Charlie Cook's MArketing for Success Insider's Club

 

Why Over 3 Million People Watched This Video…

Author: Charlie Cook   |   November 29th, 2011

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.


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