I’ve blogged about long tail niche marketing before with a YouTube video that has become a classic amongst the exponential marketing community. Just click on the hyperlink to view it.

Even though as a small business, Internet advertising is not something you’re probably engaged in, a recent report by CONTEXTWEB reveals something that I have known all along, albeit anecdotally -

Average click-through rates (CTRs) for ads placed
on long-tail websites are 24% higher than
those placed on short-tail sites.

Long tail versus short tail marketing refers to specialised niches versus broad mass markets respectively. What’s of particular interest is that the MORE specialised and targeted you are with your web strategies, the greater the returns you’ll produce.

Our clients have known this for years – often out-performing their much larger, national competitors with very deep pockets.

Long tail websites—the millions of smaller websites with niche audiences—offer significant ad performance advantages across a wide number of verticals.

Among all 20 categories studied, long tail ads registered increased CTRs over short-tail ads, led by alcohol beverages (50%), B2B (48%) and charities (48%). The lowest long-tail lift observed was for auto advertisers, but still had (12%) better CTRs.

The trade off remains between quantity and quality of the communication. This is something we cover in depth in our Killer Kopywriting Konversations™ workshops as we help our clients design Killer Kampaigns That Konvert Klients™.

As shown below, among 21 publisher categories, 16 categories registered increased CTRs on long tail sites whereas in five content categories, ads on short tail sites underperformed long tail ads.

Data Source: CONTEXTWEB‘s Intelligence Report: Using Long Tail Sites to Optimize Media Spend was published in March 2011. It analysed digital media performance from roughly 18,000 publisher sites across 1,000 campaigns in the second half of 2010.

Imagine being able to SEE the flow of visitors as they navigate your site – how cool and VALUABLE would that be?!?! Well, Google’s done it again – they are releasing this new functionality in their signature Analytics platform – WOW!

Click on this image to read more about this new release!

It was bound to happen… Real Time Google Analytics! If you’re an exponential Internet marketer who adheres to Management By Metrics™, this is BIG!

Just thought you should know!

Psst! Thanks to Ray Keefe of Successful Endeavours for forwarding it to me in real time!

In a recent article,”Companies in the dark over converting web traffic into sales” it was reported that sixty per cent of Australian companies with an online presence have no idea how to convert website visitors into customers.

More than 300 Australian marketers were surveyed through independent research with the report also revealing 89% of companies don’t use tools to assess how people use their sites.

Moreover, the companies surveyed spend 40% of their budget attracting traffic to their website.

Some 30% of marketers either do not evaluate the success of their website or only evaluate on an annual basis.

A further 25% assess their website biennially. This lack of engagement and measurement of their websites means most marketers have no idea what small simple changes could be made to their websites to increase sales.

Isn’t this alarming?

So how do you stack up to these stats?

If you want help to grow your online presence and bottom-line results, give us a call. We have a RESULTS GUARANTEED Platinum Program that will have you out-performing and out-selling your competitors in no time – if you qualify!

According to a recent survey, personalised emails generated 42.7% more click-throughs on average to the web copy than non-personalised email.

Personalised emails generated 403% more sales on average than non-personalised emails.

Personalised emails generated 42.8% fewer un-subscribes on average than non-personalised emails.

Email Personalisation is not new, the question is does it still work?

Should you expend the effort to personalize your emails?

You should TEST to see what happens. Surveys and reports are great to give you ideas, but you need to test the findings with YOUR suspects, prospects and clients.

Don’t just believe everything you read.

Whitelisting your email is something that many Internet beginners still struggle with. With the proliferation of spam and junk emails, it’s still something that’s important to do.

Having people whitelist your email will improve your email delivery and conversion rates.

That’s why this explanation really stood out as a great value-creation tool for clients. I thought would share it with you.

You’re welcome!

A lot of people debate the pros and cons of Social Media, what I have come to call Social NOTworking – where people waste countless hours exchanging posts, chats, pokes, photos and other electronic elements with people they wouldn’t be caught dead with face-to-face. But that’s my personal bias AND I am not saying that Social Media is not worth doing – it is, but not for the reasons MOST people think…

That’s a discussion for another day and one I reserve for my paying clients to help them out-perform their peers by doing out-of-the-ordinary things that create extra-ordinary results.

Results that baffle their competitors – BECAUSE they (the competitors) have no clue…. Shhh! It’s called Stealth Marketing and means they can’t copy what you’re doing!

