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Driving Serious Newspaper Ad Sales In A Recession
Posted on August 20th, 2011 by admin
Driving Serious Newspaper Ad Sales In A Recession
Ideas, strategies, and thoughts from a newspaper ad sales consulting firm doing just that
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Before: This ad lacked a clear attention-getter,
a clear benefit headline, and enough substance to
Do you have an option for your customers to contact you for FREE using 1300 number and 1800 number signup? 1800 services are a toll free services within Australia.
convince prospective buyers to stop in.
You may think some accounts are just unsellable this time of year. So, you might wonder how a Montana ad rep convinced a hot tub store owner to sign a 13x contract (for 5 col x 18″ ads) in the middle of April,getting them to spend more in 3 months than they did throughout the entire previous year.
Andrea DeNucci is the ad rep at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle groupwas able to do it because she provedupfront that running a new ad with a strong strategywould get a dramatic response. In fact, the business sold more hot tubs off the very first ad than they ever had before, even before the recession.
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle just passed the $75,000 in added revenue for a little over a month of using these techniques, and is showing no sign of slowing down.
This is especially significant because while conducting my ad sales seminars, ad reps are telling me their most common objection continues to be, “nobody’s spending money right now, so I can’t advertise (or I need to really cut back).”
The reality is that there are plenty of consumers buying, your ad reps just have to convince the prospect that with the right ad strategy, they can get the majority of those consumers into their store. It involves you doing two things.
First, you’ll need a killer ad strategy. All the case studies in this blog use a process taught in our Response Oriented Selling course that make creating direct-response ads easy. Look through the posts and I bet you’ll see a pattern.
Second, you’ve got to actually sell the strategy, the size, and the frequency to a business who has the misconception that nobody’s buying. This is an involved process that starts by eliminating any incorrect theories the prospect has in mind about how to advertise and helps them see how much they need to spend to succeed (we show ad reps how to use the Socratic method of teaching to get the prospective advertiser to buy into the approach.)
When it’s time to show the ad, you can explain how the new ad fits in with the information about their business, products, and competition while at the same time adhering to the new approach to creating effective ad strategies.
After: The new ad had a great strategy. It was much clearer what the sale
was about as well as enough proof for the most skeptical reader
believing this will be worthwhile to visit.
Once you learn how to do it, it’s incredibly simple.
After teaching the prospective advertiser the new techniques (which also moved her from the “vendor” mode to the “partner” mode), Andrea got some information and sketched out a rough strategy.
It involved featuring a major graphic of hot tubs at the top of the ad to grab the attention of those few people who happen to be obsessed with hot tubs this week, mirroring back what the target customer cared about when buying hot tubs (price, selection, and service), and then getting into enough substance that even the most skeptical prospective buyers– those planning on going somewhere else–would be sold enough on the shop to go there.
She then handed it off to her designer, Duncan Bullock, who did an outstanding job making the strategy shine. Here’s what Andrea emailed me after the ad ran the first weekend:
Hi Bob,
I wanted to let you know that I met with the hot tub place today and he said the ad worked great! They were crazy busy that weekend and sold more hot tubs for that sale that weekend than any other sale they have had in the past. And he said that people were saying that they saw the ad in the paper and came in knowing what hot tubs they wanted.
Andrea
So, keep in mind that until you fix the underlying theories the advertiser has on how to get a response, you, your newspaper, and the recession will continue to be the most logical explanation for why newspapers don’t work for them.
Fix their underlying theories and create a real strategy–don’t just hand an old ad off to your designers and say “be creative”–and you’ll be amazed how quickly you’ll increase your ad sales as well as the sales of your advertisers.
Even when advertisers say they don’t have any money, they really do. Here’s why:
. The Bozeman Daily Chronicle knew they could do a lot more for this advertiser and in the process get them spending the money they needed to succeed.
I know it makes no sense. Your current and prospective advertisers aren’t lying when they insist they have no money. All evidence seems to support it. Their sales are down. We’re in a recession and nobody’s buying.
But what they’re saying is almost never true, and if you accept their objections, you’re doing a huge disservice to them, your newspaper, and yourself.
I have the pleasure of working with ad reps week after week who come in to my seminars convinced they have a unique territory full of businesses unable to spend anything. Of course, by the end of the process, which includes personally helping them go after business, they learn how to make major sales to these same businesses and get them a dramatic response.
For example, we just wrapped up teaching our selling system to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, a 18,000 circulation newspaper in Montana. The day we finished up our final target account sessions, the ad reps headed out to present their first new strategies. The sales were instantaneous and dramatic.
The first presentation and sale (aside from one I helped close while on-site) was made by ad rep Megan Armstrong to an historic hotel in her territory that was running sporadically at best, occasionally sticking some menu items in a small ad and just not spending the money they needed in order to succeed.
After teaching a better approach to ad size, frequency, and content, the advertiser signed on to a series of 5 col x 18″ ads (twice per week!) designed to overwhelm the target customers with information matching the reasons why people take a weekend escape to one place rather than another. Until Megan proved they needed and could run this ad, they never would have spent this kind of money.
Megan first taught them our new ad strategy techniques, which fixed any incorrect theories on ad size, frequency, and content. Then, once the advertiser understood the logic involved in succeeding with print and online newspapers, Megan presented the new ad, a 5 col x 18″ ad, and suggested they run two times per week for 13 weeks, plus a number of impressions in their online newspaper (the same techniques apply to Web ads). The contract presented was for $14,000.
They signed on the spot, but asked if they could have an “out” after the first $8,000 if nothing happened. The great thing with a 5 x 18, of course, is that clearly everybody in the market this week for a weekend getaway will see the ad (out of almost 50,000 readers per day) and there’s so much room for some real substance that the reader will be overwhelmed by all the reasons they should go there– the food, the rooms, more food, and the historic charm of the area are all covered in detail.
