- Advertising agencies in Utah with direct links to listed agencies.

Testing is the heart and soul of direct marketing.

As a direct marketer (that’s you) you must follow certain guidelines in order to get good results.

Here are the nn guidelines, rules and suggestions to get the most out of your direct mail marketing testing.

1. Have goals for every test. What do you want to learn? What response would you like to achieve? Write down the questions you would like answered and run a test for each. Every test should answer one speci@257; c question.
2. •Develop a hypothesis for every test. Each test you run should be a test of a speci@257; c idea. Every hypothesis should be based on a sound rationale. For example: “This is a test to see if adding a lift letter signed by a well-known doctor will lift response to our package. Our rationale is that since people respond to authority @257;gures, such as doctors, adding a lift letter will increase credibility and boost response.” Your test, then, will prove or disprove this hypothesis for a particular product marketed to a particular audience.
3. Use hypotheses as a platform for creative work. Hypotheses can help you create genuinely different ideas for testing rather than retouched versions of your control. For example, if you have @257;ve hypotheses, you can test a series of @257;ve direct mail pieces, each incorporating one hypothesis.
4. Test one element at a time. Testing more than one element will make it impossible for you to know what makes a difference in results. For example, if you’re testing price, change only the price. I call this the Evolutionary Testing Strategy.
5. Test all-new direct mail pieces. There are some disadvantages to testing elements indi­vidually. It takes a long time and conditions change. So for some, it may be better to test totally different mail pieces against your control in hopes of a big breakthrough. I call this the Revolutionary Test Strategy.
6. Track results meticulously. Keep detailed reports on the number of pieces mailed, the number of responses you get, response source, the conversion percentage, the income those responses generate, the average order, the percentage response, your income per thousand, your cost per order or cost per response, your net dollar return, returns, bad debt, and every other fact that you need to calculate speci@257;cally how your piece performs.
7. Use your tests to determine strategy. Mathematical results are the best way to end de­bates on issues such as creative approaches, formats, and offers.
8. Keep using your control until you beat it. Never shelve a control just because you’re tired of it. If it’s making money, keep using it. Until you have the @257;gures in black and white that conclusively demonstrate that you have a new control, keep that old one going.
9. Keep testing. Testing is a long-term commitment. It’s not something you do once and forget about. It’s not something you do only when you have a little extra in your budget. Testing should be part of your routine. You want to follow what I call the Testing Loop:

To chunk it down to the very basics

• Run a test
• Analyze the results.
• Act based on the results.
• Repeat.

It’s been another fast-paced year on the Internet. Just when we though it was safe to venture out with our marketing plan, Google introduces Google Wave, Microsoft launches Bing and tells us it’s joining forces with Yahoo.

So to clear our minds, we came up with Ten Easy Internet Marketing Tips we know to be true, so it doesn’t matter how you choose to go about it, you’ve got some facts to go on:

• SEO is important, but there are many things you can do yourself before you decide to blow the budget on a specialist. Think well-written content, regular updating and getting people to link to you.

• Email newsletters work if you divide up your target audiences (where possible), check the statistics and include a “call to action”. Overall, finding new ways to communicate with your customers is a good thing as long as your copywriting is good. If it isn’t, find some help here.

• Blog, but only if you’re an expert! You probably have it in you if you’re passionate about your subject. Blogs are unique and give followers the opportunity to get a feel for you, your business and the way you work.

• Statistics. The brilliant thing about Internet marketing is that everything is trackable. If you don’t do it already, get Google Analytics on your website, it’s free.

• Get your business on Google Local Business Centre.

• Introduce video into your websites, blogs and emails. The search engines love rich content like video and it’s very low cost to do. Use YouTube to get started and link back to your website.

• Venture into social networking. It’s not going away and as more of us “sit” in our social network of choice, be it Facebook, Twitter or one you’ve created – they’re a whole new channel to market to. You can set up a Facebook Business Page, which is public (so Google will find it), and promote what you do to gain “fans”. Remember to add a “Find Us on Facebook” (or whichever social networks you’re using) button on your website.

• Offer information that people want to read, not just what you want to sell to them. We’ve got many writing tools at our disposal now and the Internet has made it possible to share more information (for free) than ever before.

• Other free giveaways are a hit and remarkably easy to do. Can you provide articles about your product/services/subject that people sign up to receive? Can you create a free download or other value added content?

• Remember that any PR you do “off” line can be tweaked and used online too. Add a press release into a news section on your website, tweet about your event or update your wall on Facebook to tell fans what’s new.

