All too often I hear horror stories from people pouring money into Google Adwords and other Pay-per-click advertising who aren’t getting more than a trickle of results. What’s the secret to converting this investment into huge sales? With a great web marketing strategy.
Find out in this week’s website marketing article >>
Charlie
Small Business Web Marketing Ideas That Get Results
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Most web sites don’t successfully generate more than a small trickle of sales. Is yours one of them?
Let me guess. You have a web site and it may be attracting visitors, but it’s only generating a couple of sales each week, if any. Is the volume of traffic the problem?
It’s true that you need visitors in order to convert them to buyers, but even getting thousands of visitors a day won’t guarantee a single sale. So you turn to your web designer for the answer to the problem. Your web designer should know what to do, right?
No!
Marcia called me from Chicago. Thanks to some top search engine positioning, her web design firm’s site gets around four thousand visitors a day. Wow! Even I’m impressed by that number. With that kind of traffic, Marcia’s firm should be generating between two and four hundred leads a day and have more business than they can handle.
When I asked Marcia what their conversion rate was – how many leads they generated from their site – she told me that it was only one lead per month. That’s only one lead out of 120,000 visitors.
Ouch! With all the interested prospects that stop by their site but never contact them, Marcia’s firm is losing millions of dollars of potential business a year, and their site was built by some great web designers.
Building a website is like building a house. Given enough time and lumber, you could throw up some kind of structure that you might call a house even without any blueprints. Of course, the plumbing might not work and the kitchen might end up on the third floor.
But you wouldn’t hire a builder to put up your new home without a plan. You’re smarter than that. The first thing you’d do is find an architect to draft a plan for your house. Once you’d worked out a plan that you liked, you’d find a builder to turn your plan into reality.
Did you ask your web designer to build your site without first giving them a marketing plan and the marketing copy they needed to create a winning site? Whoops, you and 97% of web site owners did the same thing and got the same results.
Web designers build sites, but they don’t create your web marketing strategy or the master plan to start with. And without a master marketing plan to get prospect’s to contact you and to convert them to buyers, no matter how much you spend on your site, it won’t sell your products and services.
It’s not your web designer’s job to map your online selling plan, they just build sites. If you told your home contractor you wanted an all black granite kitchen, they’d build it whether it was a good idea or not.
Web designers and carpenters get paid to create what the owners want. And if you don’t know how your site should be structured to generate sales, don’t count on your web designer to tell you what to do.
If you want a web site that generates leads and converts them to buyers, you’ll need to give your web designer the compelling marketing copy and the marketing strategy and plan for your site to follow.
With a web site marketing and sales strategy in hand, your web designer can do their job and help you build a web site that sells. Without it you’ll waste your money.
Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Gets Results
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“I’ve been told by my webmaster that SEO is a waste of time and I shouldn’t bother. Is he right? Does search engine optimization still work?”
– Phil from Austin TX
It’s a question I’ve been asked more than once. I’ve also had clients tell me that they’ve hired search engine firms to help them with their search engine optimization but after spending thousands of dollars and waiting for months, seen no appreciable change in traffic to their sites.
– Is it a worth spending the time and money to make your site search engine friendly?
– Will it make a difference in the number of people who visit your site?
– Or would you be better off spending your money on pay-per-click advertising? Should you bother with any of it?
Absolutely. Search engine optimization, that is, helping the search engines put your site at the top of their listings, is the single most effective way to build your business.
Put your site in the top ten listings or the top few spots for the keywords your prospects use to find your products and services, and you can make a lot more money. Of course once you have lots of traffic you’ll need to know how to convert it into sales.
Want to know the secrets to getting all the business you can handle? Find your web marketing answers >>
Sugar For Your Site?
If you want a quick energy boost, you might grab a candy bar. You get a surge of energy, but when the sugar has burned through your body an hour or so later, you feel tired.
To build the stamina to get through the day feeling great, you eat a balanced snack of protein with some carbohydrates that will keep you going and build muscle.
Pay-per-click advertising is like sugar. It provides almost instantaneous results, but it’s short-lived, and to reenergize your web site marketing you need to buy more and more. Each time you spend money on advertising you get a handful of visitors, but to keep them coming in you need to spend again.