Too much copy? We don’t think so. Their readers, like yours, are literate enough to handle a few paragraphs, despite the “advertising folklore” that trickles down to us that says bulleted items are all that people will read. That “keep it short” concept comes from image advertising, and it’s even questionable for those types of ads.
In effect, with this ad, they’re stacking the deck in favor of the advertiser and, as long as they’re using our effective ad techniques properly, they’ll do wonderfully and essentially own the market for weekend getaways.
Keep in mind it wasn’t just the ad that sold them. It was a combination of a few things.
Megan made it clear from the start that she wasn’t there to sell the account, but to see if she could help them like she’s helped other advertisers, not just with the media, but the message.
She taught new techniques that made much more sense to the advertiser.
She got better information out of the account.
And she invested some time into creating a killer strategy using our techniques that she could then hand off to her designers to make look better (we taught the techniques to them, too).
Sure, it took a little longer, but it was time better spent than knocking on doors for an hour and trying to close them on the spot.
Last week, I was in a publisher’s office wrapping up five days of training and I liked the way he summed up the issue of advertisers selling ad reps on the fact that they have no money to spend.
“When they say they have no money, it’s not that they’re saying they have no money,” he said. “They’re really saying: you haven’t yet shown me you’re going to make my business a lot of money.”
Focus on response, ignore their cries of poverty, and you’ll not only increase your ad sales dramatically, but it’ll be the best thing you do for your accounts, as Megan showed so successfully her first time out with these new techniques.
Real Estate: a 16-time, full-page ad that made the realtor’s phone ring off the hook
Getting a realtor on track with larger, more effective ads that work the very first time they run is possible, but you’ve got to change the way realtors think about using print and online newspapers and come through with a more effective ad.
If you have realtors who have cut back on advertising, who claim that running in your newspaper does little else but keep their listers happy (and really, who hasn’t run into this objection) or who think their money is better spent on the Web alone, then this post is for you.
Within days of conducting our Response Oriented Selling course for his staff, Brian Doane, VP of Advertising of the Hoosier Times at Schurz Communications , took this and a few other realtors from small or non-existent ads to full-page, 16-time contracts using our Response Oriented Selling techniques.
Brian had previously championed dramatic success with our ad sales approach while at another newspaper in Nampa, Idaho. He knew the advertisers cries of, “I’ve got to cut back due to the recession,” “I have no money,” and “you’re too expensive,” were merely signs that some of the business community had lost their faith in the medium. He knew if he used a better approach to creating effective ad strategies, and then presented a strategy based on that approach, that the doubters would spend what they needed to be successful and he could ultimately show them how well his publication works when used properly.
After all, there were plenty of people buying homes, just less than before.
So, he made a point of inviting key realtors–who he knew he could get running and running significantly more–to one of the prospective advertiser seminars we conduct as part of our larger course. In these sessions, we show the print and online newspaper ad sales techniques in action while teaching the attendees effective strategies to get a dramatic response immediately and consistently afterward.
The attendees bought into the new response principles, including the part about ad size and frequency, and Brian followed up with them, gathering more information from the prospects, applying the techniques to the information about the realtor’s business and went out and closed a number of them shortly afterward.
“They’ve never had an ad work this well before,” said Brian. “They told me the phone was ringing off the hook. That’s pretty impressive for real estate.”
The real estate category is an interesting one, since most of them are convinced the only way to use print is to fill their ad with listings. Of course, this helps them keep their listers happy (and attracts more of them,) but there are so many more reasons why people list with or buy from one realtor rather than another, and many of those reasons are not addressed in most real estate ads.
The things most important to a prospective client–such as how hard they’ll work for you, their experience, if they’ll get top dollar for your home, how fast they’ll sell your home, how good they are at listening and making things easy–while most realtors are adamant that these things matter to the customer, they’re nowhere to be seen in a typical real estate ad.
As Brian pointed out, “It’s no secret there are fewer people buying real estate in this market, so we needed to show these prospective home buyers that this particular realtor was better at helping them find the right home for them, and that required some real copy.
After all, our readers are readers, and especially with a high-ticket item like this, they’ll spend the time reading a more sophisticated message. That’s one of the key strengths of any publication like ours and we need to take advantage of that.”
Brian is continuing to refine and experiment with the ad as it keeps running through it’s initial 16-time run, but we’re optimistic they’ll keep it up.
“For us to thrive in this economy, our ad reps need to be able to deliver the whole package. They need to be able to prove the ad strategy will work just as well as the newspaper or the prospect just won’t run or end up running smaller, less frequently, and end up reinforcing their misperception that newspapers don’t work. And often this involves using Bob’s techniques to fix their incorrect theories about what works and what doesn’t so they’re okay with committing to what they often see as a significant amount of money.”
Don’t let the prospect’s expectations limit your recommendation
This ad looked great, but lacked substance. A common mistake–especially with ads selling upscale furniture–is to put your name at the top and keep it simple and elegant. It’s also too small given the relatively small amount of people in the market for this sort of thing.
Archant just forwarded details on another sale that’s come out of their Response Oriented Selling ad sales program, which I conducted for some of them just outside of London a few weeks ago.
This is a classic example of an ad rep who didn’t let the amount of money an advertiser was spending elsewhere, or the size they were running, influence what size she was going to recommend.
After completing our course, ad rep Linda Ikwue’s first target account was a business running a 1/4 page in a competitive magazine, spending 100 per month (about $130) and not running at all with her own publication.
Ignoring the prospect’s claim of too high a rate and limited budget due to the recession, Linda quickly shifted the topic over to response and explained that there are two things that affect response–the medium and the message.
Linda’s plan was to use our techniques to dramatically enhance that response equation by proving a new ad will be more effective than what they were running elsewhere. In effect, using her new personal strategic advertising skills to leverage the sale.
Of course, a big, beautiful, effective ad wouldn’t do much good if the prospect had other ideas, so first Linda got to work fixing potential incorrect theories the prospect had about how response works, including getting buy-in on the principles that would later justify size and frequency as explained in our course .
