More traffic=more sales ???

Although this is an easy connection to make, your other source of opportunity is the proportion of website visitors who enquire or buy- called your “website conversion rate”. Increasing  your conversion rate by 50 to 100 per cent relatively quickly is realistic when you follow the strategies below. What’s more, many of these methods are low cost, using you existing skills.

Here are the top 7 strategies for boosting your website conversion:

1. Measure

Start by measuring each of your major conversion points or “goals” to objectively track your website performance. Free tools such as Google Analytics allow you to track key actions such as newsletter signups or enquiry form submissions. If you know that 8 per cent of visitors subscribe to your newsletter and 2 per cent enquire, you have a baseline against which you can compare your performance.

2. Take the focus away from  products

Most business websites focus too heavily on your own products and services. How do you fill their need or lessen their pain?  Shift your focus to how you solve your customer’s problem or need, and the results you can deliver. People buy results, not processes. This “problem solving” approach is much more effective at getting website visitors to say “yes” than simply pushing your product.

3. Your website users are the experts – ask them

Most business owners give a lot of thought to the best layout and content for their website, but receive very little input from actual users. One highly recommended service is UserTesting.com. For only US$29, a trained user tester will review your site and record every mouse movement and click as a flash video, along with a voice commentary. And you don’t need to conduct a lot of testing to gain useful insights. Between one and three tests is enough to start with.

4. What’s holding your clients back?

Make sure you don’t make the mistake of focusing only on your product benefits and reasons to enquire or buy. Also consider what’s stopping visitors from taking the next step.

5. Use the “shortcuts” – they are proven

Certain website content and design elements have been proven to convert better than other alternatives most of the time. Using these “conversion shortcuts” is a fast way to lift your sales.

Here are some reliable shortcuts that relate to text presentation:

• Avoid small fonts. Choose 13 point type or higher

• High-contrast text colours (eg black text on a white background) work best

• Improve readability with subheads, bullets and short paragraphs

• Highlight important words and phrases with bold or italic text to aid scanning and comprehension

• Make hyperlinks obvious. Blue, underlined links are best

6. Provide assurance at decision points

“Moments of truth” occur at key decision points, such as your enquiry form or shopping cart checkout page. It’s at these points that users tend to be most easily scared off. That’s why it’s a good idea to include assurances to allay any last-minute doubts. Adding privacy messages, security badges, key benefits and information on what will happen immediately after the user performs the action are effective elements to include here.

7. Test and pick the winner

People are very poor at predicting how different website elements such as headlines, copy or design elements will perform in the “real world”. That’s why you need to test. Tools such as Google Website Optimiser (free) allow you to show different site elements to different users and track the results of each version. That means you can pick a winner every time.

Try checking your existing website against the suggestions above. If you’re already spending money on traffic generation such as Google Adwords, increasing your conversion rate means you can make more sales without spending a cent more on marketing – making this the perfect strategy for the current economic climate.

Your Unique Selling Proposition is that distinct, appealing idea that sets you apart from every other “me too” competitor.Your USP gives people a reason to give their business to YOU and not your competitor. Online, it means opting in, enquiring or buying on YOUR site, rather than clicking on to the next.

Without any thinking can you clearly say the unique advantages you offer your clients? If you struggle with this, you’re certainly not alone. Very few business owners are able to state their USP.

Read on to discover how to formulate a powerful USP to increase the conversion power of your website and shorten your sales cycle.

Examples of USP Concepts
USP concepts can be grouped into 10 broad categories: Price Quality Service Speed Selection Convenience Guarantee Customisation Originality Specialisation.
Please note that these broad concepts are very much a starting point only. Simply claiming, “We give great service” won’t convince website visitors to click deeper into your website, enquire or give you their business. You also need to flesh out your USP with specifics to really drive home HOW you deliver on your promise.

Then you lay on the PROOF that what you say is true (we’ll go into more detail on how to do this in future editions).

When you follow this process, you’ll find more qualified prospects self-selecting into your sales process.
We’ll look at two distinct strategies to help you find or articulate your USP in just a moment. You need to specify what you’re aiming to achieve.

The Qualities of a Successful USP
Successful USP’s encapsulate an important need. Important for the customer. They’re tightly worded and promise something special that your competition doesn’t. Here are a few well-known examples:
Speed e.g. FedEx: When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight
Quality/Selection  e.g. Woolworth’s: The Fresh Food People

Unsuccessful Approaches To Avoid
An unsuccessful USP is one that isn’t really “unique” at all, usually because it’s not specific enough. How often have you seen boilerplate marketing slogans such as:
“Good Quality and Low Prices”,
“Affordable Quality Since 1984”,
“Service With A Smile”,
“Excellence In Quality And Service”.
These are empty words that hold no persuasive power with savvy website visitors. To really make your USP come alive, you need to be specific.

How To Create A Compelling USP
Here are two effective strategies for finding your USP and successfully incorporating it into your business or professional practice.

