Marketing Online for Free

What are the best ways to get your ad noticed when advertising on Craigs List?

We compiled a few tips to follow when you are posting your advertising on Craigs List. Follow these simple rules and your ads will be twice as effective, will bring more leads and generate more business.

Lets consider at first whattypes of products Craigs List is best used for. Whether its real estate listing, cars, electronics, kids stuff of services type of service may partially influence how aggressive you should be when following this generic advice on creating advertising. There is no one rule to create ads that will work for Real Estate firm or Web design firm, lawyer or car dealer. Main thing is to understand principles and decide which strategy is best for your business.

1. Use images in your ads. This is important -   one of key differentiating factors in Craigs List advertising is showing what you have for sale. If the listing is service related, post examples of items that you do, even if its advertising services such as legal advice or anything else visualizing an object will help users to get more comfortable with your offering.

2. Use Caps and different symbols in the title of your ads, but sparingly. Its important to have some of  >> *** +++ or other items, true, as many listings are not using them Although in some business areas this in fact will cheapen and generalize the service or offering. Many customers are very educated and can filter results that are obviously “designed” for maximum performance. When you are searching for best deal, as most peopleon craigs list, best results are in fact found among same as long as they match your criteria.

3. Don’t overuse words such as free, no cost, etc. While its important to have listings that attract general audience, mentioning too many times that product is free is going to work against your ad. The value you build with your description will be lost, devalued due to mention of free items, add -ons, etc.

4. Keep posting the listings every few days. You have to analyze how frequently ads are being repeated by your competitors in the same category and tune in to the same frequency of repeated ads. Search results produce only recent ads, everything after week is purged so your ads will no longer work unless you repeat them every 3-4 days or more

5. Have your ad designed by a professional website design firm. Don’t try to copy/paste items from your desktop, etc. Each ad has to look professional even if service cost is low. Hiring a professional designer will only improve your conversion % and ROI on your own time.

6. Design effective landing pages that receive clicks from Craigs List advertising. While many use phones or links to profile pages, link to effective landing page that is optimized to the same offer will produce best results.

7. Include links to LinkedIn to build up credibility of your advertising.

8. Keep your writing on 6-8th grade level. Avoid anythign that required thorogh reading, keep things simple and clear, even more clear then on the website.

We will go through more Craigs List advertising strategies in more detail in our future articles, but this should help you get going with your campaign more efficiently.

[private]How can you use LinkedIn as free marketing tool?

There are many uses of this great website. One of the obvious ways is to create wide network and hope that your profile will turn out to be useful to somebody on your network. In this article lets review some more advanced and harder to notice indirect free marketing strategies on LinkedIn network.

There are multiple entry points to linked in site one of them is for users that are logged in -  their profile and other is for search engines that tag each public profile listing making it searchable and easily accessible to the public. Depending on the specialization of your business, posting a well done resume that stresses the expertise, experience, references and testimonials of past customers can be very efficient method that can bring customers that do their due diligence work. For example if you define in your resume only information about schools that you attended, it will not help you establish level of trust with a prospect. Truth is that LinkedIn pages are often ranking higher then any other pages when search is made on a a specific name of a person. If you have your profile on LinkedIn, try to search Google for your name. In 90% of cases it will be very close to the top. Therefore the very first step is to post an effective resume that will help you build credibility level with customers. Also, after this is done a link to this page can be posted on your website leading customers to the external network where they can learn how wide is your expertise and if you have any praises from other LinkedIn users.

Another method of free marketing on LinkedIn is posting frequent updates on your social profile. Specifically it is not a good idea posting updates that you are traveling here or visiting other place unless you feel this is useful to your network. Use this to post items that are directly linked to your business, promotion, services. POst update that you are launching a new corporate website. Post item that you are opening new offices, offering discount, introducing new product line etc. All of your network partners will receive these notifications in several formats. One is delivered via email when you receive weekly updates on your network status. Other is shown when users login to their profile page.

Next method is to join appropriate groups on LinkedIn. Why is it important? The group joining activity becoming a way to track other network friends behavior. Many members on the network are looking at what other are doing and joining same or similar groups. Notofications  about such activity will indicate to your whole network that you are active and will help you strengthen your brand name.

Next method is to search questions asked on the network on specific subjects and provide answers. You can post answers on subjects that are relevant to your business or any other line of business based on your time and availability. More answers you post higher the chance you profile will be visited by more people and you may get direct business contacts this way.

