Global Marketing Research

Over the next couple of months The Global Research Team will be implementing some changes in how and when we post as well as making some improvements. We will also be starting two or three new blogs in different niches. We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused in your information gathering process. Our scheduled re-opening date is Jan1 2010.

Should you need to make some changes in your own business Bert Spector's book  is a good place to start.

Thank you
The Global Research Team

Image by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten via Flickr

1. Demonstrate a Reliable Internet Presence

If you are reliable and responsible, many people will spread the good word about you and your product or whatever it is you do online. Social networking is much like being at a party and letting people get to know you. Your business traffic will start to flow once you assume a credible and trusted voice in the social media arena. If you treat social media as a party and act as you would at a party without the drinking you should be fine. Don't start selling as soon as you walk through the door of Twitter or Facebook...why you ask? Because nobody knows who the heck you are. You will need to be more interesting, personal, genuine and active with your customers than traditional advertising. Get to know them and what they want and let them know you and what you have to offer.

2. Start Blogging and Deliver Content, Content, Content

Instead of pushing sales and product information messages the way most people would with traditional advertising, give good content for your target audience. Let them gain some knowledge about your industry and about how knowledgeable you are about your industry through your posting. You will have to to modify your merchandising mentality about how trust works in the social mediasphere. Companies that simply push sales messages just won't last in the social mediasphere, people won't like you and will tell others that won't like you as well. If you aren't liked you won't make any money in this arena and you'll be wasting a good amount of time to boot. You're going to need a blog to further interact with current and future customers. Through your blog you can deliver as much reliable and trustworthy content as you want. Be sure your blog is as informative, interesting, current and reliable as possible. Post at least 4 times a week or people won't want to come back to your blog...I had to find that out the hard way.

3. Developing Great Net Sentiment Is A Must

Simply put net sentiment is how much customers like or dislike your blog, website or products. If you are liked you will get talked about a lot if you are disliked you will get talked about even more! Interacting with customers by answering questions, sharing industry news, writing articles, writing blog posts, and leaving helpful content on social media networks should build positive net sentiment. Thourgh social networking consumers have the ability to influence each other like never before in the history of marketing. If you don't have time for social media yourself you should hire someone to do it for you or miss out on reaching millions of potential customers daily! It doesn't matter what industry you are in or what product you sell, at some point in time your company will be mentioned in the social mediasphere as either a honorable company or a scoundrel.


4. Monitor Everything You Do In The Social Media Network

The monitoring process can be a little time consuming but there are many online tools to help the process along. You should monitor conversion rates, consumer interaction, trade name sentiment, forum conversations, and respond to any questions about your company or trade name on a regular basis. By tracking the conversations focusing on your trade name, you can respond to requests for information, favorable and negative comments remain active on a daily basis. Everyday have something to say to your customers and potential customers, this is what social media is all about INTERACTION! Even if they don't interact with you interact with them to find out why they are not interacting with you and fix it.

Get your Free SEO Software and Free Gifts NOW!

By
Blaine W. Stevens
Global Research Team

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• Martha Stewart Prefers Twitter Over Facebook (shoppingblog.com)

Image by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten via Flickr

4 Steps To Help You Begin Social Media Marketing

1. Demonstrate a Reliable Internet Presence

If you are reliable and responsible, many people will spread the good word about you and your product or whatever it is you do online. Social networking is much like being at a party and letting people get to know you. Your business traffic will start to flow once you assume a credible and trusted voice in the social media arena. If you treat social media as a party and act as you would at a party without the drinking you should be fine. Don't start selling as soon as you walk through the door of Twitter or Facebook...why you ask? Because nobody knows who the heck you are. You will need to be more interesting, personal, genuine and active with your customers than traditional advertising. Get to know them and what they want and let them know you and what you have to offer.

