Are You Missing Out on the Net’s Largest Market?

Just last year, a change occurred to the demographics of the World Wide Web. For the most part, it occurred with little fanfare. Dedicated Internet marketers, however, definitely noticed.

So what is this grand event? Queue drum roll…

In short, female Web users now outnumber male users. Okay, I know. You’re thinking, “Wow, that’s it? Pretty anti-climactic if you ask me!”

And you’re right. It is downright anti-climactic if your target market is cats, dogs, or fish. For the rest of us that are going after humans, this is a big deal! For years it had always been assumed that the number of men surfing the Web would be greater than the number of women doing the same. Well, that assumption started out in peril, and now it is dead.

If your target market isn’t exclusively male, and yet you’ve failed to put enough resources into attracting the female consumer, then the time for ignoring the fairer sex is over. It’s time to figure out what women want and start giving it to them.

So What DO Women Want?

Want to sell something to people? Find out where people are and what their interests are. Here are a few stats regarding the human race’s better half for you to mull over:

• 47% of female Web users (versus 53% of men) visit video sites (such as YouTube) versus 27% a year ago. They are also visiting more often, more than twice as often as men.
• Burst Media reports that 54% of women shopped online during the first half of 2007, buying mostly clothing, financial products, and groceries. Wealthier women shop online more (68% of those with household incomes that break six figures versus 49% of those with incomes lower than $35,000). GSI Commerce reports that women are also more likely than men to take advantage of limited-time offers or free gifts that are included with purchase.
• Female casual gamers match men in numbers, but women are more likely to pay to support their casual gaming habit (versus “enthusiastic” gamers who play more violent games like first-person shooters). Women made up 75% of casual game purchases.
• According to Jupiter Research, among young women (aged 25 to 34) nearly half have a college degree and are the most likely group, among women, to watch full-length TV shows and video clips online. This group is also more likely to search for local restaurants and entertainment, visit social networking sites, read blogs, and download music.
• 84% of women turn to the web for medical information versus 72% of men. In the young women age group (25-34), over 90% use the web for medical information versus 75% for women age 65 and over while overall 50% say they turn to the ‘net more than they turn to their doctor.
• The University of Manitoba found that while many women say they found online dating meaningful, many also said it was for losers. Good luck figuring that one out!
• 43 million moms go online daily and spend an average of 85 minutes per day there. Moms also visit blogs more often with 15% reading blogs daily versus 8% for all women, while 7% of moms blog daily versus 3% for women overall.

So there you have it. Who says that women are difficult to understand?

Posted in Industry Fizz, Online Marketing | 1 Comment »

Why People Buy – Part 3: More Psychological Switches

In Part 2 of this series, we learned the two most common reasons people buy. Now we’ll cover a few of the less popular reasons and discuss how we can use these switches together to help us make a sale.

Switch #3: To make life easier

With the “save money” switch, we talked about how someone might buy an oven so they can make their own food and save money by not having to eat out. This switch is kind of the opposite of that.

In this case, somebody might decide to eat out, even though it costs more, because he doesn’t want the hassle of preparing his own food. It’s easier to eat out.

You’ve probably heard the saying, “Life sucks, then you die.” I always like to add, “but not before paying taxes,” to the end of that, but that’s another story.

Life is full of hardships, which is why we spend so much money trying to make it easier.

Switch #4 is, “to gain comfort and lessen pain,” but it’s very closely related to #3, so I’m going to skip it.

Switch # 5: To be more popular

This switch is actually also very closely related to the next one, which is, “to attract a potential mate.”

Everybody wants to be loved. Just look at all the dating sites that are out there and the huge amounts of money they all are making. If your product or service can help somebody get the popularity they crave, then you’re well on your way to making the sale.

People buy iPods over any other MP3 player, even though they cost more and in some cases aren’t as feature rich, because it’s the hip thing to have. People buy Harley’s over other cruiser motorcycles because you are shunned if you don’t. Men buy fast cars, not for their practicality, but for their ability to attract women.

I think by this point, you’re starting to get the idea of how you can apply these switches to your product or service. For a quick lesson from the experts, watch a late-night infomercial and count the number of psychological switches they are attempting to flip.

A new pillow can make your life better by helping you sleep better, but what else does it do for you? Count the ways and find out.

Here’s a list of the top dozen reasons people buy. The more of them you incorporate into your marketing, the better chance you’ll have of making the sale.

1. Make money
2. Save money
3. Avoid effort and make life easier
4. Gain comfort and lessen pain (closely related to #3)
5. Gain praise and popularity
6. Attract or impress a potential mate
7. Curiosity
8. Protect or improve the lives of loved ones
9. Be in style and avoid criticism (closely related to #5)
10. Emulate others
11. Be individual (the opposite of #10)
12. Improve one’s reputation (again, related to #5)

Be wise in your marketing. A new pillow that uses the latest in sleep technology can potentially improve your life. But can it help you attract a mate? That would be quite a stretch, and saying that it does may simply insult and turn away potential customers.

