Recently, while I was buying a Private Labels Rights (PLR) package from one of my favorite freelance writers, I had a self-proclaimed creative idea for advertising online businesses.

I originally posted the idea in the Open Source Marketer Community Forum, but I thought it was worth posting on the blog as well. Basically, the idea is to put your product offer or advertisement at the end of someone’s autoresponder signup process.

If your not familiar with the autoresponder signup process, let me explain. A professional autoresponder service provides the ability to create mailing list signup forms that can be copied onto blogs, webpages and the like.

The form is often used in combination with a free offer to entice visitors to join a mailing list. When someone enters their name and email address into the form, they are presented with a webpage telling them to check their email for a confirmation link.

The visitor checks their email, clicks the confirmation link, and they are presented with another webpage that confirms that they have completed the opt-in process.

This is what’s known as a double opt-in signup because it requires the interested visitor to hand over their name and email address (opt-in number one) and then click a link in their email to confirm they want to receive email from the list owner (opt-in number two).

When you sign up for a newsletter or mailing list you usually see these standard set of notices. After completing the signup form, you see a page that tells you to check your email, and you get a page that confirms your opt-in status when you click the confirmation link in your email. It happens like clock work.

However, most new marketers (heck even experienced ones) leave money on the table by not customizing these notification pages. They just use the default pages that are provided by the autoresponder service and they miss out on opportunities to further promote their own or related products and services.

What they should be doing is putting a one time offer on that final confirmation page to capture a sale from someone who was interested enough to double opt-in to their mailing list.

Here’s where you come in. Since that list owner is not fully using their autoresponder series to it’s fullest potentional, why not contact that list owner and ask to put your custom offer or message on that confirmation page?

Then your message will be seen by every person who double opts in to their list. Depending on the offer and the message you provide you might be able to get in front of a lot of people and not directly complete with the list owner.

If the list owner is interested in affiliate marketing, then you could offer them a percentage of sale. Or you might do well to negotiate a flat monthly fee or a per visitor fee. The right mix will depend on their past opt-in numbers and the conversion rate on your product or service.

This is just an idea and worth a think about, considering how many people don’t use that space today. Who knows, you might be able to get advertising space that is cheaper per visitor than Pay Per Click advertising.

Looking for an edge,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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Without question, word of mouth advertising is absolutely and indisputably the best form of advertising that has ever existed.

This has been the case, good or bad, for a very long time. No one can deny that word of mouth advertising is, in it’s most basic form, free and highly effective.

In most cases the people who hear the advertising message are usually listening to someone they trust when they hear the message and because the person who spreads the word is usually unpaid, word of mouth rocks!

So why then are some bloggers running prize awarding contests to get attention? Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.net ran a Birthday Bash Competition where over $60,000 dollars in cash and prizes were given away. I don’t know about you, but that’s a heck of a birthday party.

So why then, if word of mouth is free and effective, do bloggers run expensive contests and give away cash prizes? Well, the answer is simple really. Its for attention.

The kind of attention I’m talking about isn’t the destructive self involved kind of attention seeking you might expect, but rather a highly focused, intense form of attention that captures an audience and drives them to take a specific form of action.

You see for the most part our attention is competed for all day long. We have obligations, desires, and distractions that clamor constantly for our attention and action. So, sometimes it’s necessary to do a little creative advertising to generate a little word of mouth buzz.

If you’ve read the Rich Schefren’s Attention Age Doctrine then you’ll know that attention is as valuable as gold and in order to generate some buzz and grab our attention, sometimes that involves creative ideas. By running an attention getting contest you are effectively generating buzz worthy news that can be distributed to others by word of mouth.

Here are a few tips for running a successful contest:

• Make a very attractive offer, a juicy one even to encourage participation
• Clearly state the requirements for winning to avoid confusion
• Define a short participation window to create urgency
• Be transparent about the process to foster trust
• Announce the winners publicly to create a sense of community
• Prime the pump for the next competition to build anticipation

In Chris Walker’s case at BusinessBlogger.net he’s doing all of this in text book fashion, just on a smaller scale. For the entire month of February Chris is giving away $500 cash and a BFG NVIDIA graphics card as part of his blogging contest to promote his new business directory.

Chris does a great job of spelling out the details of the contest on his blog, but basically he is asking that people blog about his new project. During the whole month of February he is taking entries and the winner gets awarded a prize. If $500 interests you then check out his blog for more details.

Ultimately Chris is being creative with his marketing to get a specific response. He is also giving contestants an incentive to participate for a chance to get what they want, a chance to win some cash. Personally, I’d eBay the video card. So either way I’d go for the smackers.

So yes, word of mouth is free and yes it is highly effective, but don’t forget that it’s up to you to come up with creative ways to create something to talk about, and that sometimes can cost money.

In Chris’s case and in Darren’s I’m sure there is something working behind the scenes of value for them beyond the initial cost of the contest. In Darren’s case, I can only imagine the benefits of getting that kind of buzz going around such a large event. And for Chris I would guess that he has a long term strategy for his business directory. He is most likely willing to give away cash and prizes on this end of the business journey to accomplish some goal on the opposite end.

