Direct Response

If you ever happen to step into any of our offices in West Chester, you are sure to feel an immediate surge  of energy!!!  Asides from an exciting location, our offices take on a life of their own.

With functuay in mind, we’ve created a fun work environment where our peeps enjoys free Starbucks, lunch, snacks, Fiji (I love statement water), and Friday pizza parties.  We also have an honorary system where you can wear whatever you want to work, take breaks whenever you want, and basically enjoy true freedom in the workplace.  On top of that there’s an amazing massage therapist on staff…A MANDATORY in fast-paced and uber-competitive environments.

In less than 3 years, our full-time team has collectively grown to over 150 highly talented sharks strategically located in Pa., Ga., NYC,  and India.  And to think that all of this could materialize from a dream….pushed into a concept…driven to reality!!!  And every month revenue just seems to keep increasing & increasing & increasing….

One thing I’ve learned during these exciting times is to invest in your work environment.  Go the extra mile to create a great place to work.  i.e.  We ripped the old flourcent lights out of the walls and installed state-of-the-art track lighting that creates a real positive mood.   i.e.  Instead of picking up a cheap sofa from Ashley’s, we partnered up with Restoration Hardware (brand ambassador) and decked out one of our offices with super comfortable furniture.

Why go the extra mile to create a great work environment?  Just ask Facebook, Google, or Microsoft.

Great workplaces do the following:

-  Impress Clients:  Want to get your clients to spend more money with you?  Invite them to tour your offices and let them see for themselves that there’s a huge operation running behind your website.

-  Create A More Productive Work Environment:  Get more bang for your buck with your staff.  Take care of your employees and they will take care of you.   CAVEAT:  Sometimes people will take advantage of you, or mistake your kindness for weakness.  Call them out on the spot and make them recognize before you have to make them realize….

-  Attract Higher Talent:  It’s no secret that we invest in people, not businesses.  People make companies great.  If you want to to attract great people that will propel you to the next level, then you ought to make the work environment AWESOME!!!

After searching high and low bad-ass office furniture, I found a couple really good spots.  For conference tables we ordered a Radian blue conference table from StoneLineDesigns.com.  Sick!!!!

Stoneline Design is a small outfit that custom builds conference tables.   Our table was built-to-order and is a BEAST!!!  To show some love to the owner, Diana Hersh, I convinced her to offer readers of Direct Resposne a nominal discount if you order from her.   She’s a really nice lady that makes a superior table.  Let her know I referred you and she’ll hook-it-up:

Diania Hersh
Stoneline@Mindspring.com

Also my friends Tim and Megan from Restoration Hardware hooked up our old office in WC.  Look what they did to the old joint:

Reach out to Megan direct and mention Direct Response to get a HUGE discount.  Thank you Megan, you rock!!!!

Megan Monohan
mmonohan@restorationhardware.com

So the only question is, does your office create the “wow” effect?

Direct Response Marketing is all about standing out amongst the crowd and eliciting an EXACT, quantifiable response from your marketing.  With billions of ads thrown in the face of consumers every month, how does your advertising stand out?

Does your marketing elicit a favorable response?  Do you own the market yield for your vertical?

On nearly every major website built with direct response in mind, there’s a blog.  These blogs help engage the audience, build links, and create authority.  Here’s a few examples of blogs on solid websites with direct response elements:

http://blog.trysensa.com/

http://www.hasoffers.com/blog/

Here’s 3 free tools to improve the engagement on your direct response offer’s blog:

1.  Build Infographs To Highlight Your Data

http://infogr.am

2.  Launch An Interactive Timeline

www.dipity.com

3.  Embed Apps, Links, and other Call to Action Devices Into Your Videos

www.Viewbix.com

http://www.dipity.com/StevePro/Steve-Jobs-Life-and-Career/

Enjoy!!!

For the past few weeks SEOs all over the world have been trying to make sense out of Google’s latest algo update, codename Penguin.  I’ve personally spent countless hours brainstorming with the most seasoned SEOs on the planet over Penguin, including one of my colleagues that had previously held the #1 ranking for the HIGHLY COMPETITIVE keyword “SEO Company” and “SEO Companies” (3+ consecutive years with small fluctuations here and there)…keyword previously.

