Visitors, Leads and Customers from Internet Marketing

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Our Website is the integral piece of technology around which we build a functional marketing machine. Think of it as a race car frame to which we have to add the functions we are seeking. We are seeking customers so we must build in the engine that takes us to where they are gathering. We want people to stay awhile once they find us so lets put in comfortable seats. Finally we want them to become our followers or customers so lets put in seat belts and doors so they can't get out. No just kidding. Lets put in a great stereo system and sunroof so they want to ride with us for a long time.

Then we want others to join us so lets put in a phone so our passengers can call their friends and tell them what a great vehicle we have for success. But like a high performance vehicle, everything has to be just right. And most important, everything has to be tested and constantly adjusted because every race track has different conditions and requires a change of gearing. Weather changes and the competition changes so we have to be constantly monitoring and making our site dynamic rather than static.

And as things continue to change like the algorithm on search engines, we have to play by the new rules and engineer our efforts to stay the fastest. Not a game for the light hearted.

Web Designers and SEO

Most web designers will admit that they and SEO are like Army-Navy; in the military but with different functions.

For one, the web designer creates a functional, aesthetic product to please the client. Web designers are creative and have learned their craft. SEO is produced for the Search Engines. It is more science than art. No aesthetics.

The owner thinks that because the keywords are on the website and in the source code with metas, he has been optimized. Not even close. Maybe the website is strictly for credibility and a location to drive customers through sales teams and advertising assuming they will purchase if they like what they see. Good enough.

The next step is the giant one. Reaching for the millions of people who are looking for your service, assuming you don’t cater to only local clientele. What the optimized site lacks first, is knowing what the competition is driving.

Say you wanted to race in the Sunday sweep stakes so you bought the car your budget would allow and you show up to see what happens. It’s one way to go. Or you show up at a party late and ten guys are standing around the prettiest girl. (or visa versa) So you still want the girl and you are calculating the best line or approach. You notice four guys next to you and by the looks on their faces they are thinking the same thing.

That’s what makes it so exciting to win.

SEO usually becomes an after market add-on. Without it, you don’t get access to the sweepstakes. The best way to build a car that wins is to build it piece by piece and test it. Each time around the track it comes in and you adjust it. At the end, maybe only four or five cars have a real shot at the prize. That’s really being in the game. See more on Search Engine Optimization

Big Budget or Small Budget SEO

One common ingredient shared by most companies as the result of the recession
is retrenchment.

It’s crucial to cut costs but the way out is more business.

Two ways out are healthier customers or more customers. The internet cannot
make customers healthier but it can help find more customers. It can help
you find the customers that are already there that you are missing.

Most companies have three of the important beginning ingredients for search engines.
They have been in business for more than 5 years, own domain names
for more than a year out, and have their key words in their URL or title.

Three things they miss. The words span two different categories without being
supported by the site. Let’s say your title or description is Cold Storage Shipping Logistics. This is a great tail. A tail is adding descriptive words to a key word to narrow the focus.

Now, if the rest of the site supported these words and they were repeated several times, the site might be first in page ranking for the words. Usually what happens is the content and everything else abandons the words or only follows one, so the dilution hurts page rankings.

Secondly, the phrase used in the description is diluted with too much meaningless copy. This is what occurs when web designers not familiar with SEO have created the descriptions. And the site content does not support the words in the URL, title, headlines, description, and metas.

The third common error is that the words selected do not have relevance to the way most customers search for the business. Understanding which words are used is important. Taking a stand and committing to a narrow focus of words is important to being selected for their query. Trying to cover everything gets nothing.

So with a big budget or small budget avoid wasting money by at least put some money into getting the primary ingredients for page ranking.
See more at Search Engine Optimization

Bond with The Social Media Crowd

A great way to create an instant connection with some visitors is to set up a blog on your website. For the Social Media crowd, this is the same as transparency. It takes them behind the corporate veil to the inner sanctum where the social media crowd thrives.

