I want you to do something for me.  Actually, it’s for you.

Sit down.  Relax.  Close your eyes.  Now, get in your customer’s head!

I understand that every time you listen to a marketing “guru” or attend a seminar or read an e-book or watch a free video about marketing or copywriting, you’re told to do this very same thing.

If you’re anything like me, you roll your eyes (while thinking “not again…”) and begrudgingly, halfheartedly do the task.  But you don’t do it well—cause you’re just not that into it.  And since you just half-assed it, your results are not that great.

But let’s take a look at this for a moment.  Is there any validity in it?  Or is it just some “lovee dovee, touchy feely” exercise designed simply to occupy your time?  For the “teachers” to feel that they are important?

Let’s say you sell a diet program.  And 90% of your customers are mainly interested in losing weight so that they look better.

You’ll get a much better response if you focus on how your diet program will help them look better–and all the feelings and emotions that come with that.

Their clothes will fit them better, they’ll be able to buy nicer clothes, people won’t stare at them as much, their higher confidence will help them achieve more.  Yada Yada Yada.

Focus on what they’re thinking.   Offer them what they want.  And BAM!  Conversion City.

Now, what if you had harped about how your diet plan will make them healthier?  You can mention their decreased blood pressure, their lower cholesterol, and their decreased chances of diabetes.

Major disconnect.  That’s what you would have.  That stuff has nothing to do with what’s on the mind of your customer.  You aren’t entering the “conversation in their mind”.  And you aren’t going to make the sale.

Now, enter pay-per-click marketing (PPC).  Pay-per-click marketing allows you to write ads and then “buy” spots on certain keywords where you want your ads to display (on Google, Yahoo, and Bing/MSN).  You just tell them how much you’re willing to pay.

If somebody goes to Google and types in your keyword, your ad will show up.  You now have the chance to convince them to click on your ad, go to your webpage, and buy your stuff or opt-in.

Can you see how writing an ad that “talks” to your customer can increase your click thru rate (CTR) dramatically?  Which ad do you think will have a higher CTR?  An ad that promises to “lower their blood pressure” or one that promises to “fit them in that new, pretty dress”?  I think you get my point…

Definition:  Your CTR is the percentage of people that see your ad and click on it.

Ok, so now you’re convinced.  By talking to your customer and offering them exactly what they want–you will make more money.

But getting in your customer’s head—sometimes that’s not so easy.

And making matters even more difficult and complicated—not all your customers are the same.  Duh.  Each customer is unique.  Every one of your customers has something different on their mind.

“It would be impossible to talk to EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!”

Impossible?  Not even close.  In fact, with pay-per-click marketing, you can do exactly that.

With PPC, you choose which keyword your ads displays on.  You choose what your ads says.  And you choose where your ad sends your customer (which page on your website).

And since every keyword that we target represents a different customer–each wanting something unique–we are able to use the information gleaned from what they typed in to display an ad that talks specifically to them.

We can make them an offer crafted just for them in an ad written just for them.  We can then send them to a landing page made just for them, reinforcing their unique offer.

In short:  With PPC, we can give every customer exactly what they’re asking for from the beginning to the end.  And they tell us exactly what they’re looking for by the keyword they typed in.

EVERY KEYWORD REPRESENTS A DIFFERENT CUSTOMER.  And by typing in that keyword, they’ve just told us exactly what’s on their mind!

Example: I own a company that sells drum pedal replacements for the video game “Rock Band”.  The pedal is compatible for Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360.

Let’s say somebody types in “rock band pedal ps2”.  It’s safe to assume that they’re looking for a pedal for their ps2 system.  So, it makes sense that there’s a higher chance they’ll click on my ad if I write:

“Rock Band Pedal PS2” Vs. “Rock Band Pedal” Vs. “Rock Band Pedal Xbox”

Sure, they might click the 2^nd ad, but the 1^st ad speaks more directly to EXACTLY what’s on their mind.  And I know that the PS2 is on their mind because THEY TOLD ME!

Now, if they had typed in “rock band pedal xbox”, there’s a much better chance to get them to click by going with:

“Rock Band Pedal Xbox” Vs. “Rock Band Pedal” Vs. “Rock Band PS2”

Talk To Your Customer—Make More Money—Literally & Immediately!