Maybe you shouldn’t…

When talking about marketing, it is essential to understand the term Marketing. There is no denying the fact that marketing is without a doubt the most pivotal element for the success of any business. According to Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Guerrilla Marketing, Marketing is everything you do to promote your business from the first point of conception to the point at which customers patronize your business on a regular term.”

As is evident with the above argument, marketing encompasses so much of your business success, that its pivotal that you must have a marketing mindset then only your small business is going to succeed.

The question now arises: How to develop this mindset To develop this mindset you need to have a very open mind that looks far beyond the initial transaction to see all the dormant possibilities of re-working, cross-selling, and follow-up. In addition, you must be willing to experiment and look at your business related activities in unorthodox ways.

If experts are to be believed, you can never decide in advance what the marketplace wants. It is worth pointing that clients will always tell you what products and services they will buy and at what price.

If you are interested in knowing whether or not your idea has work or how much profit a concept might add or subtract, you must quickly, efficiently, and conservatively, and inexpensively test that concept in your marketplace.

Once you come up with a profitable, working process, don’t stop there. As a matter of fact, always improve on what is working for you.

According to experts, innovation is the name of the game especially in small business marketing. But that does not mean you abandon what is working so good for you and jump to a new concept. Rather than abandoning concept, which is reaping you profits, it is advisable that you add some more features on it so that it does not become old.

Taste of the consumer is very important in this regard. On the other hand, no matter how exciting or appealing the new concept feels to you, it is of no use until you’ve tested and come to a conclusion that it contributes added benefit and profits.

When you test a new advertisement, sales pitch, or an up-selling concept it gives you an option to develop a new concept on the market and gives you a much-needed cushion to see things in different light from your competitor’s point of view. In addition, it will also offer you an eagerness to learn by observing others.

An important part of developing a marketing mindset is to always look out for new concepts, look out for new applications, and most importantly it is very essential which approaches and techniques you use in your own business. It is worth mentioning in this regard that a well-laid plan can be a disaster if not implemented through a proper technique.

Business owners who have a marketing mindset clearly come to a conclusion that it’s a waste of time and energy to re-invent the wheel in order to market their product or service. Theoretically speaking, there are number of ways to borrow ideas from other successful businesses and use them in your own.

Below are five steps that will help you develop your marketing mindset:

1. Read every advertisement you can get your hands on, with an eye not for the visual, but for the concepts in the advertisement.

2. It is advisable to read all the “junk mail” you usually delete.

3. It is necessary to spend time every day looking at different web sites for concepts you might be overlooking.

4. Most importantly, register to all the trade publications in your field.

5. Last but not the least read at least one sales, marketing, or advertising book every week. As a matter of fact, you should read one business publication or magazine every day. Publications like the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Entrepreneur. Most importantly read the articles pertaining to your field.

According to experts, visiting businesses in your area each week, especially retail stores will go a long way in opening up your mind to new and different marketing ideas. As a matter of fact, when you go into a store let them try to sell you something and pay close attention to their sales concepts, guarantees, follow-up efforts, and most importantly cross-selling attempts and then try to adapt some of their process to your business.

Moreover, when you’re visiting other places of business keep note of the things that they don’t do, things they neglect causing you not to buy.

It is very pivotal that you pay close attention to how they make you feel and the things that they don’t offer you. In theory, filling these gaps in your own business could go a long way in giving you much needed mileage over your competitor.

Another way to really get some innovative and brilliant ideas and develop your marketing mindset is to call the CXO or owner of a successful business in the same or related field. It is important that you identify your self and tell the owner that you admire his or her success and would like to learn a trade from him or her.

You’ll be surprised at so many CXO’s will be more than happy to spend some time with you talking about their business and their successes. According to experts, every time you take are able to set up a meeting with a successful business owner you are bound to gain a wealth of information to help your business.

In theory, developing a marketing mindset means having the humility to learn from the successes and failures of others. It is worth pointing in this regard that when you start a new venture, you are launching the profit adventure of a lifetime!

From this moment onward, its your responsibility to develop a marketing mindset, which means testing, and applying as many different backend, cross-selling, reselling, joint-venture approaches, and sales packages as you think can be beneficial for your business.

Or is it?

Dmoz is a human edited directory that has been running since 1998. It was created as a cooperative environment that would allow volunteer editors to keep up with the internet explosion. Way back, Yahoo used to be a directory – not a search engine – and Dmoz was an (eventually bigger) alternative to this. The only difference of course is that we are now well into the Google era of information at your fingertips. Dmoz on the other hand, is pretty much where it started.

