Why it's essential for B2B marketers to integrate mobile in the marketing mix
Six key answers to B2B mobile marketing questions
How B2Bs can best start going mobile
You can't avoid it. Everywhere you turn, everyone is talking about mobile—with the business world abuzz over mobile tools, technologies, and channels.
But even as B2Cs have been diving into mobile at a frenzied pace, B2Bs have been falling behind.
Whether because they're skeptical, or they're waiting for others to move first or they're paying attention to other media, B2Bs are missing prime opportunities to reach and engage their business audiences by not integrating mobile into the marketing mix.
The Mobile Revolution & B2B(my recently released mobile-marketing guide) lays out the business case for how emerging mobile media can uniquely engage business audiences, not just consumers.
And it outlines a set of recommendations for B2B marketers—chief among them, to elevate mobile to a priority in the marketing mix.
Based on that guide, the following six questions and answers provide B2B mobile insight, examples, and advice.
1. Why is mobile particularly prime for B2B companies and audiences?
Domain names are the equivalent of book covers. If they don’t tell people what they’re about quickly, no one will want to read it. For Internet marketing purposes that can be big trouble.
Before buying a domain name you should decide what you want to write about on your web site so that you can include one or two key words in the URL. It’s OK to be creative and have a catchy domain name as long as it is keyword rich.
This article will explain how to create a keyword rich domain name while maintaining your creativity. There are also two video training options.
Researching Keywords for a Domain
To begin, you should perform a keyword search term for the topic you are interested in writing about (or selling). There are many keyword research tools such as Keyword Tracker and Google Keyword Search. Both are free.
Video Tutorial How to Find Good Keywords
The more keywords you can fit into your domain name the better it will be for you to rank high on search engine results. For example, if you want your web site to be about kid’s paper crafts you’d want your domain name to be kids-paper-crafts.com or some variation of that search term.
The more specific you can be with your domain name the easier it will be for people to find your web site. To use the example of kid’s crafts, if someone were searching for kid’s crafts products or information they would type in: ‘kid’s crafts’ into the search engine.
Hyphenating a Web Site Name
Your web site kids-paper-crafts.com has a very good chance of appearing on the first page of Google for that search term. There are arguments against including hyphens in a domain name but I’ve found that it actually helps your search engine rankings when a domain name is hyphenated.
Look at the two URLs below and decide which one you’d rather click on:
kidspapercrafts.com
kids-paper-crafts.com
After you’ve decided on your domain name there are several web sites where you can register your domain name. I use GoDaddy.com as do a lot of other Internet marketers.
There is a video below on how to register a domain name.
Now you can start selecting your actual domain name. Most domain name registration companies will allow you to see whether or not your domain name is available by typing the name into a search box.
If the name you want isn’t available, it will return a list of recommended domain names. Take advantage of this tool by first entering your selected keyword.
If your keyword as a domain name is not available, think about the suggestions that are listed if the main keyword is still included in these suggestions and it ends with .com. Otherwise, you will have to be more creative.
For example, you can use 'filler' words, numbers or phrases within your domain name to still include your desired keyword phrase.
Fillers could be 'a,' 'an' or 'the'. Search engines tend to not look at these words, so you still have an opportunity to get indexed while having a domain name that is memorable and catchy and more to your liking.
You can also think about fillers at the end of a phrase, such as '101'.
What if you do these things and you still can't get a .com? Well, there are some instances where it is better to use a lesser used extension because the keyword is very popular.
Extensions that get noticed include:
.net
.biz
.org
You should also consider using country or state-based extensions if you don't mind international or local-based marketing. It's better to be number 1 in France's version of Google than to be number 200 or worse in America's version of Google.
How to Register a Domain Name Video Tutorial
In conclusion, choosing a domain name that will get the right buzz from both humans and search engines doesn't have to be hard.
Until fairly recently, there were only two types of sales letters that Internet marketers used to increase sales and to promote downloadable products over the Internet.
With video now widely used this has changed. This means that you have far more options than you had not long ago.
With this in mind, you have to decide what you trust is going to work best in your market niche at the outset, well before starting to create your sales page.
To start, let’s look at how it used to be.
Long or Short Sales Copy
Until a few years ago, the only choice to increase sales volume was between using a customary long copy sales page, or using a short copy sales letter. The difference between the two being the size of the sales letter.
It used to be suggested that the more expensive the merchandise that you were promoting from a sales letter was, the more material you had to include on the page to influence interested visitors to become customers.
