Smart Communications, Inc., one of the country’s leading wireless services providers, had recently launched its ultimate unlimited calls promo known as “Smartalk”.

This new service of Smart, offered last yesterday enables the loyal subscribers like Smart Buddy and Smart Gold to make unlimited calls to over million of mobile phone users on the Smart Network.

As for its features, Smartalk will not require you to change your SIM or your cell number. All Smart subscriber can avail this unlimited call service provided that they will purchase loads fro unlimited calls that comes into two variants or denominations. The first is the “Smartalk 100”, which is 100 pesos for 5 days of unlimited calls and the second is “Smartalk 500“, which is for 30 days.

According to the press release made by the Smart Communications’ official website, last June 24, 2009, when making a call using the Smartalk unlimited package, you have to use *6400 followed by the 11-digit SMART number, e.g. *6400009181234567.

For Smart Buddy or the prepaid users, if you are buying a load from retailers, just make sure you ask for the Smartalk load and not the regular one. The payment will be automatically deducted from your load and you need to have a P1 maintaining balance. Send Talk 100 (for 1 day) or Talk500(for 30 days) to 6400.

For Smart Gold or postpaid users, if you subscribed to Plan 800 and up, you can simply avail the 30-day unlimited call by simply sending Talk500 to 6400. A charge of P500 will be billed on top of your monthly service fee (MSF). Plan 500 subscribers can only avail the service by buying a Smartalk load from the retailers.

Smartalk will be offered around the country until September 30, 2009. For more information regarding the promo, you can visit the Smart website.

The Top 10 Essentials for Your Pay Per Click (PPC) Success

Whether you’re looking to do Paid Search Advertising yourself or to hire someone to do that for you - you should know what makes a Pay Per Click campaign successful - or you will end up suffering.

Paid search advertising may look deceptively easy to do. Countless times small business owners decide (and correctly so) that PPC is going to do wonders for their business and ‘dive’ right into it…

Unfortunately most of them don’t really educate themselves enough on what to do and how to do it, and then they end up spending a helluva lot of money, with little to no results. Next they declare that Paid Search Marketing doesn’t work and then they’re out!

Alternatively, the small business owner hires an overpaid, over-promising PPC management firm, and lets them do whatever they like - not knowing what to be aware of in order to make sure he’s getting the best possible results for the best price…

Well - despite the doom and gloom scenarios above, I’m here to tell you that PPC works for most businesses!

It works very well, and can be one of the best, quickest, most cost effective and best tracked medium of advertising/promotion there ever was… Sure, there are other ways you can market your business, but if you know how to, and if you want almost immediate results that are fully tracked - then PPC can’t be beaten.

OK, let’s get to the top 10 essentials of Pay Per Click marketing:

1. Know your market place

It’s as obvious as daylight, but people still go into PPC without doing their research. Bear in mind that you may know your market place offline, but when you consider the internet - it may be a whole different environment. So make sure you look into it - even if you have to pay for professional research - it will be worth your while.

If you’re letting an agency manage your paid search, then make sure you ask them about your market - make sure they have done their homework thoroughly.

2. Know your target audience

Again an obvious one - and yet again people don’t do this step properly. Don’t just list out a bunch of demographics about your prospective customers. Get into character - engineer ‘real-life’ people profiles (avatars), describing everything about them.

Creating about 3 customer avatars for your business, will help you understand your customers, and thus you’ll be able to anticipate how they behave. Knowing how they are likely to behave, will allow you to setup a VERY effective PPC campaign process, that will guarantee you success.

Remember - your customer just wants to feel understood, then if your product/service is good - they will buy.

3. Know what you want your visitor to do

In other words decide - do you want a prospect visiting your site to:

- call you to make an appointment?
- email you with more info about themselves, before setting up a consultation?
- click on the “Buy Now” button on your landing page?
- sign up to your membership site?
- sign up to your free newsletter?
- download a free report?

The clearer you are about what you want visitors to do, the easier it will be to entice them to do just that. If you don’t tell your prospects what it is they need to do to progress this visit to something that is of benefit to them, they will click away, most likely to never be seen again…

4. Know how they look for you & your product - i.e. understand searcher intent

This one’s not so obvious. Only very good paid search marketers know that keywords have different intent behind them. In other words, if a searcher on Google types in “running shoes” they are highly likely to be doing some preliminary research on what types of running shoes there are.