Search engine optimization or helping the search engines give your site a top ranking is a better balanced diet. It’s harder to put to use, but it has longer-term benefits. For example, each time you get another relevant site to link to yours, you help your search engine ranking for months, if not years to come.
Where should you spend your time and money to attract more buyers with your web site marketing? Use this link >>
Where to Spend Your Promotional Dollars to Start?
If you’ve allocated a thousand dollars a month to promoting your web site, I recommend that you spend half of that on optimizing your site and half on pay-per-click advertising. Site optimization can take months, in the meantime, use pay-per-click advertising to bring in prospects.
When to Shift Your Promotional Spend to SEO?
After the first 6 to 12 months, shift your efforts and your resources to concentrate on your search engine marketing efforts. I spend less than 10% of my promotional dollars on pay-per-click advertising and use it primarily to test sales headlines or book titles. I spend 90% of my web-marketing budget on making my site even more search engine-friendly and keeping it at the top of the search engine listings.
Yes, SEO still works! When people find your site in the top 10 or even top 20 listings on Google, they’re much more likely to buy from you, link to your site and want to joint venture with you.
What should you know about SEO?
Before you hire an SEO firm or ask your webmaster to take over your online promotional efforts, find out what it is you should be paying them to do. Many SEO tasks could easily be done by a real or virtual assistant.
And don’t assume your webmaster is an SEO expert, either. Only a few are. Web work is very specialized. Web programmers and web designers should know the basics of SEO to do their work well, but rarely are they SEO experts.
Step 1 – Understand the core SEO strategy that will put your site at the top of the search engines.
Step 2 – Give your webmaster and assistants a clear map of SEO tasks to do every month to help you generate more traffic, more leads and more sales.
Step 3 – Make sure your web site converts all the traffic you’re getting into leads and sales.
Want the details? Use this link to get the bonus special report on search engine placement. Start here to improve your web marketing >>
– Charlie Cook
Advanced Web Marketing Ideas
Work
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“My web site is just breaking even. Despite getting an average of a thousand visitors a week, I’m just making enough sales to cover the cost of my pay-per-click ads. How can I increase my conversion rate?”
– Marla, online business owner
Are you struggling to get more visitors to your site to become buyers? Do you want to move beyond sluggish sales and transform your site into a real money-maker?
When I looked at Marla’s site I saw the problem right away. It wasn’t the products she was selling. Marla’s site was only getting a trickle of sales because she was…
Breaking the Rules!
No, Marla wasn’t doing anything illegal but she was violating the key marketing rules that anyone needs to follow to make money with their website.
Are you breaking the rules with your web site too?
Web marketing is just like any sport you play. Whether it’s golf, tennis, bowling or online marketing, to even be considered a player you need to know the rules of the game. Wouldn’t you agree?
Below I’m going to give you some of the most important web marketing rules to follow. In upcoming emails I’ll detail how to keep score and which techniques to use to become a master player so you can be a consistent winner and put yourself on the podium. It’s all about helping you become a winner – at marketing online.
Want to win with your web site? Start by discovering all the rules of marketing online. Use this link >>
To win online (and offline) you need to know the rules of marketing your business.
Imagine playing golf without knowing which direction to hit the ball, or not knowing when or where to file your taxes. When you don’t know the rules, not only can you lose, you can get into a heap of trouble. Discover which simple rules to follow instead and you’ll come out on top.
Web Marketing Rules
(I’ve included three below to help you get started.)
1. Lead With the Solution
One of my clients sells specialized skin care products. At the top of her home page she listed “Pimples – Scars – Blemishes – etc” Below this headline she had “before” pictures of some the worst cases she had treated. If you scrolled down the page, you’d get to both the “before” and “after” photos and the stories of her successful treatments, but the top of her page was literally scaring people away.
Clearly state the primary solution you provide at the top of your home page and you’ll attract a lot more clients.
2. Start Conversations
It’s rare that a first time visitor to your site will pull out their credit card and buy from you right away. After all, why should they? They just met your online business and they don’t know you or trust you yet.