CONCLUSION:  I just showed you how talking to your customer and entering the conversation in their mind will get you more clicks—more targeted clicks.  And more targeted clicks means more conversions which means more money.

Talking to your customer really will LITERALLY make you more money.

MORE CLICKS FOR LESS MONEY:

NEXT POST:  I call this the “icing on the cake”.  In addition to skyrocketing your revenue– talking to your customer will actually DECREASE YOUR PPC COSTS too.  In two different ways!  I’ll tell you about both in my next post.

Now, Go Kick Some PPC Butt!

I’m working on getting some traffic to a new website. Everybody is always talking about Hubpages–so I figured I’d give it a try. Whenever one of the Guru’s mentions Hubpages, they say something like this: just sign up for an account, write at least 300 words of content, throw in a couple backlinks to your site, make everything possible your target keyword (profile name, hub name, tag, etc) and voila–instant search engine rankings.

Not.

I’ve now made two Hubs in the last week. One of them has been flagged as too self-promotional. The other has nofollow links.

The point of this post isn’t too bitch and complain that Hubpages sucks. I don’t have enough information yet to tell you whether Hubpages is worth your time. A lot of smart, successful people say it is. But who knows these days? Everybody seems to be a shyster.

I’m just going to share with you my specific experiences and what I have personally learned so far. I’ll keep you updated in the coming days and weeks as to my progress.

The first Hub I made was for one of my niches. I followed the directions completely that were outlined in Ed Dale’s 30-Day Challenge. I ran into two problems:

1. Immediately after submitting my Hub, I checked the code. My links were nofollow. That sucks. I did a bit of research on Google and found that Hubpages will usually make your Hub nofollow unless it has a minimum score of 70. I found lots of contradictory information, but all roads led me to believe that if I added more unique content, my links would be magically transformed into dofollow.

2. Before I even had a chance to add more content, I got an email from Hubpages saying that my Hub was being unpublished because it was overly self-promotional. I was welcomed to make changes and re-publish.

Blerg! That really sucks. Ya see, I had been using Market Samurai, and my Hub had already ranked on the first page two of my keywords (2nd tier). Now the page was going to be de-indexed. My mission was to get it accepted and get the level of content high enough that it would give me dofollow links.

Lessons learned: Hubpages can rank for your 2nd tier keywords very quickly. I saw it happen with my own eyes. Don’t be overly self-promotional on your Hubs. Just give good, honest information. And include one link at the bottom of your hub (by adding a link module). Write enough content to get your Hubscore high enough to make your links dofollow.

I just made my second hub last night. I made sure to include over 700 words of unique content, tons of pictures, a comment box, a poll, and of course–my link. Immediately after posting, I checked my links. Nofollow. Argh.

My Hubscore was 50…my profile score was just 20. After doing a bit of research, I learned that both scores have something to do with it. Your profile score reflects your activity within the Hubpages system. How many Hubs you have. How many other Hubs have you viewed? Commented on? All those activities will help your profile score go up.

Then there’s your individual’s Hub score. Like I said above, the best way to get your Hub score higher is to add more quality content. How much? Not sure yet. Ed Dale’s 30DC says that 300 unique words is enough. But it’s not. I know that for a fact. Unless a higher profile score would have made the 300 words satisfactory. Only testing will tell. I’ll keep you posted on that.

But from what I found around the Interwebs, you need a Profile score of about 50 to make your links dofollow. Reportedly that will occur around the time you have 3-4 total Hubs. I also read that to get your Hub score up to 70 (reportedly the level needed to convert your links to dofollow) will take about 1200 words of unique content. Again, I can’t personally verify this info yet.

I will be adding content to my two Hubs and adding another two Hubs by the end of this weekend. Hopefully that will be enough to get my profile score up to 50 and my Hub scores up to 70-75. I want those dofollow links!

One last observation. I published my second Hub last night. Immediately upon publishing, it had a Hub score of 50. Later in the evening, it was down to 49. This morning, it was up to 56. I just went to verify that it’s still at 56 for this post, and it’s now up to 61. The link is still nofollow.

Now, go kick Hubpages’ butt–and let me know of any success/failure you encounter in the comment section.