Archive for February, 2010
Converting Online Visitors to Clients/Customers
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Smart business owners know that high conversion rates are essential. In order to sell products and services, website traffic needs to convert to customers. So what are the key tactics to improve conversion rates? Here are three smart ways to convert online visitors to customers.
If you’re using a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign then make sure you’re sending each advertisement through to a unique sales page designed with those keywords in mind. That way each sales page can be fine tuned to convert that particular prospect.
Test and track everything. Testing and tracking results is a business owner’s single biggest conversion tool. You may have a perfect textbook sales page, but if it isn’t converting then it doesn’t matter how pretty it is. Test your headline, test your call to action, test your testimonials, your price, the colors you use, your font and size. Test everything and fine tune your page until it’s receiving the conversion rate you want.
Build a relationship with your prospects. The best way to convert visitors to customers is to make them an offer they can’t refuse. Give them something, or many things, for free. Give them books, audios, videos, monthly access to new content limited to members; give them an online workshop, seminar or course. Giveaways are an exceptional way to get your customers to do one thing – sign up for your opt-in list.
Why is your opt-in list so important? Because it gives you the opportunity to build a relationship with your prospects and turn them into customers. It gives you the permission and the opportunity to connect with them weekly (or more frequently) and provide them with valuable content, promotions and maybe even more giveaways.
Your opt-in list is a list of pre-qualified prospects. By signing up they’ve already told you they’re interested in what you have to offer. This makes your opt-in list process critical to your conversions and increasing your conversions. Take the time to craft advertisements that send people to a custom landing/opt-in page, just like we suggested in #1. And as mentioned in #2, take the time to test and track your results. Sometimes changing a few words in your opt-in offer can make all the difference between a list of 1000 and a list of 10,000.
Increasing your conversion rate can make all the difference in your business. It’s a strategy worth paying attention to, right? With the average customer making two to three purchases annually, a conversion increase of only a few percentage points can equal a better business for you.
Strategies For Website Traffic
Posted by: | CommentsWebsite traffic is a good thing. In fact for many business owners, driving traffic to their website is their primary avenue for business-building. And while traffic may be all well and good, what you really want is targeted website traffic. You want the people visiting your website to be potential prospects. Your goal should be to turn them into future customers.
Here are 6 effective strategies to guarantee targeted website traffic.
#1 PPC ads.
Of course, not all Pay Per Click ad campaigns generate targeted traffic. You have to study your prospects and design keyword-specific ads that send traffic to a web page related to the ad. If you have a website about foods for people with Celiac Disease and your potential customers have to dig to find information about bread alternatives, you’re not sending the right kind of targeted website traffic to the right place. Send them directly to your bread products page.
#2 A squeeze page, opt-in list and targeted email messages.
A squeeze page is essentially a way to capture the email addresses of people who are actually interested in receiving your information. True, they may be after your giveaway but that’s okay – they’re still a qualified prospect. Once you have their email address, you can begin sending them informative, entertaining and slightly romotional messages, all of which are designed to send them directly to your website – targeted website traffic.
#3 Article marketing.
Article marketing is one of the most effective ways to generate targeted website traffic. When you publish quality content, and it gets published online in article directories and republished on other websites, you’re reaching a wider audience. The link(s) in your article and in your bio box can all send targeted traffic right back to your website. The more articles you publish, the more targeted traffic you generate.
#4 Blog and guest blog.
Use the advice and strategy described above for article marketing to generate traffic with your blog.
#5 Social networking.
Social networking can send tons of traffic to your website simply because people are curious about you and your business. However, if you’re strategic about your social networking use you will occasionally include links to your website with attention-grabbing posts or headlines. If the idea of social networking is like “Greek” to you, I offer a powerful webinar program called Social Media Made Easy. You can find out more about this amazing program by clicking here.
#6 Comment on blogs and forums.
