1. Would you be interested in attending?
2. Which day and time suits you best?

Please post your feedback on LinkedIn or if you’re interested email your details to Will Click Here and I’ll send you the details for the webinar. Thanks in advance for your feedback. It will be a great webinar.
Will

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The correct answer is actually maybe. Here’s why. If your site doesn’t convert effectively then being page 1 before you fix that is a waste of money. Seo like any form of marketing investment should be measured for what it returns to your business. The big advantage it has over other marketing is that it is more easily measurable.

In order to understand whether your seo is making your cash or sending you broke you need to know:

1. How many new clients it gets you each month.
2. How much did you make from the clients and how much will you make over their lifetime with your business.
3. Was it greater than your cost?

So if you have someone doing seo for you right now can you answer these questions? If not you need to find out the answers fast.

Need Help… We offer a free second opinion on your marketing or seo. The reason we offer this is not as a sales tool. It’s because part of our mission is to ensure business owners know how to get the best return on any investment in online marketing. If business owners are better informed about judging value for money then the whole online marketing industry benefits.

p.s. We really need to lose the term ‘seo’ it has a bad name. Business is about getting leads, converting them into clients and retaining them over time. If your investing money in marketing that doesn’t contribute to this then PLEASE STOP NOW!

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A Facebook Interruption Ad

Now I’m going on record, I hate these ads! How about you? Interruption marketing is old school and there is a reason smart marketers rarely use it. It either gets ignored or it annoys the person. This particular ad has no relevance to me nor anything I recently did or looked at on Facebook. It’s un-targeted and in my view a waste of money.

Now we all know Facebook is trying to work out how to create a decent, ongoing, stream of income but let’s hope this isn’t it. So what do you think of these ‘in feed’ Facebook ads? I’m really keen to hear your views.

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Google Adwords Management

It’s a fact that Google Adwords can be a fast way to get visitors to your website. It’s a bigger, lesser known, fact that done wrong it can generate lower than expected sales or even worse be a huge waste of money.

Here are some of the mistakes we see many businesses making with their Google Adwords campaigns.

Poor keyword targeting. Let’s say you sell office chairs and you decide to focus your campaign on the term office chairs. Makes sense right? Not necessarily. There are two major problems with this. First it’s a general keyword and when we spend money we always want to target buyers. Someone typing in office chairs might want to know how to set their chair up to save their back, they could just be researching, or they might be a buyer. The point is that the cost per click (CPC) will be higher for general terms and therefore you end up paying more for people who may not even be buyers. Instead look for keywords that are more specific, here are some I found:

white office chair
leather office chair
ergonomic office chair
mesh office chairs
white leather office chair
red office chair
leather office chairs

The thing is that these terms (except one) have a lower CPC than the term office chairs. They are also quite specific about what the person is after. If your business sold any of these items you can setup a much more profitable campaign by targeting these terms. The next common mistake many business make is…

Sending Visitors Only To Their Home Page. You’ve probably clicked on an ad and been taken to businesses home page that contains very little, if any information about what you were searching for. This is dangerous for any advertiser because the chance you’ll click away is extremely high. When someone clicks an ad they need to immediately see they are in the right place and you have what they are looking for. Let’s take white office chair as an example. If you just land on the home page for a furniture site you need to browse around or search for the chair you are after. However if you are sent to a well set-up landing page about white office chairs you know they have what you’re after and you can then review the products and hopefully make a purchase. By keeping your landing pages simple and focused on what the person clicking the ad is looking for your conversion rates will go up substantially. Hence your campaign instantly becomes more profitable with the same spend. The next major mistake is…

Poorly Setup Ad Groups and Ads. Often Adwords campaigns are set-up with just one ad and all the keywords in one big group. This causes enormous problems because poor click rate ads lower your overall Adwords score and can result in lower ad positions and higher CPC. A better idea is to keep each ad group tightly focused around an important keyword. Continuing the white office chair example I found 16 related terms. These can be added into their own ad group and then a targeted ad created to take these visitors to a highly relevant landing page. You must track ad click rates and conversions when changing ad groups but hours of testing and research across many different companies proves targeted campaigns generate more sales and usually lower as costs. When I typed in white office chair on Google only one ad really stood out here it is (this ad also went to a specific landing page):

A Good Keyword Targeted Ad

So there you have it simple actionable ideas to get better returns on your Google Ads. If you would like to get help with improving your ad performance we’d be pleased to speak with you. Our service guarantees improved ad performance of you pay nothing. Just contact us here and mention Google Adwords for more information.

 

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Climb The Ladder Of Success in 2013

There is a great quote I learnt from Aussie marketer Mal Emery and it goes along the lines of ‘small hinges swing big doors’. Simply it means that the right small actions can have dramatic positive impact on the performance of your business. In this case we’re looking at websites. Here are 3 simple things virtually any business can do, starting today, to get  huge boost in performance from your existing traffic and website.

1. Learn and set-up a new lead source. Leads can come from so many different places online they key is to really understand how to properly use a lead source and make it work for your business. Blogging (like this post) is one example of lead source. My new posts go to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn which gets my business in front of many potential clients. Some popular sites/lead sources you should be using for lead generation in 2013 are:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Local Directories
• Chambers of Commerce in your area
• Referals from existing clients

2. Track conversions on your site. Every site needs to have what I call a ‘most wanted response’ e.g. call, email subscribe, etc. Each month, as a minimum, you need to see how many of these actions you got from the number of unique visitors your site got for that month. It is essential you ask each enquiry how they found out about you to help with this process. So if got 1,000 visitors and had 10 calls then you conversion rate for the month was 1%. Now that you know it ask yourself, your employees and clients what you can do to improve it. One example of an improvement many sites need to make is simplify their home page. Remove anything that gets in the way of the visitor taking your ‘most wanted response’.

