Test Your B2B Direct Mail Offers To Boost Response Rates.
The secret to success in business-to-business direct
mail lead generation is testing. I have hunches. You
have hunches. But testing settles the debate. When
you test your package against my package and we
measure the results, we know for certain which
package performed better.
Assuming your list is good (in other words, assuming
you are mailing to people who are likely to buy), the
first thing you should test is your offer. Your offer,
after all, is the second most important ingredient of
direct mail success. And as Axel Andersson says, "If
you want to dramatically increase your results,
dramatically improve your offer."
How do you "dramatically improve your offer?" By
creating an offer that is different from the one you
are using now, and testing both at the same time.
Basically, you mail two packages, one with Offer A
and one with Offer B. You test nothing else. Then
you measure which offer outpulls the other. Here is
how you do it.
Test a hard offer against a soft offer
A hard offer asks for an appointment. A soft offer
invites prospects to request more information (such
as a white paper).
Test a product literature offer against an
educational offer
Product literature includes brochures, catalogs, sales
sheets and technical specification sheets.
Educational offers include white papers, special
reports, books and article reprints.
Test one educational format against
another
Some prospects prefer their information on paper.
Others prefer going online to a special page on your
website. Still others prefer watching a video, or
listening to a CD.
Test offer descriptions
Should you say "Buy two for the price of one"
or "Buy one and get one free?' Test and you'll know.
Test a deadline against no deadline
Giving your potential customer a deadline for
responding might boost response. And it might not.
Test one premium against another
Offer an Apple iPod in one mailer and a Blackberry in
another. Offer a gift certificate to Amazon.com in
one letter and a CD player in another. See what
happens.
In all your tests, remember to test one thing at a
time and to make your tests big. Keep all the other
variables (timing, design, list and so on) the same
while you test just the offer. When I say "make your
tests big" I mean that you should test two very
different offers. If the offers you test are too much
alike, you will not be able to trust your test results.
And that's not just a hunch.
Innovative advertising places for new economy
Advertising is becoming more and more innovating in todays knowledge driven new Business world. Advertising companies finding new locations, new innovative Ideas to sell their customers products and Services through Advertising. Here we will discuss some more Places to Advertising your products and services.
Online Internet Advertising Market Places
1. Internet is the best market place to advertise your products in more than 200 countries targeted buyers or customers orldwide community.
2. Make your website for mobile users so that mobile users can access your products catalog on mobile or other PDA devices.
3. Translet your website into various Internatonal Languages so that your products and services can be reach world's local
places.
4. Submit your website into various Business to business (b2b) trade directories so that your customers can buy your products
through b2b exchange.
5. Make a blog or forums for your customers feedback.
6. Submit your website in various search engines to improve your backlinks so that your webrank or pagerank will increase and
your website can be come into first ranking in various search engines and your customers, buyers list will increase.
Offline Advertisning Market Places
Offline advertising is becoming more competitive in todays new knowledge economy. Companies doing advertising in TV channels, in newspapers, Hordings and many many new other advertising marketplaces. here we will discuss about Apparel advertsing
opportunity.
Advertising companies having huge opportunity in T-shirt, Shirts, and many other Apparels. These Apparels are good marketplace to advertise your products and services in more than 200 countries worldwide.
How T-shirts can do advertising?
Apparel companies always finding new designs for apparel Manufacturing Business. Advertising companies can provide huge Royalty free
The Value of Web Directories
Web Directories Explained
By S. Housley
Web directories are an important component to search engine positioning. Directories come in all shapes and sizes, some are generic, while others are highly specialized. Directories, are defined as categorized topics or collections of information organized into a tree like structure where categories are used to define each groups association.
Large directories like Yahoo tend to have general themes and may charge for listings. While smaller niche directories like http://www.finance-investing.com offer free listings and profit from advertising revenue or pay per click models like Google AdSense.
Being listed in a directory not only brings in targeted traffic, it provides a one-way link from a website with similar content. Directories are generally highly ranked in search engines, and are considered well respected resources, two traits that are desirable in link partners.
While smaller directories that focus on a specific niche might generate less traffic, the quality of the traffic from a niche site is usually highly targeted and will be superior to that generated from general search engines.
If you are selling fire alarms, traffic from yahoo will be less qualified than traffic from Alarm Tools, http://www.alarm-tools.net . Most visitors to Alarm Tools will have a genuine interest in alarms and alerting systems. The nature of highly specialized directories result in visitors who have a serious interest in the directories theme, or a at the very least an interest in a theme related to the directory.
As a result, web publishers need to make a conscience effort not to ignore the value of directory listings. Regardless of their size, a related niche directory listing can be extremely valuable.
Many directories offer sponsorship opportunities. Vendors can optionally purchase sponsorship to increased their exposure with a bold listing or top category listings.
Determining a Directories Value
It is difficult to assess the value of directory listing, as there is an obvious advantage to a listing of a closely related theme directory that is difficult to measure and quantify. In general, webmasters can use common web guidelines to determine the popularity of a directory and assess the directory link's value.
To assess the value of a web directory, consider the PageRank of the webpage where the link placement of your site will occur. The PageRank is indicative of how important Google may find a specific page. Another reliable third party measuring tool is Alexa. The Alexa ranking provides insight into how popular a website is. In general, a link from a web page containing a PageRank of 5 or higher is considered very good. A link from a site in Alexa's top 100,000 is also generally very desirable.
Compare the following two directories' Monitoring Tools http://www.monitoring-tools.net and RSS Specifications http://www.rss-specifications.com . Monitoring Tools' main page has a PageRank of 5 but most internal pages that contain links have low page ranks and the overall Alexa ranking of the site is over 650,000. While RSS Specification's claims a main Google PageRank of 6 and subpages all contain a minimum of a 5 for PageRank, the overall site is ranked 32,000. Clearly if you are in the syndication business, RSS Specification's would be a very desirable link partner, while you would have to weigh the cost benefit and position of a link from Monitoring Tools.
To determine a sites PageRank without downloading the Google Toolbar, use the following online tool from RustyBrick http://www.rustybrick.com/pagerank-prediction.php . A website's Alexa ranking can be found by entering the URL into Alexa http://www.alexa.com .
It is recommended that PageRank and Alexa ranking be only used as a guide when determining a directories reputation. It is important not to get too caught up in either Google PageRank or Alexa Ranking as webmasters can use "tricks" to artificially inflate their numbers.
The bottom line, links from directories that are small but niche, can provide quality web traffic.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for FeedForDev http://www.feedfordev.com an RSS component for developers.
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