Ever get lost and wish you had a map or GPS to show you where to go?
The Challenge: If prospects visit your site and it isn’t clear where to go first, second and third, they’ll leave without getting what they want.
The Solution: Don’t put your prospects in this situation. Show them the quickest path to becoming a customer.
Listen to Charlie’s Small Business Marketing Podcast
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The Resource: The Insider Secrets to Creating Websites that Sell >>
How can you blow away the limits to your business growth?
The Challenge: You’re only limited by what you know, so what’s the fastest way to find out how to grow your business?
The Solution: The FREE CD, ‘7 Steps to Get More Clients and Grow Your Business’ reveals what you need to do to put your business on the track to success. It’s an amazingly simple and powerful formula you can use to make it to the top.
Listen to Charlie’s Small Business Marketing Podcast
The Resource: FREE Audio CD – Seven Steps to Get More Clients and Grow Your Business >>
Do you want your website to bring in more sales?
The Challenge: How to you overcome the 3 most common bottlenecks?
The Solution: Keyword optimize pages, compelling free offer and long sales page.
Listen to Charlie’s Small Business Marketing Podcast
The Resource: Writing Copy That Sells >>
Creating Websites That Sell >>
Do you use email to market your business? Have you ever been frustrated by the lack of response?
The Challenge: Why do some emails get a better response rate than others?
The Solution: A call to action that tells your prospects what you want them to do.
Listen to Charlie’s Small Business Marketing Podcast
The Resource: Writing Copy That Sells >>
There are two ways to make more money with your web site. You can get more people to stop by and you can increase the conversion rate of your site.
Most web site owners are focused on the first, getting people to their web sites… when the bigger bottleneck is converting visitors to buyers and buyers into repeat buyers. Are you making this web site marketing mistake? Remember, it doesn’t matter how many people come to your site if hardly anyone buys.
Ever have your heart rate checked? People monitor their heart rates if they have health concerns about their heart beating too slow, dangerously fast or if they’re serious athletes who want to maximize their performance.
The conversion rate of your web site is the heart beat of your online business. Unless you know it your site could be in mortal danger or at a minimum not performing anywhere near its potential.
According to The e-tailing Group’s recent survey, retail web sites convert only 3% of site visitors to buyers on average. 3% may not seem like much, but it can be enough to be extremely profitable.
One of my clients, Tom, made over $150,000 last year through his niche info-product site selling a set of 3 audio cds. And Tom’s site only converts at 2 ½ percent. (This is a site he built and manages in his spare time after working his day job. Imagine what he could be making if he worked on the site full time and had a full compliment of products.)
It would be great if your site converted visitors to buyers at 20% or more as some of the best do, but to make your site profitable you only need to make it convert at a couple of percent or more. Once your site reaches the norm of 3% there are lots of ways to safely push it higher.
I bet you’re frustrated with your web site marketing, and you should be. Most web sites don’t convert visitors to buyers. Ready to finally discover the easy way to attract prospects and clients to your site so they buy, again and again >>
Do you know what your web site marketing conversion rate is? Is it high enough that your site is making a healthy profit? If it’s only a percent or two or less, you’re not alone.<
Most web sites conversion rates are low, so low that Google built a free Website Optimizer tool to help you improve your site. Google recognizes that unless business owners start seeing results from their Google Ads in terms of sales, they’re going to stop spending money on advertising.
The Google Optimizer is a good tool, and I recommend that every web site owner check it out but it has limitations. You know the saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Google’s tool can only test the elements and copy you presently have on your page. More frequently than not, it’s these basic elements which are the problem.
Improving Your Web Site’s Conversion Rate
The first step to improving your web sites profitability is to check it’s vital signs, to measure it’s current performance. Use the following indicators.
Web Marketing Success Indicators
Once you know these, you can establish a base line for your web site and work each month to improve its performance by changing, tuning and testing the following key elements of your web site.
Web Site Marketing Elements
•The words in your headline and the body of your pages. The appeal of your marketing message and whether your copy strikes the right nerve in your prospects to generate the action you want.