2. Start Blogging and Deliver Content, Content, Content

Instead of pushing sales and product information messages the way most people would with traditional advertising, give good content for your target audience. Let them gain some knowledge about your industry and about how knowledgeable you are about your industry through your posting. You will have to to modify your merchandising mentality about how trust works in the social mediasphere. Companies that simply push sales messages just won't last in the social mediasphere, people won't like you and will tell others that won't like you as well. If you aren't liked you won't make any money in this arena and you'll be wasting a good amount of time to boot. You're going to need a blog to further interact with current and future customers. Through your blog you can deliver as much reliable and trustworthy content as you want. Be sure your blog is as informative, interesting, current and reliable as possible. Post at least 4 times a week or people won't want to come back to your blog...I had to find that out the hard way.

3. Developing Great Net Sentiment Is A Must

Simply put net sentiment is how much customers like or dislike your blog, website or products. If you are liked you will get talked about a lot if you are disliked you will get talked about even more! Interacting with customers by answering questions, sharing industry news, writing articles, writing blog posts, and leaving helpful content on social media networks should build positive net sentiment. Thourgh social networking consumers have the ability to influence each other like never before in the history of marketing. If you don't have time for social media yourself you should hire someone to do it for you or miss out on reaching millions of potential customers daily! It doesn't matter what industry you are in or what product you sell, at some point in time your company will be mentioned in the social mediasphere as either a honorable company or a scoundrel.


4. Monitor Everything You Do In The Social Media Network

The monitoring process can be a little time consuming but there are many online tools to help the process along. You should monitor conversion rates, consumer interaction, trade name sentiment, forum conversations, and respond to any questions about your company or trade name on a regular basis. By tracking the conversations focusing on your trade name, you can respond to requests for information, favorable and negative comments remain active on a daily basis. Everyday have something to say to your customers and potential customers, this is what social media is all about INTERACTION! Even if they don't interact with you interact with them to find out why they are not interacting with you and fix it.

Get your Free trial SEO Software and Free Gifts!

By
Blaine W. Stevens
Global Research Team

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Recent changes in the Google Adsense program has many online website owners and marketers seriously concerned. Many have seen their Adsense profíts and income flatline... seen their four or five figure monthly Adsense income disappear overnight. For many the Google Adsense bubble has burst. What happened? First, Google made a change in its Adsense program, letting advertisers choose between putting their ads in the search results or on the content pages of Adsense publishers. Search won out and started to receive the higher bids. Search results convert better than content ads.

Next, Google has cracked down on Junk Adsense sites, like they should. These sites consisted mainly of software generated re-hashed search engine links and were totally annoying to say the least. But Google also cracked down on 'squeeze pages' or 'affilíate landing pages' - a lucrative source of income for many online marketers, mainly because these pages helped marketers build an opt-ín list or use permission based email.

The results of these changes produced an Adsense meltdown for many online marketers.

Some Internet marketers are speculating recent changes could even mean the death of Adsense. One online marketer, Scott Boulch even published a free report entitled 'The Death of Adsense".

Many affilíate marketers would agree with Boulch on some of his points, especially the obvious fact that using Adsense on your web content is starting on the bottom rung of the online marketing ladder. Instead of receiving pennies per clíck with Adsense, alert marketers and webmasters have already discovered that by using CPA (Cost-Per-Action) and direct affilíate links, they can produce significantly more revenue from their web pages. Why eärn pennies per clíck when you can eärn $5, $10 or OVER $100 per clíck?

But the fine people at Google are catching on...

In the past Google has made its own swing to the Cost-Per-Action direction with its referral system for the Firefox Browser and giving webmasters credít for signing up Adwords and Adsense accounts.

Many online marketers believe Google needs to expand on these baby steps and open their Adsense affilíate program up to third party products/advertisers. In a recent company statement Google offered some hope: "We're always looking for new ways to provide effective and useful features to advertisers, publishers, and users," the company stated "As part of these efforts we are currently testing a cost-per-action (CPA) pricing model to give advertisers more flexibility and provide publishers another way to eärn revenue through AdSense." Basically, in cost-per-action, advertisers pay for leads, purchases or customer acquisition. It would help with the clíck fraud issue and the monetary returns could potentially make Adsense's revenues pale in comparison.

