Website Design and Promotion

Client Attracting Websites

Is Your Website Failing To Attract Enough Clients?

If you are therapist, coach or healing professional looking for help in attracting more clients  through your website? If so, check out this 8-week tele-seminar series offered by Juliet:

Did you know…

Research shows that you only have 2-4 seconds to capture the attention of your web visitors before they click away to the next website?

There is now a wealth of research on what makes websites successful. This tele-seminar series will show you how to implement this research so that your website attracts all the clients you want.

Discover:

• how to get your web visitors' attention within a few seconds of landing at your site

• what pages and type of information converts the most visitors into clients

• how to make your site information-rich so visitors keep coming back for more

• how to make your site rank higher in search engines

• the best low-cost methods for promoting your site both on and off the Internet

Join us for the Client Attracting Websites Series…

Dates: Eight Tuesdays from October 23 - December 11, 2007
Time: 5:00-6:15pm Pacific Time

Calls are held on a teleconference phone line.
If you can't make all the calls, you can listen to the audio-recordings afterwards.

Save $100 with our Introductory Pricing:

Early Bird Fee; $149 +GST (If you register BEFORE October 5, 2007)
Regular: $199 + GST (If you register AFTER October 5, 2007)

For more information: http://www.julietaustin.com/clientattractingwebsites.html

Using Video To Drive Traffic to Your Website

Marketing Experiments did a cool study to explore whether a video could increase targeted traffic to your site and guess what they found? Yup, it works amazing well.

Here is what they did:

They put entertaining (not promotional) videos on YouTube and Google video and then measured the times they were viewed, how many people clicked to the website (mentioned in the video), and how many site visitors converted to subscribers.

They concluded that it was well worth the effort and came up with these suggestions for using video:

1. Keep your video clips short, preferable under 5 minutes. Most people browse through a number of videos when visiting sites like YouTube and Google Video, and may be unwilling to give any one video too much of their time
2. Ensure that your video has interesting, entertaining or provocative content. If it doesn't "wow" people, they will have little incentive to share it with other people they know, or across their social networks.
3. Be cautious about including commercial or promotional content. The most powerful short videos are those which are purely entertaining. It's when people click through to your site that the time is right to add your sales message.
4. Don't plan on creating just one video. It is hard, if not impossible, to accurately predict which videos will enjoy wide, viral distribution. Our own testing demonstrated that some videos were shared more than ten times as much as others. So plan on creating a series of clips, and learn from the one which performs the best.
5. Optimize your video clips to maximize distribution across social network sites, use tags and bookmarking links to help people find, save and share your videos.
6. Create videos that multiple people (possibly some of your customers) appear in. The best team of viral marketers you can hire are people who appear in your video and pass the video to their friends and family.

You can read more about their research here and watch one of the videos they used in the study here.

Improve Your Email Marketing Campaigns

Darren Rowse points to a post by Steven Spencer that addresses the issue of decreasing open rates for email marketing campaigns. I have heard a lot of people recently talking about how it is getting increasingly difficult to reach your market via email.  I too have noticed a drop in my open and click through rates.

Steven provides some great tips on how to improve response rates to your email campaigns. Here are his main points:

• Clean up the email format to make it more ’scannable’.
• Consider smaller, more targeted campaigns, tied to broader campaign strategies.
• Get more specific in your Subject line.
  
• Practice spam filter avoidance.
• Experiment with send times.

You might also want to read a post I pointed to earlier that tells you how to improve your response rate with HTML emails.

Great List of Resources for Increasing Web Traffic

Wow!

Brian Clark has just put together an incredible list of resources on attracting links and increasing website traffic. I counted 44 of them!

For all of you who are socially responsible business folks out there who are looking for ways to get more links or web traffic, do check it out.

Resource Site for Internet Marketing

A lot of people are talking about a new site called, Tubetorial. It is a site that has video tutorials for various aspects of marketing online. It seems like a great site, lacking in a lot of the hype found  on most websites related to Internet marketing.

One of the posts is called 7 Steps To Creating and Selling Niche Information Products. It's a great little tutorial that provides an excellent summary of how to go about creating and selling information products.

If you are want to know more about marketing on the Internet, you might want to check in with this site often. It looks like it's going to be very useful.

A Unique Method of Using Testimonials

Testimonials are crucial to your online success. There are a variety of ways to gather and use them and John Jantsch describes a unique method for using testimonials in his recent post The Small Business Reverse Testimonial Referral Tactic:

When you receive a testimonial from a client, clip a very powerful sentence or paragraph and print (you can do this in-house with post card templates from an office store or StockLayouts) 10-12 postcards with you client's comment, a simple offer and your contact information. Then, send these cards to your client and ask them to jot a hand-written note and send them along to folks they think would benefit from this offer. (Yes, put postage on the cards for them.)