Getting all of these web site marketing elements working together to optimize your conversion rate takes expertise, time and work. To start – create a map of each part of your web marketing process from ad to landing page to site to sales page to upsell page to thank you page to repeat sale. And include in your flow chart how you use email and autoresponders.
Then add in the conversion numbers and you’ll have a snapshot of where your web marketing is leaking buyers. Increase your conversion rates at each step and soon you’ll have plugged the holes in your web marketing and have a healthy flow of sales and profits.
Want to discover how to use these website marketing measures and elements to make your site attract more prospects and convert more prospects into buyers? Ready to finally make your site into an outrageous success? Use this link >
When you were five or ten years old you may have played the game of hide and seek where the object was to avoid being found. The longer you could stay hidden and the harder it was to be discovered the better.
As a business owner or someone responsible for marketing a business you want to do the opposite. Instead of remaining hidden from view, you want to make it as easy as possible for members of your target market to find you again and again.
You may have a PhD, worked for big name clients, provide outstanding service or have a new ground breaking product but if people can’t find you it is tough to build revenue. What you want is to be found so prospects contact you and you can convert them to client status.
What happens when someone is looking for a new product or service? More and more customers and consumers use the internet to search for the goods and services they need, to the point that ‘google’ has become a verb. They may also use the search engines provided by Yahoo, AOL and MSN.
A prospect types in a set of keywords, your name or your company name into a search engine, with Google being used by far the most frequently. Can they find your website? Go to www.Google.com and try the following three tests:
Help people find you the first time and again with “Creating Web Sites that Sell“. You’ll learn how to structure your site and how to write web page copy to rank high in the search engines and attract prospects.
If you’ve had trouble getting people to visit your site or getting them to contact you once they do visit, “Creating Web Sites that Sell” shows you how to get better results with your web site.
Here’s the link to order your copy of Creating Web Sites that Sell.
1. If a prospect hasn’t heard of your company they won’t be searching for your firm by name. Instead they will be searching using keywords that describe the problem they want solved or the type of information they are looking for. If they are looking for ways to motivate employees, that’s what they will type in the search box. If they are looking for adventure vacation ideas for Costa Rica, they’ll enter that in the search box.
My prospects might enter, ‘attract more clients’, ‘marketing coach’, ‘web marketing plan’, ‘web lead generation’ or ‘marketing services’ in Google. When they do, they’ll find my site at the top or at least in the first 10-15 listings.
Type the problem you solve or the solutions you offer into Google‘s search box. Is your site listed at or near the top of the listings? Is it even in the top 100?
2. Type your own name in the search box. Does your web site come up at the top of the page or in the first 20 listings?
3. Type your name and/or your company name in the search box, for example, “Charlie Cook” or “Marketing For Success”. Did Google find your site in or near the top spot?
If you aren’t happy with the results of these tests, your search engine marketing needs work.
How to Avoid Playing Hide and Seek With Your Business A Smart Domain Name
Choose a domain name that is simple and obvious or simple and memorable. If your company is called Bollard and Jones Realty (or whatever) try to obtain bollardandjones.com as your domain name. That way, a prospect who knows your company name can type it into their browser and easily find your site.
The simple and memorable strategy is to use your domain name to describe what you do. Once prospects have found your site through a search engine, typing in the domain name will reinforce the ways you can help them. For example www.marketingforsuccess.com or www.printondemand.com.
Keywords That Work
While they are many ways to improve your use of keywords on your web pages, you can boost your ranking in the search engines simply by using your keywords in your page title tag, your metatags and 4 to 6 times in the text on your page. Make sure to use them in normal, well-written sentences.
Do you want to increase the number of visitors to your web site? Do you want to create more opportunities and generate more business with your site? “Creating Web Sites that Sell” shows you how.
With Creating Web Sites that Sell you’ll l earn how to make your site search engine friendly and get people to it. You’ll also learn how to convert site visitors into paying clients and customers.
Here’s the link to order your copy of Creating Web Sites that Sell.