As more and more commerce goes online... acquiring customers for such diverse services as ínsurance, real estate, telephone, marketing, web hostíng, travel, mörtgage loans, cable TV, banking... you name it, almost any service or product sold in the marketplace is now turning to the Internet for customers and lifelong clients.

Enormous sums of monëy will change hands. Perhaps, the most lucrative of these is customer acquisition. Advertisers are turning to the Internet and webmasters/marketers for acquiring these lifelong customers for their respective services and products. Businesses and companies are quickly realizing paying an attractive lead generating fee/commission is smart business. They quickly build a client base for their services or products and quickly recoup their expenses - realizing in the long run these leads will generate huge profíts.

It can also mean huge profíts for the CPA networks like ValueClick's Commission Junction and Rakuten's LinkShare who supply the advertisers with publishers and website marketers to harvest these leads. It can be a lucrative venture for all involved, especially for those online marketers who have cornered the search engines for lucrative niche markets in big ticket items. Even small ticket items pay quite well for those marketers who know how to market online.

Contextual advertising is fine, but CPA (Cost-Per-Action) will offer much better returns for the website owner. Making any profitable site much more profitable. It will and is opening up a whole area of marketing opportunities that nevër existed before we had the Internet. Creating a complex structure of advertisers, publishers and the Affilíate/CPA companies that connect the two.

Of course, cutting out the middle man has always been even a more profitable venture for most marketers. As more and more webmasters realize they can make much more with dealing directly with companies, rather than going through a middle process like Google Adsense or the countless other affilíate/CPA networks ... online marketers can reap even bigger rewards.

For an online marketer when you get a telephone call or email from the CEO or the affilíate manager with a company or service you're promoting with your website - you know you have made it! Dealing directly with a company usually means bigger commissions and special exclusive deals just for you or your sites.

Only fly in the ointment, all that extra paperwork and business wheeling and dealing. Many marketers and website owners like the idea of someone else handling all the tracking, collecting payments, promotional materials... they just like to sit back and build more websites and content. It gives the affilíate marketer a lifestyle that they are looking for on the web. They just like to market and promote with their sites and let someone else worry about the details. Therefore, there will always be a place for contextual ads like Google Adsense... "Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated."

However, could CPA be a better alternative for the current Adsense contextual ads?

Google would be the natural choice for a middleman if there ever was one. Besides, many savvy marketers know the Google brand name is trusted online, any product/service promoted through Google would be an easy sell. Many argue Google already dominates the web, why should it not be the one to handle these CPA transactions through its Adsense program.

On the flip side, over countless updates and changes to its indexing, many webmasters have experienced more than a few negative dealings with Google. Many have won, many have lost in this Google Age, but all have realized riding the Google Search Engine is like running with the bulls at Pamplona, totally thrilling unless you're one of the unfortunate few who get trampled in the process.

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About The Author:

Titus Hoskins is a former teacher who now works full-time online operating numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing.

By Blaine Stevens

If you're just beginning your InternetRSS feeds, if that is the case your first thought should be, "What the heck is an RSS feed?” In essence an RSS feed is a type of data format that's used to syndicate subject matter on the web. By including an RSS feed for your content, you could potentially have your content published throughout the World Wide Web. Marketing endeavors you might not have discovered

For the Pros and newbie’s alike there's multiple techniques to apply RSS feeds to your site and profit from them, furthermore in this short article I'll discuss a couple of those ways. Let's not beat around the bush and get right to the meat of the subject so you can get a effective beginning to turning a profit with RSS feeds.

1. One of the best ways to profit with an RSS feed is to create niche content sites. There are a couple of simple stages you have got to stick with, furthermore once you establish your niche content site the majority of your work is done. Simply by using an RSS feed for some of the content your site will automatically update with new content each time the RSS feed is updated. A word of advice here, make sure the RSS feed you choose updates at an interval that is acceptable to you and the goals of your site. When done right it's as "set it and forget it" as you can possibly get. This is the easiest way to go if you would like to make a profit.

