Did you notice that? I implied that the searcher had a question. Even when searching was relatively basic, the searcher always had their own conversation taking place inside their heads. And the quest for an answer to their silent conversation starts with their search (i.e. a question). Are you considering this when you construct your campaigns?

Inside the mind of the Searcher

The most effective campaigns are those that are attempting to answer the specific question that the searcher is asking. But what are they saying? The answer can be found in the search box. What they type into that little search box, directly relates to how far down the research road they have come.

Consider these two search terms: “Yukka Plant” and “Yukka Plants”. On the face of it, these two searches would appear to be identical. Yet the intention of the searcher is likely to be very different. Someone typing in “Yukka Plant” is more likely that not looking for information about what a yukka plant is. Maybe they want to see what one looks like, where it comes from, or even that such an oddly named plant really exists!

Switch now to the term “Yukka Plants” and just by adding the plural to the term the searcher would appear to already know what one is. They know it exists, they probably know what it looks like, and so they are looking for something different. If you were looking to buy one, which would you type in?

Search Trends

Research into search behaviour is now showing that the user has developed a more sophisticated nature. Now, when they type in a phrase, their expectation is that the question inside their heads will be answered. It is becoming more and more standard to see a complete phrased question typed into the search box. This is fantastic news! If you have the power to get under the skin of exactly what the searcher is looking for, and you match your offer to answer their question precisely, your click-through rate will go through the roof. They will literally be unable to restrain from clicking your ad. And why not? They have asked a question, and your perfectly-matched advert answers it unequivocally.

Why should you bother?

Google has made changes over the past few months where the price you pay for your click, and the position your ad attains, is directly related to how relevant your ad is to any given search term. This is something you are probably familiar with, known as the Quality Score. The effect of all this however, and what the killer PPC professionals are already doing, is that you need to write specific ads matched directly to a particular search term. The tighter you make this, the higher your quality score, the greater number of clicks you will get, and the less you will pay for each click. Oh, and as a byproduct, obviously you are going to get the highest possible targeted traffic. I’ll take those odds any day!

Jerry points out that his abilities being shown on the pitch are being ruled by his head and not his heart. He’s concentrating on the money he could earn if only the headhunters would put their faith in him.

I don’t know about you, but I always get turned off by someone who is so obviously in it for the money, that it affects how they talk to me. Life is passion-less enough without more money-chasers. For me, I believe that the passion someone shows, is far more attractive than the money they have (or more often don’t have).

Now this is not a post about how to find your true love (sure my wife would wonder why I was posting this if that was the case!). But we must remember that the network marketing industry is about people, and relationships. We must give, without want, to ultimately receive. If you want people to join your opportunity, you must show them the passion you have for the business - the money will come as a natural byproduct if you get this right.

Ultimately, Jerry was right, Rod got his elusive contract, and all was well in Hollywood. Perhaps its time you got your contract too???

But publishing your own videos is scary right? Well perhaps to start with, but the more you do it, the easier it becomes, and the less awkward you come across in the videos.

Just Do It

It is easy to think that video marketing is better left to someone else, but you should embrace this technology. When looking to attract clients for your business, nothing gives better confidence in you than a personal blog to camera. So my advice would be to just do it. If necessary, do it badly to start with, but at least make a start. My own initial videos are horrendous. I look like a rabbit in headlights, but it is amazing how many people still watch them, and feel confident approaching me since they have seen me.

Why is it so Important?

Getting free leads to your site is an uphill battle at the best of times, but a properly researched topic, with even an average-looking video, will get you an enormous amount of traffic, some of which will stick. And because it is hosted by some of the largest sites on the Internet, your vidoes can get top 10 rankings in Google’s natural search, within minutes of being published. YouTube is the 3rd-highest ranking website in the world, so a video with a good title and keywords, can often rise to the top with ease. It is not unheard of to acheive first place in the rankings for a long-tail keyword with 15 minutes of having been uploaded.