Once the prospect saw the power of the approach and that Linda was qualified to drive response (instead of simply quoting rates and forwarding instructions to the designers), the client was willing to spend some time with her answering questions about his business.
He even admitted he wasn’t getting a response in the other publication.
“Linda returned to the office, sketched out a new strategy, got some text together, and spoke to Joe Ringer on the design team to come up with some ideas. One of the main strategies was for the ad to get into more detail about how they actually build their pieces better.”
The trick in an upscale direct response ad is to keep it elegant while providing enough substance to prove what your target customers care about. The trick here is to not just come up with a great new strategy, but to change the prospective advertiser’s underlying theories about size, frequency, and content so they actually spend the money they need to get a response.
As for their choice of a full-page ad size, the managing director explained to me, “for his business, they make all their furniture by hand and customize them to suit. The average sale is about 3,000 ($4,800) and very few people are in the market at any given point in time for his products. The ad needed to be big.”
Linda then took the ad to the client and after reiterating how her publication reached plenty of the right people in the right places, she began the process of getting buy-in for the new full-page ad.
Linda reviewed the key issues about the prospect’s business, competition, and target customers and then walked the owner through the response techniques again, drawing out the logical process that was used to arrange the information.
Linda then presented the ad, positioning it as the logical result of everything the account told her.
According to the managing director, “As for ad size, after proving the ad would work, Linda drew a diagram of the funnel [something we teach in the course] so that she could show him how a full page was critical to making a profit, even though they were used to running just a 1/4 page in the other publication.
“He agreed to a full page advertisement in October (they’re a monthly magazine) and approved the attached ad today, so he is now spending 800 ($1,270).
“She really enjoyed the whole sales process and thinks the client did, too!!”
One of the reasons I really like this case study is that Linda didn’t limit herself to what she thought the business would “go for”, something that I see too many ad reps do and something we discuss a lot in our course (and here ).
Instead, Linda created an ad with the right content and size to get the advertiser a response, which in this case meant a larger ad to attract the relatively few people out there about to buy this kind of product. Also, it contained enough substance that these prospects would believe it, even if they were planning on going elsewhere.
How a U.K. ad rep turned a 1/10 page into a 1/2 page
This ad had some really nice elements actually, but certainly not sufficient substance for someone about to drop any serious money on a kitchen remodel who might already know of a place to go. It’s surely not getting enough of those few people seeing, reading, and responding to the ad.
My previous post showed the managing director of the U.K.’s Archant newspapers introducing me to half of his staff (about 315 ad reps) a couple of weeks ago. A number of ad reps have since convinced their prospective advertisers to return to their publications and run larger and more frequently.
I’m trying to get my hands on the “before” and “after” ads, and here’s one set which is a typical example of what selling response, and Response Oriented Selling is all about.
Daisy Kingham, an advertising sales executive at Archant’s Norfork division, had a custom (or bespoke as they say) kitchen remodeler in her territory who wasn’t running with her at all.
Daisy stopped in and was promptly told that print, and her publication in particular, didn’t work for them. Besides, they said, her publication was expensive and there just wasn’t a whole lot of people remodeling their kitchen in this economy–all objections that signal to our client newspapers that it’s time to move into the Response Oriented Selling techniques. Honestly, there are few objections where you wouldn’t use this approach.
Daisy went on to explain that their experiences weren’t unique and, as with all types of advertising media, that other advertisers had experienced similar issues before. She proceeded to share an example, along with the unique advertising effectiveness techniques that were used to subsequently get the advertiser a dramatic response. Daisy then offered to quickly share the new approach with the prospect, which, of course, he was open to hear.
These half page ads were plenty big to get everyone going through the newspaper that day about to remodel their kitchen to see the ad and contained enough substance to get even those planning on calling the place their friend told them about to think twice and call them instead. Even a bad response would make them a profit, of course.
Let’s face it, of all the things a prospective advertiser would be willing to talk about, how another advertiser is making a killing in this economy isn’t exactly at the bottom of their list.
Daisy then went on to teach (actually draw out of) the prospect what we call our Response Model, which, according to Daisy, he completely bought into.
From that point a major sale was fairly certain but, of course, there was some work to do. Now firmly into the highly desirable “partner” mode and out of the “vendor” mode all prospects try to place you in, the prospect was willing to provide plenty of information and answer any questions she had. Daisy then left and returned to the office to consolidate all the information into an ad strategy she could later present.
This is an alternate ad our overnight design team also came up with. I really liked this one, too.
“Actually, I wanted to wait until non-selling time to create the strategy, so later on that night, once I got the kids to bed, I got to work applying the Response Oriented Selling techniques and create the ad strategy”.
“While the original ad had some good elements–a graphic to catch the people sensitive to remodeling their kitchen, a good benefit headline, and some detail, I found the detail so lacking that I feared those people who may already know of a kitchen remodeler might not be convinced to switch.”
“Besides, the ad was clearly too small. So many great prospects would miss it that there might not be anyone left to actually come in and make the purchase. And clearly even a bad response would make the advertiser a profit”. So Daisy created a half-page ad–which would be a huge jump for a non-advertiser that claimed they had no money to spend.
Daisy sketched out the ad, wrote some excellent copy addressing the issues people care about when choosing one place rather than another, and I offered to have our DesignYourAd designers make it look better. The next morning, Daisy got back two versions and she chose the first one (though the second one is fantastic, too).
Daisy returned to the prospect the day after her first meeting, and first reiterated how her publication reached exactly the target customers in which they said they were interested.
Typically, a prospective advertiser is on the fence at this point and so Daisy used the ad strategy to “push them over”, though it’s really more like drawing them along. She went on to explain how she took the information about their products and services, competition, and target customers and used the new approach (she also drew out of the prospect) to create the ad she then presented.
The trick here is, of course, when you do it right, that the final recommendation isn’t the ad rep’s idea, it’s simply the logical result of everything the prospect told her. An incredibly effective way to turn around even the most reluctant prospective advertisers.
