Internet Direct Marketing Tip of the Day

Here’s a practice that’s as old as search itself. Ask the search engines to show you who is linking to your site. Then, ask who is linking to your competitors’ sites. Compare the list of those linking to you against those who aren’t.

You want to make tracks to those who aren’t linking to you and make nice-nice, somehow. Maybe you can just ask them for a link, and they’ll give you one. Maybe not. Having good content to link to can help your inbound link campaign. The more quality sites that point to you, the higher you should appear in search engine results. LC

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If you want to be sure a specific person or company finds your Tweet, put an @ (the “at” symbol) in front of the Twitter name. Example: @LarryChaseWDFM.

Twitter calls these “mentions” and tracks who mentions you and what they say. When you mention others using the @ symbol, those people will see your Tweet, even if they don’t follow you.

Likewise, you’ll see any Tweet that mentions your Twitter handle, even if you don’t follow that particular Twitterer.

Most Twitter clients build this “mention” function in when you reply to a Tweet, but you can add the @ symbol manually as long as you use the correct Twitter handle. LC

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One way to make your ad copy jump off the screen is to use words that are “hot” in the period in which your campaign is running. You might even consider building a campaign around what is hot at the moment.

Of course, what’s red hot now can be stone cold in a few months, but by then, you’ll probably have moved on to the next bevy of ads which use offers and words that are emblematic for that point in time.

Try it. When done right, your copy has a newsy immediacy to it and can dramatically boost response rates. LC

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Have you ever noticed a disconnect between an ad’s copy and the landing page it links to? Sometimes, one person writes the ad, and another creates the landing page. They should knit together seamlessly but often don’t.

When the landing page seems disconnected from the ad copy, it’s a good bet beaucoup conversions are being lost.

It seems almost too obvious to suggest, but walking through the complete user experience for a given ad is 100% necessary. If there’s a download on the landing page, then download that file. If the link to the download site comes via email, make sure that email delivers to your inbox, and that all the copy in that email message lines up with what you’re saying in the ad and on the landing page.

The bottom line is this: An Internet Marketing campaign has a lot of moving parts. All the niggling details need to be checked. If you don’t “conform” all the moving parts, you’re probably leaving money on the table. You can think of it as a form of ad optimization. LC

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If you’re reading this, my guess is you already have one. But if not, get one soon. Why? Because it’s a game changer.

Geocentric targeting (with user opt-in) and Mobile Ecommerce will undoubtedly change how we move through life, transfer funds, Twitter, buy stuff and more.

Many traditional direct response and brand marketers as well as publishers denied the huge changes underway in the early days of the Internet.

Internet Marketers shouldn’t make the same mistake by underestimating how huge a shift Mobile Marketing represents now.

When you actively test smartphone GPS-enabled apps, what mobile search can do, and how effective simple text couponing can be, you will get a front row seat into what’s coming down the pike. LC

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The next season of the inside 1960′s Madison Avenue show is still under wraps, but its cable home, AMC, is continuing to host the clever microsite <a href-”http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/madmenyourself/”>”Mad Men Yourself,”</a> which promotes the classic, cynical series.

This site lets you create swanky ’60s-style avatars resembling characters from the show for your iPhone, Facebook page or Twitter image or to decorate your computer desktop.

In the second season, Banana Republic offered suits inspired by lead character Don Draper, which was ironic for a store that started out selling safari-type threads. You could even get a Mad Men tie clasp. When’s the last time you saw someone wearing a tie clasp?

For a while, tuploaded clips on YouTube deubbed in modrn-day dialogue into exisiting scenes from the 1960s. One showede account exec Campbell Twittering about Nancy NoodleHead, in the hopes of making the campaign go viral…a far-out thought for 1961. This is what you call brand loyalty. LC

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I’m always amazed by wishy-washy Website copy that never makes it clear who is behind the copy on the page. I find myself fixated on trying to figure out who is talking and what their agenda is. This undermines the copy because I’m not focused on what, but rather, who.

The same is true for lots of solo email “from” fields. I have to look at the extended header or the email service bureau or some sub-domain to guess who is trying to convince me of what. Again, this sort of communique loses credibility because it isn’t up-front in what is normally a pretty transparent medium.

The Internet isn’t one medium, but rather a bundle of media that employs different modalities: Web pages, emails, blogs, RSS feeds, Twitter streams and so on. The variety will only increase in time, and there will be some confusion about who is talking in any one of these channels for some time to come. It can’t hurt to be more clear about who you are and your intentions. LC

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I’ve noticed that offer copy often gets good response rates when it employs the same spoken language of the reader.

Copy that “speaks your language” has a certain amount of credibility. When I see copy that I think isn’t right on the money, I often ask clients how they’d explain it to me themselves.

A large percentage of the time, what they say in the first person is more natural and to the point than the original written copy.

So, if you want copy to resonate with your readers, listen to them and/or explain your offer to someone before formally writing it down. Then, capture what you just said spontaneously, and write it down immediately thereafter. LC

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If you want to see how many people click on your Tweets, use a URL shortener like bit.ly or tr.im.

Not only do these URL shorteners free up characters in the 140-character max posting format, but they also track clicks on your links, retweets and page redirects.

It’s a quick and easy way to measure what topics your followers respond to and which ones they don’t. This might affect what you write about in future Tweets. LC

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Whether you have B2C customers or B2B clients, it can only help to add value above and beyond what is expected.

When tough times come around, you want to have ready practices and programs that delight your patron. There’s nothing like adding value to say, “We value your business.”

Think of such loyalty programs as insurance for tough times, which inevitably happen every so often. When customers and clients cut their budgets, value-add programs can help you make their newly revised short list. LC

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