What’s your creative idea for generating buzz worthy word of mouth advertising?

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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If you are trying to decide which eBook cover program to buy or you need a program that makes retail box images for you then save your money because here is a free resource that does the same thing as those expensive photoshop addons.

I don’t remember how I found it but the site is called 3d-pack.com and it is an online box generator that can make an ebook cover, cd box, dvd box, and a 3D dvd box. The 3D box is still in beta, but then just about everything is labeled beta these days.

The final result from this site is pretty good. It might take you a little bit of “tweaking” to get the exact look and feel that you want. But I have used the paid for photoshop templates before and they require some trial and error as well. So for the price tag of zero dollars, it’s not a bad deal.

If you are still interested in using a professional grade tool then consider using the one I use to create ebook covers. It is simple to use and it comes with complete tutorials to show you how to use everything. The package includes the ability to make ezine covers, ebook covers, vhs tapes, membership cards, report covers, gift boxes, box sets which is good for different types of sites.

I know some people think these things are cheezy or that they may have been over used, but when used properly they can add an attractive element to the page and give the buyer at a sense that there is something tangible behind the buy now button.

So there you go. Two very useful tools on a Friday night.

Bargain hunting,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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Does your marketing message make your customers give you the shirts off their backs? If so, is this a positive relationship building activity or something else?

Here’s a fun blog post from ImprovEveryWhere.com that features 100 men who all take off their shirts at the same time and shop in an Abercrombie and Fitch store on 5th Avenue in New York City.

Apparently Abercrombie and Fitch is willing to display men on every wall of their stores, but they aren’t willing to let their customers take off their shirts while shopping.

Here are ten things you can do to make sure you’re building a positive relationship with your customers, both online and off.

• Stay in close contact with your customers.
• Reward your customers for providing feedback.
• Have a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page website and explain anything that might confuse your customers or visitors.
• Resolve customer complaints quickly and completely.
• Make it easy for your customers to contact you.
• Treat your employees right and they will treat your customer the same way.
• Give your customers more than they expect.
• Admit and apologize for mistakes quickly.
• Reward customers often.
• Invite customers to your office for lunches, parties, barbecues, dances, seminars or other special events. Even if they can’t make it they will feel more welcomed.

Now you might not have 100 shirtless customers show up at your website looking for answers, but you get the idea.

Gone shopping,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketing.com

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Have you ever considered running an offline business? If you have, then you’ve probably been overwhelmed at some point with a list of things that you need to consider like legal, accounting, advertising, marketing, production, employee training, payroll, client relations, and the list goes on and on.

To avoid this list, you may have turned your attention to doing business online where the promise of a new way of doing business is continually promoted. The only problem is, at some point, you’ve found yourself applying an offline business mentality to online business ideals.

Why is it that when we think of running an online business we continue to try and apply the same mental process to a new methodology?

Maybe you decided to get involved with online business because you saw all those commercials in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s that portrayed the Internet as a place where all the old rules didn’t apply. But as soon as you got online you naturally started applying all the old ways of thinking to your online activities.

The problem is, we haven’t retrained our brains to leverage the new and let go of the old.

In 1998 my wife and I were going back to college as “non-traditional” students. Basically that means we were actually studying instead of going to the campus parties. And during that time she and I listened to an audio version of Robert Kiyosaki’s, “Rich Dad Poor Dad.” We absolutely loved the material and for a time I believe we actually understood a portion of what he was trying to teach everyone in that book.

But, when the time came to graduate college and go back into the work force neither of us applied what we had learned to the way we thought about our jobs. We continued to do what we knew was not going to relieve us of a 9 to 5 job.

That is what happens with most everyone who goes online to make their fortune. They think they understand the vision, but when it comes time for execution, for whatever reason, they miss the mark.

Do you feel like your missing the mark?

To drive home what I am talking about, and to give you an idea of how you can avoid it, I am posting this 90 minute video by Rich Schefren on the “Internet Business Process.” In the video, Rich lays out the reason people don’t make the money they want online and how they can change their thinking to begin earning what they have only been dreaming about. It is an eye opener for certain.

Rich recently released part 2 of his Attention Age Doctrine Report where he talks about the importance of understanding the value of people’s attention and how to get the right kind of attention in a market place that is tired of being sold too. If you haven’t read the report then I recommend you download it now, print it off, and read everything he has to say on the subject.

Keep in mind that the concept of an “Attention Economy” is not a new idea. In fact, Thomas Davenport wrote about it back in 2002 in his book, The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business.

Once you combine what Rich says in his 93 page report with this video you will have a crystal clear vision of what it is that you need to do to be a success in your online business. Everything else you may have read up to this point is technique and technical knowledge. What Rich is talking about is fundamental stuff that goes deep.

Personally I am still able to identify with the concepts in both the written report and the video. Hopefully you will too. In fact, I would love to hear what you have to say about both of these items. So, be sure to leave a comment on this post and let me hear your feedback. Or if you prefer a more private means of communication, then you can contact me using the OpenSourceMarketer Contact Form on this blog.

Be honest with yourself and see if what he is saying frightens you or excites you.

Assessing reality,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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