Flash and Splash Pages
When you submit your site to the search engines, they are
looking for text. Pages full of pictures or with just your company logo (splash pages) or mini-movies (flash animations) may look pretty but they won’t help the search engines judge what your site is about. In addition, research shows that 90% of visitors find these entrance Flash and Splash pages annoying. Rather than move further into your site, most visitors will leave. Avoid home pages full of pictures, movies or with minimal text. They may look nice, but they won’t help people find you.
Build Links
One of the best ways to boost your site’s rankings and thus get more visitors is to get other sites to add links from their site to yours. An extremely effective way to do this to write articles and distribute them to sites visited by your target market. Most site managers and ‘webmasters’ are hungry for relevant content. Provide these sites content they want and they’ll be happy to use it and link back to your site, as they do to my marketing services site.
Stay in Touch
Offer an incentive to get site visitors to give you their contact information, and join your e-mail list. You can also follow up with a call or a mailing. Once a prospect has been to your web site, you want to regularly remind them of the problems you solve and the services you provide. Don’t let your prospects forget you when they are ready to make a purchase.
Avoid playing hide and seek with your target market. Help more people find you and you’ll grow your business. Tune up your search engine marketing strategy and your web site and you’ll have more site visitors, more prospects and more business.
Marketing should run like a car’s engine. Give it the right fuel and you’ll enjoy steady acceleration when you step on the gas, but let the tank run dry or put in diesel when your engine runs on gas and it will sputter and stall. If you’re marketing isn’t helping you attract a steady stream of new clients and accelerate the growth of your business, chances are you aren’t using the right fuel to market your business.
The first step in any successful small business marketing effort is to get the attention of your prospects. If they don’t know you or your products and services exist, you won’t be able to grow your business. All too often service professionals and small business owners think that touting their expertise and the benefits of their services will get them the attention they want. Unless you are a well published author or sought after expert, this marketing strategy rarely works.
Prospects’ primary interests are solving problems and meeting their needs. If you can show prospects you clearly understand their concerns and know the problems they are experiencing you’ll get their attention and have the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise and the solutions you provide.
When you take your car to a mechanic you don’t want to them to replace parts until they’ve diagnosed the problem. A good mechanic will start by asking you to describe the symptoms, then they may hook your car up to the computerized diagnostic machine to further understand the problem before they order that expensive part.
Similarly if you want to sell your products and services to a prospect they must first have a problem that needs to be solved or a need to be filled. Despite an understanding of this fundamental sequence, most firms’ small business marketing efforts start with a focus on their services, products and credentials.
Learn how to position yourself and your business for success and where to start and how to focus your marketing to attract more clients and increase sales. Get started now >>
Without prospects problems and needs your firm wouldn’t exist. And without the services and products you provide, you wouldn’t have a revenue stream. You need both prospects’ problems and service solutions to keep your marketing engine running smoothly. Problems are the fuel that provide the power and your solutions are like the cylinders of an engine that do the heavy lifting.
Fueling your marketing engine requires a constant focus on client problems and needs. The more accurate your identification of client’s pressing concerns and interests, the more power you’ll get out of your marketing engine.
The first step to strengthening your small business marketing efforts is to clarify your prospects client’s common concerns. Do you know:
– What the concerns of your target market are?
– What problems they have that you can solve?
– Which problems they want to solve?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions, don’t panic. Instead, list the questions you could ask your prospects to get the answers. Chances are you already know your prospects’ concerns and the problems they want solved but aren’t using it to fuel your marketing.
Learn how to find the right words to explain exactly how you help prospects. With a brilliant marketing message or elevator speech you’ll attract more clients right away. Use the ’15 Second Marketing’ guide to create more business opportunities.
Take a look at your business marketing materials and or marketing meetings. Do you start with clients’ problems and concerns or do you start with a description of your services and products and benefits?
Prospects want to see themselves and their concerns clearly identified in order to feel confident that you understand their needs. If you lead with this in your business marketing materials you’ll get their attention.
Which of the following describe and focus on prospects’ problems and which focus on benefits and solutions?