On most forums and blogs when you participate and comment you can post a link to your website in your signature. This does generate curious folks who just want to know “who said that?!” When you participate in forums and blogs that are relevant to your website and industry niche, you’re sending targeted traffic to your website. You can also try unique approaches like posting reviews on websites and directories for products related to your industry and include a link to your website in your review profile, for example reviewing on Amazon.com. You can post answers on Yahoo! Answers and you can post videos or podcasts on directories and drive traffic to your site much like you would with article marketing.
There are a number of creative ways to drive targeted traffic to your website. Analyze your traffic-generating strategies and tactics to ensure you’re sending the right kind of traffic to your website.
Content Marketing for Solopreneurs: Solve writer’s block with an idea catcher
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Linda Dessau of You Talk, I’ll Write shares her knowledge about how to keep track of all your inspirations in this guest post. We all need help with our writing – blogs, newsletters, email and more – Linda is the expert. Don’t miss signing up for her video – 7 Secrets of Content Marketing Success.
For solopreneurs who have decided to implement a content marketing strategy, there’s nothing more disheartening than writer’s block. After all, content marketing is no quick fix—it requires consistent effort to deliver the high-quality content that you will get you noticed and remembered by the people who will use and refer your services. The pressure is on!
One of my favourite tools to help with writer’s block is the idea catcher. An idea catcher is—literally—a place to catch your ideas as you think of them, so that even if you don’t have time to develop them in that moment, they’re not lost. When you’re sitting at your computer, an idea catcher might be a file, an online journal or mind mapping program, or a “draft” post saved in your blogging account.
When you’re away from your desk, carry a small notebook or audio recorder with you at all times, and have somewhere to store your notes, such as a folder or an “idea inbox” on your desk.
Key benefits of the idea catcher include:
- Awareness. You’ll start noticing ideas more when you have a mechanism in place for capturing them (result: more creativity)
- Choice. With a pile of ideas to choose from at any time, you can select the one that has the most juice for you in that moment (result: higher quality articles)
- Abundance. Ideas tend to multiply, with one idea sparking another, so that even if you don’t develop them all, you will have thought of more topics than you would have otherwise (result: you have more fun, get better results, and stick with it)
Aside from always having an idea catcher at the ready (and I mean always—I even have a waterproof pencil and notepad in my shower) here are three other things you can do to generate more ideas every day:
- Feed your mind with information—not just about your area of expertise, but whatever interests you. You’ll be amazed at the connections you can make and the articles that can come out of it.
- Get out and experience more from life. Try new things, meet interesting people, travel and support the arts. You will have more to offer and share when you get home.
- Fuel your body for creativity by getting enough sleep, rest and water. When you are rested your brain functions at a higher level and tasks flow more easily. Drinking water will hydrate your body and your mind, essential for creative work, but just being near flowing water can also inspire creativity.
Once you have multiple idea catchers in place and implement these feeding techniques, your writing will take on a new rhythm and sense of ease. Leave the struggle behind and start filling your idea catcher—you’ll be thankful for those gems the next time you’re staring at a blank screen.
Linda Dessau is the founder of You Talk, I’ll Write and the Idea Generator blog. She ghostwrites and edits content for newsletters, blogs and social media. Her clients are coaches and others who want to build trust, relationships and credibility while growing a service-based business. Feeding your idea catcher every day is only one of her 7 Secrets of Content Marketing Success—you can discover them all when you sign up for the free video.
5 Twitter Tools Every Social Media Marketing Campaign Should Use!
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John Panico of Social Media Dudes shares his Twitter expertise in this guest post. To hear more of John and his Twitter secrets, join the free teleseminar on February 23rd. Register here.
Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networking sites on the planet. It truly is one of the game changers that if not already a part of your social media marketing campaign, change that today (see my article on Twitter for Business Done Right for proper setup).
If you are looking to either be a Twitter Ninja or perhaps haven’t participated because you were concerned about the time it takes to manage, I am endowing you with what I consider five essential tools that will make you more efficient, save you time, get you the followers that you want and fortify your social media presence. As a bonus, all of these are free (although you may decide to upgrade to take advantage of some additional feature that some of these tools afford you.