Finally other very basic format is to use your extended outlook email address files to contact old customers and friends with invitation to join LinkedIn network. This is a very acceptable invitation that iw not considered as SPAM, therefore you have a way to contact your past contacts and remind them about your services in indirect way -  by asking to join you on LinkedIn. If they do, youhave later wider audience to promote to with items as discussed above.[/private]

A very popular method of free marketing is using online services such as MailChimp and others that allow you take advantage of trial or low volume mail at no cost. All you have to do is to have a list of prospects, key message and professional advertising to get your campaign going. What many business owners forget to do is to implement effective metrics and tracking mechanism and to segment marketing list to do very basic A-B analysis. No matter how small it is, typical advertising can produce 1 or 5% return depending on a message alone with no changes in creative of the advertising. Similarly, even best designed and most effective message may not convert if its not taking user to a place where its clear what they need to do.

What happens in situations like this is what nobody wants to happen to their business. Some customers of ours tested low volume marketing campaigns to get the word out about great offer. The mailing that went out performed ok, but customer wasn’t happy. A significant design and communications effort was delegated toward improving the artwork, polishing the message, etc. As a result next mailing produced even smaller conversion.

The key problem was in the fact that the main conversion page that contained key call to action was already populated with other links, and wasn’t fully optimized. Once several key changes were made % of conversions went up significantly.

This is to illustrate that we should never forget about other side of marketing -  the side that in fact facilitates conversion, should always be addressed and considered at the same time as key marketing products.

Here is a basic checklist for effective email marketing strategy:

1. Identify key audience demographics and create copy that speaks in appropriate tone

2. Clarify key marketing offer, remove “noise”

3. Use only professional design, no word copy/paste to create landing pages

4. Segment your marketing and do A-B testing from first round

5. Make sure solid tracking mechanism in place to see and analyze results

One of the best ways to engage a prospect is to have a well developed advertising. Creating a professional presentation will not only help your organization to deliver clear marketing message but will also strengthen your branding and promote other products or services you offer. Engage a professional design firm, don’t settle for pre-built design templates and speak to a professional how to gain VALUE rather then trying to save a dollar. In hiring a professional in fact free service is a consulting that creative team will provide that can be just as beneficial as the design itself.

Confirmed Opt-in Myths Exposed

Posted by Sean Cohen

Confirmed opt-in as defined by SpamHaus, who is one of the most respected anti spam organizations in the world:

Known as “COI” in the legitimate bulk email industry, also known as “Confirmed Opt-in”, “Verified Opt-in” or sometimes “Double Opt-in”.

With Closed-Loop Opt-in the Recipient has verifiably confirmed permission for the address to be included on the specific mailing list, by confirming (responding to) the list subscription request verification. This is the standard practice for all responsible Internet mailing lists, it ensures users are properly subscribed, from a working address, and with the address owner’s consent.

In the event of “spam” accusation:

The Bulk Email Sender is fully and legally protected because the reply to the Subscription Confirmation Request received back from the recipient proves that the recipient did in fact opt-in and grant verifiable consent for the mailings.

Source:Spamhaus Website

Numerous myths have circulated regarding confirmed opt-in and its effects. There are many misconceptions out there, and we’d like to help clear those up.

Myth 1: My List Size Will Decrease Because Of Confirmed Opt-In.

Some addresses entered into your form will not confirm — that much is true. The percentage of addresses that don’t confirm depends on many factors, including the quality of your traffic and how effective your thank-you page, confirmation message and incentive for confirming are.

Percentages aside, there are compelling reasons that having fewer addresses on your list is a good thing.

Sometimes Less is Better

I know. You may be asking, “How can a decreased list size be a good thing?” Well, let’s consider:

5-20% of all web form submissions are undeliverable right off the bat.

This means that of your total list size you can cut that by 5-20% because these email addresses are simply dead. Remember these are not temporary undeliverable but permanent dead addresses.

Now, add on the bogus and malicious sign ups that undoubtedly will happen. For example, someone comes to your website and decides to put in bob@aol.com. Well, bob@aol.com was once a real email address and because you were not using confirmed opt-in you are now classified as an unintentional spammer.

A recent study by MarketingSherpa and KnowledgeStorm found that only 68% of users always enter a valid email address. 

So, nearly a third of respondents knowingly enter bogus email addresses.

- Source

ISPs do not differentiate between unintentional spammers or actual spammers. The potential for you to be blocked or even worse, blacklisted, remains the same.

Myth 2: My Mailing List Is Different! I Don’t Need Confirmed Opt-In.

Let’s be clear, confirmed opt-in is for all businesses, plain and simple. Anyone collecting subscribers and in turn sending email needs to confirm that those people intended to sign up to your mailing list and want to receive your email.

In this age of email regulations and massive volumes of spam email, deliverability can be an issue. Why increase your chances of not getting delivered by putting yourself at risk.

Myth 3: No One Else Uses Confirmed Opt-In. Why Should I?

This is simply not accurate. Our own campaigns here at AWeber use confirmed opt-in for all email marketing activities. When someone signs up for a Test Drive of AWeber, they must confirm.

