Students Of Success

Copyright 2005 Daniel Levis

Web copy that’s intended to sell or generate leads needs to quickly reach out and grab attention and build rapport with a target audience. You can connect with your audience more effectively if you understand something about how people process information, and how they think.

Every one of us is constantly sorting, distorting, and generalizing what we perceive, just to stay sane.

As a result, different people see the world differently. You probably want to appeal to as many of them within your target market as possible. Here are three simple tips you can use when it comes to editing your web copy.

1 - An idea can be made to appeal to more people if it is expressed in both a positive (moving toward), and a negative (moving away from) fashion.

Look how it’s done in this famous lead…”TWO YEARS FROM NOW, your business could easily be worth 2.5 to 25 times what it’s worth today…Or you could fall into the list of business also-rans… ” Some people are motivated by the desire for gain, and others by the fear of loss. With a statement like this, it doesn’t matter which, you’re speaking their language either way.

Another great example of this is in the life insurance industry. Rather than try to force a square peg into a round whole, the insurance companies came up with the idea of “cash value”. Now the sales pitch could be reframed to appeal to both types of people. Those that moved toward pleasure could be sold on the idea of early retirement, and those that moved away from pain could be sold on the more traditional idea of income protection.

2 - The second idea is internal versus external frame of reference. Some people do things because they see others doing them. Some people want to relate things to their own experience. The former is impressed by testimonials and success stories, while the latter is moved by deductive reasoning, analogy, and metaphor. You can see this requires two very different kinds of selling.

Here’s another way to look at internal versus external orientation. The internally directed person values a sense of achievement while the externally directed person values recognition. Two sides to the same coin.

So you might say in your copy, “Picture the smiles of appreciation your family will reward you with when they begin to enjoy the new lifestyle this knowledge can afford you. Imagine the sense of achievement, and how confident you’ll become!”

The first sentence appeals to an external bias, while the second one targets an internal bias.

3 - And the third tip is to use phrases that appeal to multiple modes of perception in your copy. Like everyone else, you perceive the world with a bias toward seeing (visual), hearing (auditory), or feeling (kinesthetic). Naturally your copy will reflect this bias. By going back through it and editing it to include all three biases, you will connect with more readers.

I am a very visual person, so I might write something like, ” You’ve got a clear view of it in your mind’s eye now, don’t you? Suddenly, it appears you’ll make your decision.” I might go back and edit this passage to include a mix of the modalities. Perhaps…”This is really resonating (auditory) with you now isn’t it? You’ve grasped (kinesthetic) all of the important points and you can see (visual) your choice.”

By understanding people’s patterns of perception, and how they view the world, you can make more of them feel comfortable when they arrive at your website. Your sales message will click with more buyers, and you’ll see more sales!

“. . . anywhere is the center of the world.” Black Elk, Sioux Medicine Man

About the author:

Daniel Levis is a top marketing consultant & direct response copywriter based in Toronto Canada. Recently, Daniel & world-renowned publicist & copywriter Joe Vitale teamed up to co author “Million Dollar Online Advertising Strategies - From The Greatest Letter Writer Of The 20th Century!”, a tribute to the late, great Robert Collier.
Let the legendary Robert Collier show you how to write words that sell…Visit the below site & get 3 FREE Chapters!
http://www.Advertising-Online-Strategies.com/ad-strategies.html

Every year well over 4 million people are bitten by dogs. While some of these bites may be minor, others can leave serious injuries or even death. If you own a dog which bites someone, you could find yourself in legal trouble. If it kills someone, you could end up behind bars. While I don’t want to scare you away from owning a dog, there are some things you will want to do to make sure your dog doesn’t bite you or others.

The first thing you want to do is never approach strange dogs. Even if the dog is behind a fence or tied up, it could see you as being a threat. You should also keep your own dog away from other strange dogs. It could be injured or killed if the strange dog decides to attack it. You should also avoid petting your dog without letting them sniff your hand first so that they know who you are. Under no circumstances should you run from a dog. Dogs are natural predators, and will almost always chase you unless they’re trained.

