and many retailers are now pouring resources into
this area. However, excellent tier one support can be
logistically challenging and prohibitively expensive.
This is where online customer feedback can be used
to provide 1st rate customer support at economical
prices. Customized and relevant auto-reply emails
(triggered by feedback content), can be sent to customers, thereby reducing the need for immediate real-person response. These auto-reply emails reduce
reliance on 24/7 live support by redirecting customers to FAQs or by offering an option to schedule a
support call.
The feedback can also be segmented, prioritized and

34

april 2012

• Feedback is not just about optimizing your site
and improving UX. With intelligent forwarding
in place, online feedback can be easily leveraged to increase qualified leads, inbound
traffic and social marketing reach – directly
improving your bottom line.
• Listening to customers is not only about making them feel like you truly care (although this
is of course, very important). Rather, customer
feedback is all about gaining a competitive
advantage with real insight into what affects
your customers’ overall experience and satisfaction level. Improved customer experience directly impacts and improves conversion rates,
which in turn increases revenue.
• Online feedback is about your customers
being offered an on-page, user-driven channel to accurately express what is important
to them. This is in stark contrast to surveys
which are about your visitors having to work for
you, and which generally provide less reliable
insight.
• Excellent customer support is essential to help
differentiate your business from the competition. When managed properly, customer feedback can provide you with a smart and affordable way to give your customers the
service they deserve.
Ariel Finkelstein
is the co-founder and CEO of
Kampyle. Since 2007, Ariel has
overseen Kampyle’s growth from
an emerging startup to a leading
SaaS provider of online customer
feedback solutions, serving both
SMB and enterprise companies
around the globe. Ariel can be
reached
at
ariel.finkelstein@
kampyle.com.

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