If you live in the greater Phoenix, AZ, area and are interested in how you can market your local business using article marketing, I’ll be teaching a 3-session coarse at Paradise Valley Community College, starting Saturday, March 6.

One of the five deadly mistakes of home page design is poor use of copy and copy optimization techniques. When your home page says the right things in the right way, it will attract and convert more members of your target market.

There are areas of home page copy that you need to think about and work on until it is optimized for your ideal clients. Here are some starter guidelines for each one …

One of the six questions your home page, landing page, squeeze page or sales page must answer is “Do you understand my needs?”

Basically, they want to know that you understand them … if you can illustrate that you do, then they’ll opt in to your list, buy your products and hire your services. But if you can’t show them that you understand their needs, they’ll click away and find someone who does.

So, how does a web page answer this question?

One technique for growing a responsive and profitable list is to offer a physical gift in exchange not only for the person’s information but a “shipping & handling” fee, as well.

This technique is becoming more and more popuulat because the psychology behind this tactic is that the person is now in the habit of buying things from you, and therefore will be more responsive to your offers down the line.

Typical physical gifts are light-weight and, therefore, don’t cost much beyond $5 to ship. These light-weight gifts include:

This week I’m going to talk about audio and video opt-in incentives. An opt-in gift needs to be a sample of what you have to offer, so not all of these options will work for your business. I’m listing these suggestions to help jump-start your creative process.