Therefore, a sales letter for a $197 item would be longer than the sales letter for a $97 item, but shorter than the sales page for something costing $1997.
At the other end of the pricing model, the market was flooded a couple of years ago with $7 product offers nearly all of which used “cookie cutter‟ pre-made templates that looked like this:
Sales Letter Copy Sample 1
With such a low price, buying or not buying the merchandise being promoted had little or zero to do with the sales copy and page design. Since even if there was only the slightest thought that the item might perhaps be of some use, it was a no-brainer to invest $7 to find out if it actually helped.
If you are interested in seeing what kind of products were being offered, you can find at least a hundred of these $7 offers here.
And until a few years back, that was really the how sales letters were created. It was either long or short copy if you were creating your own sales letter or a pre-formatted, 98% pre-written sales letter for $7 products.
The number of different kinds of sales letters that people use has grown over the past few years.
This gives you many more different options, which of course brings the associated disadvantage that the choice is now harder to make than ever before.
New Ideas for Sales Letters
In the past five years or so, no one can have failed to notice that video has unquestionably exploded all over the Internet. Accordingly, including video on sales pages is now almost mandatory.
With the question being whether a sales page includes one or more videos.
For example, although a traditional long copy sales page should be designed to build up momentum from the top of the sales page down with a story gradually developing, it is now routine for a video to be used in numerous places on the same sales letter page to complement the point being made at that particular stage of the letter.
As the written story is developing, so is the story being told by the videos which are featured at several different points on that page.
This should not after all be a great surprise because it makes of sense. Using video allows you to talk directly to your lead or customer and makes you appear far more social.
In effect then, both sides benefit from the use of video, so the trend towards using video on sales pages is one that you can almost guarantee will quicken over the coming years.
Thus, video allows you to present far more information far more quickly while keeping your web site visitor interested and involved with your content.
At the other end of the spectrum, we are also beginning to see sales pages that present little or no information at all at the front end of the sales funnel.
This consequently brings you to a serious consideration that has to be thought through before you decide what kind of sales page you’re going to use. This thought is, who is your targeted prospect or customer and what do you know about the kind of sales tactic that they are likely to favor?
You Must Talk Their Language
The chief purpose of your sales letter is to convey a message to everyone who views it.
The message that you communicate is made up of different parts, such as the graphics on the page, the words that you use and the font, any videos that you incorporate, and so on.
Changing any of these parts of the sales letter also changes the nature of the message being communicated as well.
As an example, although the fact that you are reading this suggests that you are someone who will create sales pages in English, would your page convey exactly the same message to your viewer if you wrote it in Spanish or German?
Sure, the words might mean precisely the same, but the influence and therefore the message that the page carried to the viewer may be entirely different if it was written in a completely different language.
Instead of trying to come up with something that everyone loves, you have to write your copy and create a sales page that appeals to only one “ideal” customer.
Basic Sales Page Structure
If you are going to build a long copy sales letter page, the first thing that you need is a web page editor, a program with which you can construct that page in the correct way.
The best known program of this type is Adobe Dreamweaver but as it is also quite costly, you are probably better starting with a free editor like NVU or Kompozer.
Both of these are excellent WYSIWYG editors (what you see is what you get) meaning that they can to a large extent be used in a similar way to the way you would use a word processing program like Microsoft Word.
As you will probably have noticed from looking at other people’s sales pages, it is common for the sales copy to be featured in a table in the middle of the page like this:
Sales Letter Copy Sample 2
Given that this is the widely accepted for this kind of page, this is what you ought to do as well.
If you want to create a sales page from a template, you can download free sales letter templates from the web sites listed below.
Clearly, using a ready-made template or a page generator has the benefit that it allows you to create your page quickly and easily.
Writing Your Copy
Initially, you have to understand the concept of how to write the copy, what it is intended to do.
There is an outline of how your page should progress that you should follow if you want to achieve the best results.
The best sales letters are those that slowly develop a story from the top to the bottom of the page. Each distinct section of your page has to be written in such a way that it propels your visitor to keep reading the next section.
Your main headline should force your reader to continue reading the sub-headline which should compel them into starting to read the main copy text.
If you can somehow interlace a plausible and interesting story into your sales copy this will immediately draw your visitor in. Everyone enjoys a good story and they have to know the ending, so they will keep reading.
