A reader wonders:

I recently bought ‘Adwords for Dummies‘ and I really enjoy it. Now my problem is trying to figure out a product to sell. Any hints on how to find products to sell?

My response:

First, thanks for your kind words about the book. You should feel free to write a nice amazon review for it :)

Now, let me gently criticize the thought process that produced the question:

That’s backwards thinking.

The world is so full of products and services, unless you live naked in the woods (or at the beach, which I don’t recommend), you’re tripping over things to sell all day long.

Right here, in my home office (OK, my wife’s home office, but she’s sleeping and I like her artwork better than mine, and I have to step over the dog to get to my office), I see binders, jewelry, postcards, battery chargers, matches, keys, picture frames, organic rice milk, window blinds, etc. etc. etc.

Somebody is making money selling every one of those things - else they wouldn’t exist.

Instead of looking for products to sell, look for markets to serve.

Focus on needs and desires and pains and longings. People will buy things that they think will improve their lives. Every purchase I’ve ever made has been an act of hope in a better future. Every purchase, from the bananas at Trader Joes to the Prius at the Toyota dealership to the 2 by 12 planks at Home Depot that I turned into raised garden beds. Toothpaste. Shaving cream. Bass guitar lessons for my son. Every purchase is motivated by a desire to increase pleasure and decrease pain.

When you focus on a particular market - a group of people who share some meaningful characteristics - and get to know what they deeply want to have and what they want to get rid of and what they want to avoid, then you’ll know what to sell to them. And you won’t have to wonder.

Now, if you want to use AdWords, certain realities come into play, which you can get from the book. Like, who’s looking for it, and how much can you make from selling it compared to the cost of an AdWords click. Some products are not well suited for AdWords.

But don’t start with products. Don’t even start with media. Start with people, and figure out how to serve them.

Khalil Gibran wrote, “Work is love made manifest.”

If your business is an expression of love of a group of people, and a sincere desire to improve their lives, then you are on the easy path to success.

I recently found a great example of an opt-in form, from Remember the Milk (an online to-do list service). Here’s a short video showing what I love about it:

What other web pages have great opt-in forms? Post your favorites to comments.

I was thumbing through Website magazine the other day when I saw an article that had me floored. Someone had asked a bunch of search marketing professionals what they’d do if they were forced to choose between search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC).

Even more incredibly, they had actually gotten a bunch of people to answer the question (77% opted for SEO). Poor 23% PPC (sniff).

The question makes about as much sense as asking what’s more important about a car, the steering wheel or the accelerator.

Even though I wrote the book about AdWords, I recognize that both have their place in a successful online marketing strategy. (To be fair, the Website magazine article offered interested stats and did end up with a nuanced view of the topic - I’m just picking on them to make a point.)

Let’s compare:

Organic (SEO) traffic is free and can be plentiful. AdWords traffic costs money and can be hard to come by. Score one for SEO.

Organic traffic is more credible than paid ads (at least, judging by searchers’ behavior). Score two for SEO.

Organic traffic can last a lot longer than AdWords traffic, where any idiot with a big checkbook and no understanding of ROI can outbid you and kick you off the first page. Score three for SEO.

PPC traffic used to be more predictable - your organic listings might disappear overnight like dinghies in the Bermuda Triangle when Google tweaked their algorithm, but AdWords was steady and consistent. Until summer 2006, when they started playing with Quality Score and threw the PPC world into an SEO-like tizzy. So no advantage there.

So why is AdWords so great then? Why do I view it as important as SEO? For three reasons: Read the rest of this entry »

According to today’s New York Times, retailers spending money on expensive display ads are receiving less bang for their buck than advertisers using text ads (i.e. AdWords). Ironically, the article appeared below a banner ad for Grand Auto Theft:

And just to make sure the expensive ad was extra-annoying, it kept unfolding over the article:

The good news? Most big companies, like the ones mentioned in the Times article, still are working off the old TV brand-building mindset online. For smart advertisers, the downturn in online advertising is an opportunity - cheaper clicks, less competition, and more chances to be friendly and helpful, rather than in-your-face and annoying.

I discovered the McGurk Effect the other day.

Actually, my friend Sammy told me about it, and I looked it up on youtube, which is almost the same thing.