Getting Started

The only thing you need to get started is a USB-enabled video recorder, a small tripod, the Internet for keyword research, a pad of paper to construct your script, and something sticky to attach your script to your tripod so you can read it while looking at the camera. You can get a decent starter camera for around $120.00 online. I personally use a Kodak Zi6 and there are great reports from fellow marketers on the The Flip, both of which have a built-in USB function to upload directly to YouTube if you need to.

A bit about editing

Once you have recorded your ‘epic’, you will probably want to top-and-tail the video to remove the bits where you are setting yourself up and turning the video off. You will probably want to add a little graphic at the end with your website address shown. The easiest way to do this is to use Windows Movie Maker which should be on your PC by default. Simply load up your video and remove the bits you don’t want, add your credit at the end, and click ‘Publish’. From there upload it to YouTube, Yahoo Videos, Google Videos, MySpace, etc.

Automation

Once you have got into your stride with all this, you may want to look at something that will upload your content to all the relevant sites in one go. Tubemogul.com is a free resource for this, or for more functionality and a larger number of supported sites, try out TrafficGeyser.

The absolute master in my opinion on how to acheive this is Harvey Mackay whose legendary book Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty is unparalled in this space. In it he describes the concept that you should build up your network before you have cause to need it, and goes on to explain a foolproof method for actually acheiving this.

Yet this idea of regular interaction presumes that you have the ability to get face-to-face from time to time. Well, probably like you, my business model has a global reach, and I regularly work with people across the globe with little hope of ever actually meeting all of them. So what then?

I believe that the networking model is still as relevant, probably more so, only we have to work that little bit harder to get our relationships established. Internet-based communications make it a doddle to actually reach anyone we want to, but the ability to really ‘hit-it-off’ with someone takes a new skill set. You can tell a huge amount from someone within 3 seconds of actually coming into contact with them, You simply can’t get the same positive or negative feeling by reading 3 seconds of an email.

Networking in the Internet era therefore requires a new rule book. Programs like Skype allow you to video-conference with someone for little or no cost. So use it! Treat it as a business tool in the same way you would otherwise arrange a meeting. Use email and phone conversations to arrange a time to ‘meet’. And stick to it. OK, the picture may be a bit fuzzy occasionally, but the subconscious messages you both will pick up from each other will more than make up for any quality issues. Other tools such as Twitter and Facebook are great for then keeping up with developments in your network. More than anything however - networking when remote from your contacts will take more time. You have to understand that the ‘trust’ element, which can be almost instant when meeting someone, will take careful and continual work to get right.

When prospecting, this often starts with having to make a call to someone. If you are worried about calling a lead, and leading them through to a close (after all you want them to be part of your new, improved network) you could do worse than trying Mike Dillard’s Black Belt Recruiting program. For more details visit the site.

p.s. I recently discovered a web site that is dedicated to bringing together people in your local area. http://www.meetup.com is a fantastic tool for finding and joining groups of like-minded people.

Why should you care whether your advertising speaks to the ‘Old Brain’, ‘Middle Brain’, or ‘New Brain’? For one reason alone… You can get a subconscious decision from a prospect before they even realise they are doing it! What would this do to your marketing campaign? What would the ability to tap into your clients’ brains, and get them to subconsciously decide to click on your ad, do for your business?

Now don’t get me wrong. This is not about tricking a prospect into clicking your ad. For one thing, that would be commercial suicide with a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaign. Just imagine if hundreds of uninterested people clicked through to your site and then realised they had no interest in joining a stamp-collecting fraternity (i’m sure these exist). Not only would you be paying for every visitor, your conversion rate would plummet and so would your quality score.

No. This is about much more. And it is highly sophisticated.

Let’s take a trip into history, to the time when Mr. and Mrs. Ugg were spending all their time doing their best to avoid Ted the Tyrannosaurus. Back then, we (the human being) had only one fully developed type of brain - the ‘Old Brain’. This brain conditioned us to deal with the fight or flight decision which enabled us to stay alive. Pretty important back then!

Fast-forward about 68 million years, and it may surprise you to know that this part of the brain still exists. We still have that pre-programmed ‘Old Brain’ right at the front of our decision-making psyche. And the major benefit to playing to this part of the brain as an advertiser, is that the decision response time by the Old Brain is approximately 250-times quicker than a decision, one that is properly thought out, made by the New Brain.

