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Headlines
That Pull, Persuade And Propel! from 
When writing direct response copy, there are a few things
that can maximize the responsiveness of your message. The
first and most important element that can turn any website,
salesletter or ad into an action-generating mechanism is the
headline.
A headline is meant to do two vital things.
First, it needs to grab your reader's attention. Realize
that people surfing the web are click-happy. They tend to
scan web pages quickly, even many of them simultaneously.
Your site is but a blur. So, your headline must be prominent
and effective enough to stop them.
Second, your headline needs pull the reader into the copy
and compel her into reading further. To do that, it must
cater to a specific emotion or a relevant condition -- one
to which the reader can easily associate. Here's a list
of "triggers," coupled with actual examples I used in the
past:
Curiosity ("Revealed!
Closely Guarded Secrets For ...")
Mystery ("The Five Biggest Mistakes to Avoid
By ...")
Fear ("Over 98.4% of People End up Broke When
...")
Pain ("Suffering From Needless Back Pain? Then
...")
Convenience ("How to Increase Your Chances
With ...")
Envy ("How Fellow Marketer Pummels Competitors
By ...")
Jealousy ("They All Laughed When ... Until
I ...")
Sloth ("Slash Your Learning Curve By 57% When
...") |
Love, Lust ("Make
Her Fall in Love With You With ...")
Shock ("Finally Exposed! Get The Dirty Truth
On ...")
Greed ("Boost Your Income By More Than 317%
When ...")
Pride, Power, Ego ("Make Fellow Workers Squirm
With ...")
Assurance ("... In Less Than 60 Days, Guaranteed!")
Immortality ("Reverse The Aging Process With
...")
Anger ("Banks Are Ripping You Off! Here's Why
...") |
Ad space in tabloids is excruciatingly expensive. If
an ad is repeated in more than two issues, preferably
copy-intense ads or full-page advertorials, common sense
tells you that the ad is profitable. Rip out the ad and
put it into your swipe file. (If you don't have one, a
shortcut is to copy someone else's, such as http://successdoctor.com/partners/tools/swipe.htm
or http://successdoctor.com/partners/tools/headlines.htm.)
Then, copy the headlines into a document. They can be
easily converted into "fill-in-the-blanks" formulas. And
believe me, they work well with almost all markets. I've
tried these types of headlines on both low-end and high-end
clients, from simple $10 products to six-figure investment
opportunities. And they worked quite effectively in both
situations.
...
Using some of the triggers mentioned at the beginning,
here are some examples of being specific with your headlines:
"Nine Jealously Guarded
Techniques That ..."
"Here Are 17 of My Most Prized Recipes For ..."
"How I Made $42,791.36 in Only 11 Days With ..."
"Boost Your Golf Drives By 27 Yards When ..."
"A Whole New Way to Lose 45 Pounds in 7 Weeks With ..."
"Marketing Toolkit Contains 35 Powertools That ..."
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"Follow These Eight Magical
Steps to ..."
"Read This 22-Chapter, 376-Page Powerhouse ..."
"The 10 Commandments of Power Positioning ..."
"Chop Paperwork By as Much as 47% When ..."
"Slash Your Learning Curve By Four Weeks With ..."
"... And Start Using Within Only 33 Minutes!"
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...
Ultimately, ask yourself: "Does my headline effectively
stop people from scanning my web page, capture their attention
and trigger their emotions in order to pull them into
the copy?" More importantly, ask yourself, "Does my opening
statement beg for attention, arouse curiosity and genuinely
cater to the motives and emotions of my market?" If not,
change your headline and try different ones. Sure, the
change may be small and insignificant. But often, the
smallest changes can create the most dramatic changes
in your results.
To read the entire article, click
here!
Scamsters Disguising Themselves as Legit Web Companies from
WASHINGTON (AP) — Stealing identities and credit card numbers with bogus e-mail and Web sites that appear to come from legitimate companies is an increasing problem on the Internet, federal officials warned Monday.
The Federal Trade Commission said it had brought its first case against this type of scheme, called "spoofing" or "carding." A 17-year-old California boy accused of posing as America Online agreed to settle federal charges by accepting a lifetime ban on sending junk e-mail and paying a $3,500 fine, the FTC said.
...
The counterfeit site directed consumers to fix the billing problem by entering credit card numbers and other sensitive personal information including AOL screen names and passwords, Social Security numbers, bank routing numbers, credit limits, mother's maiden name and billing addresses.