The McGurk Effect: if you listen to a recording of someone repeating the sound "Bah Bah Bah Bah" while watching a synchronized video of them mouthing the sound "Gah Gah Gah Gah", you will actually hear the sound "Dah Dah Dah Dah."

If you want to confirm for yourself the reality of the McGurk Effect, search for it on youtube.

Now, I’m anticipating three possible reactions to this summary of scientific progress:

1. "That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever encountered. Where can I learn more?"

2. "Big deal."

3. "Why are you wasting my time on this nonsense?"

Give me a minute, OK? There’s a lesson in here somewhere. Let me see…

When you create marketing campaigns, you are communicating based on a set of assumptions about your market:

• What language they speak.
• What their desires are.
• How much they can afford to pay.
• How badly they want their itch scratched.
• What they already know about your product or company.
• What they know about other potential solutions to their problems.
• And so on…

My question is, how many of these assumptions are you consciously considering, and how many are based on observable evidence as opposed to pre-judgment?

You see, if you write about your product as if your prospect already knows what it does, you may be a self-inflicted victim of a Marketing McGurk. You’re saying, "Here’s a big discount on my Magrouple-OpMart-WangChickle," and your prospect is hearing, "Dah Dah Dah."

Because your message is incongruent in context, just as the lips forming one sound and making another are incongruent in their context.

If you assume your prospect connects your solution with their problem, you may be McGurking yourself as well. You can treat sinus problems with chiropractic? Really? Acupuncture can help with eczema? The problems you can solve may be old hat to you, but your prospects need education and explanation and repetition to make the connections you take for granted.

Ken McCarthy understands the power of avoiding Marketing McGurkisms. He just announced the faculty and program of the 2008 System Seminar (Yes, I’m one of the faculty members, which entitles me to attend a pizza party on Sunday, June 1, not to brag but there you have it :)

And rather than assume that you would recognize the names and expertise of the presenters (most are not "gurus", but simply hard-working and clever practitioners and educators, so you probably won’t recognize them), Ken took the entire System 2008 program and made it available right now.

http://program.thesystemseminar.org

So if you’re not familiar with Nancy Andrews, Richard Mouser, Lon Naylor, or any of the other 22 faculty members; if you don’t know that Nancy Andrews has cracked the SEO code, that Richard Mouser used simple testing tactics to turn his money-losing online store into a huge success, that Lon Naylor is the expert in helping folks
use screen capture video tutorials to grow their businesses - you will after browsing the program guide.

Ken knows that by stepping out of the way of the product, and letting it sell itself, without hype or fancy marketing footwork, he’s allowing his prospects to gather information in their own way, to make an informed decision about whether System 2008 is appropriate for them.

If you’ve read AdWords For Dummies, you know that I credit Ken with being my Internet marketing mentor, as well as my first copywriting teacher. The most important thing he taught me is this:

Don’t try to be a copywriter. Just explain what you’ve got and why anyone should care - and then just get out of the way.

In other words, don’t mess around with mystical, manipulative tactics that are supposed to magically vacuum money out of your prospects’ wallets while they grin stupidly in a hypnotic trance.

Just talk to people. Be interesting. Be respectful of their time. Share value. Make your pitch. And shut up.

You can download the System 2008 program here:

http://program.thesystemseminar.org

If the program convinces you to join me in Chicago on May 30-June 1, I’d be delighted to connect with you - just give me a shout. If you read through the program and decide that it’s not for you, then that’s the right outcome.

No McGurks here - either it’s the thing to do, or it isn’t. Either way, you’ll broaden your perspective on Internet marketing tactics and strategies simply by browsing the program.

A reader asks:

Do you believe Affiliate Marketing is a reasonable and economical starting point for someone trying to learn adwords and is it possible to be able to promptly track the results of  ROI and conversion rates?  Everything I read in Adwords is tied to having control over my own website which obviously I wouldn’t have as an affiliate.

Here are my thoughts:

This question is like asking me if I think it’s possible for a 5′10" 43-year-old guy to train enough to dunk a basketball if he currently has a vertical leap that wouldn’t clear a soda can. (Not thinking of anyone in particular, mind you.)

Yes, I absolutely believe that success is possible in both cases. But I’ve proven myself quite unwilling (so far) of doing the work that would get me to either goal.

I know some folks who make a good living at affiliate marketing. They know their markets, they test constantly, they track every traffic source for ROI conversion down to the keyword level, and they constantly scout out high-converting merchants. They manage their bids with alertness that would put your cat to shame. And they become brilliant at several forms of traffic generation - not just AdWords, not just article marketing, not just SEO.

