Small Business Marketing from Charlie Cook

Want to generate more sales with your internet marketing?
If you’re struggling to attract visitors to your site, to generate leads and to sell your products and services online, you’re not alone.

Many small business owners who have put up web sites are in the same boat; frustrated and wishing they were more successful online.

You’re spending money to keep a web site up and running; you’re spending money on pay-per-click advertising; and the site is only producing a trickle of sales. Sound familiar?

The problem isn’t an awareness of your current situation, the limp results are all too painfully apparent. Nor is the problem one of goals. You know you want your web site to bring in $100,000 or $500,000 a year or more.

What can you do to get from where you are with your internet marketing to where you want to be?

My son Evan, a junior in college, recently returned from traveling in Europe with a friend. They made a low-budget, whirlwind tour of London, Rome, Florence and Amsterdam.

Neither of them had traveled on their own or visited those places before or spoke Italian or Dutch, but they knew what they wanted to see. Their strategy for making the most of the limited time they had in each city was simple.

Pick up a small guidebook, a street map, and map of public transit. Then plan a route that includes all the sights that could possibly be squeezed into a day. With good information, they accomplished everything they wanted to in each city.

Marketing on the web is like traveling abroad for many people. They don’t know the language, they don’t have a good guide or guide book and they’re easily lost and confused about how to get where they want to go.

This is not a vacation, though, its your business, and you don’t want to lose time and money wandering in circles. To reach your web site marketing goals, you need a guide with solid information. Get the proven, step by step Creating Web Sites That Sell and discover how to sell more with your web site. Use this link to claim your copy >>

The 5 Rules of Website Marketing

Rule 1 – Know Where You Want to Go
Before my son Evan arrived at the Rome airport, he’d made a list of his objectives. He had a short time and wanted to get to the most important classical sites. There are key objectives in onlinr marketing, too, that should be on every business owner’s list.

These include:

– Knowing how to attract a flood of traffic,
– Getting people to give you their contact information,
– Building relationships with prospects in order to convert them to clients,
– Motivating your prospects to take action so they buy from you.

Rule 2 –Get a Good Map
If marketing on the web were obvious, you and everyone you know would already be multi-millionaires. To reach your objectives you’ll need a detailed, up to date map that shows you how to make your online business highly profitable. Use this link to get your map to online marketing >>

Rule 3 – Choose the Best Route
If you’re going to get to St. Peters, the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel, the Castle Sant’Angelo, the Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, and the Republican temples in Rome all in one day and still have time for lunch, you’ll need a plan. (And, yes, Evan did all that in one day.)

You’ll need to know where to begin and how best to get from place to place. The web is the same. You’ll need a web site marketing guide to take you step by step to increased sales.

Here are some of the areas you’ll need a map for:

Generating Leads
• Creating a site the search engines will love,
• Taking the shortcut to top search engine placement,
• Writing pay-per-click ads that will drive people to your site.

Converting Leads to Sales
•  Prompting people to contact you,
•  Writing compelling content,
•  Knowing when to use short and long copy in your internet marketing,
•  Knowing when and how to include links in your site,
•  What to do to follow up to convert interested prospects into paying clients,
• Increasing per client sales,
•  Knowing what information to track and measure.

Rule 4 – Know When to Change Course
If you were lost in a strange city, you wouldn’t keep walking around in circles. At some point, you’d look for someone to ask for help.

Marketing online is the same. It’s not a linear path and occasionally you’ll make mistakes, we all do. The key to being successful is to quickly recognize when you’re headed in the wrong direction get the help you need to get going in the right direction.

Ready to get your website marketing going in the right direction? Use this link >>

Rule 5 – Act on the Numbers
Foreign as it still is to many business people, marketing online has some distinct advantages over traditional media. For one thing, you have access to information which can tell you exactly how many people saw your ad, how many responded to it, how many signed up at your site and how many bought from you.