Whether you try John's method of using testimonials or use others, make sure you are collecting testimonials from your clients and customers on a regular basis. I ask all my clients for testimonials. Some I gather from comments they have made to me throughout our work together and others I glean from an interview I hold with them when we complete our work together.

Websites More Convincing Than Celebrities

A new report by AccountAbility shows that celebrity endorsements are second last (next to leaflets delivered to the home) in terms of convincing consumers to buy. At the top of the list is packaging (which, if you're a sole practitioner in a health and healing field, can be your website and other marketing material). It's nice to see that websites and other Internet sources come quite a bit ahead of celebrities. That knowledge could save you a lot of money! ;)

Though not a very strong influence yet, it's good to hear that certifications, such as Fairtrade do play a role in consumers' decisions.

Success with Pay Per Click Advertisting

Brian Clark at Copyblogger has a great post summarizing how to make the most out of your pay per click ads. He notes the two commom mistakes people make when using pay per click:

1. Sending traffic from your pay per click ads to the home page of your website or blog instead of to a specific landing page.

2. Not making an attempt to to establish a relationship with those that don’t buy (i.e. getting subscribers to your newsletter or blog), once they get to your site so that you can market to them in the future.

He then outlines 5 steps for boosting your conversion rates for sales while also increasing subscriber numbers for your newsletter or blog.

While the method Brian describes is well known by those marketing on the Internet, as he points out, many people still neglect to utilize it.

Fiddleheads and Your Competitors

Seth discusses the issue of competition and how most people wish their competition would just go away because they assume they will do better if there are fewer people selling services and products the same or similar to those they offer. He gives an example of vendors selling fiddle heads at the market. He points out how you actually need the competition because the more there is to purchase at the mall or the market, the more people will show up there to buy.

The same is true for socially responsible/green businesses. The more businesses that exist, the greater the demand for products that are sustainable, green, etc., and the more people will want to buy from these businesses. It's also partly a matter of education. Your competitors are helping to educate your market. The more people learn about the benefits of dealing with ethical and socially responsible businesses and their products, the more they will want them. 

Instead of fearing your competitors and wishing they would go away, what would happen if you welcomed each one and viewed them as helpers in growing your business?

Move Your Website Visitors Forward

Gerry McGovern writes on the purpose of websites over at Marketing Profs: Daily Fix blog. He explains how the purpose of web navigation is to keep people moving forward. He points out that it should not be focused on where the visitor has been or could have gone.

He uses a driving analogy to explain his point:

Let's say you're out driving. You come to a junction where you are offered a choice between heading to New York or Boston. You take the road to New York. That's a decision you have made. Would you find it useful to be constantly reminded that you can still turn around and head to Boston? Would it be helpful to be reminded of all the places you've passed as you head to New York?

Your job is to understand the primary direction your most important customers are heading, and to remove obstacles in the way of them arriving at that destination.

These points are crucial for the success of your website and yet so many people still are just not getting it. So take a look at your site, reduce the clutter and confusion, and lead your visitors along the path towards the action you want them to take. It's really quite simple. Don't make it complicated.

Seth Has Flipped…

Seth Godin just released yet another free ebook: Flipping the Funnel.

Basically the funnel refers to the process where prospective customers enter the top of the funnel and gradually become customers as they move along down the sales process. I wrote a post on the funnel approach to marketing on my marketing blog for healing professionals that you can find here.

Seth takes the funnel approach one step further. He talks about flipping the funnel over and turning it into a megaphone where you utilize the Internet to turn friends, prospects and customers into your fan club. From the ebook:

Turn strangers into friends
Turn friends into customers
And then…do the most important job

Turn your customers into sales people

Definintely worth the read and is illustrative of an approach to marketing that many are adopting.

Download flippingfunnelPRO.pdf

Why Customers Leave Your Website

Marketing Journal has posted the results of a study conducted by Juniper Research on the reasons why customers leave your website. Here is the summary:

• slow or broken links: 84%
• unable to find needed information: 68%
• unable to find company information: 31%
• limited search functionality: 23%
• poorly labled links: 16%
• outdated FAQ: 6%
• site map too general:4%
• site uses pop-up ads: 4%
• other: 3%

This research shows how important it is to check your links and make sure they are all working. I know nothing frustrates me more than going to a site where the links are broken. The importance of having solid information on your site is also highlighted by this study. If people don't find what they are looking for off they go.

How Well Does Your Website Perform?

The Guerrilla Consulting Blog has a website self-assessment test that you can complete for free. Once completed it will analyze the results and send you a report with suggestions on how you can improve your site.