That’s why many of the ad reps who get good at this approach have virtually a 100% closing ratio. Besides the work she had to put into the strategy–and let’s face it, in any sales position you’re supposed to do your homework and some analysis before presenting–it was an incredibly easy sale.
The customer bought the ad and thanked her for it. A truly win-win scenario.
Daisy’s already working on her next target account ad, a garden center, and I’ll share that one with you if and when it sells. No doubt it will.
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Nine Reasons Your Site Isn't Driving Sales
Posted on August 20th, 2011 by admin
Home > Online Business > Building a Website > Nine Reasons Your Site Isn’t Driving Sales
Nine Reasons Your Site Isn’t Driving Sales
To make your website an extenstion of your sales staff, create content that educates visitors and helps convert them into leads. Serving is the new selling.
Do you have an option for your customers to contact you for FREE using 1300 number and 1800 number signup? 1800 services are a free call within Australia.
Tweet
I have a problem. I’m trying to find replacement windows for my 60-year-old Cape Cod house near Boston, but I don’t want the vinyl builder-grade options in stock at the home-improvement superstores. Iconic architect Royal Barry Wills designed the cozy Cape, and he had strong opinions about what was good and bad. I’m trying to do right by the guy.
When I Google “residential replacement windows” or use other relevant phrases, the searches bring up manufacturer sites that show me various window types, sizes and features. They even ask me to sign up for their e-mail list–but they don’t give me a good reason to become a lead. That’s because not one is a resource for what I need: advice on the ins and outs of renovating an architecturally significant home, and on the pros and cons of wood versus vinyl versus aluminum clad. Instead, they try to sell me stuff.
In short, they aren’t talking about my needs, but they sure do have plenty to say about themselves. I see these kinds of missed opportunities all the time. Home renovation–like many things in life–is an expensive, confusing prospect. The companies that understand that serving is the new selling will be the ones customers buy from.
Your website should be an extension of your sales staff: It should help generate and nurture leads by educating prospects (a role traditionally played by salespeople). Like a good salesperson, it shouldn’t just sit around and wait for the phone to ring.
So what about your website? Is it all about you, or does it talk about your customers–and in a language they can relate to? Are you using your website as an opportunity to solve problems for would-be buyers? Are you demonstrating in an honest, empathetic way how your company and its products or services can lessen their pain?
If your website is not helping you generate and nurture leads, consider these possible causes:
You haven’t defined goals. The overarching goal of your website is to attract people and invite them to get more involved with your business, whether or not you sell directly to them online. You want visitors to stick around a while and get interested in you and what you sell, right? Have you identified the primary goal of your site? Or secondary goals? What action do you want site visitors to take when they land on your site? Being clear on that informs everything else: design, navigation, content, search engine strategy and so on.
More Content, More Leads
Your content hasn’t changed since Bush was in office (even the second term of the second Bush). If your site isn’t continually evolving and updating, it becomes a static brochure for your business. If you don’t have regularly updated content, such as a blog, you aren’t creating new pages for Google to index. Remember, the more content you create, the more traffic and leads your business will get. ( See sidebar .)
You aren’t creating momentum. You can change this by creating a path for your customers to get more involved with you. To move them along, include relevant calls to action or “triggers” on each page of your site, not just on your homepage. That means on every blog post or any other piece of content you produce. It may sound obvious, but many companies don’t embrace the opportunity to create a path to deeper involvement and (ultimately) conversion.
You don’t have customer interaction. Incorporating a blog or other social content into your online presence gives your customers a sense of who you are. Use these tools to speak to your customers directly, honestly and in your own (human) voice. This is an enormous opportunity both to educate them on how you can help and why they should rely on you–and to hear what they have to say to each other in the forum you’ve created. Regularly updated content that has a sense of personality and purpose builds trust with your would-be customers, and that’s a beautiful place to begin a relationship.
You can’t update your site without the tech guy. Can you update at least some elements without calling IT? This is where blogs and other social platforms come in handy, because you can update them yourself. Why is that important? Because you need to update at least some parts of your site frequently and easily, both to save budget and to create a more immediate flow of content–for potential customers and for search engines.
You sound like everyone else. Is your site full of Frankenspeak, i.e., corporate jargon-rich nonsense? Or, instead, does it sound like it was penned by a human? Most companies spend more time worrying about site design than about the words on the page. But the most memorable sites convey personality and perspective in their homepage content, which immediately sets thems apart. Try this test: If you mask your logo and site design, can you still tell–by the voice of the text–that it’s your site, or do you sound like any one of your competitors?
You didn’t optimize. Can search engines find your site? Does your regularly refreshed, updated, readable content contain search terms that relate to your proficiency? How well are they attracting customers to you? One easy way to boost your search rankings is to continually link descriptive keywords back to related pages on your own site. Doing so helps search engines understand what your site is about.
You aren’t measuring anything. Do you know how your website is converting browsers into buyers? Have you identified what paths they typically take? Do you know which pages perform best for you? Or what content visitors are interacting with the most? Are you using analytics tools to measure the traffic to your site, to track online conversions and to measure ROI on your marketing campaigns? Free tools like Google Analytics are a great place to start.
You put hip before happening. Every element on your homepage should support the goals you’ve identified. That means avoiding design elements that might be hip or cool but ultimately are just distracting. (My pet peeve: web pages that talk to me.)
Put clarity (useful, predictable, efficient, logical) before creative (cool, splashy, flashy, beautiful).
So how about your website? Is it generating leads by serving potential customers, or is it just sitting around and waiting?
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Nine Reasons Your Site Isn't Driving Sales
Posted on August 14th, 2011 by admin
Home > Online Business > Building a Website > Nine Reasons Your Site Isn’t Driving Sales
Nine Reasons Your Site Isn’t Driving Sales
To make your website an extenstion of your sales staff, create content that educates visitors and helps convert them into leads. Serving is the new selling.