You can try out ads and ad copy at very low cost. You can compare the response rate to two different ads side by side.

You can test copy and design elements on your web pages to see which attract clients and which send them away.

Using readily available online information, you can easily determine your lead acquisition and client acquisition costs. Then you can leverage this data to cut your costs and increase your profits dramatically.

For example if you have a page on your site you where you want to get people to give you their contact information you can track the number of people who come to the page versus the number who sign up. If you’re conversion rate is less than 20% you know that something is wrong and you need to change the design or copy.

Check your conversion rates monthly, if not weekly, and adjust your website marketing tactics accordingly.

“This past week one of my web pages started getting ten times the usual number of visitors but hasn’t generated a single sale. What do I do?” – Janet

While I was away in Scotland a couple of weeks ago, Janet called from Salt Lake City and she called again the day I returned. It turned out an affiliate partner had given one of her web pages top exposure on their site, and as a result she was getting a ton of traffic to the targeted page. But none of it was making her any money and she was frustrated big time.

Do you own or market a web site? What do you think is the most important factor in making your site a financial success?

If you guessed that the answer is getting more people to your site, you’d have lots of company. The conventional wisdom is that you put up a web site and then try to get a top search engine listing or use your advertising campaign to bring in visitors. The number of visitors you bring in should determine the amount of money you make.

Want to know the truth about internet marketing?

A top search engine position or a link from an affiliate can get a high volume of traffic to your site, but there isn’t a direct correlation between traffic and sales.

Getting visitors to your site is important, but it’s not traffic that ultimately matters. What does matter is how much of that traffic you actually sell to; the percentage of visitors you convert to buyers. The conversion rate of each page on your site determines whether you have a profitable web site or just another internet marketing expense with minimal returns.

Frustrated with the lack of sales from your site? Ready to find out how to start selling more? Discover how to make your site convert more visitors to buyers with this link >>

Want to see a great example of a site that gets tons of traffic but hardly pays its own way? I can pick on this web site because it’s one of my own.

Ten years ago I put up my first site, www.newsletteraccess.com. Today you can find it in the number one or two spot on Google for ‘newsletter’ or ‘newsletters’, and it enjoys top positioning for a whole host of related keywords. As a result, the site gets lots of traffic. That should be good news but…

Actually, I’m embarrassed by this long-neglected site. www.newsletteraccess.com gets 40 to 45,000 visitors each month, but very few are converted to paying clients. The site makes some money but could do much better, given the number of visitors.

The problem? Like all too many sites on the web it was planned and designed without an understanding of how to convert traffic to clients.

If you’re a subscriber to this newsletter, ‘More Business’, you know that my current site is www.marketingforsuccess.com. This site enjoys many top ten search engine listings as well as hundreds of links from other sites. As a result, it gets about the same amount of traffic as www.newsletteraccess.com.

But there is a big difference…

Marketingforsuccess.com generates 40-50 times more revenue because it’s written and designed to convert visitors into clients. These two sites have very similar amounts of traffic, but one makes lots of money and the other doesn’t. Surprised by the difference?

You can sell more, even with the existing traffic your site is getting!

Many web site owners give up on their sites prematurely because they don’t have a top search engine listing. But you can make more sales with the same amount of traffic you’re getting now by converting more site visitors to paying customers. Find out how. Use this link to claim your copy >>

Janet had signed on with me to work on lead conversion on her website earlier this year. I had showed her how to organize the page layout and rewrite the copy to grab visitors’ attention and get them interested in her products and services. I was, to say the least, a little concerned when she left me a message saying that her web page wasn’t converting visitors to clients after the work we’d done.

Turns out that the web page in question was one we hadn’t revised. She went on to tell me that the reason she was so frustrated was that the pages modified with my input had increased their conversion rates by 400%. She knew that the page that was getting a high volume of referral traffic could do the same with the right changes.

Have you been worrying about getting traffic to your site? Stop! This shouldn’t be your first web site marketing priority.