In support of my bias, I came across recent reports that continue to show that website traffic from social media networks is still pretty low.

SeeWhy studied 60,000 ecommerce transactions across a variety of sites in February 2011. Since running an online store is about selling things, they looked at only the people who actually loaded items into their shopping cart. Here’s one of the summary results:

Email Marketing Generates More Buyer Traffic Than Social Media

Email Marketing Still Outperforms Social Media

As you can see, email brought in the most traffic, with direct and search significantly less. Social media came in at only 4.3%, not great, but better than display advertising, so that’s something to think about.

Next they took that info and charted the percentage of people from each source who completed their transaction. In other words, the people who handed over their credit card number and hit submit.

Email Marketing Converts To More Sales Than Social Media

If you want more sales, send more emails!

In the above pie chart you can clearly see that email and direct hits to the site still resulted in the best sales conversions, social media picked up a dismal 2.11% of the overall, but look at display advertising. Yikes, only 0.53% conversion rate? Maybe you should be spending money on your Facebook page rather than on display ads, but once again that’s a discussion for another day. Social NOTworking does have its place, but not where or how you might think. We explain this in our Killer Konversations™ Workshops if you’re interested…

At the end of all of this, SeeWhy does put in the usual disclaimer. Your mileage may vary and different types of ecommerce sites will have different results. While I understand that this is a study of ONLY 60,000 transactions, it supports my bias that email marketing still is the primary source for online sales.

There’s a fundamental reason – it’s a privileged conversation that people still value – as long as it’s not violated.

If you’re asking yourself why email marketing isn’t in the news more often, it’s because it simply isn’t as new and trendy as social media marketing.

The news “media” are always searching for new trends and buzzwords to fill their empty pages.

My clients don’t care about the buzz and hype – all they want is more people buying their products and services.

If that’s what you want – send them more emails – but not just any emails… That’s considered spam. You need to know what to send to whom.

That’s what we teach our clients to do – become a client today. Contact us now and we’ll help you avoid making mistakes that cost money and lost sales.

Google Instant is not new, but it is having a dramatic influence on how people search….

As you can see when you use Google, the search results change dynamically AS YOU TYPE. The suggestions DO influence what people will type in – this is having a dramatic effect on Google Adwords…

Ray Keefe of Successful Endeavours sent this Google Warning article link to me several months ago. I shared this with my clients giving them hints and suggestions, but those are beyond the scope of a blog post.

If you’d like ‘instant’ access to tip and tricks to make sure you avoid mistakes and are kept informed in ‘real time’ – contact us to join one of our many programs.

I am sure you’ve come across Google Previews (as shown below), but what’s important about it is it’s going to change the SEO and web design concepts as it becomes more popular. Google’s done this to keep you on its page longer, in an attempt to regain it’s #1 status on the web, which it lost to Facebook in 2010. Facebook has more views and the visits are 10 times longer (22 minutes versus just over 2 minutes on Google per day).

I’ll talk about other strategies Google is using which are going to make your SEO strategies even harder and more cumbersome, but for today, I wanted to focus on Google Previews.

We’re all going to need to design our pages according to this new feature. Hopefully Google will explain how it selects the summary text, at this stage it all seems quite random even though it’s not. As soon as Google reveals anything worth reporting – I’ll let you know.

Google Preview Example

This second example of a Google Preview shows how complex this is because the preview is page-by-page depending on the listing, keyword search, etc…

Google Preview Example

I am sure you enjoy this and my other blogs. They are filled with information that would otherwise take you hours to find and in many cases, there is no way you would ever find them on your own. The reason is that I have HUNDREDS of contributors to my blogs from around the world… Take this blog post about 10 You Tube URL Tricks You Should Know About. Unless you were searching for that, you’d never even think of it.

That’s why it’s valuable to have a business coach, advisor or mentor who does this for you, automatically and systematically.

In my case, I am The Exponential Growth Strategist which means I find stuff that makes the difference and gives you options to choose from. Like this YouTube Channel link.

The question then becomes – are you ready to take these tips to the next level and make them work for you to create exponential growth for your business and/or online sales channel?

If you are, then consider the Exponential Internet Marketing Bootcamp – when you attend as a VIP Ticket Holder, we’ll guarantee that you’ll make $30,000 GUARANTEED in the next 12 months.