When a dog is eating, sleeping, or caring for its young, it is best not to startle or disturb them. They may snap at or bite you. It may be necessary to neuter your dog if it is going around and getting into fights with other dogs constantly. You can also take your dog around others to keep it from being nervous when in the presence of people it is not familiar with. Dogs should also be trained not to chase anyone. This is one of the most common things which leads to a dog biting someone. You should also give your dog rabies vaccinations, and never allow it to go places without your supervision.

If you should be attacked by a dog, the first thing you want to do is remain calm. If you panic you are likely to make bad decisions. You will also want to wash the wound as soon as possible. Use soap and water and contact your doctor as soon as you can. Contact the animal care agency in your area and let them know that you have been bitten. Describe the dog and where you encountered them. Let them know what direction you think the dog went in.

Being the owner of a dog which likes to bite is a serious issue. You can avoid biting by training the dog while they’re young. Once they get older, it will be difficult or impossible to get them to follow your commands, and if they bite somone else, you could be in a lot of trouble.

Michael Colucci is a technical writer for Free Dog Training and Dog Care

In recent times, initiatives such as the Sarbannes Oxley Act in the US have dramatically raised the profile of compliance within the corporate world. As a key element of any corporate compliance policy, expense management has shared some of the limelight. As a result, corporate expense management software is now critical to any business concerned with corporate compliance. But what is corporate expense management software? Does your company need it? And where do you find a good corporate expense management software solution? Just as importantly, how do you successfully implement and integrate corporate expense management software into your corporate environment. This article sheds some light on these issues.

What is corporate expense management software?

Corporate expense management software is a software program that processes:

1. transaction records received from a credit card issuer (detailing employee use of corporate credit cards0; and
2. cash reimbursement claims originated by an employee.

In practice the target application is Travel and Entertainment expenditure. A robust corporate expense management software solution will also support procurement (pCard) activities as part of a broader strategy of effectively managing lower value, high volume business-to-business transactions.

The three core steps of any expense management process are:

1. the acceptance/input of validated source data;
2. the application of predetermined rules of handling expense records; and
3. the posting of transactions to a corporate repository such as an ERP system.

What is the purpose of corporate expense management software?

The objectives of corporate expense management software implementation should include the following:

1. to automate the preparation, submission, approval, and auditing of travel & entertainment claims, thus improving the productivity of account holders and reducing the time and cost of accounts staff;
2. to support the implementation of a standardized best practice method of managing high volume expenses through the use of corporate credit cards; and
3. to increase the transparency and enhance the governance of financial transactions conducted on behalf of the enterprise.

Sources of corporate expense management software

Australian and international organizations now have access to a range of quality corporate expense management software solutions which are well suited to driving down administration cost whilst meeting corporate compliance requirements. There are essentially three sources of “corporate expense management solutions”:

1. ERP systems;
2. systems offered by card issuers; and
3. best-of-breed solutions.

Each will have their own merits and will suit organizations in different circumstances.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems
ERP sourced expense management has the attraction of being fully integrated within the financial suite of software, therefore offering a standard look and feel to all users of the ERP. With ERP sourced expense management functionality, the ERP supplies the core software, and the enterprise needs to customize and configure the system to reflect its own structures and rules regarding the management of staff expenses. If you’re considering the option of using their ERP for expense management, you need to be conscious of a number of factors, including:

• the actual functionality available within their specific installed ERP system;
• the backlog of work on the ERP system accumulated for the IT department; and
• the deployment time and the cost of the project (which will usually be substantial).

License costs can be an issue if an enterprise if your company has not paid a license fee that will cover all card account holders and cash claimants.

Card Issuer Systems
Some card issuers promote “expense management” solutions which can range from a computer generated report through to an online system with some embedded workflow concepts. The attraction of card issuer expense management solutions is that they are offered as part of a card deal, sometimes (apparently) for free. If you’re considering a card issuer expense management solution, you need to know:

• will you be ‘locked in’ to the card issuer?; and
• will you be able to configure the expense management solution to adequately reflect internal requirements?