Before you spend another dime on search engine positioning or pay-per-click ads to get visitors to your web site, do yourself a favor and find out how to convert more of the people who come to your site into paying clients and customers.

Once you have a site that turns visitors into cash, you can begin to spend time and money to drive traffic to your website. Of course, when your site converts more visitors to sales, you’ll have more money to spend on online advertising on hiring a top SEO firm.

Ready to turn more visitors to your web site into cash? It’s not going to happen by magic or if you wait another week.

Discover the insider secrets to making your web site convert prospects into buyers, and make your site’s profits grow. Claim your copy >>

Here’s a note from a reader with a problem that’s familiar to many small business marketers.

———–
Dear Charlie,

My web site has been up for six months and I’m getting a couple of hundred of visitors each week, but my site isn’t generating any leads or sales. My web designer tells me to give it more time or to spend more on Google Ads, but I to increase web sales now. What do I do?

Joe, Minneapolis, MN
———–

Do you have a web site like Joe’s that isn’t generating leads or sales? The two of you aren’t the only ones; there are hundreds of thousands of business people who have put up web sites and aren’t getting the results they want.

Spending money on marketing that isn’t working is simply foolish, no matter what media you are using. The advice to wait and give your marketing more time or spend more money on advertising that doesn’t generate a response is just plain nonsense.

Picture yourself heading to your car to drive to a client meeting. When you try to put the key in the ignition, it won’t go in and you can’t get the engine running. By mistake, you’ve picked up the keys to your spouse’s car. No matter how hard you try, those keys are never going to start your car or get you where you want to go.

Marketing is the key to getting your business roaring to life. But the wrong marketing strategy or tactics aren’t going to take you anywhere.

The quickest way to improve your small business marketing and start generating more sales is to find out what works from someone who knows.

Discover the key to generating leads and sales with your web site >>

Today I’m going to share with you the most powerful secret you can use to increase web sales.

Information Location Is The Key
——————————————-
Any realtor will tell you its, “location, location, location” that determines the value of a property. The same is true the content on your with your web pages. The location of information determines whether or not your prospects read the page and contact you or not.

Put your logo or company name at the top of your web page and your prospects won’t read the rest of your page. Why? Most people first concern isn’t what your company is called. Your prospects primary concern is what you can help them.

Put a photo or your company name or a welcome message at the top of your web page and you’ve wasted the prime real estate on your site. You could lose 90-95% of your site visitors. They’ll never read down the page to discover that you have the product or service they need and want.

The most critical location on any web page is the part that comes up first on your prospects’ computer screen. Give your prospects reason to read the rest of your page, and they’ll scroll down.

What happens when you put the right information in the right places on your web page?

When Frank came to me, he had a web site that was generating just 10 leads a week. Given the hundreds of dollars he was spending each week on Google Ads, he should have been able to do better.

After a quick analysis of the information seen by visitors in the first few seconds at Frank’s site, I showed him how to make two simple changes to his homepage. Two weeks later, I checked back and Frank told me that his leads had increased, from 10 to 60 per week.

With a few simple changes to the top part of his web page, Frank dramatically increased his sales In the ensuing months I’ve shown Frank where to make other improvements to his web site to generate even more leads and maximize his sales. He’s now getting 150-180 high-quality leads a week from his web site without spending a dime more on advertising.

You could be getting 6 or 18 times the number of leads from your website that you’re currently getting by using the same strategies I showed Frank how to use.

I’ve been marketing online for close to a decade now, and have tested and proven strategies that bring in leads and sales. Whether you want to improve your search engine position, increase your web page conversion rates or boost your sales, discover what to do from someone who knows how.

Kathy was moments away from buying a URL (web address) for her business, but in a last minute of doubt she called me to make sure it wasn’t a big mistake. In the internet marketing forums she had visited, Kathy had read that you should pick a distinctive URL for your web site to get peoples’ attention.

