I told her to look online and compare watches and find one that she liked. She took my advice and did her research. She was drawn to the Movado Watches. She liked the style of the Esperanza Black Dial. I told her that we just couldn’t afford to spend over $1,100 for a new watch. She understood but was very disappointed. She doesn’t know the real story.
I did some research of my own and found a site called www.bluedial.com. This site has the exact watch that she wants, the Movado Ladies Stainless Steel Esperanza Black Dial. This watch is part of the Esperanza collection. The Black Dial is made of lustrous stainless steel and has a sophisticated modern design that is very attractive. It has a slender tank case that is attached to an open link bracelet that oozes style. This is offset by a dramatic black dial with silver colored hands and a Movado signature concave dot. You know this watch is made with quality in mind because it is water resistant to 30 meters and has precise Swiss Quartz movement. This is all backed by a 12 months warranty.
My wife doesn’t know that I bought all of this for under $500 and that it is her Valentine’s Day gift. I want her to know that I love her all of the time. To me the Movado Ladies Stainless Steel Esperanza Black Dial is the perfect way to show my love all of the time.

A client recently asked some great questions and I thought they deserved to be seen by our readers.

Dwayne,
Thank you for your information.  We have been working to address all  the issues you made us aware of.

If I understand the areas we need to address they are as follows:
1. Our Centric
2. Our Social Message
3. Our Internet Outreach
4. Our Branding
5. Our Website Design

Am I missing anything?

1. The Centric
Tenlittlelaws.info is the website at this time, but the focus is not  on the Ten Commandments as much as it is on the Kingdom of God.  The  Commandments are the elementary laws that teach people how to have  basic love for one another.  The ultimate result is developing the  character to be a citizen through baptism for the Kingdom of God when  Christ returns.  All people will have an opportunity to learn of God’s  way.

Revelation 21:1-3 is the focus point!
Rev 21:1-3 KJV  And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first  heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more  sea.  2  And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from  God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  3   And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle  of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his  people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

Where exactly this fits into the Categories I don’t know.  We’re still  rolling it over in our minds.  We have done some checking on the  keywords and the numbers are not very high for “kingdom of God”,  ”God’s Kingdom”, “Preaching the Gospel” or “Ten Commandments”.  Can  you assist us in better defining out niche?  Do you have a certain  link we can go and check the keywords?  The Rovin Search Engine  Visible was where I was trying to check keywords.

2. Our Social Message
Can you give me an example?  Is it the same as the message on the  Twitter and WordPress blog, and Facebook websites by getting people to  engage?  Mrs. Harrison and I have been working on a power point  presentation we were going to make into a video for the website.   Would this be more likely used on the social pages?

3. Our Internet Outreach
I’m assuming this would be tied to the blog etc.?

4. Our Branding
We have a logo, which I need to make some modifications too.  I’ll be  making those adjustments.  I have a logo which you can use until the  revisions are made.  It will be generally the same, size, color etc.   I have a colored logo and a pencil sketch of the logo which I like.   Both are attached.  The Logo depicts Revelation 21:1-3.  The Scripture  and the logo would the same branding.

5. Our Website Design
We have allocated $750 as our beginning budget, but when you break it  down into hours, it’s only thirty hours.  Everything we’ve discussed  up to this point will need to be scaled back.  I don’t know how much  you can get done in thirty hours.

At this point I would say that the look of the website could stay the  same, but the CMS and SEO codes would be the focus point.  I would  like to have a new design, but I believe it’s functionality is more  important than it’s looks.

We need more of a break down and get specific about what we hope to  achieve in this venture.  As you said before, we need a clear  understanding of what is going to happen and the cost.  If we can have  some design changes in the looks that won’t take away from the  functionality design then we can proceed to change the looks.

With this all being said, have I given you enough information you can  generate a plan of action on your part.  I keep thinking that the  redesign of the website has to be driven by us if we hope to keep the  cost down by us giving you a look and you executing it; otherwise, the  hours would be spent on design work.  Please don’t hold back, I need  you to be blunt and to the point with what we’re discussing.  I need  to make decisions based on your input.

