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 Serving the global online business community since August 30, 2000 . . . . |
"Marketing Tools and Strategies that Produce Optimal Results"..
Make Your Web Site Sell With These 3 Steps to Improve Your Web Site Marketing
by Charlie Cook "I'm getting zero conversion on my Web site (no ezine sign-ups). What can I do to improve my lead generation and income?" - Beth, from Chicago If you have a web site or are thinking of building one you want it to do two things. You want it to generate leads for your business and help you grow your business. What should you do if your web site marketing isn't accomplishing these two tasks? Imagine you had a new car in your driveway that didn't start reliably or wasn't running well, you'd take it to your mechanic for a tune-up immediately. Forget the fact that you waited months to get exactly the color and options you wanted; you expect your car to work, to get you where you want to go. You should expect the same of your web site. Your web site marketing can generate a steady stream of leads and help you skyrocket your sales. This can be hard to imagine if you haven't experienced it, but believe me, it's true. What can you do if your web site marketign isn?t accomplishing this? My own site currently attracts 450 to 500 new qualified leads each week. I use a strategy I've developed over nine years of web site marketing. |
This simple strategy has been just as successful and profitable for my clients, in many cases increasing their leads from almost none to hundreds per week. Growing your business online is a three-step process. First, you help prospects find your site. Second, you help them qualify themselves. Third, you convert qualified leads into clients. So far, it's just common sense, but do you know which specific steps to take to achieve this online? Here's how to do it with your web site marketing: 1. Offer Solutions to Attract Visitors Use the site description that appears in your search engine listing or the copy in your Google Adword ads to motivate people to visit your site. The most effective way to do this is to describe the problem your products or services solve. 2. Give Site Visitors A Reason to Contact You Getting people to your site is the first step, but it doesn't count for much if you aren't able to convert site visitors into qualified leads. Give your site visitors a reason to contact you (and give you their contact information). Giving something away works for almost every type of business and can work for you, too. |
3. Convert Leads Into Paying Clients
Follow-up on a prospect's interest by giving them information that has use and value to their business. Give them reasons to trust you, more information about the problems you solve, and more examples of ways that you can help them as you've helped other clients. Tune up your web site - or build a new one that gets you where you want to go - with these three steps you'll and attract more and more clients each month.
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What's the Best Way to Increase Traffic to Your Web Site?
by Charlie Cook You built a web site to create a surge of inquiries and new business, but hardly anyone even drifts by, much less stays to learn about your company. Given the time and money you've spent, you're frustrated that your web site hasn't turned into a profit center overnight, and you're inclined to dismiss its revenue-generating potential. Don't! There are three excellent ways to bring people to your web site. 1. The Best Way to Attract Visitors Unquestionably the best way to channel a flood of visitors to your web site is to get it listed at the top of every search engine. If prospects can find your web site in the first ten spots on Google, Yahoo and MSN, you'll get plenty of visitors. Even a listing within the top twenty will bring in a steady stream. You know that search engine position depends on keywords and the way they are used on your site. Search engines look at the frequency of use on your page and number of links to relevant pages. If you've ever worked with the site code yourself to try to get to a top position in the search engines, you know that it is not obvious how to succeed at this. The experts (and many who claim to be search engine specialists are not expert) charge $12,000 to $30,000 and up annually, per site, to achieve and maintain top search engine positions.
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Thanks to top placements for several keywords, my site attracts over 35,000 unique visitors each month. You or someone in your firm can achieve this, too. Don't have the time to do your own search engine positioning or a budget of $12 to 30 thousand dollars for the task? Write me and I'll refer you to a reputable firm that can help you. 2. The 2nd Best Way to Attract Web Site Visitors Top search engine positions make a big difference, but if you don't want to invest the time or money to put your site at the top of the search engines, there is a virtually no-cost technique you can use to bring in qualified prospects. Thousands of online ezines and newsletters are hungry for content, and your prospects are always looking for ideas that will improve their businesses or their lives. Write short articles with ideas and information that your target market can use, send it to the ezines, and links from those back to your site will bring hundreds or thousands of prospects right to your 'door'. One article I sent out last December, 'What Santa Knows About Marketing' was picked up by over a thousand ezines, newsletters and web sites, and is still listed ten months later.
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3. The 3rd Best Way to Attract Web Site Visitors I love Google Ads and you should, too. They are simple to set up, you pay only when people click on your ads, and you can set daily budget limits. They look like the easiest way to attract qualified leads to your web site. Why aren't they the number one way to attract web site visitors? Because making Google Ads profitable is more complex than it first appears. Have you tried Google Ads? What were your results? Lots of companies use Google Ads, but few can justify the cost based on the sales generated. It turns out that to make your Google Ads pay for themselves, you need to pay careful attention to keyword selection, the wording of your ad, and the layout, wording, and links on the page that people are sent to from the ad. Given the challenge and the cost associated with search engine positioning, and depending on your particular product or service, Google Ads may be the best way to attract visitors. Use the approach outlined above to put them to work for your business.