If the same searcher typed in “running shoes reviews” - then they are likely to be still researching - but they now know that they will buy - when they find the shoe that appeals to them.

A prospect with ‘buying’ intent, however, will likely type in “buy asics gel kayano running shoes” or “asics gel kayano stockists”. You get the idea…

5. Start small - grow big later

This simply means that it is better to find the most suitable keyword phrases for your business, and run with that small group first. This will allow you to test the ‘waters’ and it will help you keep control of your budget.

Later on, when you know what works and what doesn’t you can add other phrases to your heart’s content.

6. Split test your ads

It is amazing how many people don’t take advantage of this feature on Google AdWords. Split - testing will give you a constant way of improving on your ads. Your ad is the ‘window’ to your sales… so you cannot afford not to be constantly trying to make it better converting than before.

7. Use landing pages (LP)

Landing pages are powerful when using them correctly. They allow you complete control of what your visitor experiences. I always recommend that if you are only wanting one result from your prospect you should use LPs. But if your resources and knowledge are limited, then at least make sure you are leading the searcher to the most search-relevant page you have on your site.

8. Track everything

This says it all - even if you don’t know how to, or with what - find someone that can help you. Outsource this job, or simply head over to Google and read all there is on their Analytics service. In some cases this is perfectly sufficient.

9. Listen to your stats

Once you have your tracking working, make sure you look at your stats to see the results. I recommend you look at them once a day in the beginning - depending on the size of your campaign, the amount of traffic your keywords are getting, and the amount of money you’ve budgeted to spend.

Once your campaign is working and making you profit, you can start looking at it less often, but at least once a week. Also make sure to optimize it regularly on the basis of your stats.

10. Learn consistently and constantly

Learn from your successes, your failures, your competitors’ successes and their failures too… I have a document template that I use for all my campaigns called - Lessons Learned. It’s only through experience that you will be able to progress and optimize any paid search campaign.

Well - hopefully you’ll find the above list of PPC essentials very useful. Of course there are a lot of other important points to consider, like daily budget, competitive research, and return on investment requirements, but the above 10 will be able to start you off in a very strong way.

Bear in mind that whether you’re managing your own PPC campaigns, or you’re hiring a professional to do it - you can use the list above to make sure you’re getting the best out of your campaigns.

Search Engine Optimization for Newbies

With so much information - and misinformation - available on the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) it can be tricky trying to separate fact from fiction.

Coupled with the fact that SEO changes only slightly less rapidly than the weather, it can be downright overwhelming to know where to start.

So, if you’re an SEO newbie looking for a place to start, here’s a look at some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) basics. What Is SEO?

Even the most beautifully-designed site won’t do you much good if potential customers can’t find it. That’s where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in: SEO helps ensure your site is more visible in the search engines, drive qualified traffic to your website, and convert that traffic into actual customers.

In short, SEO increases your website’s rankings in the search engines by making the pages within your site more attractive to the search engines. The more attractive your site is to Google, the higher its rankings in the search engine results pages. And the higher your rankings, the more likely users will visit your site. Obviously, a site with a result on Page 1 of Google is going to get more traffic than a site buried on Page 14.

If your site is missing from the top search results, then you may not be maximizing your ability to generate new business and add revenue to your bottom line. Let’s take a look at some stats:

* 1.3 billion Internet users
* Over 85% start at a search engine
* Less than 25% will go beyond the top 10 search engine results
* Top 10 results get 80% more traffic than those ranked in the 11-30 spots

Besides gaining better rankings in the search engines, SEO is effective in several other areas as well:

* Branding/establishment as an authority
* Pre-qualified lead generation
* Easily tracked ROI
* Cost savings compared to other mediums such as glossy brochures and yellow pages ads (average cost per lead is $0.29!)

Breaking SEO Down

SEO consists of several key elements that work together to generate increases in a website’s rankings, traffic and conversions: Keyword Selection, Copywriting, Link Building, HTML Optimization and Analytics. Let’s take a look at each element in more detail:

Keyword Selection

The foundation of any SEO campaign is good keyword research. That’s because targeting the right keywords is essential to getting your SEO on the right track. If your sell silver ladies watches, then you’re going to want to rank in the search engines for the phrase “silver ladies watches” and other similar phrases. If your keyword research is off and you target the wrong keywords, then you may not get visitors who want what your site has to offer. That’s why you need to make sure that your site is properly optimized for the most-searched-for keywords related to your business.