To be blunt, I think that if you have a commitment to reach out to people, deliver your message in various forms and media, engage them where they are congregating, provide them with compelling messages of hope, relieve their fear, offer help when asked and ask them to help you promote your program, reward them with a unified and beneficial message, and be a leader; you will win. In your life and in your ministry brother.

As far as a plan of action:
1 – Gather a logical outline of the main categories of your site (not the one you have now but the idea one you want). Making sure you do not confuse titles of articles with categories of content.  This will become your new navigation system

2 – Make a list (a tweet sheet) of at least 100 small quotes and scriptures that provide guidance. Keep each quote below 100 character – including spaces – so we still have room for a shortlink back to your site.

3 – Make a list of the prime keywords that you would like to attack. You can acquire this using the Google public keyword suggestion tool. Just go to Google and type in Keyword suggestion tool and Google usually puts its tool at the top. Limit your list to 50 keywords for now that have the most searches.

4 – Take each keyphrase from this list and sort it into the category structure you set up in step #1. So each keyphrase is now under the site navigation in one category or another.

5 – Take each keyphrase and do research on it to compose an informative article on it of at least 500 words. Make sure the article is 100% about that keyphrase. You can have opinion of course, but it should be about the topic. Compile the images you want to use or illustration as well as any supporting information like Youtube video links, tables and charts, links etc so each article is a nice little niche information package.

6 – Go over each article and look for every opportunity to utilize the other keywords in your master list. Highlight those in the copy because when you publish them those keyphrases will be used as cross links to your other articles and sections to provide SEO buoyancy for the site.

7 – Extract the most salient points of interest from each article. Use that to make a talking point outline you can adlib a video/audio/podcast delivery from. We’ll need this later to drive a multimedia marketing campaign for you.

8 – Compile a list of the top 20 or 30 most authoritative sites you would most like to get a link from. Then compose a open honest email message you can send to their administrator at a later date to solicit a link exchange.

9 – Compile a list of all the people you know and prepare a message for them asking them to visit your new site and to consider please mentioning your site to their friends, visit your facebook organization page and liking it, and also to follow your updates on Twitter.

10 – Compile a series of short messages that welcomes someone to your ministry, explains the mission you are on, delves into the message you are giving and how it will benefit them. Design this series of messages in a conversational voice (like you are talking to them in an email) and keep them in bite size chunks of 100 to 300 words each. Develop them in a logical sequence that will take the person from welcome to full understanding and even to loyal supporter. This series will become your first email autoresponder series. We’ll plug that into MailChimp to interlock with your other social messages.

Okay sir this should be a good start. Ironically I stopped at 10 steps (probably the marketer in me) but it should be plenty to get started with.

We can begin the site migration and CMS process any time. but this will give you plenty to work on so the project is always in a forward motion.

Thanks;
Dwayne

The folks over a Q-Based Healthcare have busted out their new All Stop brand. The brand is topped by their new logo (caduceus / Asclepius staff and forward leaning fonts). The colors are strong and keep the medical theme moving forward. I imagine it took a few heated marketing meetings to approve the bold red & green color scheme, but I have to admit it works! The new look speaks to power, knowledge, and vitality.

The new All Stop brand name is technically a rebranding of their flagship DermaTechRx product line. They do have a statement about this on their site at http://www.allstop.com/faq/brand_notice.html

So why All Stop?

Folks who remember the DermaTechRx product line know they worked great on various skin ailments. Q-Based has been selling relief for arthritis pain, scabies, lice, eczema, bed bugs, poison ivy and ringworm for years. The bulk of their business is done online and they claim nearly 200,000 satisfied customers. I have used their products and always been satisfied.

All Stop has become their new brand to signify the power of the products to STOP ALL the ailments they are designed to treat. They certainly can stop lice and bed bugs, and ringworm (oh my), but more than that; these solutions help thousands of people help themselves with affordable home treatment solutions.