For advertisers, this means that if you can reach directly into the Old Brain, your advert can be acted upon before your competitor’s has even been considered/comprehended.

As is discussed in Patrick Renvoisé’s Neuromarketing, the way to access the Old Brain’s decision-making process can be broken down into 3 key areas:

• Diagnosis of the Pain experienced by your client
• Differentiation of your Claim relative to your competitors
• Demonstration of the Gain your client will receive by choosing you

Anyone who can do this, in a way that speaks directly to the Old Brain, is onto a winning combination.

Diagnosing the Pain

The first step to successful marketing comes from understanding what it is that is motivating your prospective clients to need your product or solution. This is often referred to as empathising with your clients’ needs. Take time to consider why someone may need you, and I mean really understand their problem. Often, it would be sensible to prove this understanding by restating their problem as part of delivering you solution. Remember, no matter how good your solution may be, unless you can really demonstrate why they need it, you will typically get nowhere.

Differentiating your Claim

Unless you have recently discovered the secret to time-travel or some other similarly unique proposition, you will need to establish exactly why your service is better than your competitors. We all have competitors that are just dying to steal your customers, so you need to spell out exactly why your client would be crazy to go anywhere else. In terms of marketing to the Old Brain, this is best served with a picture that entirely focuses on the benefit you will bring to the table. Note: How many features something has, is the entirely wrong approach to marketing.

Incidentally, “Company xxx is one of the leading companies in the US” doesn’t cut it here. However, “Company xxx is the ONLY provider of xxx” is measurable and absolute by comparison, and should be the direction you focus on.

Demonstrating the Gain

This is probably the most powerful aspect of marketing: The “all these guys agree it works, therefore is WILL work for you” concept. The flip side to this, would be the feeling that something is “Too Good to be True”. We’ve all seen adverts that make up feel this way. The chances are that by validating your service through the use of multiple recommendations, your client will trust that the service is good for them too.

Remember the word TRUST, as this is your ultimate aim. If your client trusts you, they will buy from you (assuming you have successfully identified the need and stated specifically what makes you different). And assuming that you deliver what you have said, they will continue to buy from you again and again.

Remember, your Old Brain is simultaneously simple and complex at the same time: Simple in terms of only being able to process a decision that requires not much more than a simple yes/no answer (Q. “Do YOU need more money?” - A. Yes!); yet complex in that it can force an involuntary action from your body (to click on your ad) without any more detailed comprehension.

This topic obviously is much more detailed in scope than can be conveyed in this short post. If you are interested in reading further then order a copy of Neuromarketing and read it from cover to cover. I would suggest this is required reading for everybody who ever has to sell anything.

She invited me on a call to get to know more about the system (I had submitted my application by this point) which was hosted by Gregg Davison, the top earner in the UK.

The call opened up and Gregg was introduced stating he was calling in from his new home in the Cayman Islands. Are you now thinking ‘yeah, right’? Well I did. I thought that this was all way too contrived.

I listened to the call, asked a few questions, and after an hour, my curiousity got the better of me. My previous (corporate) life had been in Information Security. So I know a few tricks. And I didn’t believe that Gregg was in the Caymans. How could a genuine guy, from one of the poorest parts of England, now be in the Caymans?

So I sent him an email, and when he replied with the information I had asked for, I traced exactly where the email had been sent from.

Well you can guess the answer. I signed up there and then and haven’t looked back since.

If you’ve read this far, can I say thank you. And I hope that this might give you a little confidence that any reservations about joining the Network Marketing industry you have, are quite justified and totally familiar to me.

The Benefit of Being Negative

You read last time about setting up specific content campaigns and organising your keywords and keyphrases into ‘themed’ groups. This will go a long way to getting your ad on the correct type of sites. But you can further refine this process by adding negative keywords that will inform Google about exactly which type of sites to avoid.

Taking my previous example of trying to address Wall Street readers, one of the keywords listed was ‘Stock’. Whilst the inclusion of the other terms should help to pinpoint the exact definition of ’stock’ you are attempting to address, you should consider other possible intepretations and rule these out using a negative keyword list. Two possible incorrect interpretations would be warehouse stock and stock recipes. I would therefore put both warehouse and recipeinto my negative keywords list for this AdGroup.