Look for ways to implement the above switches into your marketing, but don’t go overboard.

So what do you think? Leave a comment and discuss the ways to improve conversions with influential advertising.

Posted in Online Marketing, Making the Sale | 1 Comment »

Why People Buy – Part 2: Psychological Switches

As discussed in Part 1 of this series, people have very specific reasons for why they buy things. When a person opens their wallet and forks over their hard-earned cash, they are trying to satisfy some kind of need in their life.

In Part 2 of this series, we’ll briefly cover a few of the top “psychological switches” — the things that click in a person’s brain, telling them they should buy something. Once you know why people buy, you can cater your marketing to satisfy that reasoning.

Here are the most common reasons people buy.

Switch #1: To make money

It takes money to make money. We’ve been told that so often that we all believe it. Watch late night TV for a bit, and soon enough you’ll see an infomercial for a grand money-making scheme. Thousands of insomniacs whip out their credit cards and buy whatever it is that’s going to make them the next millionaire (or so they’ve been promised).

People also spend large sums of money to earn a college degree with the belief that it will land them a higher paying job. After entering the workforce, they may seek out additional training to help them in their career or to get a new job in a new field.

Businesses also spend money on all manner of items that they believe will help them increase revenues. This can be equipment (faster computers for example) that will help increase productivity, or it can be advertising to help boost sales. Money is also spent in research and development of new products, employee training, competitive intelligence, and so on. A nearly endless list of myriad items that the company believes will help them make more money down the road.

Switch #2: To save money

When people hear this, the first thing they usually think is, “People buy the item that is the cheapest.”

The reality, however, is that buying something because it costs less is much farther down the list of reasons why people buy. This switch is more about spending money now for something that will result in savings in the future.

Imagine a person who drives a 1978 GMC pickup. It burns a gallon of gas every 8 miles and is in need of repair more and more often. There’s a good chance that this person will determine that he has reached the point where buying a newer truck will be less expensive than maintaining his current one.

Take a look at your own life and you’re almost certain to find several instances where you spent money on something in order to save you money in the future. Sometimes it may not have been the main reason, but it may have helped you decide to make the purchase.

A more efficient furnace will save you money on your heating bill. A cell phone plan with more available call time will save you money by preventing you from going over your limit. A water filter saves you from buying bottled water. An oven lets you cook your own food, saving you money on eating out.

Businesses often hire consultants to analyze their business to find ways to cut expenses.

The two switches we’ve talked about here are far and away the most common reasons people buy. In Part 3 of this series, we’ll discuss more psychological switches and ways you can combine them to make for more effective marketing materials.

Posted in Online Marketing, Making the Sale | 2 Comments »

Top 10 SEO Mistakes

These days, it seems everybody is an SEO expert attempting to implement their own brand of SEO. And yet we see time and time again as companies implement their SEO strategies to exiguous results.

While there is no dishonor in attempting in-house SEO, it can cause a great deal of harm if one is not careful. At the least, you won’t get sufficient results from your efforts. At the worst you can destroy your company’s reputation.

Following, I cover the 10 most common and most significant SEO mistakes that I see on a daily basis.

1. Trying to Rank for Keywords That You Really Shouldn’t
   A small niche shoe website shouldn’t target “shoes” or “fashion”. There is simply far too many websites, many of them very well established, that you must beat out for such a commonly used word. “[Niche] + shoes” or “[area] + shoes” or “[style] + shoes” is a far better strategy, and a much more realistic goal.
2. Not Taking Full Advantage of the Title Tag
   The title tag is the most important place to be putting keywords. It’s the title of your document, and should therefore reflect what the document is about. Too many companies choose instead to use a generic title, such as their company name, for every webpage.

   Just as harmful, if a webpage is not about the keyword you’re targeting, then you should not use the keyword in your title. Doing so will result in your webpage not ranking as well as it should.

   Be sure to use your target keywords in your title, always putting the most important keywords first, only repeating keywords if natural, and using every keyword in your title within the webpage’s content. Any information that doesn’t help you rank, such as your company name, should be put at the end.