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The Best Kept Web Site Marketing Secret
by Charlie Cook If you have a web site that's not pulling in prospects and sales, I have a marketing secret to share with you. Your sales and profits will increase as soon as you apply it. Whether you're marketing on the web, in print or in person, you are guaranteed to improve your web site marketing and make more sales. Here it is; people buy from you when you give them what they want. Sounds obvious, but most people don't apply this secret to their online and offline marketing. Many people think that the quickest way to improve their web site marketing and increase sales is to convince or 'sell' more prospects. Trying to convince people to buy your products and services is hard, not much fun and rarely works. In fact, this approach repels the majority of people who may actually want the products and services you provide. Your prospects are like you; they want and need to buy services and products, but hardly anyone wants to 'be sold'. When a prospect reads your brochure or visits your web site, they are thinking about their needs and desires. Once you focus your marketing on giving your prospects what they want, you'll see a leap in responses and in sales. Think about your products and services. Why do people want them? What's the first and most important concern your prospects have? What are their secondary concerns? Can you help them solve each of these problems and get what they want? |
Look at your ads, brochures, or website. Ask yourself the same questions prospects ask themselves when they view your web site marketing materials;
What is the most prominent element on the home page of your web site or the cover of your brochure? In most cases, it will be your company?s name. Does your company name describe your prospects' biggest concern? Does it give them a reason to believe you have what they want? Imagine you wanted to open a new bank account in your hometown. On Main Street you see two banks with large signs in the windows.
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There are dozens of reasons people buy. You may hire a business coach to help you make more money, a personal trainer to become a better golfer or tennis player. You may buy a new computer to increase your company?s productivity or a high definition TV to give yourself greater viewing enjoyment. Identify the reasons people buy your products and services and it's like finding the key to sales. What's the biggest secret to attracting all the clients you want? Stop trying to convince your prospects to buy and instead focus on giving them what they want. Once they see you as helping them, they?ll help you by buying your products and services.
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4 Steps to Selling More With Your Web Site
by Charlie Cook Most web sites are more like stage sets than real buildings; they make a good impression and they look substantial at first, but when you open a door, you end up back stage in the dark. They don't generate large numbers of leads, help build relationships with prospects or generate the desired volume of sales.
The architect would consider your ideas and objectives, create a coherent plan to meet your objectives. You'd review these and then she'd produce drawings and blueprints to guide the construction. You'd need a contractor to build your house, and the contractor would hire specialists to complete the job; carpenters, electricians, masons, roofers, etc. Once your home was completed, you'd need to maintain it; even a brand new house needs periodic attention. The architect would consider your ideas and objectives, create a coherent plan to meet your objectives. You'd review these and then she'd produce drawings and blueprints to guide the construction. You'd need a contractor to build your house, and the contractor would hire specialists to complete the job; carpenters, electricians, masons, roofers, etc. Once your home was completed, you'd need to maintain it; even a brand new house needs periodic attention. |
Building or Renovating Your Dream Web Site Can you imagine building your dream home without careful planning, or a clear sense of how the rooms would work together, or a blueprint? Before you build your web site, did you define how it would function, how it would get attention, and how it would generate leads and build profitable relationships? Did you have a web marketing blueprint? A web designer is like your building contractor. They will assemble your web site, but they can't tell you what the site is supposed to accomplish or how it fits into your overall marketing plan. Before you use a web designer you first need to understand what you want your site to do and how to structure it to convert prospects to clients. Diane Varner, a successful web designer in El Granada, California, asks prospective clients a series of questions about their marketing before she starts work for them. She wants to find out what their overall marketing strategy is and how their web site fits into it. Her expertise is web design; if a prospect needs help defining their web-marketing plan, she refers them to me. 4 Steps to A Web Site that Sells1. Create Your Web Plan and Marketing Content Before building or renovating your web site, you, too, should identify how your web site fits into your marketing strategy. Clarify and delineate the actions you want visitors to take and how to structure your site to get prospects to contact you and buy your products and services. Organize site content and pages to mirror prospects' decision-making process, moving them step-by-step towards a sale. Write content that motivates prospects to continue reading and browsing your site and includes appropriate use of keywords to help boost your search engine rankings. 2. Hire a Web Designer/ General Contractor Once you have a plan and the supporting marketing copy ready, find a web designer who can put these elements together to create an easy-to-navigate site whose overall look and feel supports your positioning objectives. |
Many web designers function as general contractors and will sub-contract the programming required to create forms, manage databases, email or online shopping cart systems.
3. Market Your Web Site Most people make the mistake of waiting until their site is built to think about marketing it. If you started with the previously defined web plan, you will have avoided this mOney-losing blunder. But don't assume that people will find your web site on their own. Use free promotional activities such as distributing your articles to get attention. Consider advertising in newsletters and/or using pay-per-click advertising. 4. Maintain Your Web Site Just like that dream house, a web site needs regular upkeep and updating. Allocate the time and money to see that the site is well maintained, whether you learn to update text yourself, have someone in your company do it, or give the job to an outside professional. The beautiful home you carefully planned and built creates the physical context for you to eat, sleep, relax and enjoy family and friends. Your web site should create the marketing context to help you get prospects' attention, build relationships, and generate leads and s.ales. Use the four steps above to build or renovate your web site and you'll have a site that is more than a flimsy stage set; you'll have a web site that will help grow your business.
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