It therefore stands to reason that more Opt Ins, over time, will result in more sales.

Some time ago you could gather a huge amount of Opt Ins simply by offering a free subscription to a newsletter. However, these days you’ll get better results if you offer a little more incentive for you visitors to opt in. This could be a free report, audio download or even something sent through the post.

In another article I’ll cover some ideas you can offer to your visitors but for this issue I’d like to talk about the different kinds of Opt In tactics.

The Static On Page Opt In Form

The static Opt In Form will usually sit on a web page, always visible, containing your Opt In offer. This usually appears either at the top right or top left of a web page and should immediately be visible to a visitor on your website.

If not then you’ll get far more Opt Ins if you move your opt in form up to the top left or top right of your web page, if visitors have to scroll to see you’re your opt in form then you’ll be loosing a huge amount of potential subscribers and customers.

You should expect to sign up aprox 10% of your visitors into subscribers using this kind of form

Hover, Drop In Opt In Forms

The Hover Ad or Drop In Form drops in over the top of your web page and contains your Opt In offer and Opt In form. The visitor is then clearly presented with your Opt In Offer & Opt In Form. They can then either close your drop in ad or subscribe.

We’ve found that a drop in Opt In form seriously out performs the statics version and saves you extra space on the web page itself, although you may want to use both.

You can decide weather or not the drop in ad shows only onece per visitor or each time a visitor lands on the page and is definitely something you should test.

You should expect to sign up aprox 10% to 20% of your visitors into subscribers using this kind of form

The Squeeze Page

The squeeze page is designed to do one thing and one thing only and that is to collect opt ins from visitors.

The squeeze page is a page dedicated to your opt in offer and visitors have only 2 options. A) Sign up for your newsletter. B) Leave your website.

Now although that might sound a bit harsh they collect far more opt ins than any other strategy and is something you should definitely test.

Usually the squeeze page contains a video & a freebie for signing up or entering their data and is usually used as a pay per click landing page rather than the home page.

You should expect to sign up aprox 15% to 40% of your visitors into subscribers using this kind of form. I’ve even heard from people who experienced 50%.

Try testing the different opt in strategies and see which works best for you.

Probably one of the most misunderstood areas of marketing and internet marketing.

Pick up the local paper today and throughout it you’ll see plenty of expensive advertisements from all kinds of companies in varying industries.

Many of these, including the larger supposedly more experienced companies will simply feature their web address in small print at the bottom of the ad.

The one major problem with this is the only visitors your likely to get are the ones that we call “Hot for what you’ve got”. This will be a very tiny portion of your “Target audience” and your target audience, in turn, is probably only a small fraction of the readership of the publication.

Instead of copying what “the big boys do” try to be more imaginative.

For example:-

Let’s say I own a dog boarding kennels and I’ve been running a basic ad in some kind of dog owner magazine.

Now assuming I’ve not had much space to work with and I want people who are going on holiday “THIS YEAR” not next week, to take action and enter my marketing funnel.

Rather than run an ad simply stating Dog Boarding with a contact number address and website address, hoping to get those at the last minute trying to sort out somewhere to put the family pets, I’d get far better results asking those who are going on holiday this year to visit my website to claim a free DVD or CD showing & explaining exactly how I care and look after their pets.

At the very least I should be asking them to visit the site to claim a free broucher along with a pre booking discount.

This way not only will I attract more potential customers to visit my site, by collecting their details in exchange for the information, I can continue to build a relationship with them until they’re ready to go on holiday.

TIP) You must compel reader to visit the site, there has to be something in it for them and you must clearly state it within the ad.

TIP) Change the URL for each publication so that you can monitor results eg:-

www.mysite.com/freebrochure for one advertisement
www.mysite.com/freedvd for another advertisement etc…

Try changing some of your existing ads and I’m sure you’ll see far better results.

I hear these excuses all the time. Web designers are not marketing experts and many don’t actually give a monkeys whether or not you make any sales.

So many business owners are held back by their web designers and either do not make the required changes to their sites or get put off by down right nonsense that many of these surf boarding junkies talk about.

It’s time to set the record straight!

You pay your designer to do a job and if you have even a half decent one they’ll do the work you ask, providing you tell them what you want doing instead of asking for their opinion.

If you do struggle it’s time to find someone else who’s willing to take your strategies and make them happen.

Now before you think I’m slating web designers all together, I’m not, some of them are actually very good, It just pains me to see so many of you with really great ideas fall at the first hurdle due to “poor designers” or the ones that tell you what you can and can’t do with YOUR business.

At the end of the day, you should be the one in charge of your marketing efforts. I can help you by giving you great suggestions and strategies to try but what’s the point if you don’t actually put them into practice?

Now I’m also not going to tell you that everything you try will dramatically increase sales, some may actually reduce sales. HOWEVER, you will never discover the true earning potential of your website unless you are prepared to invest some time and test new tactics to convert more of your existing traffic into actual paying customers.