Here’s the thing about affiliate marketing: because it seems so easy, it’s incredibly competitive. There’s the lure of easy money with no work and no customers and no website.

Not only that, the pure affiliate business model has structural downsides: you do all the front end heavy lifting of lead acquisition without any of the back end of long-term customer relationship. Also, affiliate programs change, Google changes, companies go out of business - so make sure if you want to be serious that you create a multi-legged stool, for traffic generation (not just AdWords) and affiliate merchants (not just one or two).

That said, affiliate marketing is great for supporting your entry into a marketplace in two significant ways: Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I appeared (sonically, anyway) on the Internet Radio show, Online Marketing with RSS Ray.

Through the miracle of JavaScript, you can listen to it here:

I send a survey to AdWords For Dummies readers a few days after they sign up for the Gold Key section of the askHowie.com website. I do this to find out what questions people have, what level of internet marketing and AdWords savvy they possess, what additional products and services I have a chance of selling to my list, etc.

One of the questions is, "If you could spend 30 minutes on the phone with me, what would you ask?"

Usually, I hear things like, "How to get more clicks… how to choose a market… which tools to use…" Stuff like that.

I just received an anonymous survey response with a really great answer, that I have to share:

Survey: If you could spend 30 minutes on the phone with me, what would you ask?
Respondent: How are you?

Reminds me of a line in one of my daughter’s favorite books, Indigo’s Star, by Hilary McKay:

History test question: "What would you say to Tutankhamen if you bumped into him on the street?"
Student’s answer: "Sorry."

So, I write about this because it amuses me, but I’m now casting about for a marketing lesson to wrap around the story, so you don’t feel like I’ve wasted your time.

Maybe it’s this: most of the other 105 completed surveys have given me an insight into my market that makes it very easy for me to connect with readers. It’s very hard to create from a blank sheet of paper. It’s fairly easy to answer someone’s questions (when you know the answers, that is).

We all know that we need to constantly create new and valuable content to compete for attention online. Yet most of us don’t feel like writers (me included, at least 80% of the time), and wonder how in the world we’ll find anything new to write about our industry.

Just find a way to systematically collect your prospects’ most pressing questions, and you’ll have fodder for more writing than you’ll have time for.

I use SurveyGizmo.com - their basic service is free, their interface is simple and intuitive, and I like the color scheme of their website (I know, I’m shallow).

Survey responses will also give you invaluable data about your AdWords account - which words to bid on, what to say in your ads, etc. Nothing like knowing the mind of your market if you want to make them happy.

And to the anonymous survey respondent, if you’re reading this:

"I’m fine, thanks. And you?"

An AdWords For Dummies reader wonders:

We own a [TYPE OF] store that specializes in [PRODUCT LINE]. I have been chosen to run our adwords campaign and I am wondering what rules change if your only goal is to bring people through the door?  How does the game change? 

My reply:

If you want people to visit your store, you need to get them into your database and follow up to build the know-like-trust bridge. Sure, some people will read your landing page and get in their cars and drive right over. But most will need additional touch-points and reminders. So your landing page has to offer a compelling reason for visitors to give you their contact info. Maybe all you need is a 10% off coupon on their first purchase, which you’ll email to them.

Or a report on how to prevent and deal with the problems that your products solve. Or any type of information that answers compelling questions that your target market has.

My home study course, Leads into Gold, which you can read about on a web site that features a very chubby photo of me from 2004, deals with this issue in great detail - how to craft offers that will get leads, position you as an expert helper rather than a self-interested peddler, and predispose and presell your prospects so when they contact you they’re almost ready to buy.

Holy cow, I thought I was pretty savvy about the Internet. And then I go and click a link in an email that looks like it comes straight from Google AdWords, but actually is trying to get my credit card info and suck my account dry.

Check out the email and see if you can blame me:

Looks real, doesn’t it?

But when I checked out the source code, I discovered that the live link actually went to a fake website, not AdWords. Had I looked closely, I would have noticed the typo on the last line: "any your ads and campaigns…" And the repetition of the second and third lines. And maybe half a dozen other clues. But as Paul Simon sings, "A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest."

So please be smarter and more deliberate than me when clicking links in emails supposedly coming from AdWords.