After great deliberation she finally had selected the following URL. The site URL Kathy had selected, but hadn’t yet purchased, was, www.everythingbutfleasthatsneeze.com. I am not making this up. She wanted a distinctive, attention-getting URL and she had succeeded. Was it the right one for her business? Should you use the same strategy in choosing a URL for your business?

Your URL can either attract or repel prospects and clients. It can reinforce your brand name, or communicate your marketing message.

Unless you or your brand have national name recognition – or you plan to spend millions on web site marketing, naming your site after your self or just using initials can be a mistake. Most prospects won’t know or be looking for your company name.

It is true many companies use their principals’ names and it’s easy to find them, once you know them. If you’re trying to attract prospects, people who don’t already know you, your names won’t mean much, or tell someone looking for a particular service, what you do.

Your primary interest is getting the attention of prospects. You could pick a URL that includes the attention grabbing word “sex” but this wouldn’t attract the kind of clients most service professionals want or small business owners want. You want to draw the right kind of attention and pull in qualified prospects.

Want to know how to use your web site to improve your web marketing and increase sales? Discover how to attract more clients and customers and make more sales with your web site >>

The best way to do this is to describe the problems you solve and the solutions you provide. A weather service for surfers might name their site, www.surferweather.com. A network of photographers for people who want a digital photo to use on their site or to submit to an online dating service uses the URL www.lookbetteronline.com.

Using a URL to describe what your business is about serves as a prompt to prospects. When they think of the task they want to accomplish, your URL comes to mind.

What can you do if you already have a company name you don’t want to relinquish and a URL to match? Your existing clients may already know your URL and have it book-marked. Keep it and add another with a succinct web site marketing message.

Let’s say your current URL is www.jonesanmurray.com. You can leave this URL and your site as is and just add another with the same content but a different URL. To help your existing clientele learn your new URL, change all the internal site links; when people come to your original site, they’ll link to the new one.

If Kathy had an online flea market her URL might have worked but she was trying to sell a book on how to buy a home, a topic with a huge potential audience. Her initial choice of URL www.everythingbutfleasthatsneeze.com might have attracted attention but it wasn’t going to help her reach home buyers who might purchase her book.

Your web URL is like a mini web site marketing message. Take advantage of this opportunity to describe what you do succinctly and you’ll attract many more qualified prospects and paying clients.

Why is it that some web sites help sell products and services while most languish in obscurity and only serve as a drain on finances?

Why don’t most web sites attract prospects, help convert them to clients or customers, or function as a source of revenue? To answer this question for your own web site, focus on its purpose. For most independent professionals and small business owners, web sites are meant to:

* Attract as many qualified prospects as possible
* Build a target list of people who want you to market to them
* Convert prospects to clients and paying customers
* Convert clients to repeat clients

If your web site marketing does these things, it’s a success. If not, then it is time to review what is working and what isn’t.

WHY MOST SITES DON’T WORK
Most sites are, in a word, boring to others than the creators. They focus on the firm’s services, products, processes and credentials. They are a turnoff to prospects and can keep you from earning money. If your web site shouldn’t be about your firm what should be the primary content?

CLIENT PROBLEM FOCUSED CONTENT SELLS
Sites that work to sell products and services attract prospects because they provide information prospects want and can use to solve a problem or meet a need. If you’re a lawyer, your site should focus on legal tips and strategies your target market can use.

If you’re a graphic designer, include ideas on using design to improve communications, or if you’re a computer systems expert, give your site visitors tips on keeping their computers from crashing. A writer could include a tutorial on writing with examples of copy makeovers of web pages, press releases or brochures.

This educational focus for your web site works for a number of reasons. People usually search the internet for free information. Prospects will want to visit your site because they know they can get a couple of ideas they can use, and by providing this information, you establish yourself as an expert in your field. Finally, your information educates prospects about opportunities they may not have been aware of.