If you want to research professional sales pages to increase your sales go to Clickbank and look at the highest selling products. Study them and get ideas.
If you are currently running an Internet marketing campaign or are about to launch a campaign, one concept you cannot neglect is search engine optimization, better known as SEO.
Sear engine optimization is the most talked about and written about buzz word in Internet marketing today.
Unfortunately, the great majority of bloggers and web site owners commonly do not know enough about how to prepare pages to make this strategy work for them.
I perform a lot of research and time after time I come across blogs that do not have their pages set-up correctly.
Even those who are acquainted with SEO may have a hard time executing their strategies to produce the desired outcome.
You probably already understand how important it is to advertise but if you are running your business online you should be aware that there is a lot of free advertising in the form of optimal search engine rankings.
Search Engine Ranking
The most popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing rank websites according to complicated algorithms which are designed and constructed to determine which websites are relevant for appropriate search terms.
Accordingly, taking the time and putting in the effort to optimize your website for relevant search terms may result in you ranking high in search engines for these terms.
This is important because you want to rely on these rankings to bring in traffic to your web site.
Most people performing a search click on the first few links on the results page when they search for an exact term. They know what they want and they're in a rush to get it.
What this means for you is when your website ranks high enough to appear on the first few lines or even on the first page of the search results, you will notice more web site traffic.
Converesly, if your web site doesn’t make it to the first page there is little chance that you will see traffic from visitors who use search engines.
How To Optimize Pages
Now that we talked about how search engine rankings are valuable, you might wonder how to accomplish these high rankings.
I will now talk about how I achieved that ranking. But before I do, I want you to perform a search on Google for the title of my article, or some variation. I rank fourth, right under Amazon.com if you insert the complete title.
If you search for a variation I'll still come up on the first page somewhere.
The way I got first page ranking is simple but hard. It's hard because it takes a lot of work, but simple because all we have to do is insert the following into our web page conent:
H1 and H2 tags
Pictures
Video
Key words in the text
News feeds
Wikipedia links
You've read this before. It's nothing new to you, but are you doing it?
Are you taking the time to really work on your pages or are you simply cutting and pasting text?
Keyword density refers to the number of times a particular keyword is used in the content of your web site.
The theory behind this concept is that web pages which are rich in keywords often are likely relevant to that keyword.
However, exaggerated use of that keyword may result in punishment to the web site if the search engine considers the keywords are not being used suitably.
META Tags
META tags are bits of HTML code which search engines use in assessing the content of a website.
Using keywords in these tags can be favorable in some search engines. Care should be taken to avoid placing irrelevant keywords in these tags as this may result in your website being penalized.
Inbound Links
Inbound links are also used by some search engines to rank websites. Inbound links refer to links on other websites which point to your website.
In evaluating the worth of these inbound links, search engines consider the rank of the website providing the link to your website.
This means you should ensure the website providing inbound links to your website are high ranking websites to receive the most benefit from these links.
Finally, the content on your website can do a great deal to bolster your search engine rankings.
How To Start An Online Business Selling Used Cell Phones
Sell Phones Like This
Selling used cell phones online is a good way to begin making money extremely quickly. I began earning serious money buying and selling used sell phones within two months.
In this article I will talk about how to source used cell phones and where to sell them. I'll also tell you how to get free cell phones in order to start making money today. Yes, today!
Selling used cell phones is a very lucrative niche business. If you're serious and put in effort, you can have fun and earn a nice living in this niche. People buy used cell phone for different reasons.
For parts
As a second phone
For a child
To replace a lost/damaged phone
It doesn’t matter why people buy used cell phones. As long as they buy them. And people do buy used cell phones. I’ve had repeat customers and customer referrals but I’m getting ahead of myself.
I began selling used cell phones after reading an eBook a few years ago about the top 10 best products to sell on eBay. And I began making money right away.
I also began selling phones on Craigslist once I realized that people were really buying these things.
As with any business there is a learning curve. You’ll have to go through trial and error. You will make mistakes but don’t give up.
I made the mistake once of not testing a phone (more on that later) and the customer complained that the ringer didn’t work. I had to refund the money of course.
There are a couple of options for acquiring used cell phones to sell.
Researching The Value Of Cell Phones
You can research the value of a used cell phone very quickly. Usually in a few minutes. When you become proficient it will be a matter of seconds.
eBay is the best place to find the value of a phone or anything else.
You will need an eBay account (more on that later). And you’ll have to log in to your account to perform the search on the completed listings section.