Successful small business owners tell me that once they have a conversation going with a prospect, they can convert more than 50% to buyers. Think of your site as the beginning of a conversation.
You may not be able to convert 50% of visitors to buyers, but your site should prompt at least 7% to 25% to contact you and so continue the conversation. Start more conversation with prospects and you’ll convert more into paying clients.
3. Build Relationships to Build Profits
Unless you’re Amazon.com or Apple or some other large corporation, your competitive advantage lies in the quality of the relationship you have with your prospects. In most cases the brand your selling is you.
People buy from people. Continue to engage their attention, educate them and give them the solutions they need, and your sales will continue to grow.
Want to build your online profits. Use this link >>
Knowing how to play any game and how to play well are two different things. I know the basic rules of golf, but give me a golf club and you’d have to clear the course of anyone who wanted to avoid injury and give me couple of days to actually finish a full round of 18 holes.
You may know the basic rules of marketing online, but do you know what you need to truly succeed?
The good news is few if any of your competitors know or apply the basic rules to web marketing. They may understand the importance of getting traffic to the site and converting visitors to buyers, but few know how to do it well.
When you discover what to do and start to follow the rules with your web marketing, you’ll instantly put your online business far ahead of your competition. Winning online isn’t automatic but it’s a heck of lot easier when you know the rules of the game.
Want to win online with your website marketing?. Use this link >>
Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Work
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“My web site gets hundreds of visits a day, but hardly anyone ever contacts me much less buys from me. How do I fix my site?”
– Phil S., a manufacturing equipment broker, Chicago, IL
Do you have a web site?
Wish it generated more leads and more sales? If your web site worked the way you wanted, your online marketing would work for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to generate revenue.
I looked at Phil’s website and found a professionally designed, good looking site, but it was missing the key elements that would let people know they are in the right place or help them discover the value of his services and products, and motivate them to contact him.
Phil’s problem wasn’t generating traffic; it was getting the visitors that came to his site to stay long enough so he could convert them to clients. Most web site owners focus all their attention on getting people to their site.
Big mistake.
In the last 7 years at our house we’ve had two wall ovens where the electronics went bust. The ovens looked fine from the outside. They opened, the electric coils were in there, but you couldn’t use them. They wouldn’t cook a cookie much less a turkey. Without working control panels, they was nothing more than large and costly wall ornaments in our kitchen.
A web site without a system for controlling where visitors go is the same thing, nothing but a costly online ornament. To make it work you need to have a system that converts visitors to buyers.
Want a marketing system to make your web site sell? Use this link to find out how >>
If you have a web site, your biggest concern should be converting the traffic you get to leads and to sales. You want to manage the flow of visitors so they move easily through your site and contact you and buy from you. Once you’re site works to do this then you can shift to focusing on attracting more traffic.
Phil had the same problem most of my clients have with their web sites. He was getting traffic but wasn’t converting it to leads or sales. A complete site makeover was in order, but Phil didn’t want to wait months while every page was redesigned, rewritten and rebuilt.
Here’s the quick fix that I recommended to Phil, one I recommend to many of my clients. This can usually be done with your existing page template design within a couple of weeks.
** Web Site Marketing Quick Fix **
1. Replace Company Name With Compelling Marketing Message
Most web sites put their company name or product name in large type at the top of the page. When a prospect first finds your site this is the quickest way to send them away. What you want instead is a marketing message that convinces site visitors to stay and read more. You’ve only got a few seconds to capture their attention; make the most of it.
2. Motivate Prospects to Give You Their Contact Information
One of the most frustrating marketing blunders is to have someone who is looking for the solution you provide – find your web site and then leave without at least contacting you, if not buying from you. The simple fix is to offer them something for free in return for their contact information. That way you can follow up with them and help them get to know you, trust you and buy from you.
3. Rewrite the Homepage Text With Copy To Engage and Educate
Ever have a teacher that put you to sleep? Just providing information about your products isn’t enough to keep your prospects’ attention or pique their interest or convince them to buy. What you want to do is create a dialogue with them instead of lecturing them about your products or services.