Best-of-Breed Solutions
Best-of-breed expense management solutions from specialist providers can be relatively seamlessly interfaced to an organization’s internal systems such as HR and ERP, but will not present a common look and feel to the ERP system. You would usually choose a best-of-breed expense management solution if you want:

1. your company to be independent of a particular card issuer;
2. to achieve a fast implementation; and/or
3. to configure the solution to its own unique rules and policies of expense administration.

Best-of-breed expense management solutions are typically deployed as either an ASP (Application Service Provider) or self hosted solution. Although exceptions are common, small to medium enterprises tend to appreciate the lower up-front cost of an ASP expense management solution, and larger enterprises are attracted to the control available through a self-hosted corporate expense management software solution. ASP expense management solutions are typically paid for on a per statement per month basis, and self-hosted corporate expense management software solutions have a range of options available from up-front license fees to monthly license rentals.

Overcoming the cultural resistance to corporate expense management software

Some Finance Directors still have an aversion to corporate credit cards. It’s not uncommon to hear a finance director say “if I give everyone a card, they’ll spend us broke!”

However, the benefits of corporate expense management software are apparent as soon as the Finance Director considers the difficulties of controlling the expenditure behavior of thousands of employees using a manual system of reimbursements which is largely based around a set of uncoordinated spreadsheets. Basic activities such as enforcing travel policies, calculating tax implications, reconciling, posting to a chart of accounts at a detailed level and auditing, are so difficult as to be more honored in the breach than the observance…

Viewed from a different perspective, a company with revenues of $700m $50m in EBITDA, and $20m in annual employee business expenses, can make a dramatic impact on its bottom line using corporate expense management software without increasing revenue. If automation reduces these expenses by only five per cent in the first year, the savings alone have the same impact on the bottom line as $14m in new revenue. It isn’t surprising that the return on investment of corporate expense management software is often achieved within its first 12 months of operation.

Corporate expense management softwares also play a vital role in Fraud Control. “Fraud” in this context takes many guises, not all of which are the sort that land perpetrators in court. Information taken from our own customer experience and from publications of the USA Association of Certified Fraud Examiners identify the top four categories of fraud:

1. Mischaracterized expenses
2. Overstated (exaggerated) payments
3. Fictitious expenses
4. Multiple reimbursements

Research in the USA has pointed to as much as 1% of company revenues being lost to employee expense mismanagement. Corporate expense management software will not, in its own right, eliminate this but it is a vital tool in creating an environment that drives down the level of mismanagement.

Conclusion

Over the past 18 months, our company has observed a change in motivation for corporate expense management projects. Whereas formerly corporate expense management software solutions were an exercise solely in the reduction of administration costs, now governance is equally a driver to implement technology based controls around high volume expenditure. The Sarbannes Oxley (SOX) act in the USA has captured the attention of any enterprise active in the USA. However, inside or outside the USA, the senior executives must warrant that their company has implemented adequate financial controls that prevent fraud and give a true and correct record of the enterprise’s financial activities. As a result, the Corporate Travel Manager who pitches a proposal on expense management to the senior executive team currently finds a willing audience.

Peter Granger is CEO of Inlogik Pty Ltd. Inlogik owns and distributes ProMaster, a corporate expense management software solution used by over 250 corporations in 40 countries. See http://www.inlogik.com.

The Secret Behind the Internet

Last week’s issue of “Getting Results” was largely theoretical
and abstract. This week I hope to offer you some real-world
advice that you can put to use straight away tohelp you gain
better search engine rankingsand grow your online contact base
without software, spam, or any dirty tricks.

Before We
Begin

I’m going to be discussing something called PageRank. (Click that link to find out what
it is.) You can check the PageRank for any website by
downloading the Google Toolbar.

OK, now I have a question for you:

Do You Get
Linking?

