Lately small businesses have been bombarded with strategies and tricks to improve SEO efforts.

As an employee hired solely for SEO reasons, I understand the importance of organic search rankings and the excitement that comes from seeing your company pop up after a Google search.However, companies need to remember that pay per click (PPC) advertising is still an important part of the marketing process.

Even if your businesses in ranking well in organic search, PPC marketing should still be on the top of the priority list. Unfortunately, many companies toss PPC marketing to this side once SEO efforts yield positive results.

For those who are unfamiliar, PPC marketing allows a company to place little ads either on the top or on the side of search engine results pages (SERP), and each time that ad is clicked the company has to pay a certain amount of money. This is a quick way for a business to get their ads at the top of major search engines, and is therefore primarily used by startup companies and companies who haven’t see their website rank well in organic search.

Consider a few of the benefits of PPC advertising:
• Keyword and Phrase Tracking—PPC advertising allows a company to learn quickly which keywords and/or phrases and ads yield the most profitable results. This takes much longer to track if you’re using SEO alone. Knowing this information will then, in turn, also help your future SEO efforts.

• Reliable—SEO rankings can fluctuate at any time, but a company can count on PPC marketing. If you pay for an ad to be at the top of a Google search page, it will be there. It also serves as a nice back-up in case your organic search ranking does fall short of your expectations.

• Competition—It can be very difficult to compete with dominant brands. However, PPC helps to keep things fair. If you can pay for that top spot on Google, you’ve got it. This will put your company’s ad right in the middle of all those dominant brands, which helps to even out the competition.

• Budget—Many companies think that PPC will force them to take out a small business loan, but companies can actually set their own budget. You can be as aggressive or as passive as you’d like to be, which puts you, the company owner, in total control.
PPC can offer these benefits to both small and large companies. Regardless of where your company falls on the SEO scale, PPC will always be important. Whether your company has taken a break from this type of advertising or has never given it a thought, it’s time to put it on the radar. Below lists 5 steps to getting started with PPC:

4 Simple Steps to Get Your Company Going with PPC
1. Search Engine—Just about every major search engine (and many local search engines) allows PPC advertising. The first step is deciding where you want to place your ads. Different search engines have different benefits, so don’t go running to Google without doing a little bit of research! Consider your budget and your company goals.

2. Keywords—It is important to consider which keywords you want to target. PPC ads are connected to specific keywords, so in other words, the ad will only be seen by consumers when the keyword/keywords are typed into the search box. Once you decide keywords that work for you, be sure to add them into the text and title.

3. Bidding—This is where PPC advertising gets a bit confusing. Your company has to pay the search engine every time someone clicks on an ad you placed on their search engine. The highest bidder then gets the best spot on that particular search page (usually at the top as opposed to on the side). This is the easy part. It is deciding how much money you should bid that gets a bit tricky. Consider this example:

- Let’s say you get one sale for every 100 clicks (a conversion rate of 1:100) and your product costs $10. This then means that you should not pay more than 10 cents per click if you want to break even. If the highest bid costs 30 cents, then it is not worth the money for your company.

4. Landing Page—You want to make sure that when someone clicks on your ad they are sent to a page that will allow them to buy the product. Make sure the page is organized and easy to use so that you don’t pay for a bunch of clicks that don’t give you a sale.

Amanda DiSilvestro is an expert writer on toll free numbers based in San Diego, California. She writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as workers compensation insurance. You can find more of her articles as well as vendors comparisons for your small business needs at Business.com.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Over Thanksgiving we were talking about family and comparing notes about how smart the latest toddlers in the family are when someone asked if I’d seen the video of the toddler who can’t figure out a magazine.

In the video, the young toddler tries to interact with a magazine like an iPad and keeps being frustrated.

If you haven’t seen this funny video,… it’s called ‘A Magazine Is an iPad That Does Not Work’

Do you understand what this toddler is trying to tell you… about your online marketing?

The expectation is that an iPad and your website should be interactive, and linked to ACTION.

When people reach your site, they should be able to point, click and get more information, to get access to videos, to interact with the content in order to move through your marketing funnel.

