Our President, Keith Holloway, is honoured to be rubbing shoulders with the Canadian internet marketing elite as a new contributor to the leading Canadian Internet marketing community web destination, OneDegree.ca.
Read OneDegree to stay ahead of the curve on Canadian Internet marketing, and keep watch for posts from Keith. You’ll find his bio on the OneDegree site, as well as his first article, Top 10 Reasons why B2B Businesses Under Invest in Their Web Sites.
If you haven’t already started an e-marketing campaign for your business, now is the time to start. If you are already using email marketing – here’s how can you improve it this year.
According to the Sandler Sales Institute, the number one reason for customer defection is “perceived indifference” on the part of the sales person or company. How can you possibly stay in touch with the hundreds or thousands of prospects and customers you have? Email provides a powerful and cost-effective method of communicating with any number of prospects and customers, reminding them of the benefits you provide them, keeping you front of mind, and calling them to action.
Don’t buy in to the pervasive myths that email marketing is either ineffective or damaging to your reputation. Professional email marketers send campaigns only to their permission-based list and provide relevant, anticipated, trusted content to their contacts. Don’t have a list? Start building it. Overwhelmed by the task of creating campaigns? Hire professionals to make it easy.
Experts know that email extends the footprint of your web site. You’ve already invested time and money into creating your web site – shouldn’t you remind people of it? Maria Veloso, in Web Copy That Sells , says that email is the tail that wags the Internet dog. The point she makes is that email is not merely a supporting element of Internet marketing – it can play the starring role as a primary sales tool:
Email can be used to direct what happens on your web site, not vice versa. In essence you can use email to “wag the web site” 1
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Read this 15 page e-book to discover more e-mail marketing tips and advice. Includes information on Privacy and Spam laws, deliverability, subject lines and more. Internet Marketing Best Practices.
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Most web sites – at best – only focus on the average visitor. All of the content is created for what this ‘average’ visitor wants, and written in the way that the ‘average’ visitor wants to hear about it. At worst, the web site only focuses on the company. The web site talks about the company, tells the visitor what they think they should know. All this is done with little regard for how even the ‘average’ visitor wants to hear it, see it, and experience it.
The user centered approach is clearly better, but there is still a problem. None of your visitors are ‘average’. Think about your real-world sales process. Sales people naturally customize their message for each type of buyer.
When a web site does not address each individuals needs, sales suffer. When a visitor is not able to find the specific information about your product or service that interests them, they tend to leave and search out another web site that does.
For example, a 2001 paper by user Interface Engineering shows “you can increase sales on your site up to 225% by providing the sufficient product information to your customers at the right time”1
What’s the solution? It’s called developing personas, and it’s brilliant. (I didn’t make it up.) It involves a completely new way of thinking about your web site and your customers. The idea of persona development was first introduced in 1999 by software developer and consultant Alan Cooper as a method of making software design more useful.
Read the rest of this article:
How to make your web site a selling machine
Thankfully, a recent Globe and Mail article* validates what Internet savvy businesses have known for years.
“Increasingly, the survey suggests, Canadians are becoming more receptive to legitimate forms of e-mail marketing, with about 79 percent having registered to receive e-mail from some sites. That figure was up from 77 per cent a year earlier.”
This survey goes to show that consumers (and business prospects) really want to receive relevant email from companies they are interested in staying in touch with.
Now it is true we all get a lot of spam. Yet, even with all of that unwanted mail cluttering the inbox, email is an extremely efficient and effective marketing tool for almost every business.
Why does email make so much sense?
Your e-mail list is a huge asset
Start thinking of it as such! Build it relentlessly. Use it to drive sales and customer interest. Use it to make special announcements. Use it to stay top of mind. Most importantly, use it in a regular schedule so it is anticipated, keep it relevant, and respect the privacy of your audience.
*Michael Ryval, “Making a statement on-line“, The Globe & Mail, April 4, 2005. (Now only available for purchase)
Now people ask me all of the time how to get more traffic to their site, how much does it cost, and how do I start? And even though the answers can be quite simple, I am loath to tell because in many cases it is a waste of time and money! For most sites, getting more traffic won’t help at all.
The fact is that there are many ways to generate qualified, targeted traffic to your site but there is a more important question you should be asking first:
What do you expect your visitors to do once you get them there?
These questions may sound silly, but that is the strategy for most web sites. Is it worth spending 50 cents – or several dollars to get a qualified visitor to your site and *hope* that one of the above scenarios comes true?