Of course you do! You own a website, it gets a reasonable amount
of hits, you’ve got some green on the GooglePageRank bar,
obviously you know about linking!But how do people link
to you? Do the sites that link to you use your company
name? Dothe links say “click here”?If they do, read on: I have
much to teach you…

Be the Holmes to My Dr Watson

Here’s a useful bit of info that I gleaned from Michael Cheaney
over at websitemarketingbible.com. Do me a favour
and follow the simple steps below. We’re going to do some
investigating…

1. Visitwww.google.com

2. In the search box, type in “click here”
(without the quotes), then click “Google
Search“

3. Cast your eyes over the results. Pretty familiar looking
aren’t they? Now click on the first result (should be “Adobe
Reader Download - All versions”)

4. Perform a search on that page for the words “click here”.
Check your browser’s Help documentation if you’re not sure how
to do it. (Usually you can just press CTRLand F at the same
time)

5. Notice how your search has returned no results. So that page
can’t be top of Google’s ranking for content. Maybe it’s in the
HTML code?

6. If you know how to check a page’s source code, do it, and
search for the word “keywords”. Interesting…This page doesn’t
even have any keywords! So how has this site managed to get top
of the list for the phrase “click here?” Google doesn’t
sell rankingwithin the results returned, so how do they do
it?

All over the Internet, people link to Adobe, Apple,
Macromediaand the like using phrases such as “click
here to download” or “click here for
more info”.Because so many people use that phrase to link
topages like the Adobe Acrobat Reader download, Google
ranksthese pages10 out of 10. But why does Google think that
“click here” is a description of the Acrobat Reader?

Anchors Away!

In Internet-speak, another word for links is “anchors”, and the
text that you click on to activate a link is called “anchor
text”. That piece of text is vitally important,
because it’s supposed to describe the link destination. The more
people who use that particular phrase to describe the link, the
more Google believes that is in fact what the link is about. So,
because so many people link tosites with “click here” as the
anchor text, Google assumes that this text describes in some way
the Adobe Acrobat Readerdownload page, and all the others in
the results.The guys from Google agree:

“…anchors often provide more accurate descriptions of web
pages than the pages themselves … We use anchor propagation
mostly because anchor text can help provide better quality
results.”

Quote by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page,taken from “Search
Engine Optimization for Dummies” by Peter Kent

Don’t
Click Here for a Solution

You can achieve a better ranking by playing by Google’s
roogles…sorry, rules. Make sure people link to you using a
phrase that describes your company’s products and services, or
better still, use keywords that people type into Google to find
your site. For example, I ask all of my link partners to link to
me using phrases like “web design”, “business cards” and “promotional CD-ROMs”, so that my Google
PageRank will increase and my site will become easier to find
for those phrases.

Don’t go too far with it though, because badly constructed link
text will discourage people from clicking on you - and you do
still want human beings clicking on the link aswell as
Google - so try and be smart with it.

Oh, and another piece of advice. If you manage to amass hundreds
of link partners using the same phrase, you may be in trouble,
because Google penalises sites that it thinks are taking
liberties. So try and mix it up a bit.

Next Week…

This week I’ve looked at inbound links, ie: links coming into
your site from another, and how to improve your PageRank through
good link descriptions. Next week I’ll be looking at reciprocal
linking, and trying to dispel a few myths about it.

In the meantime, if you’ve got anything to do with marketing,
IT, copy writing or small business services (like forums, help
sites, newsletters etc), feel free to ask
me to include your link in our Links
Directory. I only accept sites that are relevant tomy
business, and I’ll explain why next week.

20/10/05

In internet marketing, there are many people who have not make a sale. When you ask them why they are so difficult to make their first sale, most of them will tell you that it is because they do not have selling experience before.

Do you agree? I don't.

In my opinion the most critical obstacles that stop their first sale is what they think about selling. They actually don't like to sell, or even hate to sell. They think selling is unethical.

This is common, very common. But don't take this as an excuse to stop making money online.
In internet direct selling is not the only way to make money.

Have you heard of Google? Have you buy anything from Google directly? No? Then how does Google make money?

By selling advertising spaces - let others not you to sell from your site.

This is easy, you need not to learn hypnotic copywriting, product creation, product delivery, and other selling skills anymore.

You just need to write quality content, provide useful information, free service, or host a forum, then provide advertising spaces to other sellers, and you will make money online without own selling.

Will this be easier for you?

Copyright © 2005 Mark Tse

Resource box: Using public domain content to build profitable content sites is now easy. See how Quick Page Generator can help you build your content empire in a record short time. http://www.marktse.com/qpg/