3. Make an irresistible offer. We are exposed to so many marketing messages and we are suspicious of them. This means that unless you have an irresistible offer it’s too easy for potential clients to say no. An irresistible offer is one that’s harder to say no than it is to say yes to. So ask yourself, your employees and your clients how easy is it to say no to your current offer? Then improve upon it until you get to the point where it makes you slightly nervous to make the offer. At that point you stand a chance of impacting the market and making more sales.

Please take just one these ideas, apply it right now whilst you remember and let me know how you go.

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In 2013 if you are not using video to drive leads to your website you’re missing out big time.

Videos are so popular YouTube alternates between being the number 2 or 3 search engine behind Google!

Here are the results of a simple test I did late last year. I picked the term ‘Top 3 Ranking in Google‘ and made a simple video about it. I uploaded it to Youtube and some other video sites. Then I did some basic video seo. Note it was basic:) Anyway as of today 29/1/2013 with no extra work done I have two spots on page one of Google for that term in Google US and Google Australia (see screenshot below). This is the power of using video in your seo strategy. Here is the video it’s simple and I am not going to win an Academy award but I am getting leads from it already and I’d rather have that! If you’d like to learn more about how to use video seo to drive new leads for your business drop us a line.

Top 3 Ranking In Google Australia Example

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1. Quality of the ad copy (this determines the click through rate)
2. Quality of the landing page (the page that ad clicker lands on determines whether you get a decent return on the $ invested)

After studying and working with many different businesses I have seen that most people are getting results far below what they could be getting. This can be fixed quickly in most cases with with some simple changes. A positive change in ad copy or the landing page can dramatically increase the returns you generate from your ad spend. Better still this is one of the quickest marketing improvements any business can make.

As a special offer for any reader of this blog I will review your Adwords campaign free of charge and highlight areas that can be improved to get you better results (lower ad spend, more clicks, more leads or a combination of all of these). Naturally I am hoping you will be impressed with what I reveal and that we may do business together in the future. However that is entirely your call, the review is free of any obligation.

To claim your free review right now just message me your details and I’ll get in touch. At the very least you will get some ideas about how to improve your Google Adwords results with no cost or obligation. These reviews are time consuming at my end so I can only do a few per month. Right now I have time for 8-10 max.

p.s. Even if you’d just like to fire an Adwords question at me send me a message and I’ll do my best to answer it for you within 48 hours.

Will

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The easiest way to do this is to track where every enquiry into your business comes from. You just need to ask and then record them on a sheet.

This will immediately show you where leads are coming from and allow you to make better informed marketing decisions.

However with your website you also need to compare the leads it bring against the number of unique visitors your site gets each month. When you do this you have your lead conversion rate. This is normally expressed as percentage. For example if you get 5 leads a month from 200 unique visitors your lead conversion is 2.5%. If your lead conversion is below 10% then there is scope for dramatic improvement in your marketing. Individual analysis needs to be done but low conversion could result from:

• lack of a compelling offer on your site
• hard to find contact information
• too many distractions on the site preventing the prospect doing what you really want them to do
• poor traffic coming to the site (real prospects or just lookers)

If you can relate to this problem, most businesses can, let’s chat and take some time to find where your problems and get them fixed. This action alone could turn 2013 into your best year ever. Contact us here.

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After years in the marketing game I have seen how very small changes to marketing can create very big impacts on a business.

Here are just a few things that can really improve the return from your existing marketing:

1. Ensuring your ad or website has a strong benefit laden headline.
2. Making sure your initial offer to potential clients is irresistible.
3. Following up with leads that have been generated until they are ready to buy or no longer have an interest in what you sell.
4. Changing copy in an ad or marketing piece so that is written to clearly highlight the end benefits a client gets from doing business with you.
5. Reviewing marketing in other industries to see if there is a strategy you can use in your industry to become a dominant player.
6. Creating a powerful guarantee for what you do so that the perceived risk of doing business with you is greatly reduced.

That is only a short list of a few ideas. However as I am passionate about helping businesses succeed and I’d like to make you an offer.

Send me your website or an existing marketing piece and I’ll review it for you and make at least 3 suggestions that will get the site or marketing piece performing better for you. This critique is 100% free of cost or obligation. It’s my way of introducing my business to yours and naturally I am hoping you’ll be impressed with what I give you and that we may work together at some stage. However that’s solely up to you. The critique is free. Naturally I cannot offer these to everyone so the first 10 to contact me are in and any after that go on a waiting list till I have some more spots available. Remember a small improvement can create big cash returns so act fast to get your free critique before all 10 spots are gone.

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So what’s the solution? In simple terms it is to set some clear goals for the marketing and to make sure your website is designed in a way that supports those goals. This means your site:

1. Must have a clear and compelling offer.
2. Must make getting involved with your business low risk for them. This is where a great free report is really useful.
3. Have multiple forms of contact and staying in touch with your business. There’s nothing wrong with and big and bold phone number on the site rather than just an anonymous contact form.
4. An automated follow-up system.
5. Simple but professional design.
6. Nothing on the site that distracts visitors from taking your ‘most wanted action’.

Right now I am just finishing up a new free report covering this topic in greater detail it will be called something like ’13 Ways to Get More Leads, Convert More Leads to Sales and Generate More Cash From Your Website’. I am interesting in knowing if you’d like a copy when it’s done to send out to your database and social media followers. The report can be co-branded with your business name and details. Just reply to this post, call me or use the contact form on my site to let me know you’re interested in it when it’s released.

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