To be effective, to help you generate a lead and a sale, your website needs to have a clearly defined set of actions for prospects to take and then it needs to deliver.

But is that the case? Is your website doing this?

Most websites are still designed like a business brochure – which means that in terms of Internet marketing – they don’t work. They’re static, boring, and don’t deliver.

But they don’t have to be!

Well-designed and money making sites like FreshDirect.com exist. You know the grocery delivery service. It’s so easy to use that one family we know had arrived home to find a large order of candy delivered by Fresh Direct.

Turns out their 4 year old, used their iPad to place the order – the site is so easy and intuitive to use.

The point is that your site, whether you’re selling food, dental services or exercise classes needs to have a simple action sequence built into the design that prompts prospects to contact you, sign up for that free class, or exam. It needs to be as easy and intuitive to use as an iPad.

Here are few ideas to get you started.

10 Ways to Transform Your Existing Brochure Website Into One That Generates Leads and Sales

1. Map out the action sequence for the site. E.g. what you want prospects to do first second and third, starting with reading the headline that gives people a reason to stay on the page.

2. Use video to make your point. You can get in front of the camera if you want or just ad audio to an entertaining powerpoint set of slides.

3. Include audio and video testimonials from your happy customers to provide social proof you provide great value.

4. Always include a free offer that gets your prospects to give you their contact information, whether it’s to get a free report, watch a video, sign up for a free class, or free dental exam, or whatever.

5. Invite comments to blog posts and articles on the site.

6. Include surveys and share results. Everyone loves to share their opinion and find out what others are saying too.

7. Provide online scheduling. This is one my pet peeves. Every time I want to schedule a haircut, a ski lesson, or workout with my trainer, I have to play phone tag, which means I end up spending way less than I would with these service providers if they just provided online scheduling.

8. Include places for customers to share information. Small Dog Electronics in Waitsfield, VT lets customers upload pictures of their dogs. Sugarbush, where I ski, invites skiers to upload video.

9. Invite people to share your content, essentially doing your marketing for you. We use a handful of social media networking tools on our blog to increase readership with Facebook, Twitter, Google. See the blog to see how it’s done.

10. Use live chat. Nothing beats answering a prospect’s question in real time to develop a lead.

In case you’re not convinced let me give you one number to think about.

41%

That’s the number of people who watch our short intro video and then sign up to watch our free webinar. 41% of the people who visit www.clientsdelivered.com/smallbusiness decide to watch the webinar video.

How about your site?

What percentage of the people who visit, take the next action you want them to take?

For most businesses the conversion rate is less than a half of a percent, which is beyond terrible.

But you can easily change that by taking action today to make your site more than just a boring brochure, by using the 10 ideas listed above.

Or if you’d prefer, let my team do it for you. Just fill in the form at www.clientsdelivered.com/get-started/

To your success,

Charlie
MarketingforSuccess

P.S. Yes, I’m making my team available to you to do your website development, search engine marketing and social media marketing – if you qualify.

P.P.S. Over 3 million people watched the video mentioned earlier and they watched it because it’s funny and it points out the obvious.

Expectations have changed, and your website needs to do the same to transform visitors into sales.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Is it me or am I the only person that thinks that landing pages are the greatest invention since sliced bread?

I’m reflecting on this as I prepare to pull together an on-the-fly landing page for an industrial client that they’re going to use at a trade show. When the client approached me a few days ago and told me that they were going to a trade show in about two weeks and needed marketing materials, I jumped into action.

Here is my checklist… for creating an effective landing page on the fly.

1. Buy a domain name or names. This may seem obvious, but I’ve found myself waiting too long to buy domain names that are keyword centered around the offer. It’s natural to buy a domain for the name of the product, service or site. But take that extra step and explore domain names that your target audience might search on – especially if you’re in a niche. For example, one company serves the compressed natural gas industry and when I searched for domain names on specific products in that industry that customers might be searching for – they were ALL AVAILABLE! I bought them up and now I can use them to direct customers to the specific pages that they are interested in. So, look for those golden nugget names for your landing page.