3. Not Using the “nofollow” Attribute to Your Advantage
   Some companies don’t use “nofollow” at all, while others use it on every link. In both cases, you are making poor use of the nofollow attribute. The nofollow attribute of an anchor tag is used as a way to meter out “link juice” – the value given to a link. By using nofollow on any given link, you are giving it less juice, thereby creating more juice for other links.
4. Using “nofollow” on the Wrong Links
   Remember from the previous point that nofollow is used to meter out the value of your links. Links that are insignificant search wise – such as your site map, user agreement, privacy policy, and so forth – are good pages to use the nofollow attribute when pointing to. This creates more juice for your more important webpages.
5. Not Optimizing the Landing Page
   So you’ve done everything else to get ranked and are now getting lots of traffic. If the landing page isn’t optimized to convert, then all that great traffic will be wasted.
6. Misuse of Flash
   Search engines have absolutely no way of indexing Flash content. Websites that use Flash for a majority of their content are missing out on the major benefits of SEO. Some sites will even use Flash to display large amounts of text, all of which remains unseen by the search engines. Flash should be used sparingly, and should never be used if it’s possible to use plain text.

   If you must use Flash, consider creating a separate page that contains text which is indexable by the search engines.

7. Keyword Stuffing / Hidden Text
   I know this gets get talked about a lot and many think no one does it anymore. You’re wrong… it happens all the time.

   Keyword stuffing is the practice of overusing a keyword or several keywords to the point that your content doesn’t make sense because it is unnatural. Hiding text is making text invisible to users by making the font color the same color as the back ground. This allows a webpage to be stuffed with keywords without making it appear unnatural to the user.

   However, the search engines are able to easily spot keyword stuffing and hiding tactics and will penalize you for it. Plain and simple: don’t do it! It will only harm you in the long run.

8. Not Targeting Keywords That Actual Shoppers Use
   Sure it’s easy to rank for the keyword phrase “guacamole colored orangutan statuette dancing in a corn maze,” but nobody will ever search for that. On the other hand, getting ranked for “guacamole” might get you a lot more traffic, but no conversions (unless that’s what you’re actually selling).

   Do your research and find keywords that will provide you with enough traffic to make your efforts worthwhile, will bring customers that convert, and are realistically obtainable. As noted in point #1, ranking for “orangutan” might be unreachable, whereas “orangutan statue” or “dancing orangutan” might serve you better.

9. Misuse of JavaScript
   A lot of JavaScript is client side, meaning it runs after the browser loads the page. This means that search engines only see the JavaScript code (or the call to it), not the results of it. If you are hiding links or other text within JavaScript code, then the search engines won’t see it, nor will they follow the links.

   To solve this problem use server-side scripts, such as PHP, that allow search engines to see the output of the script rather than just the call to the script itself. If you must use JavaScript, place code inline anytime you are creating links rather than making a call to the code. This allows a search engine spider to see the link location and follow it.

10. Bad Link Building Campaigns
    Building up inbound links is a time consuming task. If you’re going to do it, make sure that you are chasing after quality links that will build up your website’s reputation.

There are plenty of ways to create a lot of inbound links without adding any value. Don’t waste your time accomplishing nothing for your website.

Have something to add? Feel free to comment on my post.

Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Marketing | No Comments »

Let Users Control Your Content

As the world moves toward a Web 2.0 experience, thereby allowing users more and more control over what content gets put up on the World Wide Web, it has marketers everywhere throwing fits as they try to figure out how to control it.

Experts in reputation management have started to appear out of the woodwork offering companies a false sense of security by claiming to be able to control user-generated content, promising to squelch anybody who posts negative comments about your company anywhere on the Internet.

While it is important to protect your reputation from those who would slander you, one of the best ways to do so is by bringing the fight home.

Keep the Fighting In House

An acquaintance of mine once worked for a business-to-business company’s marketing department. He proposed that the company implement a discussion board on the site. However, he met large opposition to his proposal, especially from the manager of technology who argued that it would simply encourage members to openly talk negatively about the company, which did not have a particularly glowing reputation.

The marketer argued that this would be just fine. To begin with, they had plenty of evangelists that would come to their defense. Second of all, the griping and negative talk would be in a forum where they could quickly and easily respond (and probably learn things from their customers they might not ever hear otherwise). Third, it would generate free content, even if it does have a negative slant towards the company.

In essence, my acquaintance saw any company bashing as an opportunity for the company to actually improve its reputation.

How Does Allowing Trash Talk Help My Company?

A little over a year ago, General Motors held a contest. They invited consumers to create homemade TV ads for the Chevy Tahoe and post them on Chevrolet’s website. While the expected flow of incoming videos including some good and positive commercials, there was also an influx of Tahoe-bashing videos, especially from people who viewed the SUV as an unnecessary gas-guzzling monstrosity that only served to destroy the environment.

Chevrolet’s response? They left the videos up.

Know Who You’re Talking To

In Chevrolet’s case, it’s well known that environmentalists don’t like SUV’s. Anybody looking to purchase an SUV already knows that they get bad gas mileage. They don’t need an angry consumer video to tell them that. However, the angry consumer videos, thanks to all the talk they created, might get someone considering a competitor’s SUV to visit Chevrolet’s website instead, at least to see what all the fuss is about.