While no one knows the exact algo updates behind Penguin, I now have a pretty good idea.  To sum it up, Penguin targeted anchor text links for competitive / high volume keywords.  Specifically:

1.  Too many anchor text links for highly comptetitive keywords FROM low PR sites.

2.  Too many anchor text links for 1 HIGHLY COMPETITIVE keyword.

3.  A full porfolio of anchor text links with very few naturual links.

As of 5/19/12, if you were to Google “SEO Companies”  this idiot now shows up as the #1 ranked site:

Now look, I have nothing against John Rothschild or his firm, SEOBuilding.net.  Rather it’s dumbfounding how the SPAM links pointing to SEObuildling.net would land the firm as #1 organic listing for “SEO Companies”!!!   Here’s the backlinks (144 total) to SEOBuildling.net:

What in the hell does mortgages or debt consolidation have to do with SEO?  There’s no trick to this question, it’s completely irrelevant and against Google’s best practice guidelines.  TOTAL SPAM!  Great work Google, you are now essentially pointing searchers of SEO to a company that will SPAM your search engine…EPIC FAILURE!!!

So how is it that SEObuilding.net, a site with just 144 low-quality backlinks, outranks sites such as SEER Interactive, with an authoritative and robust backlink profile?

SIMPLE:  SEOBuilding.net targets its highest authority backlinks to the commercial intent keyword “SEO Companies” while diversifying the lower-authority links to natural anchor text such as “click here” or www.seobuilding.net.  Take a look:

Nearly all of the authoritative links pointing to SEObuilding.net are anchor texted to ”SEO Companies” while the rest of their portfolio is very well anchor text diversified.

My suggestion is to do the following to your link portfolio:

1.  Build lots of natural, lower-authority links with anchor text such as ”Click Here” and www.YourDomain.com.

2.  Build some high-authority links with advertising / natural anchro text such as “Learn More” or use the good ole “Click Here” and www.YourDomain.com.

3.  Build most of your anchor-text links through PR4+ blog guest posting, news bylines, and other white-hat high PR link-buildling methods.

4.  Completely 100% avoid black-hat programs such as SENuke.  These programs are a ticking time-bomb that WILL eventually go off…

On a positive note, my colleague name redacted, owner of name redacted, is now ranked back at his #1 position for “SEO Company.”  Thanks for the insight name redacted and congratulations on your continued dominance!!!

If you’re running a continuity campaign, and one of your clients cards comes back declined, I highly recommend you place them in a email chain with a daily reminder to update their card.  Here’s some good copy that is sure to get their attention (I wouldn’t worry too much about pissing them off, they owe you money):

Subject:  ACTION REQUIRED – Client Name

Body:

Client Name -

This email is automated and will be sent to you daily until the issue directly below is resolved.

Notes: Month Day, Year payment has failed for Client Name or Company Name. Please update your credit card within 48 business hours. We appreciate your immediate attention.

To update your credit card information, please fill out this form: www.FormToUpdateCard”

Thank you,

Accounting
Your Company Name
555-555-5555

The real trick in this payment failure notice is to make sure there’s no unsubscribe button.  The daily reminders will surely cause a reaction, which more often than not is a payment update

We use Stormpost to send out these emails.  This will not work well with programs like iContact of Constant Contact, you really need to own your own IPs

It also helps considerably to have a collections agent calling the client daily!!!

The Only Verticals I Enter Are Those In Which A Ceiling Does Not Exist – Rich Gorman

One of the most profitable industries in the world is health & beauty.  Given a bad rap online by unscrupulous pushers of Acai & Skin, this multibillion industry is not only here to stay, it’s actually growing!!!

Indeed, we witnessed the rise and fall of many CPA networks, which were primarly powered by overly agressive marketers of nutra.  i.e.  Industry gians such as Epic Direct, who were HUGE players in the nutra space 2 years ago, are now DEAD IN THE WATER.  Now that the dust has settled, and these CPA networks are dying off, where are health & beauty advertisers getting their traffic from?

