Charlie Cook's MArketing for Success Insider's Club

Internet Marketing

How Do You Know When To Change Your Small Business Marketing Strategy …

By Charlie Cook   |   August 14, 2005

Are you having the same problem with your marketing my Dad has with his favorite skiff? Read the article below to find out. And, yes the story about my Dad isn’t just funny, its true.

How Do You Know When To Change Your Marketing

When you put an ad in a magazine, send out a sales letter, or put up a web site, you want results. You want your prospects to contact you and to buy from you; you hope to get a flood of calls and sales.

If your marketing isn’t generating the results you want, then it’s time to change your marketing strategy! Don’t expect to improve your results using the same strategy.

Here’s an example. A search engine positioning firm I work with was having trouble generating leads. Yes, in spite of their superior ability to put their site at the top of the search engine listings and do the same for their clients, they were hardly converting any of their site visitors into leads and then clients. They were getting well over a thousand visitors a week to their site and generating at best a single inquiry per week.

Think about this for a minute. Most people assume that getting your web site to the top of the search engine listings will solve all their web marketing problems. The reality is that it doesn’t matter how many visitors you get to your web site (or how many sales letters you send or ads you place,) if you aren’t generating leads and converting them to sales.

Find out how to change your small business marketing so that your ads, your sales letters and your web site get a huge response. Use this link to discover a proven marketing strategy for generating a steady stream of sales.

The search engine positioning firm I was working with has many satisfied national clients, are highly skilled and great people to work with, but their marketing strategy was broken. Their website looked very similar to their competitors’ sites. In fact, with a lot of information about what they do and who they are, it read like a blend of the information found on websites of other firms who offer similar services.

Many small business owners look at their competitors’ marketing materials and cobble together the information for their own pieces based on what they see. The problem with this approach is that they are copying a strategy that isn’t working for someone else. Once they publish their materials, someone else copies the same stuff and tries to make it work. Know anyone who has done this?

Nine times out of ten, marketing materials put together in this way lead with the company name and then list services or features. I can guarantee that if you are using this approach to marketing your business, you’re not happy. This marketing strategy doesn’t work.

Discover a business marketing strategy that can help you attract more prospects, generate more leads, and increase your sales. Use this link to find out how to generate more leads and grow your business.
Is your marketing working? Ask yourself the following questions:
– How many leads did my web site generate relative to the number of visitors it gets?

– How many leads did my ad generate relative to the cost and number of people who saw it?

– How many leads did my sales letter generate relative to the number of letters I sent out?

Then ask yourself:
– Given the number of leads generated, how many did I convert into sales?

– What was the dollar volume of sales generated from each lead?

It’s not a matter of time, either. If your marketing materials aren’t pulling in clients within a few days, they’re not going to do any better if you keep running them for months.

This client had the same problem with his small businesss marketing strategy that my Dad has with his boat; he just couldn’t let go. After years of being dragged up and down a rocky beach, my Dad’s aluminum skiff has lost many of the rivets in the bottom.

Put it in the water and throttle up the outboard, and fine sprays of water push up through the small rivet holes as you pick up speed. Everyone in the boat gets an upside down shower. Wherever you’re going, you arrive damp.

Every year, the family tries to get Dad to replace his skiff, but he’s had it so long he can’t bring himself to part with it, even though its not doing the basic job of keeping water out.

Is your marketing like my Dad’s boat? You’ve used it for years but it’s not generating enough new business. If so, then it’s time for a change. It’s time to use a marketing strategy that puts you on top. Use this link to discover a proven and reliable system for attracting clients and increasing your sales.
– Charlie Cook

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

To Succeed With Small Business Web Site Marketing – Think Big

By Charlie Cook   |   August 10, 2005

My current site, www.marketingforsuccess.com, has become one of the top sites on the web. How did this happen?

Each week for the last two years, I’ve written an article a week and more recently added a couple of blog entries. Page by page the site and the resources it provides has grown until it now is big in content.

Want your small business site to be big in profits. Start thinking big in terms of content. Add a page to your site each day and soon the search engines and your target market will be seeking you out.

– Charlie Cook – Helping you get a better response and more clients with your marketing

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Personalized Selling Works

By Charlie Cook   |   August 5, 2005

Periodically I post pictures of myself on vacation, kayaking, skiing, or hanging out in Tortolla. These add a nice touch but the interesting thing is that they also help sell product.

When I include a link to these pictures in my newsletter, I get hundreds of people clicking on them to see what I’ve been up to. When I put these pictures on a page that has links to my marketing manuals, the people clicking through to see me having fun in the sun, buy my manuals.

They buy my – 15 Second Marketing Guide and discover the fastest way to increase their sales.

They buy my – Small Business Marketing Manual and double the number of clients.

They buy my – Creating Web Sites that Sell and turn their web sites into incredible profit producing centers.

Personalize your marketing to increase your sales. It works.
– Charlie Cook

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Did You Forget the Web Site Marketing Sequence

By Charlie Cook   |   August 2, 2005

One client recently wrote to say she’d finished her web site and now was waiting for the orders to pour in. Wouldn’t that be nice?

The first step is creating a web site that grabs your prospects’ attention and prompts them to read your copy and contact you or buy from you. The second step is to pull your prospects to your site by the thousands.

Some people focus on building traffic to their web sites, others on perfecting their sites. To be successful you need both. Discover how to do both with Creating Web Sites that Sell.
– Charlie Cook

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

How Much Time Do You Have To Get Your Marketing Message Across?

By Charlie Cook   |   August 1, 2005

This weekend my wife and I took a trip to Maine to visit various relatives and do some kayaking. On the way up and down I tried to see what I could learn from billboards.

