Charlie Cook's MArketing for Success Insider's Club

Marketing Tools

Your Marketing Blog Looks Great!

By Charlie Cook   |   December 14, 2004

“I think your blog looks absolutely great! There’s an interesting cross pollination that can go on between ezine and blog and you’ve got a good think going on. Questions work well…

I’m reformatting my primary site How Much Joy to sell much bigger and getting a lot of inspiration from the layout of your site, so I hope that is OK and I thank you muchly.” – Suzanne Falter Barns

Thanks, Suzanne. Of course it was your comment that prompted my new marketing blog. And, yes since I added the blog to my site, traffic has jumped another 10%. – Charlie

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More On Alexa Rankings

By Charlie Cook   |   December 10, 2004

Alexa rankings are really just a snapshot — the data they collect is only from people who have downloaded the Alexa toolbar. As they travel the web and visit sites… the toolbar collects the data and uses it for the Alexa rankings. I have a client that was successfully able to improve his Alexa rankings drastically just by having everyone in his company install the toolbar at work and at home, have all his relatives install it, and set his site as the home page. He ended up with a great Alexa ranking.

Discovering that they ‘combine’ sites and data they think is similar really surprises me… and coupled with the fact that their stats only represent Alexa toolbar users – pretty much nails the coffin lid shut on any usefulness this has in my opinion. Nice to have a good ranking if you are marketing your site as a portal, or are looking to sell the site — but other than that — not sure it’s worth even paying attention to. In fact, I only go there and look when somebody asks me about it.- Tracy Sabattis, Mannix Marketing, Inc.

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Is It Important To Have Your Bio In Your Marketing Materials?

By Charlie Cook   |   December 6, 2004

“I’m starting a new business and would like your opinion.” – Lori Emberland

A – Including a bio in your marketing materials can be helpful or not depending on how it’s written. Most people make the mistake of making their bio about me, me, me. The key is to write your bio in terms of the the problems you’ve solved and the clients you’ve helped. This makes it not only more interesting so prospects read it but helps postion you as someone who can help solve problems. You can learn more about how to assemble and write your marketing materials with The 5 Principles of Highly Effective Marketing. – Charlie Cook

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Isn’t Ezine Announcer Less Expensive than Your Ultimate List?

By Charlie Cook   |   December 4, 2004

“I’m interested in buying your Ulitmate Article Distribution List but Ezine Announcer looks like it does the same thing for less.” – Suzanne Falter-Barns

A – Often you get what you pay for. My ezine announcement list is constantly updated and checked and costs roughly half as much per lead if you used Bacon’s service to create your own list.

You might be interested in the following letter sent to me. I haven’t verified this personally but it suggests checking this resource out carefully before opting for the less expensive ezine announcement solution.” – Charlie cook

“I do use EzineAnnouncer but I don’t recommend it to anyone else anymore. I seem to be the only person who can use it and there is NO technical support. I know people who couldn’t even get it set up after purchasing and had to ask for a refund.

Last summer Jason updated the database but not the software. The software has not help section, no user manual and the new database is all screwed up. He just shoved thousands of new listings in without setting up the software to send to those sites so most of what he added does not work. It took me three entire weekends to fix the mess.

If you can set up software and use it with minimal instruction then you might want to consider EzineAnnouncer. I only continue using it because I spent so much time fixing it!”