After setting up an account, if they want to receive our customer training email course, they must confirm. The same goes for our affiliates and their email training. Even when someone subscribes to our blog, they must confirm.

Ok, but AWeber must practice what they preach, who else?

If you want to sign up for the mailing lists of these organizations you will need to first confirm:

CNN	Microsoft
Oprah, CNet	bellagio.com
IRS.gov	weather.com
ign.com	maxim.com
tgifridays.com	olivegarden.com
pbs.org	visitpa.com
Whitehouse.gov

The list goes on and on…

Myth 4: Subscribers In My Market Don’t Know How To Confirm.

The simple solution is to tell them. The first page after someone fills in an opt-in form, commonly called a “thank you page” should tell the visitor exactly what to do next. Often this is done most effectively with a picture showing visitors what the confirmation email will look like.

An excellent example is our test drive sign up video on the thank you page showing visitors what to do.

Honestly, if they can’t click a link then you probably should be marketing your business offline. If someone can find your website online I guarantee they can click a link.

Myth 5: My Sales Will Decrease Because Of Confirmed Opt-In.

Have you tested this assumption? The answer is always, “No, but I just assume” or “No, my colleague told me it would hurt sales”.

It’s best not to assume anything, but rather to seek out your own answers by testing and observing your own campaigns. We have found from our own testing that while the raw number of email addresses on our list declined when we switched to confirmed opt-in, sales did not.

This means that the people who did confirm were the ones that truly wanted the information that they had to offer and the ones that didn’t were not left to bloat the mailing list.

Grow Your Business Without Risk

Will your results be exactly the same as AWeber or even anyone else? This can only be determined by proper testing and measuring.

Use confirmed opt-in as an opportunity to make sure that your lists are 100% clean and that you know without a doubt that 100% of the people receiving your mail have specifically requested it themselves.

Spend your time and energy building your business with subscribers who want to hear from you rather than dealing with issues created by people who don’t want to hear from you.

Email Deliverability Tips

Posted by Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO) with permission of aweber.com

Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.

Permission

Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Subscriber Addresses

When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.

List Maintenance

Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.

Message Format

Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber .com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.

Content

Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.

Website URL: 

Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.

Words/phrases:

Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don’t attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you’ll just make your messages appear more spam like.

Images:

Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.

Attachments:

With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It’s often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It’s important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages.

Reputation

Reputation services are often used by large ISP’s as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all. Several reputation services are:

• http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
• http://www.bondedsender.com
• http://www.habeas.com

Relationships & Whitelisting

Contact with major ISP’s and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.

Email deliverability is about ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to the intended recipient. While no single tip will enable you to get 100% of your email delivered each one utilized as a group can go a long way to reaching that goal.

Basic strategies for Social marketing and use of popular social website resources

How to make your website visible and take advantage of all common social networks? Use simple approach that can make your finding process easier. Think like your targeted audience and attempt to take advantage of visibility of your brands on multiple networks. It is critical to make sure that your organization present in all top places such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and via RSS email sign up.

In the following series of posts we Will explore benefits of using each of the social media platforms but starting with most popular, Twitter, we can immediately notice following strategy.

Companies use twitter for immediate communication but also to grow base of prospects and send news and updates. What many organizations miss is that process of search of twitter becomes a popular way to find information in a much more filtered way. Think if 100 users constantly retweet result of your search for “best place in caribbean” then you are much more likely to find appropriate result for this search then if you were to look for in google. Relevancy of searchable tweeter feeds is what really makes the tools such as Tweetdeck and others unique and useful. Designing your marketing strategy with these tools in mind is an integral part of free and effective marketing online.

In any business there is a database of contacts and leads. This info can be less valuable to you and more valuable to others. In many businesses there is no direct competition or there are parallel service areas present. A great idea to increase your membership base is to arrange a swap of mailing lists with other companies in and near your field. This is a very common practice which leads only to benefit both parties. Be very careful negotiating the terms of swap to discuss what type of marketing you may or may not send to users and what language should be used to remind to leads what prime offer this is related to.

One of the best ideas to increase your sales is to partner with somebody who has a direct interest in providing your services or products to their customers in combination with their own. Search for providers that have parallel set of products or services something yours can complement and try to create partnerships that are based on commissions % of resale.  You can increase your product offering and obtain a parallel sales channel you never thought of before. In many cases this process can be automated online by creating landing pages that offer dual solution and provide leads to both parties.

Learn basic publishing mechanism. In today’s world ones ability to make information widely available in short period of time should not be underestimated. Because of this knowledge of a good blogging platform like WordPress is important. What makes it stand out from the rest? Simplicity and in the same time flexibility and expandability. Think of this as word for web publishing.

How to quickly learn WordPress

There are a lot of great resources that can help beginners and intermediate users obtain basic and more in-depth skills. Search Google and YouTube especially for WordPress tutorials and you will master the most efficient publishing tool in no time.