Ready to discover exactly how to build and market your web site so it skyrockets your sales and your profits? Get started now >>

In it you’ll find straightforward simple ideas that will help you attract visitors and clients.

Its content that pulls. Just take a look at https://drudgereport.com/. No flashy, fancy graphics; just straightforward content. Yet it pulls in over four and a half million hits each day, five and a half million per day during this past month and has made Matt Drudge millions of dollars. Content brings customers to the site and keeps them there.

* What’s the content your prospects would love to read on your site? (Hint: It provides answers to common client questions and problems.)

SITE DESIGN AND NAVIGATION
Many sites have some educational and client centered content on their site, but it’s buried behind uninteresting homepages or by flash movies or graphic full pages that turn visitors away so they never see the good stuff. In some cases it’s simply a matter of moving hidden content to the homepage and augmenting it to give prospects what they want.

Use your site’s design, navigation systems, graphics and links to ensure visitors view the content that will interest them and to take the desired action.

* What do you want visitors to your site to do?

* Does the site design move people to the desired action?

HOW TO ATTRACT PROSPECTS TO YOUR SITE
Once you have a web site prospects will want to visit and read, the next step is to find as many ways as possible to pull prospects to your site so they find your great content. Use these strategies to pull in prospects:

* Distribute your articles, including your offer and site link, to every ezine, web site, publication and forum you can. There are thousands out there.

* Ask your subscribers to forward your articles to others.

* Make it easy for people who visit your web site to send the URL of articles found on your site to everyone in their network.

* Help the search engines find your site by identifying the key words people are likely to use most frequently to search for your site. Then put them in the title tag and body of your web pages.

IS YOUR WEB SITE MARKETING WORKING?
Does your site pull in a steady steam of prospects, build your target list and supply you with both clients and income from product sales? If not, take a look at your site content, design and promotional strategy.

With a little effort you can leverage your expertise, whether it’s about the law, computers, design or writing to create a web site that works to educate your prospects and to grow your business!

How much time and money have you spent on your web site or are you planning on spending on your site? How much money have you made with your site? Ready to see your sales skyrocket?

Find out what works to attract your target market to your site and what gets them to buy >>

“Currently we have a tradeshow circuit we do, but I would love to leverage the web more because we wouldn’t have to fly all over the country with a booth.  And a website is 24/7/365!  I want people to experience on our website what they would experience at a tradeshow. How do you make a site as personal as meeting someone at a tradeshow?” Dave Malda

Dave’s question highlights the fundamental opportunity of the web and its biggest problem. Like Dave, I’m sure you know a web site presents a global, 24-hour marketing opportunity but… how do you make it bring in as many sales as your best salesperson does?

Let’s take a look at how well face-to-face selling and selling online work and why.

-In-Person Sales
What percentage of sales do you close when you’re face-to-face with a prospect? 30-40% is respectable and not uncommon.

-Online Sales
What percent of visitors to your web site make a purchase? A few sites convert up to 3-5% of visitors into customers. For most web sites, the number is much smaller, often only thousandths of one percent.

Do these numbers represent your success in person and lack of success online?

Discover exactly what to do with your internet marketing to increase sales >>

Here’s how to make your web site as effective as your best sales person:

1. Target People Who Are Looking To Solve a Problem

People come to trade shows because they are looking for a product or service. When they walk up to your booth, you know they’re at least mildly interested and want more information.

Online, the best ways to attract people who are looking for your products and services is to make sure your site can be found in the search engines, to use pay-per-click ads like Google Adwords and to get your articles published everywhere you can online.

2. Start a Conversation

What’s the first thing you do when a prospect walks up to your booth at a tradeshow? Do you immediately start spouting product features and prices, or do you introduce yourself and try to get a conversation going by asking them a question? Of course, you don’t immediately try to sell them. First you find out what you can about their business and which product would best suit their needs.