Dmoz’s full title is the Open Directory Project. Dmoz is an acronym for Directory Mozilla. The acronym reflects loose association with ex-owner’s Netscape’s Mozilla project, an Open Source browser initiative. Originally called ‘Gnuhoo’ by founder Rich Skrenta, it was renamed the Open Directory Project in October 1998 when it was bought by Netscape. It was then acquired by AOL shortly thereafter, and Dmoz was one of the assets included in the acquisition.

Unlike a search engine, for websites to be listed in the Dmoz directory, they have to be submitted first. They are then reviewed by individuals (known as Editors) who are assigned to various categories within the Dmoz directory.

Is a Dmoz Link Worth It?

It’s fair to say that Dmoz isn’t what it used to be. You may notice whenever you search for something online these days that a Wikipedia entry is often on the first page. This used to be the case for Dmoz, meaning it was a good referrer of traffic to websites. The key words there are that it ‘used to be’. Dmoz’s category pages do not rank well at all anymore, so traffic referral is next to nothing.

It’s not all bad though, Google has its own directory which is in fact just a re-branded version of Dmoz. This shows us that it is still recognised as an authoritative website and that is demonstrated by the high Page Rank of some of its pages. In fact many websites use Dmoz’s data which means if you get in Dmoz, you may inherit far more backlinks than you expected.

One of the reasons why it is still considered authoritative is that you can’t pay to get in as with many other directories. Providing a reciprocal link isn’t an option either, so the theory is that Dmoz is more or less incorruptible. The fact is though, with many thousands of websites being submitted every week, there are simply too many for the Editors to handle. This means websites aren’t reviewed often and so Dmoz’s content is out of date, especially compared to modern search engines.

So, perhaps Dmoz is not the be-all-and-end-all it once was, but lets not get too negative. It takes minutes to submit, so there is no harm in trying!

How to Submit to Dmoz

Before you submit your website, make sure you give it a thorough health check. Have you checked it for broken links, bad spelling and missing graphics? These are all things your website can be rejected for so don’t shoot yourself in the foot!

In order to submit, you must visit the category you wish to submit to and click on ‘Suggest Url.’ It’s important to follow the guidelines, if you miss one element you will be rejected. For the full steps to submitting, visit:

http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

Ensure you don’t spam your submission with keywords or be ‘creative’ with the title. You may get away with this in other directories, but not with Dmoz. If you’re reading this article, you should already be aware of the basics of Search Engine Optimization, so the description you give Dmoz should be related to your website as well as the keywords for which you want to rank.

For help in writing the best entry, the easiest thing to do is to simply take a look at entries already within the category you are aiming for. If they’re in, they’ve obviously done something right! This is also a good time to ensure the category is the right one for your website. Take a look at the websites within the category and make sure they are similar to yours. If not, it’s best to find a more suitable category.

How Long Does It Take to be Accepted?

Dmoz is well known as an authoritative directory website. Needless to say then, it is very popular and thousands of websites have been submitted. Despite having a large number of editors, the fact that each entry is reviewed by humans means the process is longer and the backlog builds up. Considering Dmoz has been running since 1999, that backlog has grown year on year. With this in mind, waiting a year for entry is not unreasonable.

After submitting your website to Dmoz it is worthwhile looking at your web analytics program and searching for the telltale sign of your website being reviewed. The address to check in your logs for is ‘editors.dmoz.org‘.

Is There Any Way of Speeding the Process Up?

Not really. The biggest mistake to make is to get impatient and presume you’ve been forgotten about, and then re-submitting. You could easily be rejected for this. Likewise, even though deep links and multiple categories are not banned from Dmoz, it’s probably best to avoid the potential downfall of doing this.

However, there is one way to get into Dmoz quickly (relatively speaking). Naturally, people are drawn by the high Page Rank of a main category. Thing is, these are the sort of categories that take literally years to get into. It can be as little as a few weeks to get into a lesser Page Ranked sub-category. It’s very simple, fewer people submit their website so the backlog of submissions is much shorter.

As an example of this, our last submitted reviewed website by Dmoz was first submitted 4 months beforehand.

I Think Dmoz Rejected My Website, Why?

In many instances, websites aren’t really rejected, they’re just taking a while to be reviewed. Some of the busier categories will mean you have to wait months before having your website reviewed. This is why it is important that when submitting to Dmoz, you take care in writing the best entry for getting in, not the best entry for your search engine optimization campaign!

Another common occurrence is that your website may be in a different category to what you actually submitted to. It’s not uncommon to see a website moved to a more local category, if you have a .co.uk. domain for example. Make sure you use the Dmoz search tool before presuming you didn’t get in.

If you are sure you have been rejected and it isn’t down to a) a bad description or b) your website being littered with broken links, then you can contact the editor of the category. Simply visit the category you submitted to and scroll to the bottom to the editors’ names. Sometimes you will see a ‘volunteer to be an editor’ link, in which case you need to go up a level to see the editor for the parent category instead.

