Domain Hostages

Recently I’ve been working with a few new website clients that have poor performing websites. As an SEO specialist, one of the things I check is where the sites are being hosted. In my research, sometimes I find unsuitable sources for positioning purposes, so I recommed a move.

Back to my new clients- when a new webmaster or website development company takes over a website, typically they like to control the domain for purposes of ease and availablilty. To do that, the owner of the domain is asked if they would agree to transfering the domain, or giving administrative rights so the domain could be managed. In the case of my new clients, they were under the impression that they had the rights to “their” domains, but found out the hard way that they don’t, and now their domains are being held hostage. One of those clients website has been down for almost a month. The company they used to register their domain has replied to one email of the many that were sent. The result of that correspondence was that the registrar is offering them a one year “renewal extension” of their domain which has not yet expired, for a mere two hundred dollars! If that were not enough, think about the loss of business by not getting the problem with the domain fixed in a timely fashion.

Needless to say, we have been working many extra hours on getting this hostage situation under control and are in the process of registering new domains that we can work with. Unfortunately for the clients, there primary print advertising which they have spent thousands of dollars on, has the old domain information. With a non-responsive registrar, this is a very costly way to find out you’ve made a bad choice.

Here’s what I recommend when working with a registrar: Ask questions like, “who owns my domain name and do I have access to it?”- “what is your policy on moving domains if I choose to go to a different registrar in the future?”- “what is your response time to my domain issues?”. Some registrars are listed as the owner of their clients domains, in most if not all cases thats what we do because it makes life very easy to manage them. That being said, our policy is that if a client wants to move their domain from us, we gladly comply within a 24 hour period with a transfer key code.

Finally, if you are not satisfied with the response to your questions, and if they are not willing to put these types of terms into writing in any form for you, my advise is steer clear of this company, you may have some future problems dealing with them and in my clients cases, thousands of advertising dollars potentially lost.

-Joe Anzalone

WHERE’S ALL THE FREE MONEY AND WHAT DOES IT COST?

Recently I’ve been giving a lot of FREE information away over the internet regarding how to market your business more effectively. At times I wonder how much of that information is actually falling on deaf ears, or blind eyes. If I equate the time spent preparing – researching, writing, and then the time marketing this FREE information, how much money is it actually costing me? More importantly if you’re not receiving that message how much is it costing YOU.

Well lets figure out how much time is being spent giving all this free information away. Let’s say a well thought out article with research and development is 4 hours. As a consultant, fees could range anywhere from seventy five dollars to three hundred dollars per hour, so three hundred to twelve hundred dollars of billable time is invested in developing this free information to help others. The information, which is not being utilized by anyone because it’s falling on deaf ears or blind eyes, is potentially costing that individual thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales.

So why is this happening?

Questions that I get from many businesses who call to discuss their marketing issues and who are looking for new ways to generate business are basically the same; why isn’t this working, why are my sales off, how come people are not spending money with me.
There are many obvious reasons; economic times, unemployment, fear of losing a job, the list could go on. But is it really that, or is it like the free information I give away? Your message could be falling on deaf ears or blind eyes too.

Take a look at ALL of your marketing, especially now when unemployment has hit an all time high since 1983 of 10.2 percent, and begin to figure out how you need to compete in this economy as it throttles down in 2010, and by all indications it will continue to do so. Every single thing you do to market your business will some how cost you money- your money that is freely spent to “educate” those customers who can take advantage of your offerings. Lastly, do not, I repeat, do not stop marketing and advertising your products or services. The fastest way to lose more business is to become non-existent in the public’s, more importantly, your customer’s eyes. You need to find the most effective ways to spend your marketing dollars in a down economy, but keep your focus and marketing message on point.

Oh, and for the record, sorry there is no free lunch, and no free money. Everything has its price.

INCREASE YOUR SALES USING VIDEO

Now more than ever, relationship marketing is a key factor for business success. Networking events are a great place to start building those relationships. But what happens when the event is over?

Most of us will follow-up with the contacts we’ve been able to make, but have you considered what those new contacts are doing with your information?

How many times have you met a new contact or prospect and almost immediately upon meeting another from XYZ company, you get into a conversation about what that previous contact you’ve met does in their business?

It happens to me frequently. So if you are a good marketer, you are compelled to pass the new contacts information to the “newer” contact. Connecting people is what relationship marketing is all about. If you’re the person who’s being referred, the first place they will look to find out more information about you and your business is your website. When they get there, what are they going to see and or hear?

If you don’t have a video describing your business, or a testimonial video from one of your most important clients you may never get that call. Content is king on a website, so what better way to indirectly meet a new client and instill a sense of confidence than with a video on your website.