One of the tools best suited to helping you to identify negative keywords is Google’s Keyword Tool. Put each term into this tool and check what terms come up. Putting ‘Stock’ into the tool shows me that I should probably add a few more negatives to complete the list. I would then repeat this for each of my keywords and phrases and further add to this list.

OK. So we now can be pretty sure that our ad will be seen in all the right places. Now what? Am I done?

Strategy for Ad Copy on the Content Network

You may ask at this point whether there should be a different strategy for content adverts at all. I mean, your advertising the same thing aren’t you? Well, probably not. You see, when someone actively searches through Google, they already have an idea of what they are looking for. Your job as a copywriter therefore is to write an advert that convinces the searcher that your opportunity matches their own thought process. This does not apply in the content network.

With content advertising, you have a whole different job to do. Your ad is not shown because of a conscious thought process by the reader of the site. In many respects, your ad becomes part of the ‘chatter’ on the site. And the reader is probably involved in reading the material they have browsed to in the first place.

So your ad has to speak out, to the reader’s subconscious thought processes. It has to literally grab the reader and pull them to your ad. Whereas your search ad may simply make statements that reflect the benefits of your opportunity, I have found that asking questions works better in content placements. Ask a striking question, succinctly, and it will draw the reader’s eye. For our Wall Street readers where you are offering alternative careers, these may be appropriate:

• Worried about the Recession?
• Stress Getting Too Much?
• Tired of 12-hour Days?
• Is a Crash Coming?

Your goal here is to catch the eye and force the reader to answer the question themselves. This gives you the couple of seconds distraction needed for the reader to draw themselves to the rest of your ad copy. Questions that evoke a response from every reader will guarantee you a better CTR than ‘blobs of ad copy’.

Summary

Is this article you have learned to:

• Separate your Search campaigns from Content campaigns
• Treat AdGroups as ‘themes’ for your target markets
• Refine targeting by utilising negative keywords and phrases
• Distract your reader with hard-to-ignore questions

Using these exact techniques, I have reduced my Cost-per-Lead by 72% over the past month by addressing the content network as well as search. You can do this too!

Google is undeniably the king of search-engine traffic, but most marketers stick to Search traffic for their campaigns and completely ignore the Content Network. Why is this? For most, it is simply that they have never made it work effectively. I know from bitter experience that the content network can bleed an advertising budget dry without delivering ANY value at all.

When I was setting up my first Internet business, the lure of £0.05 clicks on the content network, as opposed to £1.00 clicks on the search network, was hard to ignore. So why shouldn’t I just turn on that little check-box in my Campaign Manager and throw my carefully-worded ad campaigns in front of literally millions of users? Surely some of it will stick? Erm… No! There was definitely an effect to be seen, but only in that my budget was used up in mega-quick time with almost nothing to show for it.

So what do you have to do to make this succeed?

First of all, and of the utmost importance, there are fundamental differences in the way Google matches ads up to users between the Search and Content networks. You will know, if you have read anything on the subject, that search ad groups should be kept as tight as possible, often with a single keyword phrase matched up to a specific ad written just for that keyword. This is a great strategy for search but not so for content. You see, when you include content matching within Adwords, Google doesn’t work at the keyword level. It would be almost impossible for Google’s bots to know where to place an ad based upon a single keyword, so instead, Google matches at the AdGroup level. So potentially if you have an existing Search campaign with several similar AdGroups, turning Content matching on, potentially will see your own AdGroups competing against one another as Google attempts to match each AdGroup to a relevant content page.

Separate your Search & Content Campaigns

The way to get around all this, is to start off by splitting out campaigns so that they only address either Search traffic or Content traffic. Not only will this enable you to construct AdGroups that are matched to the way Google will place the ads, but it also prevents the much-lower CTR for content ads to affect the overall CTR for each campaign. By splitting out the campaign types, you will also be able to monitor and control spending more efficiently.