The advantage to you is it is a soft sell that still allows you to put links to all your important pages. In a very friendly conversational tone you can help bring down the visitor's guard because now you are relating one on one. The only thing missing is the coffee.

You can discuss anything. You can talk about trends in the industry, new technologies, company innovations, new hires, new clients, your community activiities, your convention appearances, your people in the news. It can be like your in house Facebook or Twitter page.

Experts say find the person who tells good stories and can write in a friendly conversational tone to your audience. With 300 million people on Facebook and 23 million a day engaging in Twitter for business and fun, some people in your audience will go to your blog first.

Understand the importance of Source Code for Page Rankings

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When search engines look for the best sites to present to customers who have entered key words or phrases, they base their selections on several criteria.
One of them is the placement and use of the keywords on your site. The first indication of how you have used them is found in your Source Code.

You can see the Source Code on your site's landing page (home) and on most any other site by right clicking the Home page and then clicking “View Source”. This is a description of the words on your site. It indicates which words you have put in the most important places. The Search Engines look at your URL, your Site Title, the Meta Description, the Headlines, the Body content, the internal links, and the titles of each of the pages on your website.

Search engines know that sometimes the description that appears on the internet does not always match what is on your site. They want to know what you really are emphasizing. Your title is your most important headline and it describes the "core" of your site message. If your URL, your Title, Your Meta Description and the first line of your content copy and last line of your content copy all use the same words, it is a very strong message for the engines.

You have a better chance of being matched for these words with a customer's use of the words.

In the body content, you should use the words as well without distracting from the interest of the content. There should be images on the page that also use the words in the image descriptions.

Finally, each page of the site should have keywords as part of the title. For example http://www.FulfillmentCo.com/order fulfillment.html

The words you use will not express your whole business, but once you are on top of the page rankings for these words, visitors will see your other services in your title bars. Once you are on top of rankings for one word or phrase, you can start using more phrases to appear at the top of more categories because you will now have more authority.

This is just one ingredient to getting to the top but it is the key ingredient for companies just beginning to optimize. The other way would be to have hundreds of other authority sites pointing to your site with links, but that requires more time and is further down the road in the optimization process.

The Three R's of Internet Success

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Traffic
Retention
Conversion

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) increases traffic. This is often achieved with Pay Per Click until Organic growth can be achieved. SEO consists of optimizing the website for key words so that search engines will match the site with customers queries on Google or other engines.

Optimization is further improved by creating off page connections through linking with authority sites and then Web 2.0 techniques. These techniques are generally categorized into publication of blogs, articles and pr releases. Secondly it is achieved by getting referrals through interaction on Social Media sites.

Retention is the most underplayed aspects of internet success. The bounce rate for even the most popular sites is very high. The highest bounces rates are probably from pay per click advertisers who have taken the short cut of paying for placement instead of optimizing the retention value of their sites.

Finally, a conversion rate of a visitor to a purchaser or sign up is under 10% for most sites. If you visit a lot of sites like I do, the first thing I realize with static web sites is there is no emotional appeal. I often am not certain what the page has planned for me. Most people only give it a few seconds to communicate if they have lots of options.

I feel the next serious answer to retention and conversion is Video. We have fallen in love with it. It is not static, it is alive. It is welcoming and emotional. It can transition from retention to action. By comparison, it is so much more appealing than the static sites that I have visited that a good video has me enraptured. Not to mention that YouTube is now the second largest search engine.

As an example I provide one of the better video sites I have visited. http://digitorialmedia.com
It is time that sites that want to increase sales follow the three R’s and add video.

Web Design and SEO

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Web site designers first objective is to please the owners. Rightfully so.The sites are designed with the name and logo at the top and as pleasing copywriting as can be constructed. The designers create the pages required and then they are delivered and published. Whoever the owner drives to the site is probably equally pleased.

But what have they left on the table? The millions of people who don't know the company and yet want the services. What rarely occurs is a keyword analysis. What is the core business and what key words describe it best? Who are the competitors and what keywords are they using to describe their business? What words do customers use to find these businesses? Placing the keywords in all the right places so the search engines give the site a high rating for those keywords.