Creating a company video testimonial is easy and inexpensive. Once created it can be easily added to your website and distributed over the internet. There are even techniques to “fully optimize” your video on search engines such as Google with positive search results seen as soon as 24 to 48 hours.

If your business relies on search results for sales and your website isn’t pulling high rankings, consider the use of a video for the internet. It could significantly move you up the results page ladder and help to convert more sales.

Video on the internet in 2009 now accounts for more than HALF of all internet traffic.

In just 2 years, video which was almost non-existent has grown to more than 50% of all content on the internet. According to YouTube, which has grown to 100 million viewers earlier this year, staggering numbers of new videos are being uploaded each day.

Video is the most powerful medium for sales…ever. Blasting GOOD video over the internet is the most economical form of marketing you can do today.

Here are some statistics:
• Text only websites show viewers stay an average of 42 seconds, but websites that have “relevant” video content show viewers staying more than 5 minutes.
• 70% of all individuals on the internet view at least one video per month (There are almost 1.7 billion internet users worldwide in 2009. Do the math.).
• Internet users have grown 362% since 2000, with more than 24% penetration. Internet viewers view more than 14 billion online videos monthly, 5 billion on YouTube alone.
• YouTube has grown into the fourth largest searched website portal on the internet taking in 12% or more of all web traffic worldwide.
• More people watch video on the internet than broadcast TV each week.
So what do all of these statistics mean for you? It’s a viral marketing world at its best ready to be taken and after any production costs, totally FREE. Video exposure when done correctly drives traffic to your website, and traffic equals sales. If you’re not leveraging the power of video on your website, you could be missing more than half- 50% of your potential market share.

If you’re not using video to help market your business on the internet maybe you need to. With numbers like these and a captive audience, you can be a market share winner too.

SMART MARKETING IN THESE NO-BUGET TIMES

Unless you’ve been living under a rock these days, we are living in one of the most challenging economic times in our country’s history. Each one of our businesses has tough marketing decisions ahead, and the decisions we choose to make could have an immediate impact, good or bad on our business bottom line.

Companies that are cutting their marketing budgets across the board and those that see it as just another business expense they need to adjust will surely feel the effects of weaker sales and smaller market share.

So with a tighter marketing budget, where is the best place to effectively spend those precious dollars? You need to do everything that can make your marketing dollars work harder during these times. If measurability and flexibility are key factors, and they should be, there is no better place to consider than online.

Keeping a healthy mix of actionable online approaches in your marketing plans will ensure that your company is in the best position for whatever comes up.

Online marketing gives you this kind flexibility:
• Tactics that can be executed in days, not weeks or months.
• Ability to make changes now. Long term contracts limit your ability to react to immediate changes that may be necessary.
• The ability to produce hard data on each tactic you are investing in.

SEO, paid search and email marketing to your opt-in lists become more effective because you control not only the spend, but your tactics are squarely under your control and you can increase more of what’s working as you track your measureable ROI.

This solid blend of actionable online marketing approaches enables you to see immediate results, make immediate changes, and the impact it has on your business.

Show and Sell Using Social Media

Remember those grammar school days when we had “show and tell” and your class mates came in with all kinds of goofy stuff, except every once in a while someone came to show and tell with something very cool that everyone wanted. Maybe Miss Wright was really right all along- she was a marketing genius!

Show and sell isn’t new, just forgotten. When you’re trying to expose potential customers to new ideas, it’s better to show them than to tell them about it. By showing them in some way what you have to offer, you give them something tangible to look at, touch and possibly even smell. You give them something they can react to or form a bond with. Most people are visual, so trying to convey a concept they have to visualize in their mind’s eye may be difficult, so show them what you are offering. This by no means is saying your clients are school children, but the very same concept of understanding new ideas still holds true. Concepts are difficult, but showing examples makes it easy. In today’s complicated fast paced stress-filled world, easy wins.

So what ways could you use to “Show and Sell”? We feel by far the most effective is video. What better way to show the masses what you have to offer is there other than a video? Not many. By creating a simple demonstration video, clients and potential clients could visualize your concept or technology in action. You don’t need to spend a lot of time making it pretty, quick and cheap works well too. The point of the video is when you see it, you get what it is, and you start to see how it can be used.

The beauty part of using video is that you can upload it to the internet and share it with as many individuals as you would like; if it becomes viral you hit the proverbial jackpot.

YouTube is the perfect place to park it, and if optimized properly, can open up countless opportunities for your business. If you’re using social media like Twitter, Linked In, or Facebook, you could plug in a link pointing to your video in the content of the message and blast it out using a pre planned SM marketing campaign. If you use Constant Contact email marketing, you could embed the video into the message with a little bit of creativity and you instantly have a captive audience.

These are just a few examples of how to use show and sell to build your business. Stop telling and start showing. It’s definitely more work, but in the end, you’ll be happy you made the investment.