I think it's a worth while test to do and agree with most of the questions.  Questions include those related to:

• The purpose of your website.
• The importance of your website to your overall marketing strategy.
• Who visits your site.
• How much content is promotional vs educational.
• What people can learn from your website.
• How well different types of visitors can find the content that they want.
• How well your site allows visitors to interact with it.
• What communication tools your site has (blogs, RSS, etc.).
• If visitors can send you feedback from every page of your site.
• If you use pop-up windows on your site.
• If your Web site offers visitors some of your proprietary information at no cost.
• In order to download information from your site, what information you ask visitors to supply.
• If at least five clients tested your Web site before it was released to the public.
• If a visitor scan scan pages on your site and grasp the key ideas.
• If your Web site home page used an attention-grabbing flash introduction.
• If your Web site includes these features: Contact Us, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), Privacy Statement, Terms of Web Site Use, and Search.
• If you monitor traffic to your site, and if so, how many unique visitors view the site, what pages visitors look at, how long visitors stay at the site, and what site referred them to your Web site.
• If you use images you use to enhance the appearance of your Web site.
• If your Web site been effective in generating leads for your practice.
• If your site helped you build relationships with your existing clients.

I think it's a very useful tool and agree with most of the criteria. However, like many marketers, I am not big on flash introductions as they can distract from your message. I am also not big on pop-ups. They do work, but they are intrusive and can be somewhat cheesy.  

After having 400 consultants take the test, they have summarized the results here. Here are some interesting statistics from the websites that are successful:

• Less than half of respondents (43%) reported that their Web sites have been successful in generating business and building client relationships.
• 70% of successful websites had updated their sites within the last 30 days.
• 80% of successful websites offered information to clients at no cost.
• 90% of successful websites monitor traffic patterns and 59% monitor those patterns very carefully.

Take the test here.

The Needle and the Vice vs the Rattle Approach to Marketing

Seth has a good post on how to market effectively using a combination of the "needle and vice approach" as opposed to the "rattle" approach.

In a nutshell, the "needle" approach requires focusing on "the right person, the right message, the right moment". These are targeted messages geared towards specific folks on a consistent basis that have an impact.

The "vice" approach involves spreading your message far and wide and eventually the word spreads.

The "rattle" approach is used by those who try out an approach here and there. Perhaps give up on the approach when they don't get the results they want and then and try another method for awhile and still don't get what they want. They get more obnoxious and louder as they try to get attention.

Seth concludes:

The best marketers, of course, use the needle and the vise at the same time. They don't assault, they don't demand, instead they earn attention. And they apply their marketing pressure so consistently and in such a measured and relentless way that sooner or later, they profit from it.

Marketing successfully takes careful planning and strategy. For small businesses in particular, I can see no better way to market effectively than using a consistent, strategic plan that you implement over a long period of time to a specific group of people who become your fans. Permission-based methods of marketing do work amazing well if you are patient and apply them properly. These techniques are also the best suited to socially responsible business practices.

For more information on permission marketing, check out Seth's book here.

The Case for Having a Business Blog

In An Argument for Small Business Blogging, Chris Campbell cites some statistics on blogging:

Reported in a study by Comscore:

• 30% of US Internet users visited blogs in 2005 which is a 45% increase from 2004.

Reported in a study by Blogads:

    •     Blog readers’ median income hover between $60,000 and $90,000

    •     75% of blog readers are over 30 years old

    •     75% of blog readers are men

    •     75% of blog readers are looking for news they can’t find elsewhere.

    •     72% of blog readers never read blogs through an RSS (a method of being notified when a                   particular blog has been updated).

As Chris points out, blogging is still in it's infancy and with it's continued growth, Google's love of blogs, and everyone raving about the potential of RSS, it does seem that blogs will increasingly be of great benefit to businesses.

Read Chris' post if you are skeptical. The information he puts forth is convincing. For example, he mentiones a contest where Search Engine Optimization companies competed to get #1 on Google for a never before listed term....a blogger won.

Seth Rolls Out Yet Another Free Ebook

It might seem as though I am obsessed with writing about the marketing whiz, Seth Godin, recently.
I was intending to write a post about link anchor text and it's importance in the search engines, but then I visited Seth's blog (obviously one of my favorites) and  saw that he posted yet another free ebook.

After releasing his recent free ebook, Knock, Knock, focusing on building websites that work, Seth just posted an ebook called, Who's There: Seth Godin's Incomplete Guide To Blogs and The New Web. To quote Seth:

Who's There is not an ebook about how to write better or how to follow the traditional conventions about formatting and building a blog. It's not designed to sell you one service instead of another, either.