The same is true online. If you immediately try to sell people, you’ll turn them off and they’ll go away. Instead, write marketing copy on your web site that begins a virtual conversation with prospects.

Start by asking them the biggest or most common question on their minds relative to your product or service. Continue to ask questions about their problems and aspirations. Use this virtual conversation to spell out their concerns and, once you’ve defined them, explain how the solutions you provide solve their problems.

Find out how to make your site engaging to get visitors’ attention and prompt them to contact you and buy from you. Use this link >>

3. Build a Relationship by Being Helpful

Where does your best business come from? From clients you’ve been helping for years; clients who know and trust you. When you’re standing in front of a prospect, you can hand them a free report, answer their questions directly and demonstrate your expertise.

Converting online prospects to clients involves doing the same things with your web site marketing. Offer a free report to prospects to prompt them to give you their contact information. List commonly asked questions; then answer. Include content on the site that demonstrates your expertise and knowledge of your customers’ business needs.

Think about how many ideas and how much information you’d share with a prospect in a 15 minute face-to-face conversation at a trade show. Your web site needs to present at least this much information. In fact, it gives you the opportunity to present more.

4. Make it Personal

Make a personal connection with your prospects. If you’re an entrepreneur or a business owner, use your web site to help prospects get to know you. Help your prospects see you as more than just an anonymous site that wants their money. Do this by:

• Putting up snapshots of yourself in your office or on the golf course. (In the last couple of weeks my subscribers have seen me on my bike and on my sailboat.)
• Using audio and or video clips with ideas prospects can use throughout your site.
• Providing free telecalls. Not only does this give your prospects a chance to hear you demonstrate your expertise, it gives you an opportunity to find out what they’re really thinking about.
• Using ‘Live Help’ on your site.

Most businesses have hundreds, if not thousands, of competitors and many of them market similar products and services. Whether you’re marketing in person or online, your best competitive advantage is the strength of your relationship with your prospects.

For getting a conversation going or closing a sale, nothing beats being there in person, talking face to face with a prospect. But your internet marketing can and should do as good a job. You don’t have to live with conversion rates in the thousandths of a percent. Put the four ideas above to work and make your site sell.

Tired of waiting for your site to transform itself into the lead- and profit-generating machine you’d hoped for? Discover what works from someone who is already highly successful online and make your site more profitable.

Discover the “secret” website marketing strategies I use to sell products and services every day >>

Debra emailed me in response to last week’s ezine. Her niche coaching site has top placement in Google, gets thousands of visitors a day and is providing her with a steady stream of clients. Despite her success, she wanted to know if she could be doing better and if anything is missing in her internet marketing. Could she be closing even more sales?

Most people are mystified by internet marketing. It’s still a relatively new and very unique medium. You hire a web designer; you give them your marketing brochure or similar information about your company, and they create a web site for you. And then… more often than not, nothing happens. If you’re lucky, you get a handful of visitors, but very few contact you, much less buy from you.

It quickly becomes obvious that your web site isn’t working. It’s not generating leads or sales. Of course, if you knew where or what the problem was, you’d fix it. But that’s the most frustrating part of it; you’re stumped.

How can you tell what’s missing from your internet marketing? And how do you fix it?

Think of your website marketing as a large water main or pipe connecting a gigantic reservoir to your business. The reservoir is overflowing with prospects and your goal is to get as many relevant prospects as possible down through the pipeline to your business.

The web marketing pipeline has three valves; one for visitors, one for relationships and one for sales. Most websites are built with all three valves shut, blocking prospects from rushing to your site and keeping profits from flowing into your bank account. In most cases, even after months or years, these valves continue to restrict the flow of business so that only a small number of prospects ever make it to the point of sale.

To fix your website, you need to open all three valves. You need visitors, prospect relationships and sales in order to put money in the bank.