2. This one will take a little more effort on your part, but can prove to be very profitable. Try your hand at creating your own unique content and create an RSS feed for it, a good place to make an RSS feed widget is http://www.springwidgets.com. You will be able to promote anything you want inside your content to money. Submit your new RSS feed to RSS directories and look on as your RSS feed spreads like a virus across the internet, this is called Viral Marketing. This will be an impressive means to build revenue thru an RSS feed if you create your content in the proper ways.

3. Start an RSS feed directory of your own again this is going to take some greater effort on your part, but it's an additional enormous method to benefit thru RSS feeds. The reason you would like to do this is that, smart webmasters will syndicate their subject matter by means of RSS feeds in hopes of getting their content to all of the relevant places on the Internet. These webmasters are always exploring fresh ways to have their content spread across the internet and RSS feed directories will continue to be the number one source for them for the foreseeable future. To make this type of site truly profitable you will need to monetize the directory by selling advertising space, affiliate products, and most importantly by placing PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads on your directory.

4. Offer premium RSS feeds. Here's how you do it, first you will need to locate a professional writer online, unless you have that talent yourself. Second, after checking the writer out and viewing his or her work and you are satisfied that this person will be able to help you develop unique content in different niche fields, hire them. Third, have your writer develop content for at least three different niche fields to begin with and once you have created an RSS feed for it charge people to use your RSS feed on their website. You could also charge for your paid content in the form of articles with PLR (Private Label Rights) as well. Webmasters are always looking for articles on their niche subject.

5. Let's expand on #3 a little and make that RSS Directory you started a Podcast and Videocast Directory as well. In addition to the RSS feed directory you could offer webmasters a place to list their podcast and videocast all from one site. This strategy will also increase traffic to your site by making it more valuable to webmasters seeking to list their feeds as well as customers seeking those listed feeds. The new advertising revolution is proving that podcasting and videocasting are technologies on the rise in internet marketing, and that could mean immense revenue for some quick thinking and quick moving webmasters.


These are five simple ways to make a profit with RSS feeds, and the list goes on and on being limited only by your imagination. Use any or all of the strategies above , dream up your own or even copy strategies from the top websites in your niche. As soon as you've selected a strategy, you'll need to come up with an outline to make it materialize and then promote your site in order to attain income thru it. I just hope this is enough to get your creative juices flowing on the different ways you are able to use RSS feeds to create a hands-off cash flow.

RSS feeds are a comparatively young technology and as time marches on, it will develop like everything else in this modern world...by leaps and bounds. Entering into this line of business today, you'll have the potential to make enormous profit. So, don't wait to get started take the information I have given you here, do some more inquiry and get moving today!

Procrastination is the beginning of failure and a long slow journey to nowhere! Michael Murdock CEO, GlobalMarketingResearch.org said that to me just days before I wrote this and you know what...he's right!

To discover more about producing and profiting from RSS feeds this site http://www.rsscashsecrets.com has a free video tutorial that walks you through creating your own RSS content site in a step-by-step format. Look for my next article “Using Viral Methodology to Build Your Subscriber Base List". Until next time...

To Your Success!
Blaine Stevens

About the Author: Blaine is a personal and business training author.

Image by savethedave via Flickr

June 18th 2008

By Blaine Stevens
Tustin, California


The demise of Banner Advertisements appears to be an issue on numerous internet marketers lips these days even though the banner advertisement remains among the three most popular forms of advertising on the internet. In reality, banner advertisements are presently the most effective form of online advertising! Internet advertising expenditures increased overall in 2007, as compared to 2006 and this increase was felt in all advertising sectors of the economy and the online increase was actually less than what some experts anticipated in other advertising sectors. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau's (IAB), http://www.iab.net/ the online Ad Formats break down as follows: "Percentage use of various ad formats increased fairly well in 2007.