Instead, I divide the blog world into three groups and turn my attention to one. And in particular, I try to sell you hard on how building a blog asset can have a spectacular impact on you, your career, your organization and your ideas.

I promise this ebook is incomplete. I hope, though, that it encourages you to pay attention to some of the underlying forces at work on line and off.

As always with Seth's writings, very interesting and useful information... and remember, it's free.

So I will write about link anchor text in a future post. In the meantime you can download Who's There here: Download whos_there.pdf.

Jack of All Trades, Master of None?

A recent post in Treehugger about Organic Style magazine shutting down (http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/09/organic_style_m.php) is at first sad to me, as I think the original concept of the magazine was a good one - promoting organic clothing, food, building materials, etc. But, it's also a lesson. The reason for the not-long-ago popular (and growing quickly in popularity) publication is essentially that it got too big for its britches, so to speak, and no one (readers, sellers) really knew what the magazine was about any more. Was it about recipes, fashion, women's issues, etc.?

There is a useful tie-in to what I see on many websites these days. I often can't tell what a website is "about" - i.e., its focus is not evident. A lot of businesses, especially smaller home-based types  and/or healing professionals try to be "all things to everyone" on their website (e.g., a therapist who lists 100 different issues that they work with). This just doesn't work. Your site will be much more effective if it helps a specific target market (for one or a few specific products/services), rather than a bit of everything.

It's fine if you've got a few sub-businesses running at one time, but in that case, I'd strongly recommend that they each have their own website, rather than integrating them all into one. You'll come across as the expert on each of those specific areas, rather than someone who's spread her/himself too thin!

Seth's Free Ebook on Website Promotion

Seth Godin just released another free ebook, Knock, Knock: Seth Godin's Incomplete Guide To Building a Website That Works. As Seth says, "It's a short take on how to use the new online marketing tools to make any website work more effectively".

As the title suggests, it's not a complete guide to website marketing. However, in Seth's clever and get-to-the-point fashion it covers important core aspects of marketing your website.

For example, I love the way he summarizes the purpose of having a website:

A website can cause only four things to happen in the moments after someone sees it:

• She clicks and goes somewhere else you want her to go.
• She clicks and gives your permission to follow up by email or phone.
• She clicks and buys something.
• She tells a friend, either by clicking or by blogging or phoning or talking.

A lot of the websites on the web certainly are not focusing on the above points. Too many people's sites lack focus, try to do too many things, confuse visitors, etc.

If you want to make your socially responsible or ethical business website work better for you, you can probably pick up a few useful tips in this ebook.

You can download it here: Download knockknock.pdf 

Matching Email Address and Domain Name

Filling in for Juliet today with a brief post...

I always recommend to my clients to, whenever possible, get an email address to match their website's domain name. (i.e., if your website is www.yourbusiness.com, have an email address info@yourbusiness.com and/or yourname@yourbusiness.com.) It reconfirms your URL in people's minds, makes it easier for people to remember both the URL and your email address, and looks neater on business cards.

If you've already got several email addresses and don't want to be bothered worrying about another one, just have this one forward to one of your existing ones.

More on How To Promote your Website with Article Marketing

Although marketing your website via articles has been around for some time, it seems to be exploding lately with the importance Google seems to be placing on quality, relevent backlinks.  As a result,  more people are starting to use article marketing as a way to promote their websites.

There is increasingly a lot more information available on marketing via articles as well. For example, Priya Shah at the Marketing Slave blog has posted a useful article called, 6 Article Marketing Smarts: How To Get More Reprints And Exposure.

To summarize her 6 points:

1.Pick a topic that is hot or always fresh.
2.Target a large audience.
3.Craft a catchy relevant title.
4.Offer publishers a monetary incentive (i.e. affiliate program).
5.Write an article series.
6. Distribute your article widely.

Writing Articles to Promote Your Website

Getting relevant, quality back links (links from other sites) is key to your website's success on the Internet as search engines place a great deal of emphasis on them in their ranking of sites.

The problem is how do you get quality, relevant back links?

You certainly don't want to be using link farms as you could be seriously penalized by the search engines. And contacting other sites and offering to exchange links can be a tedious and time consuming process.

One way to get links that works quite well is to submit articles to article directories. There are hundreds of them on the Internet that you can submit to and most have a fairly straightforward submission process. One of my favorite directories is Ezinearticles.com

Increasingly I have been submitting my own articles to some of these directories and am amazed at not only how quickly they get picked up by other websites, but also how much more visible I am for the main key words that I use in search engines. Not only that, but I am also slowing increasing my Google Page Rank.

If you haven't considered submitting articles as a way to increase your exposure as well as your ranking in the search engines, you might want to consider this great way to promote your website.