– Your one liner describing what you do (Tagline, audio logo, meme, business card or elevator speech)
– Your positioning page (first page of your web site and /or brochure)
– Your ads
– Your exploratory conversations with prospects
– Any articles or press releases you write
If you are trying to fuel your marketing with the solutions you provide, chances are your marketing will sputter along and you won’t attract all the clients you want. Make the switch to using client problems to power your marketing engine and you’ll be amazed at how quickly your marketing helps your business accelerate. Charlie Cook coaches independent professionals and small business owners who want to attract more clients and grow their business.
Learn how to position yourself and your business for success with ‘The Insider Secrets to Attracting More & Better Customers’ manual. You’ll learn where to start and how to focus your marketing to attract more clients and increase sales.
Read More Marketing Ideas and Marketing Articles
“Sales have been stagnating and we’d like to send out a mailing to attract more clients. Can you write a marketing message for us to use?” – Sam from Chicago
I get calls like this every week from people asking me to write their marketing messages. I turn them all down. Wondering why?
Sam is a software specialist who writes and customizes software for small and mid-sized businesses and maintains their computer networks. I asked Sam, “If a client called and asked you to write one line of computer code for a program, what would you tell them?”
Sam instantly understood the point I was making. Computer programs are composed of hundreds, if not thousands, of lines of code. No individual line works without the others. To make your computer run your word processing, accounting, or inventory management program, every line of computer code needs to work together.
A computer program is a complete system designed to achieve a set of objectives. Writing just one line of computer code, however brilliant, wouldn’t achieve anything. It would be a waste of time and money.
The same applies to marketing. The best marketing is a system of elements that work together to grow your business, not a set of isolated parts.
Ready to get every component of your marketing strategy working together to grow your business? Use this link >>
The first step is to understand which components you need to make up an effective marketing system.
Some of these will be:
– A specific target market or set of target markets,
– A clear understanding of your prospects’ hot buttons, that is, what they want and need,
– A marketing message that explains what you do in terms of your clients’ concerns,
– A no-cost offer that prompts prospects to contact you,
– A cost-effective strategy for generating new leads each month to keep your business growing,
– Multiple ways of exposing your prospects to your offer, including a website,
– Marketing copy that takes over where your marketing message leaves off and gives your prospects a reason to keep reading,
– Reasons for your prospects to respond, to contact you and to buy,
– A follow-up strategy that builds on a prospect’s initial interest and convinces them that they need your product or service, can trust you to deliver, and should buy today,
– Once a prospect is interested in making a purchase, a way to increase the sale by 50% or more by selling them additional items they need,
– A way to keep your customers coming back to buy again,
– A referral strategy that prompts customers to refer their friends and colleagues.
Is your marketing stopping short of getting you the leads and sales you want? If it is, you’re not alone. Most marketing doesn’t deliver or help you grow your business the way it should.
Want to discover how to develop a finely tuned marketing system that will help you meet your business goals? Use this link to get a system that’s market tested and proven >>
Are the different parts of your marketing system working together? Take this quick test to find out:
– Are you often disappointed with the response to your ads and mailings?
– Do you wish your website generated more leads and sales?
– Could you use more referrals?
– Would you like to convert more of the people that contact you into clients and repeat clients?
– Do you wish you could grow your business by 30 to 50% annually?
If you answered yes to any of the above, then you’re struggling like most small business owners do to make your marketing work. Don’t keep looking for that one marketing message or one ad that it will magically solve all your marketing problems. A brilliant marketing message or ad is just the key to opening the door to your prospect’s interest, after that you need to have the rest of your marketing system in place to convert their interest into a sale.
You would never ask a computer programmer to solve all your computing problems with one line of code. You’d ask for the complete program. The same applies to your marketing.
If you want to see your sales increase steadily you need a comprehensive marketing system one where the pieces fit together like lines of a well-crafted computer program. What you want is a marketing system that does everything from getting your prospects’ attention to closing the sale.
Use this link to get the small business marketing system that works >>
Are you making as much money as you could be from the services you market and provide? Want to know the fastest way to double or triple your business revenue?
Pat, a voice coach in Kansas City, used the simple ideas you’ll find below to increase her revenue by 300% in just two weeks.
Pat sought out my help because she just couldn’t seem to make her business into the huge success she knew it could be. Pat helps business executives improve their speaking skills and move up the corporate ladder. She had a web site and was using Google Ads successfully to generate leads, and that was the problem.