The FTC said the stolen information was used to order merchandise and make online payments worth at least $8,000. The agency said it would not release the name of the teen involved because he is a minor.
"Don't take the bait. Be skeptical of e-mail messages telling you your account will be shut down," FTC Commissioner Mozelle Thompson said. "If you do receive an e-mail warning like this, don't click on the link."
Instead, he said, people should contact the company directly by phone or through a Web site or e-mail address known to be authentic.
Officials said consumers also should:
Be wary of e-mail requests for personal information, especially when they come from companies that should already have the information.
Make sure an Internet connection is secure — with an icon of a lock visible on the Web browser — before submitting personal information.
Monitor credit card and bank statements for unauthorized charges.
Is Your Site Popular? Why Should it Matter?
Knowing who links to your site, and increasing the number of links, is an important part of any web site promotion effort.
Why is it important? - Because good link popularity can dramatically increase traffic to your web site. Well placed links are an excellent source of consistent and targeted traffic. And due to recent developments, they can even generate additional search engine traffic to your site.
Yahoo Purchases Overture from
& 
Yahoo's (YHOO) planned $1.63 billion purchase of Overture Services (OVER) is as much about warding off rival Google as mining one of the Internet's hottest segments. Yahoo's proposed buyout of Overture is its latest move to boost revenue with more targeted advertising and fee-based services. Yahoo gleaned 19% of its first-quarter revenue, $53.8 million, from its partnership with Overture.
The deal will make Yahoo the largest vehicle for Internet advertising, which is experiencing a resurgence because of a jump in search ads. "People again are seeing the value of the Internet," says Dan Rosenweig, Yahoo's chief operating officer.
It appears that this acquisition is just the ticket for Yahoo, with the purchase broadening the company’s focus and increasing advertising revenue from search services, especially in shopping, travel and yellow pages categories. The deal will also provide an audience of more than 88,000 Overture advertisers who will now be encouraged and enticed to purchase the many advertising services already offered by Yahoo. While the deal looks to be a good fit for Yahoo, which needed a new channel to generate additional revenue, and Overture, which has faced fierce competition from other “pay for performance” companies; is this announcement good for Overture’s customers?
There are many directions that Yahoo can now take, with Overture and Inktomi safely under its belt. My personal opinion is that Yahoo will not be able to sustain many of the relationships that Overture has developed over the years. This will be partly due to partners such as MSN not wishing to continue a relationship with a company now owned by a competitor and partly because more and more of Overture’s competitors are developing their own internal pay-per-click or sponsored listing technology. I see a future where, just as Overture planned to use the technology of AltaVista and AllTheWeb for its benefit, Yahoo will in turn use Overture’s technology not to continue down the path of acquiring external partnerships, but to provide Yahoo and it’s advertisers a new opportunity for increasing revenues. Many people will disagree and say that Yahoo can continue to make Overture work and will continue to ad partners. But then the world would be a very boring place if we all agreed now, wouldn’t it?
Let's Check Your Site's - Keywords, SE Saturation & Link Popularity From
Search Engine Saturation - Your Search Engine Saturation simply refers to the number of pages a given search engine has in its index for your website domain. Not all search engines report this information but enough of them do to create some meaningful benchmarks for your search engine marketing campaigns.
Keyword Verification - Verify your website's placement with the Internet's Top Search Engines and Directories. Our verification tool checks to see if your site is in the top three pages of a search engine result, for a specific keyword. It’s important to be in the top 3 pages of a search result because most people using search engines don’t go past the 3rd page.
Link Popularity Analysis - Link popularity analysis is one of the best ways to quantifiably and independently measure your website's online awareness and overall visibility. Simply put, link popularity refers to the total number of links or "votes" that a search engine has found for your website.
Marketleap has designed this link popularity tool to help website owners find out who is linking to their site, but also to give a useful benchmarking report to quickly show where you stand in comparison to competitors and other major online players.
Stopping SPAM! From
The battle between those who send unsolicited e-mail advertisements, commonly known as spam, and those
blocking them has become an arms race. On one side are hordes of spammers who find ways, through technology
and guile, to penetrate consumers' inboxes, for example by misspelling telltale words like "V1agra" for Viagra
or "D E B T" for debt.
We studied hundreds of spams, used decoys to attract yet more spams, tracked down down spammers, and tested products
that filter spam on a home computer. Here's what we found:
An Internet provider that filters spam, such as AOL, MSN, or Earthlink, is your first defense. But spammers can sneak through by disguising themselves.