It would cost very little for this additional step.

After the site is launched, is someone monitoring the popularity of the site to customer queries and comparing it to the performance of competitors? Are keywords ever adjusted to get better performance and higher placement in page ranking?

The website is a business card, and it is a catalog of services and company character, but even more than that, it is a high leverage vehicle to revenues. Whether a company is bricks and mortar or strictly online, being placed high in page rankings for the unknown customer can supersize balance sheets. That is why keyword anlysis is the first step in website SEO.

Getting the SEO Running

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Most businesses with websites that I observe have made an effort to get everything in place but they haven’t optimized the pieces so that they all work together and create the synergy that increases traffic up to ten times what it is now.

A beautiful wheel without a car isn’t going far.

Not having a website optimized for key words means the competition comes up an equal amount of times in search queries. Having a video that doesn’t really have a focal point indicates an attempt to be “with it”, but maybe not achieving any results.

Having a face book page with no followers or a Twitter account with no entries is the result of someone saying “lets get one,” but no one saying “stay with it.” Having blogs that aren’t publicized or cross linked just under utilizes the original effort.

Putting it all together is like fueling a race car and starting the engine. One of the best conglomerations I have seen is www.SanMateoMortgageblog.com They have a city of interconnectivity and you could spend a few hours following around all their links.

Business is definitely getting the idea, now let’s just get the last 10%.

3 Essentials of SEO

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Increasing Business from an Internet site requires a strategy to accomplish the following three tasks.

1> Optimize the website for reader interest, retention, and conversion.

2> Optimize the website for search engines. Each has a different criteria.

3> Attract customers to the site by using traditional and 2.0 tactics.

Businesses trying to drive business quickly can engage in Pay per click advertising. The ROI can be enhanced by using analytics to test for key words and target markets. At the same time the site has to be enhanced to retain and convert the visitors to the desired action.

Organic growth is achieved by synchronizing the business, key words, and queries so that visitors get what is promised and what they expect when they arrive. Secondly, it is achieved by using Social Media practices to create followers from the community at large. This can be achieved through blogs, articles, videos, pod casts, press releases, referrals from other sites, and interaction with social media sites and forums.

A well coordinated effort produces maximum effectiveness and ROI over the long term and will yield noticeable short term improvements.

Websites Could Open Like Blogs and Welcome Visitors

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In the hundreds of website I visit, I find that where as they may have high degrees of functionality, they lack the welcoming and warmth that prevents a high bounce rate. Potential Customers have entered a search engine query and have lots of choices. If they pick your site, what is to retain them and make them feel they have made a good choice. I feel there should be more of a transition from searching to listening to what you have to say. Most sites have an immediate call to action. Whereas this approach might be too friendly for you, it expresses exactly what I think is too much formality on many sites asking visitors to make life changing decisions. The below welcome is on a residential mortgage blog that at least extends a welcome and tries to discover why the customer has visited.

Welcome to Home Buying Tuesdays!

Are you ready to buy a home, but don’t know where to start? Have questions about specific financing opportunities and programs? Looking to trade up, but aren’t sure about the market?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you’ve come to the right place.

The actual image can be seen at http:homebuyingtuesdays.com

If it were then to follow up with some immediate alternatives of how to get quick anwers to the visitors questions, it would have transitioned into the "take action" stage which is the goal of the site. I think websites should consider adding videos as a welcome, open with an instant chat window, a phone number to call for immediate assistance, or even a "sign up" to get information and a return call.

Establish a connection immediately and let the visitor know you have been waiting for them. You show there is humanity behind the technology, efficiency, and competence. They are concerned about who is behind the promises that are being made.

Are Companies Getting in Step with Social Media?

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It becomes more evident everyday that big companies know social media is important although they are not always convinced. I see sites that have been created but are without follow up activity. "It's like there, we did it, now what?" If you want to see one organization beautifully integrated with their Facebook page observe www.Sambazon.com/facebook.

