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’s no surprise that selling online has become harder. More and more consumers are researching before they even consider a purchase decision.

Results of the “Social Shopping Study”, conducted by PowerReviews in association with the e-tailing group, indicate that consumers who shop online are on a mission to get thorough information about products and find the best prices before they buy.

About half of the survey respondents spent 75 percent of their overall online shopping time researching products, compared to about one in five just a year ago. That’s a considerable increase.

When it comes to purchases such as computers and televisions, 71 percent of respondents say they spend a few days or more doing online research. Some respondents claim to spend “a few weeks” (18 percent) on research. Almost half of these online shoppers (44 percent) start with a search engine and look for top search results for the products that interest them. That’s a lot of time and effort to save a few dollars…

Amazon gets high scores from consumers as a place for product information, reviews, and price comparisons.

• Fifty-eight percent of survey respondents say they use reviews and ratings at Amazon as part of their research “all the time” or “very often.”
• In comparison, just 29 percent say they use Google Shopping to read product reviews, but that’s a good showing for Google’s relatively new service.
• Sixty-three percent think the reviews and recommendations found at Amazon are “extremely or very credible.”
• Of those who use their mobile phones for shopping, 36 percent look for competitive pricing on Amazon while they are in a physical store.

One of the more interesting findings is what consumers say about social media.

Facebook and Twitter are not highly regarded when it comes to shopping research.

• In fact, half (49 percent) of respondents says they “never” use social media to research products they want to purchase online.
• Only 13 percent say a company Facebook page has a significant impact on their buying behavior, while 59 percent of respondents say it is customer reviews of products that influence them, and 42 percent indicate it is customers asking and answering products about questions that influence them.

The survey respondents were pretty evenly split between male and female, with the predominant age group being 35 – 44 (31 percent), followed by 45 – 54 (26 percent) and 25 – 34 (24 percent). Forty-two percent of the respondents said they shopped online several times a month in the past year.

So what does this mean for your online sales channel approach?

1. Online shoppers have discovered how to do research prior to purchase, they take it seriously and invest a lot of time and effort into it. If you don’t have sufficient information available for your products and services, you’re probably going to miss out on a lot of sales.
2. Online retail shoppers seem to rely on Amazon for product reviews and to check prices. Which is important to know if you’re selling a product that is or could be sold on Amazon…
3. I have been saying this all along… Facebook and Twitter are not a factor in (most) online purchasing decisions. It doesn’t mean it won’t change in the future, just that it’s not your lowest hanging fruit if you’re focused on sales. Sales is a four-step process. Knowing when to engage social media is beyond a free blog post. It’s what I share and teach my clients – sorry!

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!

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.

Every once in a while I come across something that stands out. Today’s post is an example of a subtle question (13b) that puts the previous question into context. It’s the BEST SURVEY QUESTION I have read in several years. Leave it to Apple to do it – they know the value of feedback. They also understand and respect the CONTEXT and INTENT in which it’s given.

From Apple

When I meet with my clients, I go into substantially more detail than just highlighting something like this. There are two psychological constructs in play here that were outlined in substantial detail in two recent books I read. Books you would not come across in your airport or local bookstore.

This is what I do as The Exponential Growth Strategist – I seek out distinctions, nuances and explanations so my clients can tailor outstanding examples like this one in their businesses and/or careers. If you’d like to be coached or mentored and access this level of expertise, contact me. If you qualify, we’d love to have you in our RESULTS GUARANTEED Platinum Program.

In a previous post, I explained the benefit of using a great illustration or photo to explain a step-by-step process. Sometimes the image can be a page of text – like this one for mobile phone recycling… One page says it all in a very attractive layout, with the necessary links.

This is a great example of how to explain something, step-by-step. A picture is worth a thousand words. Always, always Keep It Simple Stupid (K.I.S.S.) especially when it comes to instructions and explanations.

Did you know you can fart proof your dog? If you’ve ever had a dog with flatulence, you know how valuable this can be.

The Internet Marketing Lesson is that I explained how to leverage this fact to two clients: One leveraged it and the other didn’t.

Which one do you think has doubled sales and tripled profits?

Enough said.

The point is that you have to capture people’s attention – especially on the Internet where people’s attention is measured in seconds.

The proof is in the pudding – I bet you you can’t bear NOT knowing how you can fart proof your dog – EVEN IF YOU DON’T HAVE A DOG!

This is how powerful Killer Kopywriting™ can be. The difference between struggling to get people to your website and having an avalanche of qualified prospects…

As I mentioned yesterday, we’re at the Marriott Hotel, staging the last of the Exponential Internet Marketing Bootcamps - ever. We’re not opening it up to the general public anymore, we’re going to keep the content for our most privileged clients – our Platinum Program Members… That being said, there is one concept that you can gain instant access to, it’s called Virtual Real Estate and as I’ve mentioned previously on several occasions, the program will be re-branded, re-formatted and the price substantially increased. At this price, it’s an absolute bargain because it introduces you to the concept that we’re leveraging for brick and mortar businesses every day. Plumbers, dentists, engineers, doggy day care centres, consultants, you name it.