Ready to stop struggling with your website marketing? Tired of just getting a trickle of prospects and sales? You can tap the reservoir of prospects waiting to buy your products and services. Get the details >>

Opening Your Web Marketing Pipeline

Visitors
Take the following three steps to get more qualified visitors to your site:

1. Build incoming links from other sites. Writing and distributing articles is the fastest and most effective way to generate the type of links to your site that attract visitors and that help your ranking in the search engines. It’s effective and essentially free.

2. Sign up for Google Adwords. With a couple of attention-grabbing words, your pay-per-click ad is a quick way to attract site visitors while you’re working on improving your search engine positioning.

3. Help the search engines find your site and give it a top ranking. Make sure you know which words your prospects use when searching for your site and include them throughout your copy. And, of course, submit your site to the most popular search engines.

Relationships
The more people that read your web page and contact you, the more prospect relationships you’ll have and the greater chance of generating a sale. Your site should prompt 5 to 20% of visitors to contact you. If it doesn’t, take the following three steps to open the relationship valve.

1. Use your page design to lead people through the information in the sequence you want them to follow, and lead them to the steps you want them to take.

2. Grab your prospects’ attention with your web copy by focusing on their concerns. Speak to their interests.

3. Give prospects a compelling reason to give you their contact information. Offer a free report that solves their problems or run a contest offering a prize they’d love to have.

Sales
20% of your sales can come directly from a prospect’s first visit to your website. What most people forget is that 80% of your sales come from your follow-up systems. Check to see that at a minimum you are doing all of the following:

1. Set up your email system so that prospects automatically receive a sequence of messages prompting them to take the next action you want them to take.

2. Use a weekly or monthly ezine to share ideas, success stories or case studies with qualified prospects. Pose problems and include links to your solutions.

3. When people sign up online for your free offer, be sure to collect information about what they want and need so you can follow-up with a phone call.

Marketing is all about percentages. Open the visitor valve by 25%, the relationship valve by 25% and the sales valve by 25% and your sales will increase by almost 100% (1.25 X 1.25 X 1.25). Leave them alone and sales will stay the same.

Ready to Open Up Your Website’s Sales?
Take just a couple of minutes to learn how to increase your web sales with our web marketing solution.

You’ll discover exactly what’s missing in your web marketing and what to do to start attracting more prospects and sales so you can put more money in the bank.

Get the details and take advantage of our current bonus offer with the following URL >>

Wendy and I were discussing a postcard campaign she was planning when she asked if it was a good idea to direct people to her web site. She’d asked the same question when we were talking about how to get a better response with her marketing phone calls.  She wanted to know whether she should direct prospects to her web site or tell them to call her office.

I’m asked the same questions by other business owners. They want to know if it’s a good idea to use their other marketing efforts to direct prospects to their web sites.

Should you be trying to get more people to your web site? My answer may come as a surprise to you.

For most companies, it’s a bad idea to try to direct people to your web site for a crucial reason. Very few web sites do a good job of converting prospects to clients. Wendy’s site was no exception. It looked good, but it wasn’t clear what site visitors were supposed to do or why. The result was that first-time visitors and qualified prospects looked around and left.

You wouldn’t take a solid lead and give it to someone on your staff who knew nothing about marketing; you’d give it to someone you could rely on to follow up and close the sale.

Typically when you have a prospect on the phone you do an excellent job of getting them to tell you what you need, clarifying the value of your services and getting them to take action. Most small business owners and marketers I talk to tell me that once they are talking with a prospect they can close the sale 20% or more of the time.

The opposite is true with most web sites. Most don’t generate leads or sales, even for a half a percent of the prospects that visit them. In effect most web sites are like a sales person who never shows up for work and never follows up on leads. If you had such an employee, you’d retrain them or fire them.

Is it time to retrain or fire your website?