Companies evidently haven't seen the proof that it is important to build a community of followers and they probably aren't sure how that following is getting monetized. If you are an individual participating for your own or on your company's behalf, you are aware of the tremendous interaction that can occur.

In the article below partially reprinted from the Star On Line News we see evidence the largest companies are certainly paying it lip service. Noticeably lacking in the comments is any connection with increased sales as a result.

Until we are able to clearly measure the increase in revenues as we can from even pay per click, large companies are going to participate so as not to be left out of the conversation and classify it as excellent public relations and brand building.


"Big business turns to Twitter for marketing

By Heather Lalley,
Associated Press

Published: Friday, October 9, 2009 at 8:32 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, October 9, 2009 at 8:32 a.m.


Multinational corporations, such as Ford Motor Co. and Coca-Cola Co., are beginning to use social media to increase positive sentiment, build customer rapport and correct misinformation, says Adam Brown, Coca-Cola's Atlanta-based director of social media.

"Having the world's most-recognized brand, we feel like there's an obligation or a responsibility when people are talking about us, we have a duty to respond," Brown says.

Best Buy Co. Inc. riled up the social-media world earlier this summer with a job posting that advertised for a senior manager of emerging media marketing. "

Social Media and Optimizing for Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization is important for businesses relying on their website to produce more business. What I find daily is that most websites were designed by great web site designers who often do not understand the true potential of optimization.

Consequently, many executives think of their website as a business card with extra powers, but are happy if they get minimum functionality. Let’s face it, the internet has become a major factor in only the last five to ten years. Most executives were already out of college and firmly placed in the corporate ladder climb.

What more companies now realize, is that their audience has new information seeking habits that cannot be ignored if you want to reach them and have credibility that you are in their world. The 2.0 world is about delivering information in the format or source that consumers believe is their world. They want to do their own investigations and rely on people they trust to give them the low down.

Face Book was started in 2004 by a couple of Harvard students that never intended it to be a business. It soon spread to hundreds of college campuses. Twitter may have started as a fun place to exchange meaningless diatribe, but commerce has found it hard to ignore the gathering of 23 million people a day. It is becoming a new Google of sorts. When you get into the deeper services you can see it is a wired city of commerce.

It’s just beginning. Advertisers go where the people are. The social sites including Flicker, Ebay, Craigslist and others have rerouted the commerce channels. Colleges have not taken Social Media seriously yet, but it is a great path for graduating seniors in this economic climate.

Books like “A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization” by Delina Hay point the way.

Achieve #1 Page Rankings

It Doesn’t Happen Immediately

To do it the natural way of driving traffic from advertising, getting referrals from publishing efforts, and getting referrals from other businesses takes time. As traffic builds on your site the search engines begin to elevate your classification as an authority and move you up the ladder in page rankings.

The Pitfalls of Doing it the Quick Way

Pay per clicks have made billionaires of the search engines. For a price, you can get immediate exposure. This is a good process if your site can make it work. The issue most have found is that they are shown the number of times their site has been exposed and the number of times people clicked, but they realize no new customers.

The Issue of Not Building a Good Site

Most website owners that take the pay per click route don’t build effective sites first. Successful sites built slowly and correctly, identify their markets, create a site that comfortably and credibly delivers on their promise, and converts the visitor to action. Now considering even the best sites may only have a 10% conversion rate, what are the chances for the poorly constructed sites?

What is a Good Site?

The owner knows the business he can deliver and it is in alignment with what a certain segment is seeking. The website is directed at that segment. It delivers what it promises. The owner produces past satisfied customers as endorsements and guarantees his promise. He has the authority of being visited by people whom he has driven, read his publications, or been referred by other sites. The Search engines have found him because of these three reasons. He is not a fly by night.

What Does it Take to Get This Authority?

The website owner has to understand the significance of key words to his business, the visitor and the search engines. The words have to be in alignment with all three. If he identifies his main business thrust with the query of the visitor and the search engine directs the visitor thinking it has a match, the wheels are in motion for a successful conversion.