Not everyone can afford to go to a doctor for non life-threatening problems. Smart shoppers have learned to leverage Q-Based ‘heathcare advisors’ (read customer service reps) to get helpful tips on saving money and using products wisely. Issues never more important than now; with a ragged economy and rapidly increasing food and fuel costs.

Smart Shoppers… Smart Marketers.

So the brand works well to express the product. All Stop products work for many common ailments and parasites. Need to treat bed bugs? They have that. Raging Jock itch? You’re covered. (With my sympathies).

Along with the rebrand, their website has also undergone some effective retooling work. Now their sites are SEO compliant. The structure follow logical tree flow and their URLs are really search engine friendly. In the last week they look to be adding some link building features. With the new design they could easily move into the social networking traffic cloud.

Check out a corporate page at www.allstop.com or a sample affliction landing page at: http://www.allstop.com/lice/head-lice-treatment Pay close attention to the new packaging. More facelift work here. I suspect these folks are going retail shelf any day now. I’ll post updates as they grow. It is very interesting to watch a young growth company like this in its early stages.

Work: The work and time it takes to build good authority sites with high visitor value and long lasting serps positioning.

versus…

Worry: The stress over when those quickly ranked machine gun affiliate traps, slick redirects and frame pages will get nerfed or even flagged as spam.

Whether you’re designing an affiliate internet marketing plan from scratch, or if you already have affiliates sites deployed, you always need more testing and feedback to monitor your conversion-path effectiveness. The most common ways to adjust are spinning and split testing pre- and post-click components like ad copy, anchor phrases, and landing page copy. But if you operate networks of thin affiliate sites you are very limited in how effective your spin-post-test cycles can be since the goal is direct injection into the sale channel from the initial search click.

Thin affiliate sites have minimal original copy and limited visitor value. It’s tough to bring them up the serps and get these kinds of pages organically ranked. No kidding right? No not really. The cause-effect relationship between value and organic ranking is made more difficult by the constant adjustment required to address ever changing search algorithms and ever increasing human-assisted page ranking.

But thin sites have one huge advantage; deployment speed. While everyone else is hoeing away on their content, trust relationships, and logical link building, the thin affiliate farmer has already grown a huge 100 acre co-op and by shear scale has socially self-promoted their sites into the top 10 or 20.

Unfair? Unethical? Slimy? Maybe so, but that’s not the point of this post. Let’s get back to main idea: The choice that YOU as a web developer and marketer have to make when planning your deployment strategy for a certain niche or product line.

You may find my attitude callous but honestly I don’t waste much time thinking about which way to go. I want to do what works best for my clients. The real choice depends on the market. Let me explain.

When you approach a campaign that is affiliate based you are faced with strong competitive challenges from other affiliates and also from the product/service originator. Competing affiliates create market buzz but that buzz quickly turns into noise once everyone breaks into the game — or if you are late to the party and there is already strong brand and social exposure working against you.

Competition from the brand is also a serious challenge — especially these days, when SEO consultants are everywhere (ahem). It is no secret that many companies are collapsing their affiliate programs and putting the resources into brand and buzz building and dabbling in social link promotion.

So before you flex your affiliate site creative muscle, consider a balance of thick and thin affiliate properties. Sure, thin sites can help you achieve faster conversions, but high quality pages build real link equity and will help you survive in the long run…and isn’t this all about the long run?

Talk soon;

Dwayne

For several years DermaTechRx was the brand for Q-Based products. Now they have expanded into their All Stop line of products are making the best use of the newly designed DermaTechrx website to help people learn from their research and experience in skin related problems, topical pain relief, and human parasites.

You’ll find eGuides covering details and symptoms — complete with visual aides, videos, and charts to help you get the most of your visit. The developers also mention they are adding interactive flash presentations to help parents and educators in the classroom.

We’re excited by this new site and applaud Q-Based for giving back to the public.

Dwayne

In the business development world, people want to grow relationships. It is often assumed that both sides want to develop the relationship. But in internet marketing, the relationship is often just one way. The buyer is going along with their life and the marketer is trying to persuade them to take an offer or make a decision — often when they are not really ready to make one.

