Most people don’t spend hours on any one website the first time they visit. In fact, if visitors stay even for a few minutes, that’s excellent. But a few minutes isn’t going to earn your company a permanent booking in their memory. Marketing is like show business, so get ready to be pushed off of the marquee by the next act that comes along…unless you participate in email marketing. If you market through email, you have an opportunity to own a permanent line on the marquee of your prospect’s memory. But before that can happen, they have to feel compelled to sign up to receive your email communications.

There’s no harm in giving something away. After all, owners of a theater often get free seats to see performances, and sometimes get exclusive performances. Why should information pertaining to your company and website be any different? Besides, the more information you provide your prospects, the more likely they are to remember you. In addition, they’ll remember you as the one who gave them that great (and useful) information. So what forms of information should you provide? You can give them an exclusive brochure, white paper or ebook, for example.

Be careful not to repeat the same information you’re already providing for free in your blog, on your website or in your newsletters, because chances are, they already have that information, or can access it very easily. As can everyone. You want to give them something that only new subscribers to your email address receive. How do you make certain that only new subscribers receive it? That’s actually pretty simple; remember our discussion a few days ago about landing pages? Design a landing page, the link to which should be automatically emailed to your new subscriber after they double-opt-in.

Let’s look in detail about the forms of information you might provide, and some suggestions of what sort of topics to include in each. We’re going to use the example of our fictional friend, the Caramel Apple Seller, who, in recent months, found his cart replaced with a website, blog and email marketing campaign.

Paper brochures are double sided and tri-folded, presenting six panels on which to house information. E-brochures needn’t be much different, except instead of being folded into thirds, these documents are usually presented as two pages in a pdf document. However, the six-panel format ought to still be used. If our apple seller were handing out paper brochures, the first and last panels might feature his company logo (a tasty looking caramel apple where the fresh caramel is dripping over the apple’s perfectly round structure), his contact information and a slogan, and perhaps the location of his cart, next to a recognizable statue in a park.

Another panel would give basic information about his company. A fourth panel would describe different sorts of apples and a fifth panel would feature caramel apples. Perhaps a sixth panel would include festive caramel apple presentations. All of the same information should be included in a pdf formatted brochure. Notice how the brochure features branding (name, logo and slogan), contact information (including shop location—to include web addresses in the pdf), a company overview, a product overview and then something fresh and unique, with a bit of flare and creativity (such as festivities).

A white paper is a document providing relevant information, usually about the industry and the company, and perhaps including a how-to. Our apple-selling friend’s white paper might be centered on the theme of growing and selecting ripe apples. Within that how-to, information about the industry of apples and caramel apples, as well as the company, would be referenced and inserted. By including this information within the how-to, the prospect remains interested in the writing itself. Imagine you’re reading a short story or novel.

The description of a character goes on for pages and pages, so that you have a crystal clear image of that character…if you can hold out through all that description. Compare that to a story where description is offered as it’s necessary. You don’t feel overloaded, yet you feel informed. You want a white paper to be the same. If you write for four pages about the apple industry, you’ll lose your prospects’ interest around page two. However, if that information is deftly included and referenced, your prospects will be captivated.

An e-book is a good choice if you have a lot of information to share. You can have an introductory chapter where you introduce the company’s role in its industry. Has your company been recognized for any achievements? Has your company had exceptional growth? Does your company participate in charitable endeavors? This is your opportunity to introduce your new prospect to your company…but avoid writing this chapter as though an excerpt from a text book. By sharing this information through an anecdote, you can interest your prospects.

After introducing your company, you can go into the meat of your ebook, where you discuss whatever theme you’ve decided upon…maybe your ebook is about growing an apple orchard ,or making caramel, or a combination of experiences. An ebook is a golden opportunity to share information while you let your prospect get to know you and your company as though you are neighbors.

Keep in mind the amount of information you have to share. If it’s quite short, a brochure is appropriate, allowing you to share information easily with bulleted lists or mini-paragraphs, or charts. Information that’s a bit more in-depth may best be presented in a white paper format, whereas if you have a lot to express to your prospects, an ebook may be the best course of action. As always, discuss these options, as well as your landing pages and your email marketing campaign in general, with your internet marketing agency. This way, you can be certain that the trusted and knowledgeable professionals you hired will enhance your online presence through any of these three outlets.

What is a landing page and should you have one?  A landing page is a webpage within your website accessible only by a certain URL.  Usually, landing pages are used for specific ad campaigns or email marketing campaigns because these webpages provide all of the information pertinent to the product or service sought, with appropriate links to other areas of the site that are either related or necessary for the prospect to complete the call to action, which is usually to purchase, though can be anything from purchasing to signing up for an email newsletter.

So why would you need a landing page?  Isn’t your website sufficient enough?  A landing page offers several benefits that can improve your internet marketing results.  Some of these benefits are listed and described below.