As a business coach to entrepreneurs and business people who want to increase sales and expand their businesses, I advocate the 1 Percent Improvement Doctrine. It’s a concept that is covered on Day 3 of my Bootcamp events when we cover the concepts of Pathways To Profits™ and determining your Next Best Step™. With Internet strategies there are so many things to do, the most important question is “what should I focus on?”

That is the “million dollar question”.

At my upcoming Exponential Internet Marketing Bootcamp, I will, for the last time, reveal how to do this for non-Platinum Program Members. The process takes a few hours to learn, but once mastered, you will always do the right thing, at the right time for the right reason/outcome.

It’s a simple, easy-to-learn methodology that I’ve developed to re-create success for over 2,000 businesses across 200 industries over the past 20 years. In fact, the strategies are so effective that I now GUARANTEE RESULTS when you attend the Bootcamp as a VIP Ticket holder.

As a business coach I don’t just reveal strategies, techniques and tactics that work, I advise and mentor my clients to learn to do it themselves. That is why I am The Exponential Growth Strategist and not “just a business coach“.

The saying “teach a man how to fish and he’ll feed himself for a lifetime” is true with business coaching, but most coaches don’t have the competency to teach, they consult and create a dependency with their clients to ensure they need them so their personal income is “secured”. I don’t do that. I make sure I teach people how to think exponentially leveraging a MasterMind Group of the most ambitious entrepreneurs around.

Why is this important? Because success on the Internet is about doing what works. Finding that out is a process. If you want to know how my clients do it, contact us and we’ll reveal the secrets to you, but you should know that this upcoming Exponential Internet Marketing Bootcamp is the last one I’m doing. That means in 2011, you’ll have to be a Platinum Program Member to learn these strategies.

I’m going ‘upmarket’ with my most valuable information and strategies. I will still have introductory seminars and workshops, but the most powerful will be reserved exclusively for those willing to pay for it. Their reward will be that I GUARANTEE RESULTS. I would think you’d agree that’s not just fair, that makes good business sense.

That’s the whole point, it’s win-win.. Ka-Ching!

With Google Caffeine, Google now analyzes the web in small portions and updates its search index on a continuous basis, globally. As they find new pages, or new information on existing pages, they can now add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

Google Caffeine

Google Caffeine allows the indexing of web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Google Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Google Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

That’s what happens when you drink too much caffeine – you get hyper!

Ray Keefe of Successful Endeavours came across new data that shows Google searches are getting longer and more specific. Attached are a few pointers on how you can adapt.

The data reveals that the percentage of clicks based on search term length is changing. Clicks made through searches over eight words grew by 8.3%, with searches over seven words growing by 5.3%.

In contrast, clicks made through searches using one word fell by 1.1%, with clicks made by searches over two words falling by 1.5%. Searches using three words remained flat.

The data isn’t surprising as the growth of the Internet as a business tool results in more users searching for more specific data, such as brands and product names.

Google reports that 20% of searches are absolutely brand new, meaning they have never been typed into the search engine before. Users are having to think about being more specific to get through jargon and get to what they really want.

This is important for you, as you must think about what keywords you can use in order to show up in as many searches as possible when your target market is looking to acquire your product or service.

One of the biggest trends ignored by small businesses is search-by-location. You must start to use keywords relating to your  location, as users are more and more searching for specific brands and products by suburb.

Not enough small businesses think about ranking for their suburb name, which is an extremely easy thing to rank for and people will use it in very specific searches. This is necessary even though Google is getting better with that sort of thing, with both maps as well as business listings.

At eight words, which is pretty high, think about the things people would be searching for and the combinations they would prefer…

That means you must consider what you think users will be searching for and that means not just what you think should be an appropriate keyword.

For example, Qantas probably use the keywords cheap flights, but they aren’t targeting cheap air fares. Similarly, you might want to use the words “cheap accommodation” but also consider most people won’t type that into Google, chances are they’ll type in “cheap hotels” or “cheap motel”.

As I’ve explained in previous blog posts, you must not get obsessed with adding as many keywords as possible, but instead should add the right types of keywords.

Google Adword strategies are beyond the scope of this blog post, I just wanted to highlight that BECAUSE searches are getting longer, you need to keep that in mind…

You can thank Ray Keefe of Successful Endeavours for the initial source of information – by going to his site and having a look around – that’ll help his SEO!