The best way to bring all these things together and to make everyone happy (on both sides of the relationship) is to build trust and report with your audience. If we stop trying to hurry the close and push the service or product we always win.

The BizDevMark team is actually doing this with our marketing — to you. We are here for you every day, providing free content and resources to help make your life better. We very rarely present an offer or sales pitch because that is not what this site is about. We prefer to build a relationship and be accountable to you.

Yes I know that sounds corny and trite but it is the truth. So if you’re a marketing professional your job is to do the same thing over and over, until you can’t tell your friends from your prospects!

Dwayne

BizDevMark – Business Development Marketing

No matter how good your lead generation, in-house marketing or list building efforts are, the key to adding zeros to bottom end of your bottom line comes from adding new buyers. New customers are the foundation of our entire future marketing effort. So it follows that the acquisition of new customers is the master key to your business success or failure.

It’s common for internet businesses to get stuck in a SEM or SEO sales channel and marketing strategy that leaves them in a narrowly focused competition pool. Here they fight it out with other trapped marketers vying for a share of a fixed volume of daily searches. Each competitor has their list of keywords and live or die over how many sales they can win from the daily available inbound search volume.

So how do we fish new buyers out of this stagnant pool of traffic? We reach outside of our fixed list of keywords. But not just any new keywords will do. We must find keywords that are returning traffic at levels we can pull fish, er potential customers out of.

Search Suggestion Tools

There are several ways to learn what people are searching for and to new build keyword silos to bring them into our network. We’ll go into content creation and keyword farming in later articles. Today we want to focus on a great way to find the missing link between what we think our market is about and what the public thinks it is about.

How do we do that? And what does it cost?

Search Engine Suggestion is the answer and it’s completely free

Here we go to the various online tools (overt and covert) to gain intelligence on what Search Intent Anticipation (SIA factor) suggestions engines are returning for your base keywords. The idea is to reach out beyond your own ideas of what your market is interested in and to see what real human traffic is looking for. Very often, this simple process will break you out of a marketing rut by opening new sales channels you can work on — to market them or even develop new products.

Please note that since most major search engines have refocus on monetized search, their main interest is in delivering quality search results. A big component of result quality is to anticipate and drill the surfer down to where they need to be when they started the search session. So the concept is to anticipate the surfer’s needs and deliver the best suggestions to fill in the blanks created by the surfer’s gap of imagination, laziness, or lack of keyword or typing skills, etc…

Also note that since the engines really want to monetize you they are always balancing Visitor Value (VV factor) with accurate anticipation. Even if they don’t admit it, there will always be heavy algorithmic gravitational pull towards commerce-specific results. You can be assured that commerce will play a factor because profitable search engines survive by driving traffic to monetized search.

A shocking but simple rule: If there is high search volume there will always  be monetized search.

Why is that? Because anything that has a high volume of search will create a focus and concentration of human interest that will in turn lure Internet marketers into the game. Internet Marketers love the crowd because as P.T. Barnum claimed there is a sucker in every crowd.

So even on innocent subjects and strongly academic search terms, human interest generates the search volume and the search volume generates marketing interest, which in turns ignites search activity (remember that Internet marketers have to constantly study the subject to steal content to power their content-centric internet marketing information product marketing efforts).

But I digress… What we want to focus on is the margin created between human interest and marketing interest. Why? Because in that gap are seething pools of fish for you to drop a baited line into. And one of the best tools to discover the gap and create whole new channels you can exploit for free is search suggestion.

Google for example now has search suggestion based on absolute metrics. Just hit their main search site for real time search suggestions. Type in a few letters of your key phrase and the suggestions are instantly delivered to you. As a bonus they also throw in the number of indexed page results. Yahoo, has been providing these for a long time and they still work great. MSN Live and Ask.com are also helpful, but their anticipation-suggestion engine is very strongly weighted to commerce results. This makes sense considering their market positioning and struggle for share.

It’s easy and free to add new life to your web marketing by using the free tools provided by the search engines. So go for it! And happy fishing.