Pat was generating plenty of interest with her web marketing efforts, but with all the time she spent talking to prospects and then the time she spent coaching clients, she was going flat out and still not bringing in as much revenue as she wanted.
I’ve coached hundreds of independent service professionals over the years; accountants, authors, coaches, consultants, plumbers, trainers, search engine specialists, web designers, real estate agents, and other independent professionals – people who provide services of every kind.
Almost everyone I talk to is working way too hard and putting in long hours. Very few are making as much as they want to make or could be making.
Sound familiar?
Want to know three easy ideas you can use to double or triple your revenue in a month or less?
You’ll find the 3 simple ideas on what to do and how to do it to sign up more high-paying clients with less effort. Use this link >>
When I start working with a new client, one of my goals is to help them see immediate results. I want to give them straightforward ideas they can put to use right away to start making more money. Then we can work on the long-term projects that will continue to grow their business. There are three strategies I teach my new clients right away:
1. Get Rid of the Time-wasters
Focus your marketing efforts on your best prospects and stop wasting time talking to people who aren’t likely to buy.
When Pat got a prospect on the phone, she’d been spending up to 30 minutes talking to them. She was spending a lot of time every day talking to people who hadn’t spent a dime on her services and weren’t likely to.
I helped Pat write a phone script that qualifies her prospects within three minutes so she can quickly determine whether or not they are high-paying coaching prospects and she should continue the call.
Then I showed her how to get the prospects that don’t fit this profile to buy her low-cost CDs. For the rest of the callers, the time wasters, I showed Pat how to politely end the call before they wasted a fourth minute of her time.
To close more sales, learn how to quickly separate the buyers from the time-wasters.
Want to discover the fastest way to make more money with less effort? If you provide a service of any kind, whether in-person or online. Find out how >>
2. Raise Your Prices
Most service professionals think that they’re already charging as much as they can, because prospects and clients often balk at their existing prices.
But nine times out of ten when prospects complain about price, its not the total cost that’s the problem. The problem is that the price is presented out of context, so prospects don’t understand the value of your services. Without understanding the value you provide, a very reasonable price is going to seem high and become a barrier to sales.
Does this happen to you? Do prospects ever tell you that your fees are high or that the price for a project seems too high?
When I first suggested to Pat that she raise her prices, she thought I was nuts. I explained how to present her prices in terms of the value her services deliver. She agreed to try my methods, and beginning that day, started charging – and making – 50% more with each client.
3. Close More SalesWhat would your profits look like if you signed up 7 to 9 of each 10 prospects?
What is your closing rate? Could you be closing more sales?
Pat detailed her sales conversations for me. She told me how she explained her services, outlined all the benefits, asked for a commitment and then tried to close the sale. It sounded like the approach that almost every other service professional uses – and it was all wrong.
I don’t know why, but we all seem to start with this approach, and it works just well enough to keep us thinking it’s the best way to sell. Its not!
When I started coaching Pat, her closing rate was 30%. Respectable but not great. I showed her how to sequence the sales call, what to say and when to say it to get the prospect to sell themselves. When she put my system into practice, her closing rate more than doubled; it increased to 70%.
In just two weeks, Pat eliminated time wasters, increased per client revenue by 50% and more than doubled her closing rate. Her income grew by 300%. Let me repeat that; her revenue grew by 300% in just two weeks.
No hype; this strategy works! Pat is now making more money with less effort by applying the 3 easy strategies above, and you can, too. Ready to start making up to 300% more? Use this link >
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? Web sites are relatively low in cost to build and manage, and have worldwide reach. They can help you grow your business and in some cases be the primary source of new business. Yes, a web site can be the next best thing since sliced bread.
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 marketing, focus on its purpose. For most independent professionals and small business owners, web sites are meant to:
If your website marketing does these things, it’s a winner. If not, then its time to review what is working and what isn’t.
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?
Start using your web site to improve your website marketing >>
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.
Its content that pulls in prospects. Just take a look at The Drudgereport. 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?
Start using your web site to improve your web site marketing and lead generation >>
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