Social Media Marketing is a time consuming waste of time – UNLESS you know what you’re doing and how to do it properly.

This is a program that can save you in excess of 200 hours of searching plus a lot of the information in the bonuses you simply would never find on your own.

Go ahead and click here on the hyperlink here – to find out about Virtual Real Estate.

At the Bootcamp, I am spending 3 hours explaining this concept in detail – not for people to actually Flip Websites For Profit, but to leverage the business model to create an endless stream of qualified prospects walking into their stores or businesses that become paying clients.

Imagine having a lead generation system that is free. That’s right, new leads that don’t cost you a cent.

That’s what Bootcamp attendees are learning about this weekend – you’re not there, so the next best thing you can do is get the online video program and try to get as much from it as you can. Otherwise you’re wasting a lot time and effort for… nothing.

There is a better way, an exponential way of doing things.

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!

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!

Most companies automatically choose their company name as their domain name. While that’s a wise move, it’s often a BIG mistake to stop there. In fact you could be losing as much as 75% of your leads because of it – keep reading if you want to avoid making this Internet Marketing Mistake!

Testing multiple domain names and picking the one that performs best (for example, in Google AdWords ads) is a very profitable strategy. Read More »»

How country specific domain names effect SEO and Google AdWords performance

Many people ask me what implications “domain name class” have on SEO and Pay Per Click (e.g. Google AdWords) rankings and results.

“Domain name class” is another word for “Top Level Domain”, or the extension on the end of your domain name (e.g. .com, .net, .com.au).  In particular, you should know the implications that country code top level domains (or ccTLD for short) can have on your search engine marketing efforts.

ccTLDs and Organic Search Engine Optimisation

Should your “main” website URL be a .com.au if you’re primarily targeting Australia?

Read More »»

Today’s post is going another Twist Of The Kube that you will enjoy. Go click on the URL below to execute the first Twist. I promise you it’s going to surprise you how creative you can be to get people INVOLVED in a process that is win-win-win. Best of all, it’s FREE!

Click here to Twist The Kube. <———– CLICK HERE TO START TWISTING THE KUBE!!!!

If you are not familiar with this term, it’s based on my Marc-Ka-Ching Kube… Click the hyperlink to learn more about this fun business-building tool, but don’t get distracted – Twist The Kube first!

This is one of countless strategies we teach our clients in our Internet Mastery Programs… If you want to Twist The Kube and start to get extra-ordinary results, check out or programs and make the decision to join today.

Today’s post is only for you if you are actively using Exponential Marketing Strategies. It’s all about playing the back-end. As I teach you these strategies, I am constantly fine tuning my strategies and tactics. I doubled my back-end sales with one disarmingly simple strategy that I want to share with you.

If you don’t already have an autoresponder system – GET ONE. I use Aweber.com and other than the annoying double opt-in requirement it’s FANTASTIC. Another option is IContact that doesn’t have the double opt-in which means that it will gain in popularity and may win me over very soon, but that is a discussion for another day.

With an autoresponder system, it means that you can automatically and systematically send follow-up messages to people who have bought from you or subscribed to a membership or newsletter.

By fine tuning and ADJUSTING these messages, you can INSTANTLY increase sales BECAUSE these are people who have ALREADY bought or accepted to receive information from you.

Even though I can’t share confidential information with you about what I did exactly – I can tell you that less than 2 hours of editing, re-ordering messages to create MORE VALUE and a SIMPLER conversation has had a 100% effect on my back-end sales for ONE of my products.

That means I can now replicate that across my other products and services.

Say it with me…

Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching!

The best part, the clients will GET MUCH MORE by getting the add-on ‘up-sell’ product making their initial investment even more valuable.

It’s a win-win proposition.

Beware of the potential risk – if you OVERSELL – you risk KILLING all the goodwill you’ve established!

This is a skill we teach in our Killer Kopywriting Workshops and is way beyond a blog post. Call Gulliver on 0401 923 852 if you’re keen to double your back-end sales in ONE day.

if you don’t fine tune your autoresponder messages, you could be losing up to 50% of your sales that you could be making….

Imagine cutting your Google Adword costs in half and doubling your Click Through Rates and Sales in one go…. We’ve just designed a BRAND NEW Internet Marketing Autopsy to assess your Internet Marketing Skills. It’s now available for FREE when you click the banner below -

Check it out and perform your own self-assessment right now, while it’s FREE – it’s usually $297.