The answer is simple:  the same places they’ve always bought traffic from.

Tier-1 Health & Beauty brands have direct access to the best traffic sources in the world.  These groups have vertically integrated media buyers that spend their days placing ads and watching stats.  While some of these groups work with a few high-volume affiliates, they’ve almost all pulled the plugs on the networks.  Examples of such advertisers are:

Intelligent Beauty

Guthy | Renker

ACMG

Beach Body

Hungry Fish Media

It’s no secret that I am a HUGE fan of health and beauty offers.  Working directly with the most prolific marketers of health and beauty, I can tell you that these guys are exceptionally gifted….  i.e.  When I took Zac Johnson through ACMGs 480 seat call-center, with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the Hudson River, even Zac was floored.  If you are an ingenious marketer and are looking to build a business from your garage that you can scale into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, then health and beauty is the way to go.

In this post I’m going to provide you with direct advice on how some of the largest advertisers in the world build nutra offers.  These steps are expensive and take a lot of time to complete.  But if you follow my advice, and are willing to invest a lot of time and money in a successful offer, then you’ll not only position yourself to make millions of dollars, BUT ALSO KEEP IT

9 Steps To Creating A Compliant Nutra Offer – THAT CONVERTS!

1.  Many of the advertisers I listed above work directly with Venable.  The main FDA contact at Venable is Todd Harrison, who is a master at creating formulas with clinically-proven ingredients for his clients.  Todd will get you hooked up with a solid formula – he’s one of the few attorneys who actually gets it!  Here’s his info:

Todd Harrison
202-279-1514
202-344-4000
TAHarrison @ Venable.com.

2.  Once you have your formula in hand, place an order at wholesale costs via At Cost Fulfillment.  Also have ACF set you up with a fulfillment account that will provide you with postal rates.  Big savings!  Here’s ACF’s info:

At Cost Fulfillment
800-277-6096

3.  Run a controlled test via ITG.  ITG is an INDEPENDANT group of doctors that will recruit human guinea pigs that have no material connection to your offer – sorry, using your mom and best friend’s testimonial won’t hold up too well in Federal Court   ITG will get you some awesome testimonials, videos, before & afters, and other REAL marketing material for your offer.  These guys rock!!!

To reach out to ITG, contact:

Ed Gaut
714-850-9777
egaut @ detauginc.com

4.  Once you have a few dozen testimonials w/ videos & pics, have DRA buildout THE ABSOLUTELY BEST lander / presale page (w/copy) / banners.  NOTE: design is usually 3-4 weeks backed up due to existing projects.  Ron Gamble runs the show, and if you don’t already know, he’s the designer of the new top mast on DirectResponse.net + Avatars + hundreds of sick direct response pages that you’ve seen around.

Direct Response Agency
Ron Gamble
Ron @ DirectResponse.net

5.  Run a full FTC / Visa compliance review via Tom Cohn.

For those of you don’t know Tom, he is the former regional director of the FTC and has successfully represented a number direct marketers who got in trouble with the FTC.  Tom will run a full scan of your sites and recommend changes.  I strongly encourage you to make all of the changes he suggest.  If you have a superior product (Todd will set you in the right direction) then it is easy to procure awesome testimonials.

Procure documents from Tom Cohn for traffic vendors so you can PROVE that your offer is compliant.

Tom Cohn
917-701-1960
Thomas.Cohn @ LeClairRyan.com

6.  Setup a LL account.  If you need integration help DRA will assist.

7.  Utilize Rick Del Rio’s exclusive rolodex of merchant processors.  This list is reserved for LL clients only.  Very useful contacts.

8.  Take your compliance documentation to the direct traffic sources.  We recommend the following:

-  EngageBDRs First Impression

- EngageBDRs managed buys (you better be an experienced advertiser of you will lose your a$$)

- Ads Direct

- Jumble Berry

- WamMedia

- Facebook: get legal involved and stay persistent to get on this channel.  Do not shortcut by cloaking.

- Google

- Advertising.com

- Mazzel Media

9.  Monetize Your Data.

It is best to monetizer your own data:

Email Monetization – Stormpost

Direct Mail – Build It Internally

Call Center – Build It Internally

If you can’t monetize your own data, use King Monetizer.