As you know from yesterday’s post, I am in Melbourne at Internet Technical Mastery - A Platinum Program event that is not open to the public… It’s where I reveal the most powerful Internet tips, tricks and techniques like the one I will partially share with you right now.

It’s called www.UserTesting.com you can scroll down to read my testimonial. It’s REAL people giving you REAL feedback on your site or blog.

But here’s the thing…

What feedback do you take and which one do you leave behind?

I’ve done about 10 of them so far – and about 25% of the suggestions would KILL my sales if I did what the reviewer was telling me to change. OWCH!

So how do you decipher what to take and what to leave?

That’s where I come in. At events like Internet Technical Mastery and our upcoming Exponential Internet and Business Building Bootcamp, I explain EXACTLY how to leverage a tool like this so it helps you get that breakthrough you need to be the ONE out of TWENTY who makes money on the Internet…

www.UserTesting.com is a fantastic service YOU MUST USE.

It’s just that if you want to be exponential, you need to know what to change and what NOT TO TOUCH!

Otherwise, every time you have someone new testing it, you’ll keep changing it back and forth, spinning your wheels and not getting anywhere.

www.UserTesting.com is a powerful tool – just like a chainsaw. You need to know HOW to use it to get the outcome you want.

I recommend it to all my clients as an absolute MUST, no two ways about it.

You simply cannot afford not to do it.

BUT, as I said you have to be careful not to UNDO what’s working and there are simple ways to make sure that doesn’t happen and how that can be safely and methodically tested. Come to our Bootcamp or join one of our Membership Programs and I’ll make sure you avoid the mistakes most people make and do what the top 5% Internet Marketers are doing to make more than the other 95% combined.

This blog gives great value for FREE – imagine what I can teach you when you pay for the privilege of being in the room?!?! That is what successful know – the investment pays for itself 10 times over.

To put things in perspective – I took 3 ideas from ONE User Testing Review that increased my conversions by 12% that equates to more than $10,000 of ADDITIONAL NEW SALES of ONE product.

With another site, I incorporated 7 subtle changes that have already increased back-end sales by 8.5% and reduced unsubscribes by 13.4% in the first week of testing.

The challenge you have (we all have) is once again what to change and not change and WHY!

Understanding the WHY means that you can do 10, 20 or even 30 User Testing Reviews and know what to ignore and what to focus on.

How would you like to know the drop-dead-easy strategy I use to get EXPONENTIAL RESULTS INSTANTLY that most people would not think of?

Ask me at the next event and I’ll tell you! This ONE tactic means I get 200, 300% or even 500% more out of EACH User Testing Review than what others are doing!

Yeah I know – that’s a tease – a tease to get you to come to my Bootcamp where for 36 hours you’ll be flooded with tips like this… Want to focus ONLY on the Internet, attend the one-day Internet Millionaire Marketing Event.

Ever wonder if what you’re doing is working? With Google Analytics it’s simple and easy to track visitors to your site, but where did they come from? Why did they take action? What headline worked best? All of these questions can be answered with the following…

Email Tracking Tip

Read More »»

A few days (posts) ago, Gavin Buckett of AGB Solutions told us how he turned a $300 investment into $17,000 of revenue.

That alone produced TWO additional solid leads from THAT BLOG post alone! (If you want new leads, send me your Exponential Success stories!)

The following is an e-mail excerpt from Gavin, giving us another instalment in his success saga…

The KEY DISTINCTION FOR GAVIN’S SUCCESS IS HIGHLIGHTED BELOW…

______________________________________________________________________

Wednesday, April 16th

Hi Marc,

I just thought that I would give you an update on how my Google Adword campaign is going.

I had a meeting today with a company who is based in Sydney (I am based in Melbourne) who found my business on Google and called me. Before I met him, he had self selected AGB Solutions to implement a HACCP system for his business. He had selected AGB Solutions based purely on what he read on my website, and that I was the business to meet his needs, as I was obviously passionate about what I do (check out the landing page: http://www.agbsolutions.com.au/food_safety_programs.php for yourself).

He was in Melbourne for a meeting tonight and scheduled his flight home around the time that I could meet him. We discussed his needs and he reiterated that we were a good fit (he is an importer of quality tea from Germany) and I a supplier of quality food safety management systems. He committed to the project on the spot.

Generally it takes two to three months to have a HACCP system fully certified. As I was his chosen supplier, he was able to fit in with my schedule when I am Sydney next Month for the Virtual Real Estate Empire Building Workshop (I am heading up one day early) and then… offered to prepay the full amount UPFRONT. I normally invoice in thirds at different stages of the project. This blew me away.

