 Online Marketing Skills By admin, on 6-Oct-2009
Face it: We’re in the 21st Century and the Internet is used by just about everyone to find just about everything.
A company’s website is either the first or second impression a customer has about the business. I’ve had many customers look up my company’s website while I was on the phone with them. The website will often influence a customer’s perception of the quality of the products and services being offered. If the site is plain-looking, boring, short on content, poorly designed, hard to navigate, or hard to find in search engines, you’d be better off not having a website at all!
I’ve lost count of how many business clients I’ve encountered who give their web presence last priority. The same clients wouldn’t dream of allowing their field sales reps to show up at customers’ offices wearing jeans and T-shirts, but many websites give the impression that their owners just don’t care about quality.
A successful business, whether or not it processes online transactions, whether it’s global, national or local, needs to regard its website as a “first contact sales rep” for marketing purposes.
And I’m not just talking about the appearance of the site, but its search engine ranking. Without the proper structure, tagging, keyword selection and content management, the site will be virtually invisible to potential customers.
Web developers and designers are plentiful; true Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts are not. The SEO goal of every website project should be: to make the site easier to find than the competition. This means raising the Google “Page Rank” of a site’s landing pages, and ensuring that these pages have been optimized to the most important keywords/phrases the business is targeting.
There are dozens of ways to build the SEO profile of a website, and despite rumors to the contrary, not all of Google’s ranking algorithms are secret. Reaching Page-One of Google is a science – it just looks like magic! One of the most efficient ways to rank-up a web page is to have other highly-ranked pages link to it. Without quality “backlinks,” you could have a gorgeous and perfectly-structured website on the Internet and still end up on page-100.
There are many SEO tools available that help reduce the time and cost of optimizing a website, including Market Samurai, Commission Blueprint, and Google’s own Keyword Analyzer. But having great wiz-bang tools isn’t enough. You must fully understand how SEO and social media influence rankings on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.
If you haven’t been giving your website the priority and attention it deserves, whether it’s just a WordPress blog or a full-blown commercial site, then you’re leaving money on the table. If your customers can’t find you in the search engines, then you don’t exist!
For more information about SEO and how web pages can quickly appear on page-one of Google, please visit LarkinSoft.
Attraction Marketing By admin, on 15-Sep-2009
It astounds me every day that marketing professionals would have the etiquette to attend a friend’s party without trying to pitch everyone within three feet of them; but use social media to try to have sex without first saying hello.
I know, it sounds harsh, but the analogy is sound.
I’ve attended hundreds of parties – admittedly, mostly in college – and have always come to expect at least one dingbat who presumes that everyone else attended the party just to buy from him. It was like dropping fresh garlic in the middle of a petry dish filled with common cold virus. The bugs all flee to the outer rims of the dish!
The party pooper is seen later all by himself – no friends, no fun, and NO SALES. I’m sure you know the type.
The phenomenon we call Social Media is no different. Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter – for example – are places where we can meet people, have fun, and build relationships. They’ve never been very effective as marketing venues. But this fact doesn’t stop marketing wannabes from dumping pitches on everyone else’s parties.
For example, I get automated direct messages on Twitter every time I follow someone, and more than 60 percent of the messages go something like: “Hi, thanks for following. To make money from your Twitter traffic, click here http://blah.blah”
They don’t even know my name yet, but want to stick their hands into my wallet. No relationship. No fun. And – you guessed it – NO SALE. I simply delete their feeble and transparent marketing attempt and UN-follow them.
The most effective marketing utilizing social media is still “attraction marketing” – which makes friends first by offering free, useful information, attracting visitors to a central hub – usually a well-optimized WordPress blog, where they are given opportunities to learn more from the person they’ve already deemed to be an expert in the given topic AND with whom they’ve already developed a relationship.
Ask yourself this: If I’m marketing to everyone on social media and NOT selling very much, should I continue to do what doesn’t work and expect the results to change for the better?
Attraction Marketing By admin, on 12-Jun-2009
I’ve been studying the videos, blogs and published materials from some of the champions in Attraction Marketing, including Mike Dillard, Mark Wieser, Jonathan Budd, Katie Freiling, Scott Brandon Hoffman, and many others. The manner in which these folks operate is very similar, just from diverse perspectives, since each has a different passion or niche. But, boiling down their approaches to what they share in common yields the following evidence:
- They have all mastered the art of generating online traffic and directing it to their blogs or opt-in capture pages. Much of this traffic is free, but some is through Pay-Per-Click (AdWords, etc.).
- They have all employed an online “engine” of sorts, to automatically provide free content and training to those who opt-in as well as a “back office” for use by those who wish to implement their training.
- They have all made generic training materials available for purchase or subscription to those who opt-in, to help advance the skills necessary to succeed.
- They have all produced high-quality capture pages and sales letters that generate high conversion rates.
- They have all leveraged Social Networks to exponentially syndicate their content and produce significant “free” traffic.
- They have all realized that “Attraction Marketing” must both attract and sort their prospects, separating the truly motivated entrepreneurs from the unqualified.
- Only the “qualified” are offered anything beyond the generic training, but it’s usually the prospect’s idea and timing that dictates any further dealings.
- They have all mastered the art of converting prospects into superstar network marketers, or certainly the art of attracting those who are already superstars.
- Meanwhile, the front-end generic materials more than pay for the cost of prospecting for back-end network marketing representatives, thus offering them “funded prospecting,” making a profit on every lead whether or not a purchase is made.
Setting up these businesses was neither “simple” nor “quick”. However, the parts of the business that would drain them of their productive time were automated, leaving them free to create new content, respond to their qualified prospects, and have a life outside of the Internet.
If an automated online business that can do all this intrigues you, or excites you, or keeps you up at night thinking of the possibilities, stay tuned to this site and those mentioned above for the free training necessary to do it. We are finishing the videos for a Free Attraction Marketing Video Boot Camp, with the strategies and tactics needed to build an Attraction Marketing business. You’ll be able to opt-in very shortly!
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