4. Create a Sequence Of Actions For Prospects to Take
Once you’ve worked out the key elements of copy on your homepage, use the information and design to move visitors to action. The secret to doing this is to use size, location, color and other design elements to lead visitors’ eyes around the page and get them to do what you want them to do – to contact you and buy from you.
Want to fix your website marketing? Use this link to find out how >>
Whether your site gets a trickle of traffic or a flood, the critical factor to your success is how many people you convert to buyers. Use the four steps above to fix your site and watch your sales increase.
Typically my clients have seen leads increase by 300% to 500% just by implementing this quick fix. After the quick fix, we go to work retooling the site design and every element of the web marketing process. The result? Additional increases in leads and sales by factors of 10 to 15 times.
Is your site in need of a fix?
If your site isn’t working to sell now, don’t wait. Each day you delay is costing you money in lost sales. Get the details on how to transform your site and start generating more leads and sales. Use this link to improve your web marketing >>
– Charlie
Web Marketing That Gets Results for Small Business Owners and Marketers
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I’m big on making lists and then using them to guide what I do so I can make the most with the least amount of effort. I’m not lazy, it’s just that I want to get my work done so I can move on to the next project or get out the office door at 5:30 and get in some exercise before dinner.
When I built my first web site back in the late ’90s I had a short Internet marketing list. It included:
* Launch web site
* Get traffic
* Make money.
Look familiar?
I love short lists but if you’ve tried doing the above three things you discovered that there is more to successful web marketing. You can’t just launch your web site and expect to flood your site with traffic. And even if you have a flood of traffic it doesn’t mean your site will generate more than a trickle of sales. Right?
When I launched my first site I knew that traffic was one of the keys to making money but the trickle of visitors my site initially received was painful to watch. So what’d I do?
You guessed it. I made a list. I made a list of the most effective ways to generate traffic. Then item-by-item I went through the list and tested each idea until my site was getting hundreds of thousands of visitors a month.
Want to know how to the same for your site, get hundreds of thousand of visitors each month? Use this link and I’ll show you my web marketing secrets >>
Online traffic is money and I sold my second site within 18 months of launching it for four times the cost of the average home or close to a million.
That was over seven years ago and ever since I’ve been identifying the most effective ways to get traffic to your site and to convert it into cold hard cash. Here’s what’s on my current web marketing list:
1. Give people the products and information they want to market their business online and offline so they become even more successful. I’m not into trying to sell people, but I do like helping people.
2. Build long-term win-win relationships with clients. I don’t want to just sell a customer a one-time solution but to be your long-time marketing go to guru.
3. Use my website to build a massive list of qualified prospects. When I add 20% more people to my list that directly translates into 20% more income or more money I can spend on my family or on ski trips.
4. Stay-in-touch with prospects and clients. I get tons of great feedback from my readers, but what would happen if I stopped emailing you? My sales would fall like a stone.
5. Continue to increase the conversion rates at every step in the web marketing process. Whether you’re a math wiz or not you know that if you add 10% here, 20% there and 15% elsewhere in the process it has a cumulative effect. Multiply these and you can easily increase your sales 50% or more. (One client – tactic by tactic – increased sales by 1500%.)
That’s my short list of web marketing goals.
What’s on your web marketing list?
If you have a list of web marketing goals that’s a start, but goals alone won’t pay for your new car or vacation home. The next step is to move from goals to action and to results. Want to know how to do that online?
To get results online you need to know which traffic and sales generating tactics work and how to apply them. Use this link to find out how which web site marketing tactics work >>
What’s the information you want to grow your online sales?
The questions I get from people fall into the following five groupings. See if these are the ones you’ve been asking yourself.
1. How do I make money with my website?
2. What’s the best way to get tons of traffic to my site?
3. How do I grow my list of qualified prospects like crazy?
4. How can I use email to skyrocket my sales?
5. Once I get people to my site how do I convert prospects to buyers?
6. Who can I trust to help me grow my online sales?
If you’ve been asking yourself one or more of these Use the following link to get the answers to your website marketing >>
Whether you’re a list maker or not, it makes sense to find out what works to grow your business online. When you know which tactics to use you’ll attract more prospects, more buyers and more sales.
Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Get Results
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Most small business owners have the keys to their office even if a secretary is there and opens the door before them. It makes sense, you pay the rent, it’s your company, you should have a set of keys to the building. Right?
The same is true of your business website. You paid to have it built, you pay to run it and you own it.
Do you have the login information for your site? Your web site login information is like the keys to your office or your car.
Do you have a backup of your site on your computer in case something happens to your web site hosting company?
Recently I’ve gotten a number of calls from small business website owners who wanted help revising their under performing sites but in far too many cases they didn’t have the login information so they couldn’t access their own sites. That’s a big problem and makes it impossible to fix your site.
Ted was one of those who called. He had a real estate site that was getting lots of traffic, a couple hundred visitors each day, but wasn’t generating any leads. He’d called me and wanted to know what changes to make to convert all the visitors he was getting into leads and sales but he didn’t have the login information for his site.
His previous web designers had the login information and Ted felt awkward getting it from them. They insisted they had done a create job for him even though the site wasn’t doing what he wanted it to do, bring him qualified leads. It was like having a new car in the driveway that he didn’t have keys to and couldn’t drive anywhere.
Do you have a website that’s been built for you but not helping you move your business forward? If you do, why aren’t you doing something about it? It’s just a matter of getting the keys and discovering how to convert visitors to buyers >>
If you own a web site you are entitled to the login information and to set and change the password any time you want. That way if you’re unhappy with the results of your site and want someone else to take over, you have the keys to the site.
If you haven’t done so already:
1. Get and keep a copy of the login information for your site.
2. Track the performance of your site, the number of weekly visitors and leads generated.
3. If you’re not getting results – take the keys away from the firm that is wasting you money and losing you business.
4. Find someone who can help you improve your web marketing strategy and work with them to turn your site into a gold mine.
In case you don’t have it already get the Insider Secrets to Creating Web Sites That Sell >>
– Charlie
Web Marketing Ideas You Can Bank On
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I hired a professional to make my promotional marketing video ideas and in response I’ve been getting lots of questions about:
– What equipment is best to get (what model camera, etc.)
– What software is needed to load the videos on to a web page or onto youtube
Since I didn’t make or load mine, in this case I don’t have the answers. Your ideas? Add a comment below?
– Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Work
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How many TV commercials and ads actually work?
You’re watching TV, one of those channels that still have ads and the commercial break starts. When it ends how many caught your interest and do you remember the products they were promoting?
Most TV ads are a waste of money. They:
– Are totally forgettable,
– Don’t define grab your attention,
– Use humor but aren’t funny,
– Forget to clarify the problem the product or service solves,
– Neglect to feature the products benefits,
– Miss including the call to action,
– Suffer from poor copywriting.
And now it’s easier than ever for anyone to put up a low-cost video online as part of their small business marketing strategy. Yikes! Will we see a proliferation of the same type of lousy video commercials that businesses pay good money to have run on TV?
I hope not! To get you headed in the right direction I’ve posted a selection of the best TV ads and commercials
I could find. You can view them at www.video.marketingforsuccess.com
– Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Works
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“Charlie can you recommend a good solid affiliate web marketing program like Clickbank or commission junction? I have tried SEO and SEM and pay per click in the past and that did not work.” Troy W.
If you’re looking for an affiliate program that will make your online sales take off without having to work to the bone – forget it. It doesn’t exist. Clickbank is a great affiliate program and if you have a top converting eProduct and can push it to the top of the list on Clickbank others will pick it up and your sales could take off.
Unfortunately there is no replacement for knowing how to use SEO to generate traffic and good sales copy to convert visitors to clients. They’re the food and water you need to make your web marketing work and for your online business to thrive. There just isn’t any substitute.
If you’re not getting results with your SEO or your Google Ads its time to learn the web marketing strategies that work. It’s not the search engines or Google Ads that are the problem it’s knowing how to use them. Which is of course why I wrote the Insider Secrets to Creating Web Sites That Sell – to show you what actually does work to improve your search engine placement and how to use Google Ads to generate sales. Without it you could end up going hungry for business.
– Charlie Cook
Small Business Marketing and Web Marketing That Works
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