Since my last email two weeks ago, I have also had discussions with three other companies, who ALL sound promising. One is a national chain of 16 retail stores with their head office and processing facility in Melbourne. I am meeting them next week; to not only discuss their processing facility, but also to implement systems for their 16 retail stores. This is only in early stages but I am quietly confident that I have already said enough to win them over. ALL from Google Adwords!

I know you like the numbers, so here they are:

My most expensive Adword is…$1.00. My current Google Adword account has cost me about $200 per month over 3 months. Since I set up Google analytics 6 weeks ago, I have had 815 visitors to my site from 15 different countries (688 from Australia). I have had 25 people who I have never met add their details to my data base.

To compare: My current Yellow Pages advertisement is worth $2,400 (about $200 per month as well) and I have had one enquiry, who is yet to commit. Yellow Pages are trying to get me to recommit to 2009. What chance do they have? I now have $20,500 committed revenue and another $25,000 quoted and quite probable (fingers crossed). All from Google! (for the same price PLUS I control this 100% AND can modify my strategy on-the-spot which I can’t do with Yellow Pages)

How would the ad go? Three days for UYMG: $295, accommodation, airfares and transfers approximately $500. $1,400 spent plus three days of drinking water from a fire hydrant to make a possible $45,000.00. PRICELESS. This is 3 months worth of effort. Multiply those metrics over 12 months.

As you say, you do the maths!

I am sure you want to know my current USP for HACCP certification (I have three USP’s now), that includes a number of Dr D’s and Exponential Marketing strategies. It is:

AGB Solutions is Australia’s only food safety company owned and operated by a former Apprentice Chef of the Year who will reveal little known safe food and quality assurance secrets to you if you’re a food manufacturer or distributor who is not big enough to have their own QA manager. You uncross your fingers knowing an outbreak won’t happen to you because we have all the appropriate certified industry skills and scientific knowledge to ensure and GUARANTEE that you will gain HACCP Certification at your first attempt as well as meeting all of your regulatory requirements with friendly, cost effective and practical solutions to ensure your products are safer than your competitors’ and empowering your staff so they never embarrass you (again).

The Guarantee that I offer is:

AGB Solutions is so confident about the HACCP certified programs that we prepare, that we GUARANTEE that your program will achieve certification at the first and only attempt, simply by completing our “11 Point Checklist for HACCP Certification Success”. If the program that we prepare does not pass certification on the first attempt, we will refund you all of the payments that you have already made.

We have worked in and on HACCP systems for almost 10 years. We can offer this guarantee knowing that every single one of our clients has achieved certification at their first attempt and we’re not about to let you ruin our 100% success record!

Thanks for your help Dr D, You rock.

Eat Well. Eat Safe!

Gavin

Gavin Buckett
Founder and Managing Director
A.G.B Solutions Pty Ltd
Post Office Box 1078, Ashwood, Victoria, 3147
Mobile: 0422 922 883
Fax: 03 9813 8349
Web: www.agbsolutions.com.au
Email: gavin@agbsolutions.com.au


P.S.
Now there has to be a P.S. doesn’t there. I would like for Max Ucherek to film me for You Tube.

What is needed for this and what is the cost? As mentioned previously, I would like to do three separate videos to compress my Pathways To Profit. They are:

Video 1: Who is AGB solutions and why should I choose you for our food safety needs.
Video 2: What is HACCP and what are the benefits of implementing HACCP??
Video 3: How AGB Solutions can implement a HACCP System for your business.

I have prepared texts a couple of weeks ago and was going to ask Leela to look over them for me to exponentialise them.

Also, I don’t know if Max can help, but It would be good to have an insert of text while I am talking (i.e. from PowerPoint).

Head down. Bum up.

P.P.S. I was in a business the other day and they had a quote that summarises my approach to your teachings. Remember I was starting pretty low on the knowledge ladder and have made a few blunders that you have pointed out to me. The quote was something like:
If you ask the question, you may seem like a fool for five minutes. If you don’t ask the question, you may be a fool for life.

The reason this strategy is working so well is that Gavin LOVES what he does, is not afraid to SHOW IT and ARTICULATES it in EVERY SINGLE communication with his suspects and prospects. If you START to do the same, you TOO will improve your results in QUANTUM leaps…