So You Have Top Page Google Search Engine Results Position, Now What?

Well you’ve made it, a top Google search result position. Now customers can find you from almost anywhere. So, now that you’ve made it to the top, here’s the million dollar question – are you converting visitors into customers?

Here’s a statement I hear more often than not – “people come to my site, but I’m not getting any business”. Sound familiar. Well if so, you’re not alone.

So what can you do to start converting those visitors into customers?
The quickest way is to give something away. Yes, you heard me correctly. If that’s not possible then here are a few tips on creating a customer attraction devise:

• Identify a problem or need of your target market and a solution to fill it.
• Perhaps a FREE downloadable Top 10 list that will help their business or personal life in some way. If your content is good, it is likely to be shared with others, possibly even on a social media site like Facebook or Twitter.
• Create an eBook or special report that has to be subscribed to.
• An effective audio interview, and or video testimonial from one of your satisfied customers. The best form of advertising is “word of mouth”, a video does that.
• Be the Godfather and create a coupon offer that’s hard to refuse. Customers like to take advantage of Special offers they can redeem – are you offering them one?

In today’s economy, businesses and people don’t want to be “sold to”, but they do want to “buy”. You telling them how great you are is much less effective than someone who has done business with you telling them the same story, so make sure you have several testimonials on your site. Make sure that your customer attraction device has some real value to it. Nothing is more frustrating than to read about a free giveaway that only serves to remind them that they have a problem and you’re not offering a solution to fix it unless they pay for it. Demonstrate to your customer that you are an expert at what you do by giving “how to” information away. It’s been proven that if you are truly good at what you do, the amount of what you are sharing can never be as much as what you know or can do. If the content is relevant, those conversions will soon become customers.

Lastly, have a good marketing plan in place. You’ll need some method of communicating with those who have responded, and a way to present your product or service so not to turn that potential customer off. You’ve done a lot to get them to this point, so remember, the best made plans will turn up empty if you don’t follow-up.

Marketing Viral Internet Videos

New statistics are indicating approximately 20 hours of new video is being uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day. If my math is correct, that’s 28,800 hours of video uploads per day!

So how do you push your video above the tidal wave of new clutter?

Visible Measures is a video online tracking company that tracks online video much like Neilson tracks television, or Arbitron tracks radio. In a recent interview they say that video is not a niche anymore, it’s now a mainstream activity. According to the Neilson ratings there were 98.7 million people watching the Super Bowl this year, and consequently there were 99 million Super Bowl video ads reviewed over the 4 weeks post event.

These statistics show that we are now seeing a pattern that viewing video over the internet has gained a huge market audience, and is grown to TV type proportions. Ten’s of millions of internet views can be reached with digital video. It’s become a very powerful marketing message tool.

What the study also found is that there is no magical way to set-up a video to become viral. Looking at the big picture, a well produced video campaign uploaded onto the internet could reach one million views within one week of launch and if that number doesn’t move you, if a campaign succeeds and catches fire, it will see more than ten million views in a short period of time.

So how do I reach my first million views? The first week is the crucial week. You need to have a high concentration of media awareness at the launch if you are to have a chance. Your campaign needs to be promoted on social media websites, some paid exposure combined with other online and social outreach in order to get your campaigns momentum started. The rest is up to the viewers. If successful, that burst of activity must be sustained with continued marketing support to keep the interest high.

So you have a successful video going, what’s next? You need to be thinking sequel. Keep your marketing message fresh and new.

Using Video In Squeeze Pages

A Squeeze Page is a single web page ad, usually as part of a website or independent web page with the sole purpose of capturing customer information for follow-up marketing. The most effective squeeze page typically uses a single or multiple success stories accompanied by video testimonials or audio tracks that the prospect would relate to when making a buying decision. They also incorporate color psychology, and catchy sales copy.

By adding video to Squeeze Pages you have a better chance of capturing the visitor’s attention. A recently released study via DoubleClick states Rich media ad formats with video outperform all other types of ads by an overwhelming margin. This study has found that people who see a video in a rich media ad are more likely to make the purchase or respond to an opt-in offer. We are quickly learning that for a squeeze page, the best first exposure idea is video.

The goal of the page is to obtain the visitor’s email address; by using a well produced content rich video testimonial you give yourself the best chance of holding ones interest and preventing the user from “Clicking-Away” to a different website. Navigation and hyperlinks are almost always absent from typical squeeze pages, but in many cases multiple videos are used. The absence of links and the use of content rich video is intended to focus visitors’ attention on one choice: register for the email list or leave the site. A call to action in the video helps lead the user to make the decision to opt-in.