Remember the old saying:  any fool can make a million dollars, but it takes a wise man to keep it.  Get your offers compliant and sleep with both eyes closed

P.S.  There’s a lot of advertisers that are still pushing hard Acai that do not run into troubles with the law.  Here’s 2 business models that are extremely successful and have been around for a long time:

http://www.aprovenproduct.com/acailand.php?t=gae2acai&gclid=CKjYgemI_68CFUZN4AodayxoGg

http://www.markethealth.com/banner.php?sid=602

Disclaimer: I have included some companies in this post that we have a stake in.  We provide services to several of the largest advertisers in the world and truly believe that our services are far superior to that of our competition.  While we are by far the most expensive on design and copy out there, our pages convert.  RE fulfillment & contract manufacturing, the savings passed over to the client combined with the efficiency of the operation, make us the preferred vendor amongst the highest volume merchants.

Thank you to all of my family, business partners, dear friends, and colleagues that hosted the best birthday party in the world.   You are all so great and I am eternally thankful.

Life is an amazing journey.  When you reject mediocrity by seeking true excellence, you are sure to have anything but a normal life.  Cheers to defying the odds, risk taking, following our hearts, and unwavering faith in our dreams!!!

P.S.  Cheers to Mark, Erica, and Emily from our Savannah team.  Shoot over pics ASAP so we can add to this post!!!

Google just loves to keep SEOs on their toes!!!  A few weeks ago Google rolled out the Penguin Update, which essentially targeted aggressive anchor-text link building and the relevancy of where links are coming from.  If you have too many anchor texts for 1 keyword OR there’s too many links from non-relevant sites, there’s a good chance your site will get penalized.

Negative SEO is essentially “search engine optimization” that hurts websites.  A little counterintuitive, as SEO is supposed to increase the rankings of your website!   In fact, Negative SEO is usually an effect that inexperienced SEOs experience after buying links from bad neighborhoods or utilizing software programs such as SENuke to build links.

It is also a tactic used by unscrupulous competitors to harm the rankings of competing sites.  Historically Negative SEO involved hacking sites or sending fake DMCA takedown request.   With the recent Penguin update, though, Negative SEO has taken on a new meaning: competitors can roll-out negative SEO campaigns designed to have your site penalized.

If you’re enjoying high rankings for competitive keywords, then it’s time to start watching out for the following Negative SEO attacks:

1.  Thousands of Exact Match Anchor Text Links From Forum Spam

Keep a close eye on the links that are pointing to your website.   With the Penguin update, you could lose your rankings if a competitor started building thousands of anchor-text links to your site via forum & comment spam.

The best way to counter this is to focus your link-building efforts on sites with strong domain authority.  Quality over quantity.

2.  Review Attacks

Competitors can easily add fake reviews to your business listings, making it look like you are trying to manipulate the listing.

If you are receiving false reviews, make sure you report this to Google ASAP via the “report a problem” section.

3.  Fake Legal Shots

This Negative SEO tactic has been around for years.    After running a link report on your site, a competitor can identify your strongest links.   From there a “fake” legal notice will go out to the website linking back to you requesting that the link go down or else legal action will ensue.  These legal takedowns usually come in the form of C&D or DMCA requests.

4.  Ripping Content Prior To Indexing

Another common Negative SEO tactic is to rip your content the moment it goes live and add it to a site that is crawled sooner than your site is.   This makes your site look like it’s duplicating content.

A great way to combat this is by keeping an updated sitemap & consistently resubmitting new content when published.

5.  Malicious Crawlers

Bots will send out crawlers to cause latency issues for users on a website.

The best way to combat this is to discover the IP addresses that Google, Yahoo, and Bing are using to crawl your website.  Then you can start blocking crawlers in IP ranges that outside of the major search engines.

All-in-all, it looks like Google is placing a larger onus on website owners to practice White-Hat SEO & monitor their websites.  It should be exciting to see how the Penguin update pans out, as it opened up a whole new world to Black-Hat SEOs to start going after sites that follow Google’s best practices.