Use Our Arsenal of Hottest Tips and Tools
To Build Your e-Business Machine!

We always have a steady stream of new subscribers to our "Marketing Tips" Newsletter, but in the last few months we've seen even bigger numbers than usual come and join us for our information free-for-all!

So I want to welcome our new subscribers by getting you familiar with our articles and making sure you don't miss out -- because in the last few months we've revealed some of the hottest, most cutting-edge trends and techniques in the online marketing world today!

For those of you who have been with us for a while, this is an excellent chance to go over some of the information you might have missed. Or maybe you've looked at these strategies before, thought about them, or perhaps even tried them out... but haven't taken the time to further explore your options or follow up on your initial plans.

And, most importantly, even if you've been following each of our publications and testing each and every idea in your own business, you might not have thought about how these ideas relate to one another, how one idea can augment the next, and how they are meant to be used not in isolated trials, but as functional parts of your whole business mechanism.

So let's have a look through a few of our most recent topics, including the following:

1. Uncover New Profit Channels for Your Business by Conducting an Online Survey
   
   
2. Seven Key Questions to Help You Find the Shopping Cart That Can Potentially DOUBLE Your Sales!
   
   
3. Create a Bidding Frenzy and Sell More Product Through the Giant Online Auction Sites
   
   
4. Discover the 4 Hard and Fast Rules for Writing High-Impact Copy That Generates BIG Sales, Subscriptions, and Click-Throughs... In SMALL Spaces
   
   
5. FREE Tools and Resources to Give Your Online Marketing the Edge it Needs
   
   
6. Learn How to Instantly Make Your Web Site URL Appear on the First Page of Search Results in Google
   
   
7. Discover How To Find The Customers That Are Five Times More Likely To Purchase Your Product -- And Get Them To Buy More!

A carefully constructed survey can be a powerful tool for striking up a personal conversation with your customers to learn exactly how they feel about your company, products, and services -- valuable insights that give you the opportunity to turbo-charge your profits by:

• Understanding your potential buyers' interests, challenges, values, and lifestyles
  
  
• Re-writing the benefits emphasized in your salescopy to focus closely on those that are of greatest interest to your target market
  
  
• Discovering new or under-served micro-niches (those tiny groups of customers who are typically ignored by large corporations) and tapping into these additional profit channels
  
  
• Spotting fads and market trends quickly and capitalizing on them before your competitors do

... all without the typical costs associated with offline surveys, all within a matter of a few days (or even a few hours)!

To find out more about conducting your own online survey, go to:

http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue62/page1.html

Did you know that the right shopping cart has the potential to more than double your sales!

Many people don't know this, but "shopping cart abandonment" is a serious problem -- 55% of online shoppers have abandoned carts. And the main reason these folks desert their selections before actually completing their purchases is because they are frustrated with the shopping cart itself.

Obviously, if you want to streamline your ordering process by adding a shopping cart to your web site, then it's critical that you choose one that will be user-friendly for shoppers. The "right" shopping cart can result in 55% more shoppers actually completing their purchases! And this means 55% more profits in your pocket!

However, choosing a shopping cart can be an extremely difficult (and confusing!) decision, especially for those of you who are just struggling to understand what one actually is...

To find out how to choose the best shopping cart software for your particular business needs, go to:

http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue63/page1.html

Online auctions have effectively created a giant virtual marketplace where people can gather to buy, sell, trade, and check out the goods of the day; they're enormously popular, high-traffic venues where start-ups and auctioneers alike can begin selling product almost immediately, with...

• No overhead or upfront costs
• No sales staff or distributors
• No web site of your own
• No initial investment

This massive marketplace will generate an estimated $48.5 billion in sales by 2006 (Forrester Research), and eBay is the obvious leader. According to the Neilson Ratings, eBay is among the top ten most-trafficked of all sites on the Internet.

The amount of traffic that eBay and the other top sites attract make online auctions an ideal place to capitalize on readily available, widespread exposure. However, the competition is fierce in popular categories, and your product can easily get lost among the hundreds of listings.

To discover how to make a killing selling your product through online auction sites, go to:

http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue64/page1.html

We all know that well-written copy is one of the most highly effective methods of getting people's attention and attracting them to your product or service… but the importance of the shortest copy is often overlooked. A lot of people don't even realize that things like their navigation menus, links, or even their newsletter subscription offers ARE copy and require careful consideration.

