Dr Ralph Wilson, writing in Web Marketing Today, says it well: there are four functions that EVERY online ad must perform in order to get a click- through. They are to:

1. Attract interest
2. Present the offer
3. Select the audience
4. Get the click-through

I would rearrange the list slightly - I think the ad should select or qualify the audience before presenting the offer. After all, the merits of your super-duper offer will likely fall on deaf ears unless your audience has a natural interest in the problem or desire addressed by that offer in the first place.

Having said that, the confines of many online ads are such that, technically speaking, you may well qualify your audience when or after you present your offer. Plus, if you have chosen your media appropriately, you will ideally, be directing your ad to an audience that is already qualified to some extent.

For example, if you have an offer that would appeal to Internet marketers, you’d be wise to run your ad in an Internet marketing newsletter like Kikabink News since it’s squarely aimed at Internet marketers.

On the other hand, if you were specifically directing your ad to Internet marketers who run home based businesses, you might qualify your audience with a headline such as “Discover The Secrets of Successful Home Based Internet Marketers…”

All in all, though, as Dr Wilson emphasizes in his article, your ad must do ALL four things to get the click-through. So when it comes to evaluating your ad before it goes live… ask yourself whether it really is doing each of those four things.

Source: Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, “4 Tasks Your Internet Ad Absolutely Must Accomplish”, Web Marketing Today

Jack Humphrey has published an article that explains, simply and succinctly how to make your blog popular. He gives 6 tips, which I’ve put my own spin on below:

1. Create ‘marketable’ blog content that readers don’t just enjoy reading but also feel compelled to forward to others.

2. Write for two (2) audiences - readers and other bloggers.

Notice that Jack does NOT mention writing for that third audience… search engines? Here’s what we’ve learned since we began publishing the Kikabink News Internet marketing blog/newsletter just a few months ago: write for people and the search engines will follow.

If you regularly write about topics you want to be known as an authority on, sooner or later the search engines will begin treating you as such. If, on the other hand, you try to write specifically for search engines and stuff your articles with an unnaturally high level of keywords… you’ll turn off readers, bloggers and eventually the search engines.

3. Link to other relevant blogs and content. Remember the days when we were all told to get inbound links… without giving out links in return? Didn’t that strike you as a little… um… selfish? Well, those days are gone. Not only can you get “trackback” links when you link to other blogs, but the search engines are increasingly taking a holistic view at who is linking to whom. They’re actually starting to favor blogs that link TO (not just get links from) other related, authoritative blogs.

4. Network with other bloggers by linking to them, commenting on their blogs and doing them favors. If it isn’t obvious, doing nice things for others will result in others doing nice things for you.

5. Post early and often. Jack Humphrey recommends posting every day. Ideally, a few times per day. Why? In Jack’s words:

“Because every post is an opportunity to hit the search engines with another long tail keyword phrase. Every post is a new chance at turning on another blogger and making them link to you. Each post you make is yet another “touch point” for you and your readers. Readers are interested in different things at different times. More posting ensures you are hitting more hot button topics with more readers with varying interests at any given time.”

6. Work out how to “hook” your readers. Ideally, you want to work out how to write such content as to get your readers coming back again and again. My husband, Simon, writes the DomainerIncome.com blog. He tends to write funny, politically incorrect posts and, in terms of attracting readres and getting comments (supportive and not-so supportive) it works.

Another example is Clayton Makepeace. Clayton is an A-list copywriter who recently let loose his rather strong political views. Well, you should see the comments he’s drawn for his political posts. I’m guessing many readers just can’t wait to see what bloggers like these guys are going to say next!

Source: Jack Humphrey, “Making Your Blog Popular”, Friday Traffic Report, November 7, 2008

Interesting article by Patrick Altoft - he reckons Google may have reduced the weighting it gives to anchor text in its search engine algorithm.

Anchor text is the text that appears in website links. In other words, instead of simply displaying the URL of a given website, you might provide some descriptive text - this is known as anchor text. As an example, “http://www.kikabink.com/news/” is the straight URL of the home page of Kikabink News. But if I wanted this link to appear as “Internet marketing newsletter” I would write “Internet marketing newsletter” as the descriptive or anchor text.