Every website that we work on, whether this is our own sites or our clients sites, is constantly under going changes, tests and tweaks.

For example:-

www.spex4less.com did not grow into Europe’s largest online retailer for prescription eye-wear, generating £80,000.00 per month over night.

It has been an ongoing process of testing new headlines, sales copy, auto responder emails, up sell tactics and follow up systems to get to that level. Had we not been so pro active testing new strategies, it would probably still be doing the mere £3,500 per month that it was when we first set it up.

Show that website to a designer and they’d probably have heart failure, it breaks so many of their “design rules”. In fact I don’t particularly like the way it looks my self.

However, almost every single element has been profusely tested and it looks the way it does today because that’s what works best, that’s what converts our target audience into paying customers of ours and we haven’t finished with it yet!

I didn’t want to waste a whole issue of our valuable marketing tips newsletter to give you this information.

The newsletter is designed for giving you the actual tool’s and strategies to put to the test. I just wanted to share this information so that there’s nothing holding you back from achieving the success you deserve.

Mark Bowden
www.marketingtipsuk.com

If you want good search engine results it’s your job to help the search engines identify what your pages are about both with the html code of the page as well as the text information on the page.

However, you can start by actually naming the file of your page using you main keyword phase for example:-

EG: www.mysite.com/main-keyword-phrase.html
(Obviously you can’t do this with your main index page)

For those of you that don’t know already, there is a small piece of html code at the top of each page on your website which includes the title of your page and the “meta tags” (description and keywords). The code looks like this:-

<title>Internet Marketing | Marketing Tips Uk</title> 
<meta name=”Description” content=”Internet Marketing Advice”> 
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Internet Marketing, Marketing tips,”>

The Title Tag:

This is where you name the title of your page. You want to use your main keyword phrase as early as possible within the title tag. This tells the search engine what you claim your page is about. (Ideally you want to match this with the keyword you used in your file name)

Note: do not try and cheat the system, search engines know if you’re trying to tell them your page is about something else other than what it actually is. Also do not key word stuff or continually repeat keywords as they’ll also pick up on this and rank your page very low.

Stick to clear short, relevant and keyword rich titles.

The title tag is also used by many search engines as the link itself in the search engine results. It also appears at the top of the web browser in the blue bar so keep your visitors in mind.

Meta Description:

This is where you can describe what your page is about, again use your main keywords or key word phrases in the description but again don’t go over board.

Keep your visitors in mind, as some search engines will use this description in the search engine results underneath the link to your site.

Meta Keywords:

Gone are the days where this tag actually means anything to the search engines. However, if you abuse it you can still get penalised. It is still good practice to put your main 4-5 keywords or keyword phrases in the keyword tag.

The Header Tags

In your html code there’s    also <h1>, <h2> & <h3> tags.

H1

EG: <h1>Main Headline</h1>    

Anything in between the h1 tags of your html code tells the search engine that this is the Main Headline of your page and is very powerful yet still widely underused.

The example html code above will be displayed on your web page in large bold text

EG: Main Headline

You want to use your main keyword or keyword phrase within in your h1 tag but remember it is important to create compelling headlines that entice your visitor to keep reading whilst still being search engine friendly.

Only use your h1 tag ONCE on each page.

H2

<h2>Sub Headline<h2>

Use in the same way as your headline including your key word and keyword phrases. However, you can use the h2 tag a couple of times. Text will appear slightly smaller than your h1 tag

H3

<h3>Other Headlines</h3>

Again use some other keywords or keyword phrases. You can use the h3 tag a few times throughout your page.

Remember to keep your headlines enticing and informative to your visitors whilst slipping in a keyword or two along the way.

What NOT to do

Do Not key word stuff your header tags, key word stuffing is not useful to your visitors and you will loose sales if your headlines don’t make sense and the search engines will frown upon it.

Do Not put your whole page in your h1 tag, sounds silly I know, but I have seen it done before.

The main Body of your page

Now that you’re clued up on the code side of things there’s also a few things you can do throughout the text on you page to clearly indicate to the search engines what your page is about.

Take your top 3 – 4 main keyword phrases and use them throughout the text on your web page.

You need aprox 6-8% keyword density, in other words for every 100 words on your page your keywords will appear 6 to 8 times, any more than that and you risk your page becoming unreadable by a human and again the search engines will frown upon it.

Once you have your search engine friendly page in place you can go through and emphasize some of your
main keywords by:-

Bolding: <strong>Bolding</strong>
Italics: <em>Italics</em>
Underline: <u>Underline</u>

This will indicate to the search engines that these words are important.

I can’t stress enough, do not try and cheat the system!

Concentrate on creating user friendly pages following the basic rules and you’ll give yourself every chance to climb up the rankings.

As far as I can remember Google or any other search engine has not bought anything from me yet so don’t get caught up with pleasing the search engines if it detracts from convincing your visitors to do business with you.

Jon Stringer
Marketing Tips UK

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