The completed listings section displays auctions that have closed and it shows the final price of the auction. You will see exactly how much people paid for the phone you are researching.
Also research the value of the phone in ‘as is’ condition.
This is important because when you test the phone and find out it doesn’t work you may still be able to make money on it. People buy ‘as is’ cell phones for parts.
The profit margin is actually higher on ‘as is’ cell phones because you can buy them for $5 and easily make a good profit.
If a seller doesn't have the charger for a phone do not buy it. There is a good chance that the phone is lost or stolen.
I learned the hard way! If the person has the charger and other accessories you can be sure that they are the owner and buy with confidence.
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Sourcing Used Cell Phones
You can begin this business with absolutely no money. How?
These days everyone has 2 or 3 cell phones that they don't use. The phones are just sitting in a drawer.
Ask your family and friends to give you these cell phones. Be honest with your family.
Tell them that you're starting a business buying and selling used cell phones. Ask for their support by giving you the cell phones that they are not using.
Or, you can offer them a percentage of the sale once you sell the phone.
You’ll be surprised at how much money you can make this way because there is no initial investment. It’s pure profit.
Asking family members for phones is the easiest way to start this business because once you have the phone in your possession you can post it on Craigslist immediately and have a buyer within hours (provided the phone is selling good).
That’s how you can make money today.
Grab a cell phone from a family member and post it on Craigslist today. But first finish reading the article.
You can also stock up on phones to sell by buying them, which is what I do.
Simply place an ad on Craigslist similar to the one below. Place the ad in the ‘Items Wanted’ category.
You can also place an ad in your local paper once you begin making money.
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Need Money? I Buy Used Cell Phones [this is your headline]
[this is the body of your ad]
I will give you cash today for your used cell phones. All makes and models needed.
When you contact me please be sure to include the make, model number and carrier so that I can research the value of the phone and make an offer.
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I've been very successful with this ad.
When you place this ad you will receive responses almost right away. People will send you emails telling you what kind of phone they want to sell.
When you receive an email from someone wanting to sell a phone do not reply to them right away. First research the value of the phone.
Contacting The Seller
After you performed the research and know what a phone is selling for contact the seller. If, for example, a phone is selling on eBay for $80 offer the seller $40 or less.
You’ll want to at least double your money or triple it. I once bought a $400 Nokia smartphone for $100 and sold it for $220 the next day.
A note of caution. Some sellers will reject your offer because they know the value of the phone.
Simply tell them that you buy to resell and that you cannot offer any more money. Most people will then accept your offer.
Do not spend too much time with people that won’t budge on the price or you’ll find yourself answering emails all day. You don’t want to work that hard!
When you and the seller agree on a price it’s time to meet the seller and test the phone and view its condition.
Have the seller come to you. This way you are not wasting time traveling.
This part is crucial. Make sure that everything on the phone works. Here is a check-list to guide you:
Check:
Ringer
Display
Condition (phones with normal wear and tear sell well)
Turn on/off
Place a call
If the phone does not have service you can call 911 to test the phone for outgoing calls.
Most cell phones allow 911 calls even though there is no service on the phone. For phones with SIM cards place a SIM card in the phone and test for outgoing calls.
The seller should have a SIM card if you don’t have one.
After testing the phone and provided everything works well buy the phone to resell.
You’re ready to make money!
Selling The Phone
There are several ways to sell a used cell phone online but I’m going to talk about two, eBay and Craigslist. I’ve tried the other auction sites and classifieds websites and they don’t perform as well as eBay and Craigslist.
Let’s begin with Craigslist because it is free and you can set-up an account in minutes.
If you don’t have a Craigslist account it is easy to sign-up for one. Go to Craigslist.com and click on open an account.
When you complete the sign-up process they will send a confirmation email to the email address you provided. The email will arrive in minutes.
Click on the link in the email that says confirm account registration. When your account is registered you are ready to post a phone for sale.
Sign in to your account and click on create a new post.
In the posting title enter the phone you are selling. For example, if you’re selling a Cricket Ascend Android Cell Phone you should enter:
Used Cricket Ascend Android Cell Phone
(it’s important to use the word ‘used’ because that’s how people will search.)
In the price box enter the price you’re selling the phone for. If you live in a major city you can list your location by neighborhood. I usually just enter the city as the specific location. This way more people will see the ad.