How Does the Website Set This Up?

When the owner has, through analysis, selected the keywords that match his business, but also focused on a viable segment, depending on his size, with which he can have authority, the site is maximized with the key words. This can include placing the keywords in the URL, the site title and description, the headlines and the copy. Creating the right balance between maximizing the SEO and the readability of the site is where a copywriter earns his keep.

How Does the Website Owner Balance His Activities?

Someone trying to run or start a business has difficulty concentrating on the activities for Search Engine Optimization. He should work in concert with someone who can help analyze his business in comparison with the positioning of the competition and articulate his Unique Selling Proposition. Once the business has found its niche, the USP can be advertised and broadcast on the internet. Blogs, Articles, Newsletters, Social Media contacts can all be created by a copywriter or SEO specialist. Back links can also be sought from internet authority sites for the particular business. These are rated very highly by the Search Engines. As the business and traffic grow in concert, the Search Engines lift the rankings to the point the business is getting more free and meaningful contacts.

The #1 Way to Build Trust

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If people didn’t resist sales presentations, everyone could be rich.

But the truth is, people get more skeptical every day. Too many businesses have taken advantage of consumers. When the consumer shops for something in which they do not consider themselves experts, their first instinct is to Run!

How Do You Earn Their Trust Right Away?

Talk about your product, but find a way to bring up some of the negative possibilities or shortcomings. If they know about them up front, they have the ability to weigh the positives and negatives. If you leave the negatives off the table they will need time to discover what they are. That usually sounds like “I’ll think about it” or I’ll leave your site and come back later.”

What is a Good Way to Present these negatives online?

The FAQ section is a great way to let the questions get asked and answered. This way they may think others have explored and come up with the important questions or that you are open to exploring problems people may face and even anticipate them.

What are the questions you need to provide for this forum?

1> Understand what the main concerns are about buying your products or services in the market place.
2> Understand what the main objections are about hitting the “Order” button for anything.
3> Understand what the main concerns are about dealing with you.
These answers depend a lot on the authority in the market place of the product or service. It depends on how familiar your purchasing process is to the visitor. It depends on how well branded you are. If the product is well branded the consumer has to find the best vendor. If your purchase sequence is familiar to them, they will feel more comfortable. If you are a known commodity, there is less concern about you disappointing them.

What Process are You Trying to Avoid?

Brian Tracey, one of the best “Sales” gurus I have found, has several CD’s on closing the sale. He says that 80% of sales are made after you have over come at least 5 objections. Most sales people and sites never try to close once.
If you read the long scroll down commerce sites you will notice that some of these experts are aware of what it takes to get a visitor to push the “Order” button on the first visit. After a few sentences they are offering you something for your email. After a short presentation they are showing an endorsement and asking you to order now.

Do they expect you to order so quickly?

No, but they are softening you up. But on the other hand, a lot of people visit you to buy, so why make them wait. Send them directly to the check out.
The rest of the process in the commerce site is more presentation, more endorsements, more requests for the order, then the bonuses for signing up today. After you’re through scrolling down the whole site you’re wringing wet. And even they probably have less than a 10% conversion rate. Can’t say they didn’t try.

What is the Problem they Know they Are Facing?

Buyers have lots of choices on what to spend their money
Buyers have lots of choices on who to give their money
Buyers would prefer to put off the decision
Buyers are worried about things they can’t even enumerate

Do these vendors address these issues?

Over and over. They have endorsements. They provide reasons why they are the best. They provide reasons why you should not pass up this deal today. They throw in sweeteners. They claim it’s a limited time offer.
Why Are They Embroiled in this Dance?
They haven’t addressed the visitors’ negative thinking straight up. They are trying to overcome it.

Do you have this much time on your site or even in person?

Probably not, so the most efficient process is to get all the negative thoughts on the table right away and if the buyer weighs them and can accept them, he moves forward on the spot.