What your site should be doing:
The visitors to your site are coming there to get information to solve a problem. Your site should be offering a solution to that problem.
Now, imagine if you could find a way to give them that information so that it helps you achieve your goals!
What if your visitors engaged in a relationship with your site? They asked for more information, and your site gave it to them. Imagine that you followed up with each and every one of them to educate them and inform them of how you can help solve their problems. Imagine that when they called you, they were already pre-sold. Imagine if when people called you, they were ready to buy!
If your site did all this how would it make a difference to your life? Wouldn’t your job of selling new customers be easier? How much traffic would you want once you know how it translates into solid leads?
When a web site is crafted properly this is exactly what happens. The first step is to have very clear goals for your site.
Get people to give you permission to contact them again.
The web is a direct response medium. It’s interactive. Yet if your site is like most, it is just a bunch of static information. Here are a few ways to get people interacting on your site and moving in the right direction:
Of course this is the tip of the iceberg. On some of our sites we employ 5 and often more methods of engaging our visitor and capturing permission to contact them again. We find that no one way appeals to everyone, but a variety of methods will generate the highest conversion numbers.
What to do with that permission will be the topic of the next newsletter
That is a valid question, but search engines are changing – and the way people search is also changing. Both of these changes have made search engine listings more important than ever.
People are looking for everything through search engines today. And yes, people are even looking for local businesses through global search engines, and recent changes have made this even easier and more effective.
Death of the Yellow Pages
For example, last month I wanted to buy a “memory foam” bed topper and I wanted to do some comparison shopping.
So I went online.
I didn’t search for “memory foam” – I searched for “memory foam Toronto”. I looked through all of the results and I could not find a store in Toronto that carried them – but one place in Quebec kept popping up. After a few more fruitless searches I visited the Quebec site and learned that they offer free shipping, had great prices, and they could deliver in two days. So I bought it.
Surely there are plenty of stores in Toronto that carry the product, but I could not find one. Had a Toronto company had invested in search engine marketing my search would have been worth $500 to them. I would have drove there and made the purchase that day.
It’s not surprising that a recent study by MarketingSherpa.com found that 77% of online purchases originated from a search engine.
It used to be that many businesses could get a steady stream of customers simply by advertising in their local yellow pages. For some it may still be true, but I believe those days are numbered. My Yellow Pages directory went in the blue box the day it was delivered.
Global search has become local search
Many major search engines, like Google and Yahoo, now allow you to bid on search terms and only display your ads to people searching from the areas you select.
Google allows you to select the provinces or states you want your ad to be shown in, while Yahoo (run by Overture) allows you to select the radius in miles from your location where your ad will be shown.
Even without this new local display technology, simply optimizing or bidding for terms that also include the desired locations in the search does the trick very well. (eg. memory foam Toronto)
How do you do it? Two ways to the top
There are two ways to the top of the search engines and they both have their advantages and disadvantages: You can optimize your web site to get good placements in the organic results, and you can bid on terms with the intent to buy top rankings in the sponsored results.
Both methods can bring considerable traffic and both should be considered and tested for your online campaign. A third, related method is to get listed in the major online directories which alone can bring substantial traffic, and also help improve your organic results.
For more detailed information on search engine marketing, download our free e-book: http://www.agito.ca/ebook_form.php
How does your site rank up?
If you would like to know how well optimized your site is, and how your site ranks in the search engines for your search terms you may consider purchasing our new SEO audit. In addition to learning how well you are doing, you will receive specific actionable advice on how to improve your results. For more information visit: http://www.agito.ca/seoaudit.php
You may suspect, or even be keenly aware, that these are the benefits of Internet marketing. Whether you are doing great and want to know how to improve, wondering how to get started, or questioning if it even makes sense, here’s an easy way to find out where you stand. Ask yourself these three questions:
When all of your past contacts and customers have a need to fill who do they remember? Is it you – because you stay in touch with them, keep them informed, educated, and aware?
When your prospects are searching for a solution that that you can offer where does your web site show up? On the first page? Second page? Will it show up at all?
When prospects visit your web site, do they interact with it? Do they happily leave you with contact details so you can follow up with them?
Without a doubt, the Internet, your web site, and your e-mail list offer multiple marketing and sales opportunities for your business. The question is, “are you really getting the most you can out of them?”
Enter Marketing In-Site, the Agito Internet Marketing newsletter; providing straightforward explanations, opinions and advice on these topics and more.
In the next issue: A high level overview of the new changes in search engine marketing and what it may mean to you.