2. Invest in design. Whether you are offering an information product or you are a more traditional business – don’t default to tacky. Your landing page is really your sales rep online. Would you buy a sales rep that showed up unkempt and disheveled? Even long copy landing pages can use good design. If you don’t have the budget for a designer and are using a WordPress platform, there is a new plugin called Premise that will create landing pages on the fly. If you have a bit more money to spend, try 99Designs, where you can get high-end design on a low-end budget.

3. Focus on the call to action. Another piece of advice that seems obvious, but isn’t when you get into the details. Really think about what you want your audience to do that will give THEM value and you a new lead. Sometimes we simply default to offering a download or emailing tips without thinking through the entire sales and marketing cycle. This is the mistake I’ve made. I’m currently in the process of doing A/B testing to see what lead generation magnet is most valuable to my visitors so that I can increase conversions.

4. Follow up. There are lots of creative ways to follow-up with your landing page visitors. In my case for the industrial client, I actually redirect them to a FREE assessment and then offer them the opportunity to schedule a FREE consultation. The “Assessment” is actually an online survey. This way I get their email into an email list AND then I start collecting data about my market. QuestionPro online survey software then sends me a notification every time someone fills out the survey. In addition to that, I forward them to the sales rep’s Tungle online scheduling account (that’s free) and this allows them to make an appointment for their free consultation.

5. Measure. Finally, don’t forget to set your baseline – even if it’s not online. Create a starting set of metrics that you can measure your process against. For example, if you’ve been selling offline, keep track of the marketing pieces that go out and what your response rate is to that. Then when you set up your landing page, start tracking how many people view it and how many people sign up. This is all easily done through Google Analytics – and another cool tool that I learned about recently is called Optimizely, that allows you to make changes to your site WITHOUT touching the code.

The bottom line is that a well-constructed landing page is like a digital sales person that never takes a vacation or lunch break. It’s gathering new leads and customers 24/7. And the only effort it requires is the time and energy it takes to set up.

The actual process of setting up a landing page can take 30 minutes or less, assuming that you have your marketing message and call to action already finished. You simply can’t afford not to use landing pages to generate leads or even sales as a significant part of your marketing strategy.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Imagine you just obtained a business loan to open up your own storefront in a popular shopping center, prime real estate.

However, just two shops down is a business that’s been around for thirty years and they sell the same products you do.

How can you compete with a business that is established and whose products are identical to yours?

This scenario is identical to a new online business professional who is just starting their business over the Internet, except instead of just one competitor you have thousands. For that reason you have to know how to compete and how to be the best you can be when it comes to your niche. The only way to do this is through understanding and researching your competition, and creating a following of your own.

With more than 6 million people utilizing search engines on a daily basis, you have the potential to earn hundreds of dollars in just one day, and that is just though the proper utilization of SEO tactics. The right content for your page can mean the difference between the first page of results (above all your competition) and the last page, where no one will know you even exist.

Take a look at the content of your competitor’s site, and (without copying copy written material!) create content related to your products and niche that offers more information and more connection with the consumer.

The creation of a strong splash page and the incorporation of a strong autoresponse system is the perfect way to keep clients that you have and increase your subscriber list. Who would you rather do business with, the business that sends you offers monthly or the business that you have to track down to find some sort or deal?

Precisely, you want to be the business that stays in touch with your clients and builds a rapport with those who are interested in your site. Taking your site to the consumer, rather than having them search for you, is being competitive.

While these are just a few ways to boost your presence among consumers you have to think about how you can get the upper hand over your competition constantly. Like young children competing perhaps, you have to stay on your toes and forge a true relationship with your consumers.

So, once your new store is set up and open for business put yourself in the shoes of the consumer, that is the only way to compete with your competition, and to win!

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

It’s awfully quiet…Nothing?… Really?

Making money with your website by leaving your profits to chance is like buying a lottery ticket. You might win –anything is possible – but the odds are against you.

If you’re serious about making money online…make testing part of your strategy. Let’s look at why testing matters and what to test and when.

Why Testing Matters
A couple of weeks ago I headed out after work for a quick 20 mile bike ride. Nice evening, not too much traffic – everything was going great until my rear tire went flat.

I thought, no problem, I’ve got spare tubes and a sleek, lightweight carbon fiber pump I paid a premium for. Within seconds I had the new tube in the tire. But when I went to inflate it, I discovered, much to my chagrin, that my pump didn’t fit the tire valve.