Try to be as accurate as possible when you describe the phone. For example, if the phone has a few minor scratches mention that in the description.
You can also describe the phone as ‘fair’, ‘good’, ‘normal’, and ‘mint’ condition. Include pictures.
People will want to see what they’re buying and you’ll receive more offers if you include good pictures. Make sure the pictures are in focus and have plenty of light.
When you’re done with the description click on post new ad and your ad will go live on Craigslist in about 15 minutes. If the phone is a hot seller you’ll begin receiving responses right away.
eBay’s system is a little harder and it takes a little longer to set up an eBay account. If you don’t have an eBay account register for one. You cannot begin selling on eBay right away. eBay requires that you have at least a positive feedback score of 10 before you can sell.
You can read about that when you sign-up for an eBay account.
When you post a phone on eBay you’ll want to follow the same steps as on Craigslist. Enter the post heading and price, pictures and description.
End your auctions on Sunday nights. That’s when most people are online and sometimes bidding wars escalate and you’ll receive a very good price for your phone.
To learn more about eBay please see Skip McGrath's Free Articles.
Skip is a good guy. His articles and eBooks are what trained me to sell on eBay.
You now know how to make money selling used cell phones. It’s not that hard and it’s a very good business to get into. After you begin making money with the phones you’ll want to sell everything online. I do! And I make a very good living.
I wake up when I want to and I work when I want to… but most importantly, I work from home. My time is my own and I don’t answer to anyone.
There are always people willing to buy what you are selling. I wish you success and if I can help in any way please send me an email.
Please be sure to mention this article in the subject line of your email so that I can give your email my attention right away.
In a video interview with Web Marketing Today, Bryan Eisenberg offers a 7-minute primer on what he terms the Five Rs of search engine marketing.
"I really wanted to demystify [the five core principles], especially for a lot of small and midsize businesses," he explains. "They hear so much conflicting [information] about search."
Here's a quick overview of Eisenberg's thoughts on each R:
Relevance
"How do you make sure you have the right content that's speaking to what people are interested in?" Eisenberg asks. "The search engine's goal is to match the user with what is going to be the most relevant content related to what their query is."
Reputation
Good reviews never hurt—but they can be much more helpful if they come from respected sources. "Who's saying you have good content? Who's linking to you, saying you have good content?" he asks.
Remarkable
A good way to go unnoticed by search engines is with competent—but unremarkable—products, services and content. "People don't comment about stuff that's ordinary," says Eisenberg. "You have to be remarkable. Remarkably good or remarkably bad: that's when they comment."
Readability
Make your content easy for customers to digest by breaking chunks of information into headlines, bullet points, graphics and infographics, Eisenberg advises. You appeal to search engines with proper content like well-chosen tags and keywords, he notes.
Reach
"When developing your content," Eisenberg adds, "write about topics that have wider interest." If your focus becomes too narrow, he warns, people simply won't search for the information you have to offer.
The Po!nt
How remarkable is your rep these days? Remembering the Five Rs could help keep your SEO strategy on course.
Looking for great search marketing data? MarketingProfs reviewed hundreds of research sources to create our most recent Search Engine Marketing Factbook (May 2010). With 121 pages and 81 charts, it is full of relevant search marketing stats and trends. The Search Marketing Factbook is Part 2 of the complete Digital Marketing Factbook (our 296-page full report).
Why telling miniature stories is an effective marketing tool
How people best absorb and remember information and messaging
I'm about to tell you a new story about stories—one you need to know because of all the other new things, social and digital, going on in the world.
But before I do, let's make sure we're in sync on what has made "story" the stuff of life since the beginning of time.
If you're a marketer, a blogger, a politician, an entrepreneur, a teacher, a parent, a corporate executive, a lawyer, or a human being in today's hyper-messaged world, you don't want to miss this.
Ronald Reagan, the late actor-turned-president who was known by Republicans and Democrats alike as "The Great Communicator," didn't start speeches on "the multi-lateral imperative of deficit reduction" with facts and figures.
Instead, he'd tell you a story about a little girl in a yellow dress. Within a minute or two, when even the most cynical listeners were unconsciously disarmed and pulled in by the parable, Reagan would move over to the hard business of the day's talk.
He knew what a great sales trainer once told me: Spend two hours telling a prospect every fact about your product—and he'll forget 95% in 10 minutes. But tell him a story, and, 20 years later, he'll repeat it to you word for word.
I'm about to tell you a new 