Effective AdGroup Construction

I talked earlier about how Google matches ads destined for the content network based upon an AdGroup as opposed to a Keyword. It looks at the overall ‘theme’ of the AdGroup to identify where best to show your ads (the content of the Ad itself is also widely believed to have an impact). So to ensure that your ads are placed where you want them to be seen, you have to help Google along.

In your AdGroup, you need to put keywords and keyphrases that, combined, will show where Google should target your ad. One trick I use to work out which keywords to use, is to find the ‘perfect’ site addressing your target market. Let’s say to want to attract someone who reads the Wall Street Journal’s Market’s section. Take a trip to www.wsj.com and browse to the Markets section. Right click on the page and choose the option to ‘View Source’. This will being up a text-version of the page you are looking at, along with the way the WSJ categorises itself for the search engines. Chances are, that their categorisation will match that of yoru target market. You need to look at the source page and find where it says meta name=”keywords”. Each phrase after this, separated by a comma, could work very well for your keyword/phrase list. Incidently, the list in the above example would be financial markets, stock, stock news, investments, stock market, market, todays market, bonds, securities, equities, commodities, foreign exchange, broker-dealer, banks, trading which seems pretty decent to me as a starting point.

In Part 2 I will show you how Negative keywords will really improve your performance, and some of the key considerations for effective ad copy.

Time Freedom

One of the greatest benefits reported by every single business owner I know is the freedom to work when you want to. You are no longer beholden to a standard 9-5 (if you’re lucky) work day - you get to choose how long you need to work to accomplish your aims. Did you notice the frequent use of the word ‘you’ and ‘yours’ in the previous sentence? Go back and check. This is about you and no-one else, and it is you that benefits directly from this time freedom. Ever wondered how much more you would achieve if you set your mind to it, not having to commute to work for 2 hours a day? Let alone the added time directly, commuting drains people which often makes you relatively ineffective first thing at work. Not so the home-business owner.

Freedom of Movement

As a home business owner, especially one that is focused on the Internet, you can effectively work wherever you want to. Ever wanted to go away for more than the standard 2 weeks on holiday? Well as an Internet business owner, of course you can. Take a laptop and one of those nifty little mobile broadband devices and your office travels with you. Reckon that’s liberating? You bet!

More Cash?

Well maybe. I wouldn’t necessarily guarantee that, but certainly you have the potential to dramatically increase your income. It is very typical for an Internet business to net its owner mutiple 6-figure income in their first year of trading. I kid you not. It will certainly take working at, but surely the rewards are worth it?

When is the Right Time?

There is a saying about having children that is similarly applicable to starting a business - ‘There never is a good time’. Well that saying may previously have held water, but under the current economic climate, how secure do you feel at work? Now absolutely is the right time. Switch the TV on at any point in the next month and I can almost guarantee that you will see one or more reports about fresh redundancies. This isn’t a doom and gloom story and you shouldn’t consider it so - I believe that now is the perfect time to take control of your own destiny and not worry whether the next company to be affected will be your own. I sincerely doubt if you would ever fire yourself!

What skills should you expect to learn?

Well this list could be a post in its own right, but as a business owner you will learn essential, transferable, skills that you simply won’t get the breadth of without being at the top. Marketing - the single most important skill you can ever learn. Absolutely nothing works without some form or marketing and as a business owner you will soon learn that you master this skill or die. Fortunately the best opportunities out there recognise this and provide you priceless training in abundance. Sales - No, I don’t mean trying to sell sand to an Arab, I mean understanding that people buy from people, and your network is everything. Grab a business owner you like and join their team. You should never have to sell anything. You should position yourself as someone that people want to buy from.

Summary

You probably guessed by now that I know I made the right choice. If you got this far, chances are you are exactly the type of person who can do the same. So I ask you “Why Not”?

It turns out that if you use the word Google in your domain name, some ISPs will block your website for trademark violations. Having the primary capture page as www.leadsfromgoogle.com therefore would have been quite a blunder! The domain name has subsequently been changed and all is presumably well again.

For anyone interested in this program, there is an introductory offer being made at $177.00 rather than the standard $497.00 (as from Friday) or payments can be split over two months at $97.00. For more details go to www.unlockppc.com.