I’d never tested my pump. I didn’t know that I’d chosen a great looking and expensive pump that only worked on one type of tire valve. More importantly, it didn’t work on the valves I had with me. There I was by the side of the road with all the tools to fix a flat, but they didn’t work together to get me rolling again.

Is your web site broken down leaving you stuck?

Find out how to fix it >>

You have a home page, a couple of additional supporting pages, an email address for people to contact you. Your site looks great, but is it working to generate leads, sales and profits?

What’s the solution?

Testing!

You want to optimize your site’s performance so it brings in a steady stream of profits. Without testing, you won’t know what’s working and what’s not. Each element of your web site needs to be tested to see if it is actually doing the job you expect it to do.

Here are the top 3 things to test.

1. Your Marketing Message
Test the headline you put at the top of the page that tells people why they should stay on your site. You can use Google Ads to run split tests to two different pages and see which headline keeps people on the page the longest or which prompts the most number of people to contact you.

2. Your Free Offer
One of the fastest ways to generate leads with your site is to offer something for free, but just adding a free offer subscribe form on your page won’t get you the most leads. The key is to provide your site visitors with a compelling reason to give you their contact information.

Test the offers you provide, even if it’s just for something you are giving away, to see which offers generate the most leads and sales. The wrong offer won’t generate leads. Find the right one, and you can easily prompt dozens of people to contact you each day and double or triple your profits.

3. Your Page Design
The size, color and placement of different elements on the page determine how well your visitors understand what you want them to do. Changing the size and color of your headline and subhead, for example, can make all the difference in whether or not visitors take the action you want them to take.

For example, I recently did a test with the sign up form on my home page. Instead of asking people to sign up for my free report in two places at the top of the page, I designed a larger signup form and asked them once. The larger, single sign up form converted twice as well.

You could spend the next 10 years figuring out what works to sell online — or you could use proven strategies and techniques to get results right away.

Here’s the shortcut to online success >>

How Much Can Testing Improve Your Sales?
I had one client who was a big believer in testing. Every time I suggested a change to their site, they’d test it to see if they wanted to make it a permanent one.

Within the first three months that I worked with them, they tripled their lead acquisition and sales. Over the next three years we continued to test the elements of their site and ultimately increased their conversion rates by a factor of 17.

Want to increase your online sales by a factor of 17?

Here’s how >> 

Testing is the key. To make it simple for you, I’ve spent the last 10 years testing what works to get more people to come to your site, to contact you and to buy from you.

Many web site owners leave their online profits to chance. I know you’re smarter than that and would rather put proven techniques and strategies to use to jump-start your sales.

Don’t get stranded beside the road, as I did when I forgot to test my bike pump. Discover what works to make your web site a success.

To your success,

Charlie

P.S. Try this one test to evaluate whether you’re web site is working. Is it making a profit of $10,000 or more each month?

Smart people like you know when to stop doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If your web site isn’t making as much money as you want it to make, you know it’s time to take action and get back on the road to success.

Here’s how >> 

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

In the last week I’ve had two people ask me what kind of magic I’m doing.

They can’t believe that my business could be growing the way it is in this economy without some mysterious trick. (May was one of my top months ever.)

Magic? I can’t pull… off even the simplest of card tricks. But my business is steadily growing, even in a recession. Why?

For the same reason that the marketing firm that hired my son is taking off. Yes, my recent college graduate now works for an online marketing firm (what a coincidence!). They target Fortune 500 companies and are so busy too.

In case  you haven’t noticed it, there’s been a fundamental shift in marketing and advertising. Print advertising has shrunk so much that magazines like Fortune and Forbes, which used to be large-format, thick magazines can barely get enough ads to run a 40-page issue.

Fortune 500 companies have shifted their focus and advertising dollars to online marketing; savvy small business owners are doing the same. The problem is that very few people know how to get results on the web.

Marketing online isn’t the same as marketing in any other medium. To get results from your online marketing, you need to know what to do and how to do it. That’s why The Insider Secrets to Creating Web Sites That Sell has become my best-selling manual this year. It shows you how to not only get traffic to your site but convert it into leads and sales, even in a tough economy.