Ironically, this kind of copy is one of the most valuable tools you have. It's job is typically to direct people to take some sort of action that is vital to your business: visit your web site, request more info, subscribe to your newsletter, click through, buy the product… which is why it requires so much more attention than it tends to receive.

Of course it's more difficult to get your message across when you have limited space, but short copy is the glue that holds your marketing campaign together. And if every button on your menu, every ad, every link isn't as absolutely compelling and effective as it can be, you're not going to get the results you're hoping for, be it more sales, more subscriptions, more referrals, etc...

To learn the secrets of writing killer copy that screams, "Take Action Now!" go to:

http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue65/page1.html

Can free resources provide solutions to your marketing needs? Are they a viable way to avoid some of the costs of marketing online? Sure, freeware has a bad reputation, but aren't there any freebies you can use?

Of course, you will never establish your e-business as a serious presence on the 'Net if your pages are filled with the garish advertising and sponsorships that typically go hand-in-hand with free services, or if your site has too much downtime, or if the services you use are constantly closing up shop...

However, there are a number of very good tools and resources available on the 'Net that are FREE. And these can be excellent ways to complement your existing tools at no cost, helping you to make your site stickier and more user-friendly, make your keywords more effective, keep an eye on your competition, find potential business partners, and more...

To learn which freebies will get you that extra edge you need to stay ahead of your competition -- at no cost to your pocketbook OR your reputation! -- go to:

http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue66/page1.html

People are raving about Google AdWords... Do you know how it works?

An ad placed with Google AdWords Select shows up in a colored box on the right side of the Google search results page, combining free (editorial) content with paid advertising. It's another form of pay-per-click advertising that, done right, has proven to effectively generate traffic.

The ads are extremely high in visibility, set off from the main text in Google's familiar pages that attract over 20 million unique visitors per month. Your URL can appear on the first page of search results without all the hassles of search engine submission and optimization... and you don't pay unless viewers click!

Sound like the ideal advertising set-up? Well, it's been very profitable for some... But there are a few ins and outs that you should be aware of before you go ahead with this kind of advertising.

To find out how you can use Google AdWords to your benefit, go to:

http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue67/page1.html

Have you ever heard of the "Pareto Principle"? If you haven't, you are missing out on one of the MOST EFFECTIVE routes there is to bigger profits.

The Pareto Principle was named after the Italian economist who observed in 1906 that 20% of the Italian population owned 80% of Italy's wealth. He then noticed that 20% of the pea pods in his garden accounted for 80% of his pea crop each year. Coincidence? Well, it got him thinking...

Vilfredo Pareto applied this 80-20 rule to pretty much everything -- and whether or not you agree with it is your prerogative. But when it comes to your e-business, you're missing out on a lot of profit if you don't realize that 20% of your customers are responsible for 80% of your sales!

It's a little-recognized fact that at least 20% of people who have purchased from you once will buy from you again... IF you follow up with them. One-fifth of your customer base is just waiting for you to offer them something new.

To discover the best ways to follow up with your customers, including what to offer them and when, and even how to automate the process, go to:

http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue68/page1.html

Final Thoughts:

With all of these articles and all this information at your fingertips -- and pointing you toward other resources -- you've got a valuable, consolidated business guide that you can apply to your business in a number of ways. Think about the relationships between these topics -- and how you could combine their uses to implement them even more effectively.

For example, before deciding on a shopping cart system for your online business, you could create your own online survey and use it to find out exactly what your customers are looking for in a shopping cart. Or, if you have a cart in place already, you could design a survey to find out why your customers might be frustrated with it and where they think it might be improved.

Of course, the copywriting skills you'll learn from Topic #4 above will come in handy in a great many ways... but you could certainly use them to write the most effective copy possible for your online auction site or your Google AdWords ad.

Think about how you could use your shopping cart software to manage your backend sales process and start taking advantage of the "Pareto Principle" (by tracking your customers and sales, adding up-sell or additional products within your sales procedure, etc.)

...And then consider designing a survey to find out exactly what your customers think of your regular or up-sell products!

My point here is this: Remember not to use these tools and resources in isolation. If you combine your strategies and your efforts, you'll be able to capitalize on your knowledge more efficiently -- and put each new tidbit of information to work for you in as many ways as possible.