Do you have an option for your to contact you for FREE using 1300 number and 1800 number signup? 1800 services are a toll free services inside Australia.
Tweet
I have a problem. I’m trying to find replacement windows for my 60-year-old Cape Cod house near Boston, but I don’t want the vinyl builder-grade options in stock at the home-improvement superstores. Iconic architect Royal Barry Wills designed the cozy Cape, and he had strong opinions about what was good and bad. I’m trying to do right by the guy.
When I Google “residential replacement windows” or use other relevant phrases, the searches bring up manufacturer sites that show me various window types, sizes and features. They even ask me to sign up for their e-mail list–but they don’t give me a good reason to become a lead. That’s because not one is a resource for what I need: advice on the ins and outs of renovating an architecturally significant home, and on the pros and cons of wood versus vinyl versus aluminum clad. Instead, they try to sell me stuff.
In short, they aren’t talking about my needs, but they sure do have plenty to say about themselves. I see these kinds of missed opportunities all the time. Home renovation–like many things in life–is an expensive, confusing prospect. The companies that understand that serving is the new selling will be the ones customers buy from.
Your website should be an extension of your sales staff: It should help generate and nurture leads by educating prospects (a role traditionally played by salespeople). Like a good salesperson, it shouldn’t just sit around and wait for the phone to ring.
So what about your website? Is it all about you, or does it talk about your customers–and in a language they can relate to? Are you using your website as an opportunity to solve problems for would-be buyers? Are you demonstrating in an honest, empathetic way how your company and its products or services can lessen their pain?
If your website is not helping you generate and nurture leads, consider these possible causes:
You haven’t defined goals. The overarching goal of your website is to attract people and invite them to get more involved with your business, whether or not you sell directly to them online. You want visitors to stick around a while and get interested in you and what you sell, right? Have you identified the primary goal of your site? Or secondary goals? What action do you want site visitors to take when they land on your site? Being clear on that informs everything else: design, navigation, content, search engine strategy and so on.
More Content, More Leads
Your content hasn’t changed since Bush was in office (even the second term of the second Bush). If your site isn’t continually evolving and updating, it becomes a static brochure for your business. If you don’t have regularly updated content, such as a blog, you aren’t creating new pages for Google to index. Remember, the more content you create, the more traffic and leads your business will get. ( See sidebar .)
You aren’t creating momentum. You can change this by creating a path for your customers to get more involved with you. To move them along, include relevant calls to action or “triggers” on each page of your site, not just on your homepage. That means on every blog post or any other piece of content you produce. It may sound obvious, but many companies don’t embrace the opportunity to create a path to deeper involvement and (ultimately) conversion.
You don’t have customer interaction. Incorporating a blog or other social content into your online presence gives your customers a sense of who you are. Use these tools to speak to your customers directly, honestly and in your own (human) voice. This is an enormous opportunity both to educate them on how you can help and why they should rely on you–and to hear what they have to say to each other in the forum you’ve created. Regularly updated content that has a sense of personality and purpose builds trust with your would-be customers, and that’s a beautiful place to begin a relationship.
You can’t update your site without the tech guy. Can you update at least some elements without calling IT? This is where blogs and other social platforms come in handy, because you can update them yourself. Why is that important? Because you need to update at least some parts of your site frequently and easily, both to save budget and to create a more immediate flow of content–for potential customers and for search engines.
You sound like everyone else. Is your site full of Frankenspeak, i.e., corporate jargon-rich nonsense? Or, instead, does it sound like it was penned by a human? Most companies spend more time worrying about site design than about the words on the page. But the most memorable sites convey personality and perspective in their homepage content, which immediately sets thems apart. Try this test: If you mask your logo and site design, can you still tell–by the voice of the text–that it’s your site, or do you sound like any one of your competitors?
You didn’t optimize. Can search engines find your site? Does your regularly refreshed, updated, readable content contain search terms that relate to your proficiency? How well are they attracting customers to you? One easy way to boost your search rankings is to continually link descriptive keywords back to related pages on your own site. Doing so helps search engines understand what your site is about.
You aren’t measuring anything. Do you know how your website is converting browsers into buyers? Have you identified what paths they typically take? Do you know which pages perform best for you? Or what content visitors are interacting with the most? Are you using analytics tools to measure the traffic to your site, to track online conversions and to measure ROI on your marketing campaigns? Free tools like Google Analytics are a great place to start.
You put hip before happening. Every element on your homepage should support the goals you’ve identified. That means avoiding design elements that might be hip or cool but ultimately are just distracting. (My pet peeve: web pages that talk to me.)
Put clarity (useful, predictable, efficient, logical) before creative (cool, splashy, flashy, beautiful).
So how about your website? Is it generating leads by serving potential customers, or is it just sitting around and waiting?
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How can I improve my website? | LinkedIn Answers | LinkedIn
Posted on July 16th, 2011 by admin
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How can I improve my website?
I’ve recently developed a web presence, which I am looking to grow throughout the next few years. The idea is that the site is low maintenance (one update per month, as a rule of thumb) and shows: (a) best practice in communication; (b) my previous work experience, and (c) references from satisfied clients.
The perceived value of the services you offer can be increased by making your company – make it appear bigger than it is. 1300 Number – Contact Us are the perfect way of taking your home company to the international stage.
Bearing in mind that I’m a bit of a luddite (although not too slow a learner) with a finite amount of time to spend on the site – are there any ways that I could improve it?
posted January 22, 2010 in Web Development | Closed
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How about get a help from Google here. Its quite intuitive, and you can ask for your preferred domain name. Advantage would be, you will get listed in Google and Yahoo. Which means that, you will become easily searchable over the Internet.
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Seeing that you already have a domain the answer above is irrelevant.
Looking breifly at your website, it is a clean crisp layout that is fairly simple to navigate around. One addition is possibly to add a logo or your trademark next to your name at the top of the page this add’s so much power to a page and influance to a company.