I’m sure your company has a website at this point, but is it working for you? Have you optimized its selling performance? Is your site bringing in leads and sales so fast that you can barely keep up? Do you know the rules of the online marketing game?

Want to win with your business? Don’t get left on the sidelines. Once your competitors discover how to make their online marketing work, you’ll be forever playing catch-up.

Make your website work to generate leads and sales. Find out how >>

To your success,
Charlie

P.S. In 1998 when I told my cousin, who was CEO of a Fortune 100 company at the time, about my online business efforts, he told me that I was ahead of the demand. He was right.

In 1998 I hardly made a dime online. But a year later, I sold my second website for an enormous profit. I used some of the profits to buy what has become a favorite haunt of mine — our ski condo in Vermont.

P.P.S. I may not be able to perform magic, but I don’t miss any online marketing tricks and neither will you with The Insider Secrets to Creating Web Sites That Sell >>

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

The best advice I ever got about blogging came from Anita Campbell, publisher of the award winning Small Business Trends with well over 100,000 subscribers.

It came on a day that I was feeling very down. I had been writing posts and…linking to other blogs, doing all the things I had read about but, my readership wasn’t increasing exponentially the way I thought it should.

That’s when Anita told me that attracting an audience was a lot more about persistence and consistency.  Building a thriving readership requires doing effective behaviors every single day and over time a sort of snowball effect will start happening.

Here are five easy-to-do daily strategies to incorporate into your blog marketing strategy.

1. Relate to your customer. The easiest way to get customers to hear you is to relate to them. How are you like them and how can you help them from your own learning experiences. Brainstorm and make a list of what you both like and dislike in your industry or niche. Write about how you are frustrated with “such and such” happens and how you overcame that frustration. Story-telling can be intriguing. Rope them in with your ability to relate to them through your own story.

2. Offer Solutions. Now that you have formed a relationship with the customer because you share the same likes and dislikes you can help them. You don’t have to be the decision-maker for them but simply offer different solutions to the problems or concerns. Even through your story you might have tried one solution and found that didn’t work and you tried another solution and found that was successful for you. You can point out that the first solution could have worked in perhaps a little bit of a different scenario.

3. Engage your customer. It could be that in your story you didn’t find a solution or maybe you want to hear how other people find a solution and what worked for them. Ask your customer direct questions in your blog and share from one another what worked and what didn’t work. Make sure that you follow through with commenting back to your questions. If you want your customer to speak up you need to let them know that they have been heard and their opinion does matter.

4. Get an expert. After your initial blog and you find out what people have tried. You could invite an expert in your field to help narrow the scope or explain why certain solutions work better than others. You will gain respect from your customer if they know they can go to your blog and find out the honest truths, the ins and outs and even get advice from a credible source.

5. A Note from your CEO. The face of the company is your CEO. People value the opinion of the top dog. Have your CEO contribute to the blog as an additional or the final piece of the topic at hand. Blog 1 was about your story and the introduction of the topic. Blog 2 was about offering solutions to the issue or concern. Blog 3 was about engaging your customer and learning from one another. Blog 4 was about offering credible advice from an expert. Blog 5 will close out your topic with a note from your CEO in regards to the topic at hand.

When you think about it, growing a blog readership is a lot like growing a flower from a seed.  With daily watering and sunshine it grows a little every day (it’s just invisible to you because the growth is all happening underground).

Then one day, a green shoot breaks through and you start seeing the fruits of your gardening. Blog marketing is very much the same.  Practice these daily behaviors with persistence, and you’ll see your readership grow.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

So you’ve told yourself you were going to use a marketing strategy that uses blogging and social media to build a loyal customer base.

And soon after, you found out exactly how difficult that would be.

There aren’t nearly… enough hours in the day or automated applications in the world to keep up with all the quality content that you’re going to need to keep those readers satisfied.

This is where “repurposing” blog marketing content becomes a sanity-saving survival strategy and a great way to reach a broader audience and get more visibility.

Let’s take a single event or idea and see how you can turn it into 10 different pieces of content.