According to Mr Altoft, anchor text is the “biggest flaw” in the Google algorithm. He believes that anchor text has no relation to trust for most queries.

“Just because a site has 5 million links with the anchor text ‘loans’ doesn’t mean its a good search result for the query ‘loans’. Currently there are two types of sites ranking for commercial queries - ones that rank due to the TrustRank of their incoming links (links from newspaper websites and quality blogs) and ones that rank because they have thousands of paid links with keywords in the anchor text.”

At this stage, the under-weighting of anchor text is just a theory… but certainly an interesting, and possibly valid, one.

Source: Patrick Altoft , “Google Changes Algorithm - Anchor Text Less Important”, BlogStorm, August 22, 2008

This is truly shameful.

I call myself a marketer. I provide marketing products and services. I publish a 6-day-per-week marketing newsletter.

But when it comes to investing in marketing, exactly what percentage of company expenses do I spend on marketing?

Let me explain…

We’re finalizing our end-of-year financial reports (the financial year ends on June 30 each year in Australia). Although I should keep MUCH better track of these things, the fact is I am not the numbers person I should probably be.

Yes, I’m a big believer in ITTI (innovating, testing, tracking and improving) and it’s the numbers that indicate the extent of any improvements (or lack thereof), but this is a learned skill… not one that has come naturally to me. So I have a tendency to keep track of some numbers… and not others…

So when it came to finally evaluating our annual performance and seeing the numbers in the cold light of day, I was shocked to see how little our company actually spent on paid-for marketing initiatives last year.

Now I should say that this figure does NOT reflect the time we devote to marketing, which is considerable… but it does reflect a “tightwad” mentality. A mentality that is, I must admit, a
carry-over from (a) building two companies with negligible startup capital, and (b) being too product oriented.

So what’s the damage? Well, our spending on advertising and marketing services constituted just 2 percent last year.

That’s right, an anemic 2 percent!

Granted, we poured a lot of our budget into development last year (and still are - if you’re familiar with DomainerIncome.com… you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!) so that was bound to reduce the percentage spent on other things.

But I’ve always thought that the bulk, if not a significant percentage of ANY business’s expenses should be invested in marketing. If anything, there should be NO upper limit as long as the amount spent on marketing is generating a sufficient return on investment (ROI). So the fact that we haven’t followed our own advice is, indeed, shameful.

Moreover, we’ve left money on the table!

So that’s my embarrassing admission… but what about YOU? Have you been fed the myth that Internet marketing is all about freebie marketing tactics and avoiding any marketing initiatives that cost money?

Probably not. Let’s face it, no serious business skimps on marketing.

For us, it’s time to get serious!

Welcome to our new look, new name email newsletter. Now before we go any further I’d like to suggest you don’t read any further… unless you’re genuinely passionate about Internet marketing!

That’s because our aim is to publish THE Internet marketing newsletter for Internet marketers. You know, where we actually tell you about breaking news… give you our take on topical issues… and provide you with helpful research findings, tips and more for improving the effectiveness of your Internet marketing efforts.

This ain’t gonna be your regular thinly veiled promotion for some self-styled Internet marketing guru’s latest home study course on how to get rich from the Internet! Boy, that was a mouthful.

So what’s our motivation? (Like, what’s our plan to extract money from you?) It’s simple really. The business model underlying Kikabink News is to generate revenue from advertising sales, affiliate promotions, and promotions for our own products and services.

But what may distinguish Kikabink News from some other so-called Internet marketing newsletters is that (a) we’ll actually publish news (as opposed to just tips on how to do this or that) and (b) there will be a clear distinction between news articles and advertisements or promotions. Hey, it works for The New York Times doesn’t it? Imagine that… providing a clear distinction between news and promotions.

Hopefully, you’ll like the new look Kikabink News, and if you have any suggestions for improvement or other feedback, drop me a line.