Here they are (as they say on DWTS in no particular order):
- Social Oomph – You may remember this site formally going by Tweetlater.com (which personally I thought was more appropriate). Nevertheless, I find this tool to be invaluable in how to be efficient on twitter.
One of your objectives with your social media marketing campaign is to appear to be everywhere 24/7. Let’s get real. If all you did was tweet all day, you wouldn’t have time to focus on your business. One of the best features that Social Oomph allows is for you to schedule your tweets. I set aside 1 hour every Sunday morning and plan out 6-8 tweets a day. Some of them are going to push people to my site because of posts I have scheduled. Others are RT’s (ReTweets) that will bring a lot of love (and followers) back to you.
The other thing that I have found most useful is the Auto DM’s (Direct Message) feature that Social Oomph provides. Like them or not, as long as you are not selling back in your first response back to a follower, these can be very effective. You can have rotating DM’s.
- TweetDeck – Twitter is constantly doing things that make it compelling to use their homepage for all of your tweeting. But if you are like me, I currently have 6 Internet Explorer browsers open along with several other applications. If I want to quickly and effortlessly take a quick look to see if someone that I am following (or a phrase/keyword) has just tweeted something, it takes a while to do that.
Having to go to the twitter homepage to do that just takes up too much time, so I prefer an application that is sitting there in the background doing all of the work for me. Some will argue that other applications such as HootSuite or Twirl or just as good. I am not saying I haven’t used them. I just have found TweetDeck to do it better and cleaner.
TweetDeck allows me to use my Twitter lists or to make groups on my own based on keywords. How cool is that? And while it works easily on my desktop or laptop, it also performs just as well on my iPhone or Blackberry. In my opinion, it is the must-have twitter tool.
- PollDaddy – Part of being involved in social media marketing is well…being involved. You not only want, but you need engagement with your audience. If you are shy about getting into the mix, creating a poll not only provides involvement, but can also supply good market research for your product or service. It allows you to get answers about things much quicker and obviously cheaper (since it is free) than using a marketing firm to do it for you.
With PollDaddy, you can create a poll and send it to your Twitter followers in seconds. No account necessary!
- Twellow – Known as the Yellow Pages for Twitter, this tool can do some amazing and fun things. Did you ever wonder just how many users in your city were actually on twitter? Twellow can tell you. But the best feature by far is geo-targeted followers. What’s that you say?
If you are a business professional or a local service business, it probably doesn’t do you any good to have followers in Boston if you are located in California. Number of followers is nice, but targeted followers are a better option. When you get to the home page, click on the TwellowHood tab and then enter your location (and other search terms you are looking for). From there it is easy to follow people that fit your parameters.
- TweetSpinner – How do you know who has the same interests/concerns that you do? You could do a search on twitter, but once again, that is time consuming. Perhaps this application is a better and albeit more efficient tool for you to use.
If you aren’t as interested in followers that are geographically in a particular area, this application allows you to automatically follow those who tweet keywords of your design. The value to that is that those people are going to see the value in your tweets and follow you back. (You are providing tweets that have value regularly aren’t you? You should NOT be trying to sell something every tweet…mix it up.) Then you can engage them to see if you can forge an alliance or if after you have shown yourself to be a good twitizen, they will want the goods or services you provide.
All right, off you go and on your way to becoming a Twitter Ninja. I can tell you from personal experience that when my clients have used these tools effectively, they have told me thank you countless times for giving them more time in their day to work on their businesses and also for the opportunities that have come their way as a result of finding/using these tools.
Are you interested in how to use social media in your business? Don’t know where to start or which sites you should be using for your business?
Believe it or not, not doing social media right can actually harm your business.
If you are looking for free tips or advice on how to approach your social media, go to Social Media Dudes.
Or follow our tweets on Twitter at twitter.com/johnpanico
Finally, those are my thoughts from high atop my 2nd floor office above my garage. What I want to hear are YOUR comments. Let Janet know if this post was of help or what other topics you would like to hear about by leaving your comments here.