Finally, once the user opts-in, the squeeze page often uses an email auto responder to begin delivering information as soon as the visitor confirms their email address. The auto responder may also be utilized to provide an immediate download link to get information, or a second informational video. Either way, by promising an immediate way of getting information upon completion of confirming their email address, this proven method is effective in increasing opt-ins using squeeze pages.

9 KEY WEB SITE ELEMENTS

If your website isn’t hitting its mark, here are a few tips that could drastically improve search engine position and your conversion rates.  As with most SEO, testing is an important factor, so whatever improvements you make to your website, make sure to test, test, test.  By leaving this important step out, you are leaving money on the table.

 Headline

An effective headline will capture your visitors’ attention and
draw them into your sales copy.
 
Simple changes to a headline have been known to produce as
much as a 1,900% increase in conversion rates. The headline is
the single most important part of your sales message. If they don’t read
past your headline, they will never reach the order button or your
sales message.
 
Here are 2 quick tips for writing effective headlines:
 
- Use a headline that asks a question that begs to be answered
- Create a headline that will stimulate curiosity
 
Drop Caps
 
Many people ignore the possibility of including a drop cap on
their sales page. However, through testing, it has shown to
increase conversion rates.
 
Colors
 
Psychologists have suggested that color impression can account
for up to 60% of the acceptance or rejection of a product or
service. Changing a few colors on your web site can instantly increase
your conversion rate.  
 
Offer Strong Guarantees
 
Guarantees help alleviate any anxiety that potential customers may have. Guarantees will increase sales. However,  a fact that many people are unaware of know is that guarantees will reduce return rates as well.
 
A longer guarantee will generally create fewer returns than a shorter
one.
 
Here are a couple of techniques that have often been found to be
successful in creating a guarantee:
 
- Circle or mark the guarantee to make it distinctive
- Use a guarantee icon that is eye-catching
 
P.S.
 
Putting a P.S  on your sales page is the second most important element
of your sales page. Many  visitors may not read your
entire sales message, but they will read your P.S. It’s frequency of being read is second only to the headline.
 
Bullets
 
Bullets are captivating, short, sweet, and pleasing to the eye.
Not to mention, all of the top marketers, historic and
present-day, use bullets. Clustered bullets offer eye appealing
interest for calling attention to key elements, as well as other benefits.
 
Tell a Story
 
Many people doing business online forget that they’re doing business with
REAL PEOPLE.  Your visitors are able to connect and relate with your
experiences. Instead of thinking of you as a salesman, tell a story that will
allow them to directly relate to you as if the story was about them.  You
probably have  same hopes and desires that they have.
 
Background Color
 
A simple  background color change can instantly increase your conversion rate. The most effective background colors include white, dark blue, grey, and black.
 
In Addition
 
Add Your Picture, and Contact Information
 
Post your online and offline contact information on your web
site so that your customers know that your business is solid.
 
You should always have a phone-number on your site. What reason
do people have to trust you if they cannot contact you? By
adding your contact information to your site, you add an extra
layer of credibility.
 
Use an email address with your URL extension: ie: info@onlinemarketgroup.com   rather than @yahoo.com or @hotmail.net, etc.  This also gives a sense of stability and it is a “professional address” for correspondence.
 
Once you have implemented some of these strategies, test your
sales copy on a small scale. Optimize your copy to it’s fullest
potential and then begin your major campaign.
 
Many online businesses do not test or ever optimize their sales message, landing pages, or forms.  
Don’t make the same mistake! Test Everything

Are You Maximizing Your Networking Opportunities?

Networking is one of the best ways to create new business opportunities, and increase your funnel of potential business leads.  If done properly, it can be fun, and financially rewarding.  Here are a few things to remember the next time you attend a networking event:

1).  Know what you intend to acomplish at this event.

2).  Arrive early.  Some of the best contacts are made before the masses arrive.

3).  Always have your nametag on, legibly printed or professionally made, and always wear it on your right side.

4). Be the last to leave (The reverse of #2 is true too). 

5).  God gave us two ears and one mouth – listen more than you speak.

6).  Don’t spend too much time with people you know.  Remember #1 and you’re there to make new contacts.

7).  No gossiping.  Ask questions and give informative answers.

8).  Never barge into an ongoing conversation, wait to be asked in.

9).  It’s not imperative that you meet every person there.  Several qualified leads can sometimes become more profitable- quality, not quantity.

10).  Make sure that each person you reach knows that you can be a valuable resource to them.

 These are a few consulting tips we share with our clients for when they attend different networking events.  Don’t forget to have plenty of top quality business cards in your pocket, and make sure you give two out to every person you speak with- one for that individual, and one for them to give someone else. 

 Last thing is probably the most important, remember to follow-up.  I hear too many times from clients that they don’t have the time to do the follow-up.  By performing this simple task, you show your new contact that you are interested in doing business with them.