1.    Landing pages provide targeted information to prospects.  If your website sells apples, caramel apples and chocolate covered apples, you might have a landing page for each so that when prospects search for caramel apples they’re directed to a page dedicated to that product.
2.    Landing pages provide detailed evaluation results for you.  If you send out an email marketing message about caramel apples that invites prospects to click on a link to a landing page devoted only to that campaign, you can find out your click-through rate in addition to determining how many of those click-throughs result in a sale.  Many do-it-yourself email marketing programs provide you click-through stats, but without landing pages, or relying on prospects to inform you that your email was the source of their purchases, you cannot know how many sales are generated from a single email marketing campaign.
3.    Landing pages provide you the opportunity to make specific improvements.  When you have an entire website influencing a prospect, if they don’t purchase your product or service, finding what pushed them away can be difficult.  Did you misspell a word?  Did a product description lack details or focus?  With a landing page, because you’re only providing select information, it’s far easier to determine what can be improved to offer prospects better opportunities in the future.

Do you need a landing page?  Not necessarily.  Should you have one?  Yes.  As you can see, landing pages provide benefits both to your company and your prospects.

When cell phones first gained the ability to surf the web, users couldn’t really surf the web, because most sites didn’t have compatibility with phone browsers.  URLs were nothing short of convoluted, and unless a user had the “url” written down, he or she wasn’t going to find the page.  Then, the phone browsers incorporated a search function, but even then were limited by the number of pages available to phones.

Now, the internet is as mobile as people are.  Smart phones have browsers that are similar, if not the same, as those on computers.  The iPhone runs Safari, just like an Apple computer does.  These smart phones aren’t limited by the number of websites that are optimized for mobile use and viewing, because they don’t have phone browsers, they have internet browsers.

Not everyone owns a smart phone though.  The prices are coming down, but they’re still expensive.  Anyone who had trouble with the new iPhone 3G might be wondering if perhaps the price came down too quickly.  But what about other mobile phones that don’t have the benefit of a computer’s browser, a qwerty keyboard and an unlimited data plan?  Unoptimized websites are not only difficult to view, but they take so much time to download onto a mobile phone that users will likely shy away lest their data charges skyrocket.

Eventually, one of two things will likely happen.  All websites will be optimized, or all phones will have computer-type browsers, such as Safari, FireFox, Chrome or Internet Explorer.  Even if that’s the eventuality, optimized sites are still good.  A phone’s screen is much smaller than a computer and so one of the reasons that regular phones cannot browse regular sites is because they haven’t an easy way to zoom.  Touch phones zoom in and out at the tap of the screen.  Even so, optimized sites are still useful on smart phones.  Zooming in and out all of the time makes elongated web browsing somewhat cumbersome.

If you’re unsure how to obtain a mobile optimized website, you should contact your internet marketing agency.

Keywords are great; they allow searchers to find your content that contains them.  However, when your content is composed, if the keyword doesn’t make sense in the context, or even grammatically, it can harm your content in two ways.  First of all, keywords that are just placed into content without thought to context will make your content lack sense and therefore readability.  Prospects might think you just put the keyword in there to grab a spot on their search…and then they’ll think you’ve wasted their time.  You’ll have lost that prospect.  If your keyword does not grammatically fit, your prospects will not only think the same as if it doesn’t fit with your context, but also that you haven’t bothered to proof your content.  If you haven’t bothered to do that, how thorough will you be with your customers?

First impressions do count, so let’s look at how those mistakes can harm some sample content.  Suppose you’re selling candied apples, and your keyword is “caramel apples.”  If you write:

“These are bought fresh each day,” and insert your keyword to say “These caramel apples are bought fresh each day,” that might be fine, unless you’re the one making the caramel apples.  Then you’ve just written that they’re bought, not made, which is not correct.

Suppose you insert your keyword so that your content reads, “This caramel apples are made fresh daily.”  If you blindly insert your keyword, you may lose the grammatical logic of your sentence.  The above example does not work because it says “This caramel apples..”  “This” and “apples” are in disagreement.  A better sentence would be “These caramel apples are made fresh daily.”  That way, you retain your keyword.

What about keyword frequency or keyword saturation?  Which of the following examples looks better?

1.  Here at Joe’s Candied Apples, you can rest assured that you’ll receive only the freshest product, because our caramel apples are made fresh daily.  The caramel is mixed each morning and the apples are selected from the best trees in the orchard.

2. Here at Joe’s Candied Apples, you can rest assured that your apples will be the freshest apples, because our caramel apples are made fresh daily.  The caramel for each of the apples is mixed each morning, and the apples themselves are picked from the best apple trees in the best of our apple orchards.

Obviously, number 1 sounds better.  If the keyword is apple(s), you can see that it occurs more than is necessary in number 2, weakening the message.  Quantity does not rule over quality.  If you’re not sure how many keywords should be within your content, for the best results, you should work with an agency on your search engine optimization strategies.