Looking quickly at the source code I notice your not using any key words or meta description but have the lines of code in place for them. If you add these it will help with your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
Also noticed your using analytics which is a fantastic tool, its a great thing to learn how to use you can find so much information about the type of people going to your website.
Only other addition I would suggest would be a contact form on your contact page not just an email address.
Clarification added January 22, 2010:
If you are stuck with anything or need and support, or just have a question you need answering feel free to connect/message me.
posted January 22, 2010
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I agree with Jonathan the key area for some work is meta titles, descriptions and so on and importantly a coherent keyword strategy.
The site is well laid out informative and easy on the eye. So the next effort will be getting viewers to it.
Including links on all your other communications, registering with business directories, using social media (twitter, linkedIn, facebook etc) are just some of the ways to increase traffic.
All consume unpaid time of course but one task a day soon builds a useful customer communication tool
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I don’t know much about the technical aspects but on the design I can say a bit more.
I think your site is a bit bland. And why the picture of the mountains? If you want the mountains for a good reason use different pictures of mountains on every page. Or different pictures of the same mountains (not flowers or people just mountains). This will make each page more distinct, so visitors know better on what page in your website they are. Now every page looks the same. And as said before a logo(type) would help a lot. And a well designed colorscheme wouldn’t hurt either…
posted January 22, 2010
Break the content down to individual blocks that would highlight topic or keywords. Add more focus on communication consultancy. Related images and graphics to content. Make content and key messages more stand out.
Web sample below is good reference.
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So far it looks pretty good.
Simple (in a good way), not too flashy, straightforward and professional.
You might try to include more of the “what’s in it for me” – it says a lot about what you do but not what that does for your clients (without reading specific case studies).
posted January 22, 2010
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Find out what your prospects want to read, target on them and put your effort in this.
Find out the most succesful keywords as well, what are the words, phrases and headlines that drives traffic to your site.
For both is very important to analyse, otherwise you’re very busy trying without knowing if it makes a difference.
posted January 22, 2010
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Hi Mike,
outsource this job to us, we will take care of maintenance part of it. we will edit and update when ever you need that help.
regards
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I would buy “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug and “Letting Go Of The Words” by Jinny Redish. Both are great books all about refining websites and making them do the essentials well. They’re very easy to read because they tackle things from the visitor’s perspective (who also wants things to be easy).
You do need to consider SEO but if you’re just starting out it makes more sense to get your website right first and then apply the SEO tecniques before and after launch. The best book I’ve ever read on SEO is Steve Johnston’s “50 ways to make Google love your site”.He’s a top consultant (search for Google Consultant – he will always be top) and gives relevant, up-to-date advice. He is just releasing a new version of this e-book so that will be ideal.
For what it’s worth, I think you’re design looks good. Nice and clean, professional looking so design-wise I think you’re fine.
Links:
http://www.searchjohnston.co.uk/resources/google-ebook/
Clarification added January 24, 2010:
Looking at some of the other comments, perhaps it is worth looking at the home page and better summarising your services from the viewpoint of a visitor. I wrote an article on a 3-step chcek which might prove useful.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2520997/3_tips_to_improve_your_web_site_homepage.html?cat=15
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Hire a professional web firm. Check their references just as you would when hiring any professional service, visit their website and view their portfolio of work and call them and try to get a feel for their customer service vibe. Clearly communicate your goals and budget for your site and then choose the firm that seems the best fit for you.
posted January 22, 2010
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Consider your audience. Think of an imaginary ‘best visitor’ – someone who is looking for a man of your skills and experience but knows nothing about you. Imagine they are a slow reader. Include the things they are looking for in easily disgestible bites.
Consider the main purpose of the site. If it is an online business card – make your contact details more prominent like they would be on a business card.
I disagree with the advice to include a contact form. They can be difficult to set up and if they go wrong, because your host disables the mail server, you’ll never know.
posted January 22, 2010
Search engine optimisation, is a hard and long work to drive traffics to
your website.
You have to submit URL and keywords of your website
to bookmark directories, and much more works or get socialized by SEO companies such as: www.kloudsocial.com ; they are accurate, fast and affordable.
posted January 22, 2010
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Your site is very clean…perhaps too clean? You need to think about your brand. Your job is communication, what do the mountains communicate? Who do you typically communicate with? What is interesting or different about what you have to say?
Obviously SEO is important for getting your site found in the first place. But what’s keeping the site visitor there once you’ve been found? Now if you had used some text with that mountains image ( for example, “Communication should be clear, like alpine mountain air and concise like a granite cliff” ) I would’ve been good with that. Right now, the mountains just look like filler. Not relevant, generic.
You need to have your message prominent on the page as soon as the user gets there. “Consultant Profile” really isn’t that interesting.
If you’re not using WordPress, I would recommend it. There is a low learning curve. Having a web site isn’t just a “built it an they will come” scenario. It should be used as an integrated tool with other advertising (even if that’s a business card). You MUST have regularly updated content. That means blogging about things you care about and are an expert in. That means aggregating interesting sources from other places. You could probably do that once a month, but it does require a bit of a commitment.
I would recommend you hire a professional designer to craft the overall look and feel of the site, then you can update it yourself from there.
Please understand, I’m not trying to be harsh. The investment in building a clear brand will come back in spades when the phone calls and emails start coming in.
By the way…I strongly recommend you get an actual contact form with a captcha on it. WordPress has several plugins that do this easily (contact form 7 being an excellent one). You are going to get LOADS of spam having your email address showing in plain text.
posted January 22, 2010
Well worth the time to speak with Brad at either brad@cookee.biz or Toll Free 888 884 9521
posted January 22, 2010
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I agree that the mountain photo is confusing, I can’t tell what it’s supposed to signify except to add some eye-candy.
I have a Planning Your Web Site Tutorial that may give you some ideas.
I also have some marketing and SEO articles you may find useful.
On first glance one thing I would do is remove the navigation from the header and some of the nav. from the footer. You don’t really need to repeat the links in all three places. Just keep it simple.