Twitter Secrets Revealed by Social Media Dude
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Entrepreneurs report over & over that they know Twitter should help their businesses, but they just aren’t getting anywhere with it or they are too intimidated to begin.
“Twitter Frustration” is happening all too much – and it’s time to pull in an expert so everyone knows how to use Twitter right.
Everyone knows Twitter is a great marketing tool…. It connects you to people who would never have found your business otherwise. It gives you an audience that wants to hear what you have to say. It’s free marketing.
And it isn’t easy to turn that into amazing business growth without the secrets of those with big Twitter success stories.
John Panico of the Social Media Dudes has the answer for you. He’ll be sharing all his best secrets in a 60 minute teleseminar – Twitter Strategies for Your Business – you’ll be studying with the master. Learn the Twitter strategies that have earned him more than 16,000 targeted followers in 6 months & grown his business dramatically.
You’ll learn –
- 3 best strategies for growing your Twitter following
- How to turn followers to customers & cash
- Ways to use Twitter to be an expert in your field
- 5 Tools so Twitter doesn’t waste your time
- Strategies to get the most from the viral nature of Twitter
Teleseminar details:
Date: Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Time: 1:00- 2:00pm ET (New York time)
Registration: Click here.
Recording: Available to all registrants.
About John Panico – John has spent his career working with small business owners & he excels in helping entrepreneurs market their new & growing enterprises. He runs several online businesses, but is probably best known around the net as one of the Social Media Dudes. John started out his marketing efforts with just a hope & a dream but through the use of social media, he has become known as the “authority guru” of the internet. He writes extensively about marketing, social media & how to become an authority in your niche. Follow him on Twitter.
12 Tips for Blog Traffic
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Blogging is one of the best marketing ideas for many solopreneurs and can become the cornerstone of your marketing plan. Here are a dozen ideas for getting more traffic to your blog:
- Post entries on your blog as frequently as possible. Search engines will rank you much higher if there is frequent new content. Several times a week is a minimum.
- Include a place on your blog for people to subscribe. The best blogs allow the reader to get posts through either an RSS feed or by email.
- Use tags on every post. Tags are labels that the search engines use and that will help your posts be found on blog directories. It’s hard to tag too much.
- Submit your blog to blog directories. Here’s a list of 20 “essential” directories from Loren Baker.
- Use guest posting. Have others add content to your blog and write original content for others. Readers of the other’s blog will check out what you have on your blog.
- Comment on other peoples’ blogs. Whenever you do, make sure to leave the URL for your blog. When people comment on your blog, be sure to answer them.
- Create community & conversation. Include calls to action in your posts, ask questions and request comments.
- Use share buttons to the bookmarking sites such as Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon. Each of those sites will provide a widget or plugin for the share button. Submit your very best posts yourself.
- Post on Twitter when you have a new post on your blog. An application such as Twitterfeed.com can automate this process.
- Be sure to use an application to post your blog feed to your Facebook profile or fan page.
- Craft your post titles carefully. Use plenty of keywords, especially at the beginning of the title. Numbers also rank well in titles.
- Spread the URL for your blog offline in all your marketing literature and online in your email signature.
BlogTalk Radio – Business Success 101
Posted by: | CommentsRegular readers of this blog know that I was recently at the NAMS internet marketing training. While there, I met John Panico, also known as one of the Social Media Dudes. That lead to an interview on BlogTalk Radio with John and his partner, Dennis Lynn. Both these guys were curious! 
Our conversation turned out to be a probing inquiry into what it really takes to be in business these days. I expected to talk a lot about social media – all 3 of us agree on the value of that. But what we really focused on is what I would call Business Success 101 – who you really must be to succeed as a solopreneur, traits to cultivate, steps to take to get your business started, what it takes for small business growth and more. John and Dennis really were interested in the two areas that I think most solopreneurs struggle with – entrepreneurial mindset and marketing. I even outlined for them what it takes to have a great marketing plan. I hope you’ll stop by BlogTalk Radio and listen in on the recording of our conversation. You may be glad you did!