Spam blocking software can filter up to 90% of the spam that your provider doesn't catch. We rate 11 such products, below.
You can avoid attracting spam by NOT posting your e-mail adress on public Web sites or using it in chat rooms, and by limiting its disclosure to just those Web sites you trust.
Refusing to patronize spammers, or even open their e-mails, is the best way to rid yourself of them long term.
How they find you
1. Public web pages. If your address appears on a public Web page, spammers can automatically "harvest" it using widely available software.
2. Chat rooms. Use your address in these rooms and you are a target.
3. "Dictionary" attacks. Some spammers send e-mail to many addresses using combinations of names and numbers, such as John101, John102, etc.
4. Online registration. Disclosing your address when shopping online can unwittingly bring spam.
1. SAProxy - Bloomba.com
2. MailShell
3. Spam Slueth
4. Symantec.com
5. Mail Frontier / Matador
6. iHate Spam / SunBelt Software
7. Mailwasher Pro
8. Spam Killer
July
Search Engine News From
www.searchengine-news.com
Google - While last June's index appears to be an improvement from the one in May, many sites are still suffering from loss of ranking or intermittent disappearance. ...The most likely cause, especially if your site is somewhat new, is that it has been dropped from the "fresh sites" part of the index. This leads us to suspect that we may not be seeing the most recent information in regards to PageRank. Perhaps this will stabilize after the next update.
New Google Tool Bar features - Google recently added several new features to their increasingly popular Tool Bar and released them in beta version.
Overture - Overture releases Content Match service - Based on what Overture says was a demand for more traffic, they've launched a new Content Match service that places targeted ads on content pages of their major partners such as MSN.
Inktomi - Inktomi updated their index on June 25th with data crawled from pages as late as May 14th. This was a general crawl and update not to be confused with Paid Inclusion URLs.
HotBot - No major changes
AltaVista - AltaVista's search results are no longer case sensitive.
Fast - No recent changes at Lycos
ODP - Do NOT resubmit your sites! ...doing so will move your submission back to the end of the line, the bottom of the queue.
LookSmart - LookSmart and Inktomi renew agreement - June 4th LookSmart announced the renewal of a multi-year contract with Inktomi (now owned by Yahoo!). So... it looks like LookSmart will likely play a role in the new Yahoo search results when Yahoo switches from Google to their own Inktomi engine later this year.
Yahoo - No major changes at Yahoo.
7 Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives
It's not easy to become as disastrous a boss as Dennis Kozlowski, Jean-Marie Messier, or Jill Barad -- but you can, if you work at it. And here's the best part: Each of the qualities that you need to be a spectacular failure is widely admired in today's business world.
The past few years have witnessed some admirable business successes -- and some exceptional failures. Among the companies that have hit hard times are a few of the most storied names in business -- think Arthur Andersen, Rubbermaid, and Schwinn Bicycle -- as well as a collection of former highfliers -- think Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom. Behind each of these failures stands a towering figure: a CEO or business leader who will long be remembered for being spectacularly unsuccessful.
#1 They see themselves and their companies as dominating their environment. ...
#2 They identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation's interests. ...
#3 They think they have all the answers. ...
#4 They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn't 100% behind them. ...
#5 They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image. ...
#6 They underestimate obstacles. ...
#7 They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past. ...
Sidebar: Big-Time Failures - Welcome to the CEO Hall of Shame. Here are six leaders who were spectacularly unsuccessful, the habits that help explain their particular failures, descriptions of the craters they left, and executive summaries of their core (in)competencies. ...
William Smithburg : Quaker Oats - Habits: 3, 4, 6, 7
Dennis Kozlowski : Tyco - Habits: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7
George Shaheen : Webvan - Habits: 1, 3, 5, 6, 7
Jean-Marie Messier : Vivendi Universal - Habits: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6
Jill Barad : Mattel - Habits: 4, 5, 7
Samuel Waksal : ImClone - Habits: 2, 3, 5, 6, 7
Read the entire article
The Top 10 Biggest Marketing Mistakes
Marketing is essential in today’s business climate, yet it can do more harm than good if done improperly. Avoid marketing’s biggest pitfalls by steering clear of these common mistakes.
1. No vision, no expectations. Too many companies don’t really know what they want from marketing, or expect to get overnight results. First, set your goals. Second, realize that marketing is a process. Third, always make sure that the process matches the goals.