1. Interview an industry expert.  Tweet to your community that you’re having the interview, then tweet out several lessons that you learned from the interview.  Remember Twitter is a microblog, so Tweeting is content.

2. Do a presentation.  Turn what you learned from the expert into a presentation that you can deliver either on slideshare or as a webinar. Don’t forget to insert your Slideshare presentation into your LinkedIn profile!

3. Record your presentation (audio, video) and upload to YouTube and Vimeo.  If you conducted your interview on Skype, use VodBurner to record the interview and post it up on Vimeo (if it’s longer than 15 minutes) or break up the interview into small parts and post it up on YouTube.

4. Use the video clips as posts on your blog with short introductions, or embed the video clips as part of an article.
Create a transcript of the presentation and make it a download.  Have your interview transcribed and make it available as a download.

5. Write a white paper based on the interview or presentation use it as a free gift.  Create a white paper using the material from the interview as supporting information.  Combine it with your own research and you’ll have a well documented download.

6. Create a reference guide based on the interview and presentation and publish it on your site as a keyword rich traffic attractor.

7. Break up the white paper into articles and post them as a series.  Article series are really popular and if you reference each preceding article, it will increase the time people spend on your site.

8. Submit your articles to bookmarking sites such as BizSugar, Digg and StumbleUpon.  Bookmarking sites are a great way to build an audience of new readers.

10. Send the articles to article banks such as ezinearticles.com.  Article banks or sites like Squidoo  or Hubpages.

11. Expand the white paper into an eBook and sell it.

12. Create an infographic to attract more visitors and go viral.

The possibilities with blog marketing are only limited by your imagination.  In fact, make a point out of living your day being on the lookout for content.  I carry a digital recorder and a flip cam with me everywhere I go.  I also make sure that I have a notebook with me where I jot down article ideas or headlines.

Another great way to repurpose content is to pay attention to the emails you send and the questions you answer.  I can’t tell you how many times people ask me questions on email and I answer them.

I’ve just recently realized that many of these answers are really blog posts or content in disguise.  I’ll bet the same is true for you.

Content is everywhere, you just have to focus on collecting it and getting the most out of it.  Follow these easy tips and you’ll no longer be a slave to content and get your blog marketing strategy down to a manageable task.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Wondering what big-time bloggers make?

It’s a lot more than you might think.

In these uncertain times, people who blog professionally are… more certain of their security than people who work for someone else.

You can make part-time or full-time income from blogging!

(Even if you don’t know the first thing about it)

Discover how to set yourself up to earn a great living as a popular blogger .

Use this link >>

Or even if you just want to see your existing business take off, the secret is in blog marketing.

Get started today.

To your success,
CharlieMarketingForSuccess

Sell More. Profit More. Live More.

P.S. It wasn’t until I added the blog on my web site that my online business saw the dramatic growth I’d always wanted.

Find out how you can do the same with blog marketing

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Jack Humphrey is well-known as the leader in blogging for dollars. He has taught thousands of people his exact system to bring in major profits from blogging. (He was the blogging expert I interviewed last year for our first Social Media Summit.)

Recently, he released a portion of his revenue numbers from 2010 and let me tell you… - they are off the charts! To think his blog is responsible for over $568,076 of revenue is mind-blowing.

Learn How Jack Profits >>

Jack has been running a training center called “Blog Success” for nearly 5 years now. In Blog Success, he teaches all of the exact methods he uses to create “authority blogs” that lead the pack in any market!

One of his students, Rusty Moore, has actually “become a player” in the VERY difficult fitness niche using blog marketing techniques he learned from Jack.

Recently, Rusty was able to do a product launch that generated over $8000 from a $17 eBook. Rusty’s blog marketing tactics generated ALL of those customers.

He simply used Jack’s proven profit formula!

Get access to the proven profit formula >>

Anyway, I wanted to let you know about Jack’s training center at “Blog Success” and let you know Jack is offering a $9.95 full-featured trial for just a limited time.

I don’t know how long he will keep the trial option active, but I highly recommend you give Jack’s blog marketing training program a try. He’s taught thousands of marketers how to make money blogging and you could be next.

Here’s how to get started >>

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..