Why do I care about billboards, which I consider a blight on the landscape?

If you have or are planning a web site you should look at billboards too while you drive by at 60+ miles an hour. Ask yourself:

How much of them can you actually read?
Of the few words you can read do you understand the message?
Can you remember the billboard’s message ten miles down the road?

The way you read billboards is the same way people read your web site. Ask yourself:

If people read your web site in the same amount of time it takes for you to pass a billboard, (2-3 seconds) do they understand what you do and how you can help them? If not then it’s time to rethink your marketing message.
– Charlie Cook

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

A Secret Selling Opportunity I Bet Isn’t Found In Your Web Site Marketing

By Charlie Cook   |   July 27, 2005

Every web site has a “not found” page. This shows up when for a variety of reasons. You’ve deleted a page that someone is trying to link to, someone types in the wrong address, etc. Each time a visitor to your site sees this page its a dead end for them and you.

On one of my sites that includes a directory of newsletters I discovered I had a Not Found page that was showing a lot, over 11,000 times a month. What could I do?

I added a sign up link for my free marketing newsletter on the Not Found page and now have a steady stream of new sign-ups for my newsletter coming from my not found page. Click here to see it. For many more ideas on ways to generate additional leads and sales from your web site, Click here – Charlie Cook

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

How to Select the Best Keywords for the Search Engines

By Charlie Cook   |   July 25, 2005

Now there is an alternative to using Overture’s keyword suggestion tool.

Keyword Discovery provides you with a list of the most frequent uses of the various uses of your keywords. – Charlie Cook

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

What’s the Best Day of the Week to Market My Business?

By Charlie Cook   |   July 8, 2005

“I want to pick one evening a week to devote to telemarketing for my home improvement business. Without making hundreds of calls on each night how can I find out which is the best night to devote to making marketing calls?” – Steve C.

It’s true you’ll get a highly variable response to your marketing depending on the day of the week and the product or service you are marketing. Few people are looking for small business marketing solutions on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Of course, the opposite may be true for your home improvement business.

The best time to market your business is, …

when your prospects are searching for the solution you provide.

How can you find out when this is? As you indicated, making hundreds of calls would be costly. Instead you can put up a Google AdWords ad and track the number of page views and click-throughs you get. I show you how to do this in Creating Web Sites that Sell. Use the page view and click-through statistics to determine the best day of the week to devote to making your marketing calls. When you market on the days of the week people are looking for a solution, you’ll generate more leads and more business.- Charlie Cook

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

What Are the 4 Most Common Web Site Marketing Mistakes?

By Charlie Cook   |   July 6, 2005

When a prospect visits your web site you have 3-5 seconds at most to get their attention. What are the most common reasons web sites fail to do this?

1. Barriers to viewing. I love movies, colorful logos and pictures as much as the next person but its information that your prospects want. Research shows 80% of people find Flash movies annoying and will just go elsewhere instead of waiting it out. Other design elements may not be as much of a hurdle to your readers, but you’ve only got a couple of seconds to help your prospects understand why they should view your site. Make the most of it to focus their attention where you want it.

2. The over use of your company name, logo and generic taglines. The object of your site is to get the attention of prospects who don’t already know and trust you, people whose biggest concern is if and how you can help them. Give them a headline which explains what you do and why they shoud contact you.

3. Marketing copy written by your webmaster or the people on your staff who developed the products and services. Webmasters are expert programmers but in most cases writing compelling marketing copy is not one of their skill sets. If you had the people who developed your company’s products and services write your marketing copy, you may have found someone who can write in easy to read English but my experience is they don’t write for the people you want to attract. As a company insider it is hard to realize how little your prospects know and most company authored marketing materials tend to bury the content that should be in the foreground for your prospects.

4. The absence of enough reasons to act. If you want your prospects to read your copy, to trust you, to call you or order from you they need reasons to do so. Don’t assume your prospects will figure out that by calling you they’ll learn more. Tell them how they will benefit from each action you want them to take.

Discover how to avoid these common web marketing mistakes and instead use your web site to increase sales with Creating Web Sites that Sell or if you’re too busy to learn another skill set ask Charlie to show you how to write and structure your web site or have him write the copy for you so you can focus on processing more sales.
– Charlie Cook

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Lead Generation and Conversion Rate Benchmarks for Web Site Marketing

By Charlie Cook   |   June 28, 2005

In this week’s More Business Marketing Newsletter I explained how to measure your web site’s performance by evaluating your conversion rate. In addition I added a web site conversion calculator for you to use to calculate the numbers you need to assess your site’s performance.

Now that you have your conversion rates for your site, what are the norms? How well could you be doing? What are the industry benchmarks? Remember these represent the average of companies doing it right and wrong. They are a baseline and you should be able to do even better.

According to information from Fireclick’s Web analytics and e-consultancy, average conversion rates are:

Lead Generation
2-3% of visitors sign up for a free registration process
10-12% of visitors sign up when the benefits are promoted
50% of visitors sign up when incentives are used

Conversion of Free Subscribers to Paid Subscribers
1-7% will convert

Conversion of Browsers to Buyers
.5 – 8% depending on your target market, what you’re selling, your site and how you phrase your offer.

How do your numbers compare?
Are you above or below the industry averages?
More importanly what can you do to improve your conversion rates?

The easiest way to lift your conversion rates is to clarify the marketing copy you use on your site, and your page design. In a word, simplify.

Want help increasing your web site conversion rates? Find out how with Creating Web Sites that Sell or contact Charlie to get help from a web marketing expert.
– Charlie Cook

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]