Copywriting

Getting potential customers to your site is only half the battle; you’ve got to convince them to buy. That’s where persuasive copywriting comes in. Be sure to tell people why they need your products or services and include conversion points throughout the site. The search engines like content, so you also need to optimize your copy to include your keywords. This includes things like descriptive product pages, built-out content like biographies, news sections, etc. One important point to remember is to keep your most critical content “above the fold” - that’s the area that’s visible to your users before they have to scroll down.

Link Building

Think popularity contests ended in high school? Think again; you’re not so lucky. Link building is like one big online popularity contest, and the search engines like the popular kids. Your success in the search engines depends, in part, on the amount of relevant incoming links to your site. Of course, having lots of good links also drives customers to your site, which is a good thing, too. Links can come in various sources, including directories, business partners, organizations, social media sites, and much, much more.

HTML Optimization

Title tags, header tags, Alt tags, Meta-descriptions — the search engines want your site’s HTML to be descriptive and clean. Search engines want to know exactly what your page is about; they don’t want to sort through a bunch of extraneous code to figure it out. That’s why you’ll hear SEO types talk about the importance of having clean code and how to use CSS to make that happen.

Measuring Success

No SEO campaign is complete without analytics. After all, if you aren’t measuring things like traffic, link popularity, and conversions, then how do you know if your SEO strategies are working? Programs like ClickTracks and Google Analytics help make the number-crunching a little easier. When analyzing an SEO campaign, it’s important to only make one change at a time so that you know which changes are effective.

If you want to have an effective SEO campaign, you need to include each of the five SEO elements listed above. Keep in mind the information here just scratches the surface of these topics, and there are certainly other more advanced SEO strategies that can benefit your site as well. These building blocks, however, are the perfect way to get your SEO campaign started on the right track.

Check out our SEO case studies or get a free SEO analysis of your site now!

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate is a word synonymous to “referrer”. If you are into affiliate marketing, this means that you are the intermediary link between the owner of the goods and the clients.

The owner of the products and services that are being sold online is called the merchant. But the merchant does not market his services directly to his customers. For that job, he relies on middlemen like you, who are the affiliates.

Simply put, you are only the person who is making the sales happen. You are the salesman, who receives his money as a part of the commission that he makes from his sales.

So if you make no sale, you get no money.

To promote a product in order to earn revenue from the sale, you will need an affiliate program. The programs actually help you by driving the traffic of visitors to your site. It is very difficult to choose the right affiliate programs, since there are so many of them out in the Web world, and only a few that you can blindly trust.

More importantly, when the companies that you are working for go under, they might not even let you know, so that your payouts turn out to be very small, and sometimes, months go by and you never get to see your payday.

Another disadvantage of the affiliate marketing is banners. If a company gets its banners all over, a lot of confusion is created in the web sites so that the visitors start to face too many options. In such cases, they become easily overwhelmed and deterred.

Affiliate tracking could also turn out to be a bit of a problem. The companies will assign special code to you that you have to use in order to report your sales. This code assures that no other affiliate gets your pay by mistake.

You must have this code pasted in your site correctly and without errors so that you do not lose out. Or else you may send a lot of potential clients without any reimbursements.

In order to look for an affiliate program, all you have to do is go to the search engines and type in the keywords. You will get many affiliate programs displayed soon, but before you make your choice, it is better that you read up the reviews and see whether people had any problems while using those programs.

The affiliate marketing mainly depends on the craft you possess in marketing goods and services to the clients. This will determine your success and failure in this business.

You can start to use the available tested marketing methods after adding certain tweaks of your own creativity to them.

There might be certain obstacles in the way, but the affiliate marketing is still very important -especially if you hoard the skill to sell even a fridge to an Eskimo! You will get your pay according to every sale you make, and this situation turns out to be pretty simple and easy.

Enjoy Guys!

Hi Guys,

I love this promotion from Smart. I been using them as my mobile sim provider since 2002. Now they have released a new promo as what other providers did before. Aside from the 20 pesos for 20 minutes, you might try this as well.

Smart introduces CALL NYT LONG or unlimited calls for only 15 pesos. This is available to all Smart Buddy subscribers nationwide.

Here is how you can register for Smart’s
unlimited call and call all you want promo. The Smart
Unlimited Call - CALL NYT LONG is valid from 11PM to 6AM.

Just txt NYT15 and send to 8566.

Per DTI 1080S09 valid until May 31, 2009.

Let me know what can you say about this promotion. Thanks.