Adjust, or Die

Old-school marketers can’t handle not having complete control over everything. Fifty years ago, company mascots such as the Jolly Green Giant, Michelin Man, Tony the Tiger, and so forth were invented from marketers that wrote down everything the mascot could say and not say, do and not do.

Today, consumer generated comments are considered among the most reliable sources for legitimate information about a product or company. Consumers trust the word of people they don’t know far more than anything a marketer can cook up.

To adjust, you first have to accept that users are now in control of what is being said. Next, you have to allow visitors to your website to communicate with each other. And finally, let go. Don’t edit what you don’t like, don’t attack those who say things against you.

This is your opportunity to listen to what your customers are saying, to take steps to improve your company, and in that way control what is being said about you.

If 9 out of 10 people that speak about your company are speaking ill of it, it might be time to take a long hard look at yourself. You’ll never be able to please all the people all of the time, but at least you’ll be able to please most of the people most of the time.

In Closing…

So what should you do when user-generated content on your site doesn’t go the way you want it to? The answer is: do nothing! Thrive by accepting that users control the Internet, or die trying to control the masses.

Posted in Online Marketing, Content Creation | No Comments »

Getting eBay Listings to Show up on Google and Yahoo!

You’ve probably seen eBay listings show up when searching for something on Google, Yahoo! or some other search engine. The following image shows a Yahoo! search wherein the top listing is for an eBay auction:

Have you ever thought to yourself, “I wonder if I can get my eBay listings to appear on the search engines?”

The answer is a resounding YES! You just need to understand how search engines work. This will give you an idea of why a search engine might rank an eBay listing in their search results.

Understanding how Search Engines Rank Webpages

Google, Yahoo! and most other search engines place a lot of weight (importance) on inbound links to a webpage. In other words, the more inbound links a webpage has to it, the more important a search engine considers that page to be. The words that are used as part of a link add even more weight as the most important keywords for that webpage.

The search engine then looks for those same keywords in the body of the webpage. If it finds them, it adds even more weight. If the keywords it finds in the webpage body happen to be headlines, bolded, italicized, or are part of a bulleted list, then again even more weight is added on.

There’s a lot more to search engines than that, but it’s enough to get us started for our needs.

Optimizing Your Listing for Search Engine Ranking

From the previous section, we now understand that we want to create keyword rich links to our eBay listing. The easiest way to do this is through the use of your eBay listing’s title. The words you use in your title will become the most important keywords search engines pick up on.

Remember the Yahoo! search results page from the above image? Notice that it is ranked #1 for the same words that are used in the auction’s title:

This image shows the Pottery & Glass category listings on eBay. The words in the title link directly to the listing’s auction page. The words in the title (which are linked to the listing’s auction page) were picked up by Yahoo! as being important keywords for the page it links to (again, the listing’s auction page).

Seems pretty easy, right? Well, that’s only the easy part. Let’s get into the knitty gritty of what this seller did that resulted in his auction being picked up by Yahoo!

Most auction listings don’t get picked up by the search engines because auction sites are very dynamic. In other words, your listing moves around a lot as new auctions are listed and old auctions end. Since your category link never stays in the same location for long, the search engines don’t bother picking it up because they know it’s just going to move eventually.

Furthermore, when you first list an auction, it is buried on the very last page of results. Many search engines only look a few links deep when crawling a site. This means your category listing won’t even get looked at by a search engine until it’s on the last day or two of its life, in which case it won’t be around long enough for the search engines to bother with it.

So the trick is to get your category listing to stick around long enough – on a page the search engines will see – for a search engine to pick it up. This means getting and staying on the first couple pages of category listings.

There are only a couple ways to do this. First is to list in a category with very few listings. Being that eBay has several hundreds of millions of listings at any given time, that’s not a likely scenario. The second (and more reasonable) option is to purchase the Featured Plus! listing upgrade.

The Featured Plus! listing upgrade costs $19.95 and places your listing at the top of the category listings for the entirety of its life, however long that may be. You can improve the odds of it being picked up by search engines, as well as maximize the benefits of being listed by a search engine, by also purchasing the 10-day auction extension (giving it an extra three days over the normal maximum listing time of seven days).

To further improve the importance of the keywords you used in your auction title, use these same words in your item description. Make sure there is a good density of these words, using them in headlines when possible. Bold the appropriate keywords when not being used in a headline.

Italicizing keywords helps as well, though not as much as bolding them. Using keywords in bulleted lists will help as well.

Choosing the bold listing upgrade may help, as should using a subtitle with similar wording to the title.

You can give your eBay listing a further boost by placing an ad for it on the prominent online classifieds site Craig’s List. Be sure to link to your auction, using appropriate keywords (preferably your auction title) in your Craig’s List posting.

Posted in eBay Marketing, Online Marketing | No Comments »