Lessons in Marketing from Publishers Clearing House
You know Publisher’s Clearing House right? They’re the ones who can show up at your door with balloons and flowers and a big ‘ol $10,000,000 check (at least that’s what you see on TV).
Remember how they used to send that thick packet of endless paperwork through the mail? You’d have to sift through magazine offers, “official looking” letters stating that you may be a finalist and then spend a half an hour affixing stamps to little boxes that told them whether or not you’d like a lump-sum check or an annuity if you won the grand prize.
They, like most companies have moved online and if you ever wanted a big lesson in marketing, it’s worthwhile to subscribe to their “updates”. They have to the best in the business when it comes to getting you to take action – not only in the subject lines of their emails, but in the way that they word the email itself, all the way through the process of upselling you on dirt-cheap offers once you’ve clicked a link and moved onto their website.
Here are just some of the subject lines that they use:
- (First Name), Review At Once!
- (First Name), next steps…
- (Last Name), Beneficiary Claim Information!
- Failure to open could cost you $1 million this (date)
- Not Opened! (First Name), find out now!
- Issued. (Last Name) Passport to Lifetime Prize Eligibility.
- (Last Name), Winner Selection Range Notice!
- VERIFIED! Winner Selection Authorized!
Notice how none of these subjects actually promise anything but get you curious enough to open the email itself. Which, after all, is the whole point of a good subject line.
Once opened, most of the contents are in HTML so that they can include flashy graphics and the like. Here are some samples of opening text in these same emails:
- Will the Prize Patrol arrive at the (last name) residence?
- (Last Name) Access Pass Issued for $1,000 A Day for Life Prize eligibility!
- (First Name) as the Rightful Owner of a unique SuperPrize Number…
- WARNING! (first name), $1,000,000.000 (date) SuperPrize at Stake!
- Over (number) people from (state) have already won! You could be next!
- Five Thousand Dollars a Week for Life at stake. (FIRST NAME), Review at Once.
- Forthcoming (last name) SuperPrize number eligible to be selected as a winner!
- (first name), $5,000.00 a Week for Life is at stake!
In almost all cases they use your first name, last name or State in which you reside in order to get your attention. They also use phrases like “rightful owner”, “you could be next”, “review at once”, or “at stake”.
Within the content they usually let you know that your going to miss out if you don’t take some kind of action today and while the law prohibits them from requiring you to purchase one of the products they offer you, you’ll still have to go through the entire process of viewing the products they have and then choosing a very large “Next” button at the bottom of the offers in order to move on.
Even if you don’t have any interest at all in the “Prize Patrol” showing up at your door, it’s worthwhile to subscribe to their updates just to see how they’re marketing to you and the process that they take you through in order to do so.
Rare Quality Tips From Google
The Google Panda update took many webmasters by surprise taking previously high-ranked sites and dropping them nearly off the face of the planet. Many people believe that Panda “continues” as more websites take a hit, but, you may be surprised to know that Google has stated that over the course of this year there will be over 500 algorithm changes. That’s leaving a lot of website owners frantically wondering if their site will be next.
In a very specific blog post about this update, Google actually gives some guidelines that website owners can follow in order to make sure that their site is one of the high-quality sites that Google will give credence to. I’ve covered the same list of items below that Google gives you on their blog post but have also added a little bit more of an explanation to them.
I don’t work at Google so what I personally have to say about them is really just what’s been learned since I started working online over 14 years ago.
According to Google, here’s what counts as a “high quality” site (my notes are in italics below):
Would you trust information presented in the article?
Generally speaking, the level of trust that a person gives to a blog post is dependent on the reader. It makes me think of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. However, keep in mind that in this instance, the “beholder” is Google.
Is the article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well or is it more shallow in nature?
It’s usually easy to pick these out of the bunch. Keep in mind that this also doesn’t mean that the article needs to be exceptionally long. I myself have written very short blog posts just stating some facts I felt you, as my reader would want to know. Shallow, at least in my opinion, would be those articles that talk about a topic giving facts that anyone on the planet already knew; it doesn’t expand on the thought nor give you additional ideas to consider.
Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
The way I read this is “Has the owner of the site done nothing but spin the same article over and over again?”
Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
This is a biggie and begs the question of exactly how the site is taking credit cards in the first place. I’m not sure how Google is specifically referring to this but if someone takes PayPal for example as a payment method then yes, someone will likely be comfortable with it. Now, Google may be specifically referring to the website itself being the credit card processor. I don’t know about you, but I’m uncomfortable these days even handing my personal information over to a general website; even if it is a big brand name. The whole SONY and PlayStation fiasco’s lately come to mind.
Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
In other words, does the article seem to be written by someone who has a command of their language, write well and state facts that are in fact true.
Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
A great example of this would be this site. People come here to learn about Twitter and Online marketing in general. Truth be told, when I started this site way back when, I didn’t specifically head out to talk a lot about Twitter, but lots of people seemed very interested in it so I posted a lot of information on it. On the other hand, if I had set out to create a site about “acne scars” because a lot of people were searching on it, then this would fall into the latter category.
Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
This post is a great example. Because technically it’s not “original” since I’m only telling you here what Google has stated on their own blog post. However, while that’s all well and good, sometimes Google can be a little cryptic and general in nature which is why I always try to expand on the topics based on what I’ve personally learned. I read this item from Google as saying “is this just the same re-hashed old information or is this something new and exciting?”
Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
If you look at one page about a particular subject and then look at another page what differences do you see? Which one is better than the other one and why? It sounds a little bit like a paper you’d have to write for English class doesn’t it? I think the key word here is “substantial”.
How much quality control is done on content?
I honestly don’t know how to re-phrase this. As a reader, I don’t quite know how you’d decipher “quality control”. My guess is that if you’ve read the article once and then gone back to read it again, you’d have seen updates to the article? I’d welcome some input from readers on this one.
Does the article describe both sides of a story?
This brings to mind a post I did on RAP Bank. In that post I was actually a little harsh of RAP Bank because I was comparing it to Clickbank and added plenty of pros and cons. The owners of RAP Bank actually contacted me and helped me sort out a few of the facts. I then went back in and made some updates. While there are some products that I genuinely cannot say one bad thing about (like my beloved web hosting account at HostGator), most products have their good points as well as other things they can improve on. This is the point I believe Google is getting at.
Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
Pretty self-explanatory but for the record I read this as “if you want news, you go to known news sites such as CNN, ABC, NBC, etc. If you want information about how to use Facebook, you’d visit Mari Smith, if you want information on SEO you’d likely visit SEOBook.com.
Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
Again, I read this as “duplicate content”. Mass producing anything, including articles, etc., generally doesn’t produce a high-quality product. But it could also be argued that sites that do have a lot of contributors (even Google themselves) have content that’s produced by a large number of creators and spread across a large network of sites. Thankfully, one rule doesn’t apply to the whole.
Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
Sometimes we’re in a hurry. All of us. And this causes misspellings, incorrect grammar, and little mistakes that otherwise would go unnoticed. Again, I think this rule is just a small part of the whole criteria; couple this rule with 5 others and you probably don’t have a very well rounded site.
For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
Again, pretty self-explanatory. I’d trust health-related information (or the equivalent thereof) to Mayo Clinic over Find My Disease dot com.
Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
If someone mentioned the name “Aaron Wall” you’d likely know him as the owner of SEOBook.com (depending on the circles you run in). If someone mentioned the name “Matt Cutts” you know him as Head of Google’s SPAM team. And hopefully when you hear the name “Kristine Wirth” you know you’re getting helpful advice from a friendly voice on the internet.
Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
Are you getting a thorough overview of the topic being discussed or does most of it sound like fluff?
Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
If someone posts an article that tells you what Facebook is, that’s totally obvious and, according to Google, not exactly the best kind of article to write. However, I take a little issue with this one because on my other website where I talk specifically about local online marketing, I need to bring it down to a level that is obvious to you and me but not quite as obvious to folks who don’t dabble online nearly as much as we do. I can tell you from experience that whenever someone says “keywords” to a plumber, he may have heard of the term but isn’t quite sure what it’s all about. (No offense intended to any plumbers out there who are well-versed in SEO).
Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
Again, pretty self-explanatory.
Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
You know sites like these. As a matter of fact, one in particular that I was very disappointed in was a well-known AA baseball team in my area whom I wouldn’t even link to in a Facebook post I made about it because there were so many ads on the site that navigation was nearly impossible.
Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
In other words, is it written so well that you’d find it in a print publication? I think this one once again falls into the category of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. This post for example, I wouldn’t expect to be in a print publication simply due to it’s inherent nature. I’m not writing a novel here nor do I expect this to be published in PC Magazine or any other kind of print publication. Perhaps they are just referring to the quality of the topic.
Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
Not just “here’s the facts, go do your thing” but rather, here’s the facts and why they’re important.
Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
Once again, pretty specific.
Would users complain when they see pages from this site?
This one actually made me chuckle. When you’ve been online for as long as I have, you realize that no matter what you say or how factual it is someone will have a complaint about it. It’s just the way it is. However, I think what Google is saying here is that if they ran across an article that was seriously a waste of their time so much so that they’d complain to others about it, then we have a winner. If you take my aforementioned opinion above about the AA Baseball team website, then this fits the bill.
All in all, I think Google has done a great job of letting us know at least some of the criteria they look for. After reading through all of these different bullet points that they gave us I can’t help but think of EzineArticles.com who really took a huge hit in the search results. If you have ever read or even re-posted an article from there you know how some of them can be exceptional while others are quickly written and don’t contain a whole lot of substance.
I’m interested in your thoughts. Feel free to post below!
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