Then I’d tweak the copy, particularly on the home page to speak not so much to what you do, but what you do for your clients. Think about how you help them. Imagine them as individual personas and think about what they would want to know in order to decide to hire you. Since you’re a solo firm I’d also switch to first person on the consultant profile page. You could also rename that to About Michael. It makes it a bit more personal.
Otherwise I think you’re on the right track. The trick is to not overthink it. I think we all do that more when we’re marketing ourselves than we do for our clients. I’m always thinking of new things to do to my site (and always behind on making it happen…I really need to clarify my services section) but the great thing about the Web is that it is flexible. You can tweak a few things now, then revisit it in a few weeks to see what you can modify.
Best wishes for your site and your business.
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Building Esteem FAQ – how to improve your self esteem
Posted on July 7th, 2011 by admin
Building self esteem and confidence FAQ – Most frequently Asked Questions
How can I improve my self esteem?
There are many things you can do to improve your self esteem and here are a few ideas to get you started.
Focus on your achievements – if you take time to think you will realise that you have achieved so many things in your life. It doesn’t matter what these achievements are only that they are important to you. List them and remember what they meant to you. It doesn’t matter what you think about your life at present if you are honest with yourself you will make a long list and that will make you feel good. Every small thing you are proud of should be added to your list. The fact that you are focusing on positives will also help you to increase your level of self esteem.
The perceived worth of your company can be upgraded by making your company appear bigger. 1300 Number – Contact Us are the perfect way of taking your local business to the national stage.
Make plans for the future – following from above the next thing to do is stop wasting time and procrastinating get planning! What would you like to do but felt you
“I have been visiting this site a while and it’s fantastic. Whenever I’m feeling bad about myself it gives me a real lift. The advice on here is second to none and has made me feel like a better person. Thanks for your words of inspiration.”
Ruth
couldn’t? Time to decide for yourself that you will do it now! Make a list of things you want to do or want to change and start thinking about how to make a start. Then take a breath and just begin. you won’t look back!
What you like about yourself – if you have low self esteem you probably keep reflecting on the things you don’t like about yourself but if you reverse this thinking it is much more helpful. What do your friends like about you? Have you ever asked yourself that or even better, have you ever asked them? After you have listed all the things you like about yourself then the negative things seem smaller and less harmful.
What can you change that will make you feel better about yourself? There are two kinds of changes you may wish to focus on. The first are changes in your life and how you live it. Ask yourself are you happy in your job? Is it satisfying? Is there something else you’d rather do? What about your relationships or your social life? If you would like to be more assertive for example then start working on that immediately. Click on this link to get Assertiveness Training – a really helpful self hypnosis download that will help you enormously. Whatever it is that you feel you need to change then go ahead and do it. this will make you feel more in control of your life and your self esteem will begin to pick up.
Accept yourself and who you are – there are many things about your personality and character and your life that you may not be able to change and that shouldn’t hold you back. Learn to accept those things and understand why you can still be happy and feel good about yourself despite these things. Try saying – well at least I am reasonably well off or at least whatever you can think of that is positive. At least turns a negative into a positive.
Disabilities are big hang-ups for many but a disability doesn’t have to be an obstacle to your self esteem. If you have a disability no matter what it is then understand that there are many people with disabilities both physical and mental who have refused to let themselves feel low because of it. The attitude you have is the most important thing. Your self esteem depends not on your disability but on your reaction to it, how you think about it. The idea is to change your attitude and thinking not the disability which may be permanent. Your self esteem is not set in stone it can be improved as you work on yourself. I think you can indeed escape. You have decided what you can or cannot do, change that and you can escape the prison which is your attitude.
I once heard an interview with the guy who used to be superman, Christopher Reeve. He fell from a horse and was paralyzed but his attitude and achievements shine out. I’m sure there are many examples if you look for them
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Fannie Mae offers bonus to Realtors to drive sales of its …
Posted on July 4th, 2011 by admin
Fannie Mae offers bonus to Realtors to drive sales of its foreclosed homes
Are you affected?
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Federal mortgage backer Fannie Mae hopes to energize sales of its repossessed homes with a new $1,200 bonus to Realtors and an extension of closing cost help to homebuyers.
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Tuesday’s announcement came as a June 30 deadline approached for homebuyers to earn up to 3.5 percent of the final sales price on a home to put toward closing costs. That offer is now good on contracts closed by Oct. 31.
Palm Beach County has about 850 homes listed on Fannie Mae’s HomePath sales website, www.homepath.com . Statewide, nearly 5,900 homes are listed.
The $1,200 bonus to the selling agent only applies if the buyer plans to live in the home. Investor sales are not eligible.
“I think it will make a difference,” said Joe Bettag, broker/owner of Coastal Properties in Jupiter. “Anytime you provide incentives in the market place, it creates a sense of urgency.”
Last year, Fannie Mae offered a $1,500 inventive to agents who closed deals between late September and Dec. 31.
Some Realtors said Tuesday the new incentive is an effort to clear inventory before more foreclosures hit the market.
Many banks temporarily froze foreclosures in the fall following revelations about paperwork problems. Opinions vary about whether a deluge of pent-up foreclosures will soon face the still-struggling real estate market.
According to the Palm Beach County Clerk of Court, foreclosure filings increased 2 percent in May compared to April, but were down 48 percent from the same time in 2010.
Palm Beach County courts are seeing a decrease in banks cancelling foreclosure sales. Auction cancelations had been as high as 50 percent beginning in the fall. That was down to 40 percent last month.
“What’s not clear yet is whether that means we’ll see an increase in new foreclosure cases, as some have forecast,” said Palm Beach County Clerk Sharon Bock.
Nationwide, 62,815 Fannie Mae homes were sold in the first quarter of the year. Typically, about 2/3 of the homes are sold to people who plan to live in them full time.
Fannie Mae’s First Look program tries to give owner-occupants a head start over investors by only considering their offers during the first 15 days the home is listed.