2. Lack of buy in. Executives, managers and staff who don’t believe in marketing can be extremely detrimental to the whole process. Gain buy-in by clearly communicating the goals and processes of your marketing campaign.
3. Fear. Companies often encounter thinly veiled fear when it comes to marketing. It is not the marketing they are afraid of, it’s failing at marketing that keeps them from even starting. Don’t be afraid to fall down a couple times as you get your marketing up and running.
4. Lack of education. If you fail to educate your staff about marketing, they will continue to mistrust it. This can lead to an undermining of the entire process.
5. Wasting money. A well-executed $500 campaign can bring in more leads than a poorly designed $50,000 plan. Many “traditional” marketing techniques, like advertising, may not produce enough results to justify the cost. At least twice a year, evaluate where you are spending your marketing dollars.
6. Wasting time. Don’t feel obligated to go to that networking group every week if you aren’t seeing any business from it. Give all your marketing sufficient time to prove its worth, but don’t hesitate to dump parts of it if they aren’t working.
7. Lack of communication. Don’t plan a huge seminar and then neglect to tell the staff about it. Foster an open door communications policy on all marketing matters.
8. Lack of accountability. This one thing alone could be the worst marketing mistake a company can make. It is essential to set realistic goals and deadlines for those involved in marketing. Otherwise, you’re likely to get “yessed” to death and nothing actually gets accomplished.
9. No rewards and recognition. Without rewarding or recognizing the marketing accomplishments of your employees, incentive to perform will falter. Acknowledge marketing successes on a consistent basis.
10. No written plan. It was once said, “As it is written, so it shall be.” Write down your goals and plan, and the likelihood that you will realize your vision will greatly increase.
These are common problems that many businesses run into. Stay ahead of your competition by not repeating their marketing mistakes.
Three C's of Successful Internet Content
With the number of Web sites growing day by day, it is the content that makes any good site stand out from the pack. But what distinguishes the content from the chatter?
Good content scores highly when measured against three vital criteria - the three C's....
Content - The content itself must be high quality. It needs to be accurate and grammatically correct. It needs to be concise and free from formatting or spelling errors.
Ultimately, it must contain something actually worth saying. Small errors and inaccuracies, obvious omissions and wild exaggerations - all these undermine the good work of your content.
Context - To be worthwhile, your content needs to be relevant to the general subject of the site, and relevant to the section of the web site in which it is placed.
The content itself could be of the highest quality, but if it is irrelevant or incongruous, it will destroy the flow of the site and lead your visitors into dead ends.
If your site is structured around selling your books and newsletters about stationery, for instance, why include stock prices or weather forecasts?
Even if they are slick and sophisticated, with interactive graphics and constantly updating content - if it doesn't lead your visitors towards fulfilling their goals - or your goals - it will be a distraction. In the worst case, it will distract the visitors and provide them with a convenient route out of your web site, before they can become a customer.
Contribution - The content needs to contribute something to the overall message or purpose of the web site. It may be high quality content, exquisitely written and beautifully presented, and linked seamlessly into the flow and structure of the site, but if it contributes little or nothing towards the overall purpose of your site, it is a wasted effort.
Whether you want your site to educate, inform or amuse your visitors; whether you want to encourage and entice your site visitors with products and services that you would like them to purchase from you - or from your resellers; whether you want your visitors to feel confidence in your brand or company; your content must reinforce this purpose and lead your visitors towards the goals of your site.
Conclusion - Unless your site content can match up well to the three C's: content, context and contribution it isn't content at all - it's just a distraction and you may be better off without it.
GREAT  Tool!
Do you know how many reciprocal links 
thinks you have? By selecting your site's link below, you
will be able to see your site on all 3 of Google's main servers,
but most importantly see how many other sites link back to
yours. It will open a new window ... Make sure you "bookmark"
this so that you can view it @ anytime: (Look on the right-side
of the blue bar ... Results 1-10 of ???)
If you have over 100, you are doing just fine! Between 10
& 99, we need to think of some other related web sites that
either you or I can send a request to! Asking for a reciprocal
link. If you have less than 10 ... SERIOUS WORK NEEDS TO
BE DONE! Call me and we'll chat about what we can do to
improve these incoming links! As I say many MANY times, these
incoming links to your sites are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!!
336-408-9075
Rich@RichsWebDesign.com
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