Imagine where your business could be if your web site was ten times as good as your best sales person. A web site can generate far more leads than any sales person, and can convert leads to sales. Discover how to make your web site work >>

Creating a Path to More Sales

With effective internet marketing, it’s possible to lead your prospects step by step through the sales process. First you grab their attention; then you demonstrate your expertise; then you prove beyond a shadow of a doubt how much better off they’d be with your product or services and, finally, you give them an urgent need to buy. Here’s how:

Step One
Take a couple of minutes to map out the sequence of steps involved in your marketing and sales process. List the actions you want your prospects to take. What information do you want them to read and in what order? At what point in the process do you want them to contact you? How?

Not all your prospects will take the same path. With the right incentives, you can prompt some prospects to take a shortcut to the point of sale. Include the incentive information you want prospects to read in your sales sequence.

Step Two
Use the map of your sales process to plan your web site, the layout or organization of elements on the page, and the marketing copy you’ll uses.

Step Three
Test each of your web pages and each element on the page to determine its effect on lead generation and sales. With a bit of fine tuning, your web site can become your best sales tool.

When should your marketing direct prospects to your web site? When you’ve set it up to move prospects along the sales path. If it doesn’t do that, don’t send prospects to it. Once you’ve built the pages to convert prospects to clients, you’ll want to refer everyone to it.

Are you ready to finally stop wasting time and money on your web site and find out how to use it to take your business to the next level? My clients report increases in their leads and sales of 300% to 1500% with these simple internet marketing strategies. Get the details >>

Do You Want To Take Your Business To the Next Level?

Discover how to attract more clients, sell more of your products and services and be more successful with less effort. Finally you can use a simple and reliable web marketing system so you can stop struggling and start making more money. Get the details >>

Charlie,

I’ve built a web site and it’s been up now for three months, but I’m only getting a handful of visitors each day. What are the best ways to get more people to my web site and enjoy more lead generation?

Marla. J., Minneapolis, MN

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 m0ney you’ve spent, you’re frustrated that your web site hasn’t turned into a pr0fit center overnight, and you’re inclined to dismiss its revenue-generating potential.

Don’t! There are three excellent ways to bring people and lead generation 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 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.

Thanks to top placements for a several keywords, my site attracts over 35,000 unique visitors each month. You or someone in your firm can achieve this, too.

Discover the techniques that will improve your site’s search engine placement and save yourself over $12,000 a year >>

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 m0ney 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.

You can attract tens of thousands of visitors to your web site each week just by writing and distributing articles.

Discover how this formula works to bring in sales and find out exactly how to get slightly famous and a lot richer with your articles.

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 c.lick 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.

I’ve written 8 tips to make sure your Google Ads help you make m0ney. Get all 8 tips along with the formula for making m0ney with your web site.

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.

Tired of spending m0ney on your web site and not generating a flood of new clients and sales? Waiting won’t improve your results. To make m0ney with your web site, you need a proven formula for bringing in prospects and business. Discover exactly how to get all the business you can handle online.

Charlie,

I need help in generating sales from my web site. My site has been up for two months and I’ve gotten thousands of visitors but only a couple of people have contacted me from the site. Obviously I must be doing something wrong with my internet marketing . What’s the secret to getting people to buy from my web site?

Fran T., Boston, MA

If you have a web site that’s not pulling in prospects and sales, like Fran’s, I have 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 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 internet marketing and to their offline marketing.

Many people think that the quickest way to 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.

Discover which web site marketing tactics to avoid and which to use to attract clients >>

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 marketing materials;

– What is in it for me?
– Does the first sentence give me a reason to keep reading?
– Does the photo make me believe this firm has what I want?

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.

Bank A’s sign says – AMERICA’S FINEST SINCE 1950

Bank B’s sign says – HIGH YIELD SAVINGS, IMMEDIATE ONLINE ACCESS

Which one would you choose? Bank B grabs your attention by talking about the services and results that meet your needs. They’ve made the sale.

Focus your website marketing on your prospects’ biggest concerns and you’ll generate more interest and sales. Discover how to prompt more prospects to contact you and buy from you >>

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.