Promote Your Business With Podcasts, Online Radio Shows and Videocasts
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Part of promoting your online business is getting in front of as many people as possible. While you are there, give them something interesting to read, listen to or watch that will direct them to your website through a link. One of the ways that people like to hear about new sites is through podcasts.
What is a Podcast?
A podcast is a multimedia tool that people can follow. Think of it as audio or video information that you can listen to or view on your computer, iPod, mp3 player or any other multimedia enabled device. It’s like having your own radio show on your website.
Podcasts can be syndicated using RSS (really simple syndication). This is the same process that people use to keep up with blogs and websites. The RSS feed allows them to receive updates when changes are made on the site so they don’t have to visit every day.
Creating your Podcast
There is software available to help you create your audio and video files. You can embed code for them on your website so others can view them.
Beyond the technical aspects, the purpose of the podcast is to present interesting information to your readers in a new and unique way. People browse the Internet to find useful items. They like to read, but would admittedly like to watch or listen as it is a more convenient way to get the same information.
So what will make your podcast stand out? Use engaging dialogue, present relevant topics and use visually appealing props and sets for video casts.
Going Viral
For one, don’t forget the keywords. You want people to be able to find your podcasts when they use their search engines. Even if you are using mainly audio, include keyword optimized titles, tags and links in your podcasts.
Submit your podcasts to directories. Use every avenue to get yourself in front of the public. That includes creating press releases to announce your podcasts if you are introducing them for the first time. Optimizing your press releases and submitting them to free press release sites keeps people finding them even after you are through using them.
Let your existing customers in on the new podcast. Use your email list to keep them in the loop as you unroll your podcast project. Give them links directly to the podcast so they can view it and hopefully pass the link on to others.
Your podcast can be turned into a radio show with regular guest spots. Interview other business owners in your niche and notable online personalities who would be of interest to your readers. A recurring show can increase your traffic and your following.
Want to get people to your website? Create a podcast. Turn it into a radio show or recurring video cast to create a following and gain more traffic to your business.
Use Affiliate Programs To Get Your Business Noticed
Posted by: | CommentsWebsite promotion gets the word out about your online business. If you are already making sales, using other, more advanced promotion methods can increase your targeted list of potential buyers and hopefully sales too. Affiliate programs are designed to do just that.
The idea behind affiliate programs is simple. You use other businesses and websites to promote your products on their website. They are doing the legwork while you reap the benefits. But, they also get a commission when people click on their link and head on over to your website.
For the business owner looking to increase their visibility among their target market, starting an affiliate program is a win-win situation. For one, your affiliates (those are your promotion partners) are not paid unless they fulfill your agreement. Some affiliate programs pay per lead, click or per sale. Each link is coded so that you know which affiliate link has been used to access your website.
Secondly, when you achieve those leads, clicks and sales through affiliate promotion, your business is getting exactly what it needs. Here’s an example: Let’s say that you are trying to build your list. If five affiliates each have ten people click and sign up on your website – that is fifty more names for your list. But, these are not just any names. They are people from your target market who are already interested in your type of product since they accessed you through a related site.
To get the desired results from your affiliate program, you have to put in some work. It all begins with choosing the right businesses to advertise your products for you. In reality, if you choose poorly, then you haven’t lost any money but you have lost time and energy and most of us don’t have that to spare when we are trying to grow a business.
Look for businesses that have at least two things in common:
• Lots of traffic
• Great reputation in your niche industry
What you want is to put your product in front of people who have made their business a success. It is a smart choice to get companies with similar interests involved in your venture. You don’t want them to be in direct competition, but if they operate within the same niche, you can be pretty sure your products will interest their visitors too.
Offering top notch tools in your affiliate center will attract just the kind of people you want to promote your website. Include graphics, website content, brandable reports and eBooks, banners and other nifty items to help them to help you make your business an even bigger success.
Affiliate programs are one way to promote your website and leverage the power of others to do it. By working with your affiliates and giving them the tools and knowledge necessary to be successful, you’ll not only promote your business more, but also increase sales.