When you click on an editor’s name, you will have an option to email them. You can also see their activity on Dmoz under their ‘Bookmarks.’ This will help you find the best editor to contact (if there is more than one). It goes without saying when contacting them, be polite and professional!

There are myths and exaggerated stories about ‘corrupt’ editors who only accept websites after receiving a fee, but a minority of editors may be managing categories that are related to their professional background. Unfortunately, that may mean some direct competitors of theirs might get rejected, no matter what the rules are.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Even if you are able to show with sincere conviction that you can solve their problems, it still might not be enough to close the sale.

You are at a disadvantage from the start.

People must desire your products/services more than they desire an equal amount of their money. However, if you include a fantastic, solid guarantee, it can make a dramatic difference in your marketing response and closing rate.

The best guarantee that can be offered is a full, lifetime, no-questions-asked refund or replacement guarantee. If your product/service fails for any reason, it will be replaced or refunded. This guarantee removes the most risk from the client by putting that risk on you.

“Stand behind everything you do.
‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’ will make all the difference.”
- Sam Walton

Now, I have to point out here that there always will be someone who will abuse a powerful guarantee like this.

However, if what you sell is of high quality and value and you stand by what you sell, then the additional sales easily will offset the few occasions on which you will need to honor your guarantee. I advise you to add 1-2% to the price of your products to offset the cost of the times that you will need to honor your guarantee.

How well do you stand behind your products/services?

You’ll likely know what makes a “classic” white paper: at least five pages of narrative text that delivers useful information about a business issue or technical problem, not a sales pitch.But there’s another approach to writing a white paper: the numbered list. You know what I’m talking about—documents with titles like “5 Secrets of…” or “6 Steps to Success in…” or “7 Ways to Boost Profits with…” I’ve written pieces with all of those titles.

They’re popular, because busy people love skimming, scanning and skipping their way through these documents.

“If I know there are five secrets, and I’m already on number three, there are only two more to go,” noted one technology executive recently. His comments echo what others have told me: when you have too much to read, too much to do and too much to remember, a list-based white paper is a welcome relief.

But a numbered set of tips is very different from a classic white paper.

While a classic white paper aims to provide real insight, a numbered list aims only to deliver quick how-to tips. These can be useful, but they may not add up to the same detailed coverage that goes into a classic white paper.

What does this mean to a content writer or marketer?

If you have a complex issue to discuss or you want to create a thorough analysis you can use for the next year or two, a classic white paper may be a better choice.

But if you need a quick, useful piece of content for a blog or to fulfill some scheduled marketing commitment, you can likely come up with a numbered list very quickly.

Design guru and author Roger C. Parker explains how.

“You take a number and a concept, and you just brainstorm. The number provides a framework for you to complete,” advises Parker. “Once you know you need six steps, your brain will help you get to those six.”

Here’s a four-step process illustrating this approach.

#1: Find a basic concept.
This can be anything your audience wants to gain or anything they want to avoid—including a set of “best practices,” and the opposite, “deadly mistakes to avoid.” For example, network administrators want a secure network with maximum uptime; they want to avoid intrusions, malware, and downtime.

#2: Add a number.
If you take the concept “maximum uptime” and add the number “five,” you get a title like “Five Ways to Guarantee Maximum Uptime.” Take the opposite concept and the number “six,” and you get “Six Secrets of Avoiding Downtime.”

#3: Add a subtitle to position the document.
Your subtitle can touch on a specific job role, such “A Special Report for Network Admins.” Then your complete title reads like this:

Five Ways to Guarantee Maximum Uptime: A Special Report for Network Admins

#4: Fill in the blanks.
Fill in with great content for each point. As you write, you can easily add or drop points. Anything between five and nine is probably fine; 10 sounds a little forced, like a “Top 10″ list.

Another nice thing about writing a list-based white paper is that you don’t need to develop the same step-by-step logic as in a classic white paper. A list is less linear and more modular, so you can pull in more material without building every point into a cohesive whole. Your material is held together by the spine of the list.

What’s the downside to this format?

Well, if your document doesn’t back up your title with great content, you will anger your audience whose time you just wasted.

Don’t think you can write these pieces without attending to your research, proof points, and clarity. Remember that the list-based document is just another tool in your toolkit. Use it when the situation calls for it, not every time you sit down to write.

About the Author: Gordon Graham helps B2B software companies tell their stories with crisp, compelling white papers. He’s the founder of www.thatwhitepaperguy.com, and a frequent poster on the whitepapersource.com forums.