Rodney Forbes, the broker/owner of Forbes Realty of South Florida, said the $1,200 incentive could prompt agents to show properties they may have previously ignored. Foreclosed homes selling at lower prices means lower commissions.
“Their inventory is either going up, or they are expecting it to go up,” Forbes said about Fannie Mae’s motive to offer the bonus. “Anything they can do to incentivize and help clear out some of these homes is good.”
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How do i improve traffic to my site http://www.technoveda.net for …
Posted on June 28th, 2011 by admin
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1. Make the website more attractive to visitors. To me, and to others certainly also, it looks like a total mess. Lots of colours and advertisements everywhere. One opens the website and doesn’t know where to look at first.
The perceived worth of your company can be upgraded by making your company – make it appear bigger than it is. 1300 Number – Contact Us are the perfect way of taking your local company to the international stage.
So, create a good layout, which means, create a good way to present your content. Separate content from advertisements. Create a structure that is easily understood by your visitors. They have to be able to rapidly identifiy
What the website is about (theme?);
What type of information they can find on it (try an introductory text);
How they can access the information (well-positioned, intuitive menu);
…
Aside from the layout, try to create an interesting design. This means:
Selecting colours and combinations of colours (a good colour scheme). Try, for example, to use different shades of one colour instead of mixing dark blue, “eye-cancer blue”, red, green and pink. If you want to use different colours, try to limit your selection to two or three that go along well (blue and blue-ish green, for example);
Being careful with typefaces/fonts and their sizes;
Creating paragraphes, positioning them carefully and also creating the correct space between paragraphs, titles and text, text and advertisements (this has to do with layout again);
…
2. I have seen you’re using Microsoft’s FrontPage 4.0. In my most humble opinion, that is not the best website-builder on the world. It produces horrible HTML-code (look at yours… it’s disastrous). I’ve been told FrontPage Express does a better job. Try that. Or try Adobe Dreamweaver or any of the many free website-builders available on the internet.
Let someone with knowledge about building websites and with knowledge about HTML review your code. It needs some serious clean up.
3. Cleaning up your HTML, along with the addition of a description, keywords and other meta-information (ask a webdesigner for more information on this), could help making your website somewhat tastier for search engines like Google. Creating keywords, and optimizing your website on those, is important for possible visitors that search for topics you write about and not exactly for the name of your website…
Basically, follow this rule: Make a good website and then you can try making good money with it. You have to work for your money.
Most important of all: Having good content. Having good content attracts interested visitors and generates qualitative traffic. No content, no good website.
Cheers,
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Societies for driving and heavy horses – Horses for sale …
Posted on June 26th, 2011 by admin
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Societies for driving and heavy horses
28 November, 2002
Interested in finding out more information about your horse’s breeding? Or do you have a passport-related query? If so, check out Horse & Hound Online’s guide to breed-related organisations, including passport-issuing organisations.
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Driving horses
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Lip-Sticking: Women Driving Sales Online and Off
Posted on June 23rd, 2011 by admin
February 28, 2008
Women Driving Sales Online and Off
The marketing to women world just gets bigger every day. I must get contacted by half a dozen PR firms, on a daily basis (and that’s small compared to bigger M2W sites I know) wanting me to hawk their client’s book, website, new tool, whathaveyou. I share some, and not others.
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Today, I’m going to share some articles online that give some insight into the marketing to women online purpose: and that is to help you understand how women think, the better to learn how to market to them successfully. I’ll share books, software, websites and that stuff in another post, on another day.
Here’s an article out of the UK, discussing the ads that “will be” at the Oscars. “Oscar ads prove that women finally are in the driver’s seat.” Reporter Jennifer Wells from the Globe and Mail states, rightly so, that the Oscars are for women what the Superbowl is for men. Her article came out before the Oscars, but she did reveal two ads that would be in play. One, for Cadillac, featuring Kate Walsh , was not new. Not a ‘new’ ad, I mean. It’s been out there – and I can see it’s appeal to women. I far prefer the one where the same model pulls up next to the “boys club,” “In one of these.”
As far as I can tell, Cadillac did the two similar commercials, with different taglines, to appeal to both the younger generation women and the baby boomers. They did it right.
Now, over at Rent to Own, this article on Marketing to Women is truly interesting. Now, who would have thought the Rent to Own folks would care about women? It makes sense, of course, but… to be actively talking about it and writing about it – you have to give them kudos
.
The opening sentence rocked my world, “If you are losing your market share or not meeting sales projections, chances are you aren’t relevant to the most important sex.” (the author’s website is decidely not female friendly : too flashy, but… he knows what he’s talking about in the article, so we will forgive him; sorry Ross .)
Here are some of the great points he makes…
“Women Complain For a Reason – Research indicates that of 1,000 random complaints, more than 80 percent were written and registered by women.” He doesn’t cite what research, though. I believe him because I’m one of those women. However, I also know a lot of women that just go away and don’t come back.
“Women Started Viral Marketing – Not only do women tend to complain about the perpetrator, but they also tell everyone else about the experience.” Hmmm…who else tells you that? Ross cites Faith Popcorn, a lady who has been touting the women’s experience far longer than I. Remember – telephone, telegraph, tell-a-woman, are all great ways to get the message moving.
His advice is rock-and-roll ready. Are you listening? Here are two points that should be apparent to you, by now…
“Be emotional – If you sell a product, write emotional content that speaks to her heart and reasons for her to own what you sell.” He doesn’t say that women are always on the lookout for ‘stuff’ for friends and family. But, they are. She’s never just shopping for herself.
“Don’t try to suck up to women – Don’t pander to women or try to exploit the obvious media stereotypes.” By which he means, not all women think alike. Not all women are Soccer Moms , not all women are even Moms. LEARN about your women customers – and give them what they want!
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permis.com – driving licence Resources and Information. This …
Posted on June 14th, 2011 by admin
Permis auto
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