Search advertising revenues total $8.8 billion for the full year 2007, up 30 percent from the $6.8 billion reported in 2006, good news for space brokers like me who sell space on high traffic sites to people who are looking for more link and banner advertising space. Display-related advertising totaled $7.1 billion, or 34 percent of full year 2007 revenues compared to $5.4 billion (32 percent of total reported in 2006. Display-related advertising includes Display ads (21% or $4.5 billion of2007 full year revenues), Rich Media (8% or $1.7 billion), Digital Video (2% or$324 million) and Sponsorship (3% or $636 million). Classifieds revenues accounted for 16 percent of 2007 full year revenues or $3.3 billion, down slightly from the 18 percent ($3.1 billion) reported for 2006. Lead Generation revenues accounted for 7 percent of the 2007 full year revenues or $1.6 billion, down from the 8 percent or $1.3 billion reported in 2006.



Advertising revenues for 2008 are expected to surpass these estimates with the absolute majority of the advertisement revenues being channeled into Banner advertising campaigns*. "A Working Hypothesis Uncovers That Viewing Internet Advertisements Exclusively, Regardless of Click-Through Percentages, Leads To Sales". This hypothesis has put a fresh perspective on the time-honored techniques behind banner advertisements. Market indicators have established that there is a solid pattern coming forth from users who recently saw an internet banner advertisement and converting that advertisement experience into a sale.



At present there is a measurable as well as tangible value to an advertisement impression without a click-thru. Internet advertisers now need to pay close consideration to the 97% of general population that doesn't click-thru on their advertisements but do take notice of the content for future reference point and visits. This essentially heightens the economic value of the internet as an advertising medium,

Since this analysis establishes that merely seeing a banner advertisement exclusively will produce sales both on and offline. Let's keep these new findings in mind as we start our own advertising campaign, while remembering for a banner advertisement to work well, it will need to cover these "key" elements:



1. A Highly Targeted Audience.

You must recognize who your market is in order to effectively direct your advertising campaign*. The banners you utilize should be positioned on websites that sustain high or rising traffic and will have guest similar to and exactly to what your advertising campaign requires for success.



2. Performance Based.

Remember any good Internet Advertising Professional provides interactivity on their websites and in their banner advertisements for a better visiting experience for the consumer. This allows the consumer to take different actions, and is the very reason why banner advertisements that include the clear-cut phrase, "Click Here" have a much greater ratio of success than a banner without that phrase. In my opinion and that of many other internet marketers, any banner advertisement that does not have a call/request to action will constitute a complete waste of capital and prime advertising space .



3. Branding.

The first banner advertisement models simply asked consumers to take action to click-thru to your web site. At present you need to communicate your merchandise "Brand" so that consumers will recall it when they find the need to visit you in the future. Web site domain names which convey this "Branding" can now be more effective than ever. The 468 x 60 banner remains by far the hottest advertising form on the Internet. Current pricing ranges from $45 to $145 per thousand exposures depending on who's services you employ. Even better yet are the Free Banner Ad Exchanges that are still available (I will list a few at the bottom of this article). Yes, believe it or not, there are still many free banner ad exchange resources that could land you a constant flow of targeted traffic to your web site. If you don't have a banner to use for exchange there are still many good free banner creation sites obtainable online as well, such as http://www.addesigner.com



4. Banners That Have Been Tested & Proven...

To get the best results you should always be updating your banners based on the latest technologies, industry shifts, and use constant testing and research to continually generate new traffic. With constant testing your banners will generate beyond the industry standard of 0.2% to 0.8%. When banners have been tested and proven to generate traffic with a little tweaking you can generate as high as a 10% to 14% click-thru rate!

Now, please understand that click-thru rates this high will only occur when these banners appear on sites where the traffic is highly targeted, but I just wanted to give you a clear idea and some insight into the differences between testing banners to increase traffic and industry standard without testing. Once you have designed and tested at least 5 banners that have proven to attract the highest click-thru rate then make sure they are seen in as many places as possible!



Make sure you take advantage of as many of these FREE banner resources as you can so you'll be able to have your ads working for you in this still critical method of ad exposure online. Use the above ideas for your banner advertising campaign and watch your sales online explode just like the Pros!