USP Formulation Strategy #1: Crystallise and communicate your unique strengths
Ask yourself these four key questions:
1. What do you offer that your competitors don’t?
2. Is this important to your customers?
3. How easy is it for competitors to copy?
4. Can it be communicated easily?

Taglines vs Slogans vs USPs
A “tagline” is NOT the same as a USP. Your tagline is normally not long enough to communicate your entire USP. However, the best taglines are a succinct contraction or summation of the full USP. They get across the key selling idea in 1 or 2 seconds. Your USP is NOT a “slogan” either, and it doesn’t have to be a short phrase or sentence. In many cases, your USP statement can be an entire paragraph. The important thing is to encapsulate what makes you unique, different and desirable to your client while eliminating excess verbiage.

USP Formulation Strategy #2: Identify a gap in the market and fill it
Another successful approach for formulating your USP is to analyse your industry for “performance gaps” that you can fill.
Ask yourself: What do people dislike about our industry? What are our competitors’ weaknesses? What specific needs are being unmet in the market?

You need each individual prospect left in no doubt as to why it makes much more sense for them to work with you onstead of a competitor.

Expertise in a specific niche can be a very powerful USP, especially on the Internet. NARROWING your focus often allows you to define and dominate your playing field, instead of waging battles for territory in a commoditised, undifferentiated market.

How We Approach the “Performance Gap” Issue
Marketing consultants sometimes have a reputation for providing a bunch of recommendations, then bailing out before the strategies are implemented or any dollar returns have been realised.
Then there’s the typical web design company, which may be skilled at putting images and code on the web, but are very often unable to turn your website into a lead generation machine that generates profit for your business.

HM Gilmore and Associates  is different because we are experts at creating and implementing website traffic and conversion strategies that are effective, accountable and profitable. Our USP is based around delivering profitable results.
Final Thoughts On USPs
A good USP is mission critical to your ability to draw visitors deeper into your website and construct a compelling case to convert shy prospects into lifelong clients.
You’re probably already offering your clients many unique benefits, but until you communicate these benefits in the form of a compelling USP, you won’t enjoy the results you could and should be getting.

Or maybe you already have a USP, but it hasn’t been incorporated deeply enough into all you marketing communications and operations. Rework or refine your USP and build an online customer acquisition system around it to generate more profitable marketing results.

Remember Market, Objectives, Strategy and Tactics – in that order.
MARKET
Who is your market?
Who is NOT your market?
Who is your ideal, hyper-responsive prospect?
What’s your ideal prospect’s CORE PROBLEM that you solve?
What value does your ideal prospect place on solving their core problem?
Can he pay to solve that problem?
Will he pay to solve that problem?
Can you reach your market cost-effectively?
How much is a customer worth to you in the first transaction?
How much is a customer worth to you in terms of ‘lifetime value’?
How long is your sales cycle? (how many days from ‘hello’ to ‘money in your bank’)

OBJECTIVES
What do you want your website to achieve specifically?
What are your timeframes and budgets?
Can you shorten your sales cycle?
Where are you now?
Where do you want to be?
What’s the ‘gap’?

STRATEGY
Definition of strategy: a plan of action intended to accomplish your specific objective(s) as effectively as possible, given the resources available.
What makes you unique and preferable to your competitor’s website one click away?
What should your online marketing funnel look like?
How do new clients engage with you?
What steps do they need to go through in order to become your client?
How can you make the process of becoming your customer easy, enjoyable and fun?
How do you keep the WRONG prospects from clogging up your sales process?
How can you encourage only ideal clients to choose your business?
How will you build and nurture relationships with prospects and clients?
How will you keep in touch after the sale?
How will you make the most of every lead, sales opportunity and unconverted lead?

TACTICS
You understand your market, you’re crystal-clear on your objectives, and your strategic outline is in place. Now it’s time to talk tactics – the tools and methods you will use to achieve your objectives.
When it comes to lead generation on the web, there are two components to consider: traffic and conversion.
Most internet marketers talk a lot about traffic, but you also need a way to convert that traffic into profit. The better you are at converting, the more traffic sources you can use and the more sales you can generate.

So what do most high-performance online lead generation processes look like? For many of our clients, they include some combination of:
Pay-Per-Click advertising (primarily Google AdWords)
Opt-in pages to capture the email address and contact details of potential clients
Email autoresponders to follow up and nurture relationships with prospects
Landing pages/sales letters designed to motivate a specific action (e.g. an enquiry or purchase)
Additional traffic generation methods (e.g. SEO) deployed strategically once the process is working.

Answer these questions and you are ready for our next article!

With 500+ million people where over a ¼ of a billion people are active daily we are told is a land of opportunity. Surely the Google killer has a place for each of you?

A flood of sales awaits if you follow the rules, use the right methods and a execute a plan of attack. You could extract plenty of gold when you know the right strategies. A warning though: it won’t take 5 minutes of planning to receive market domination. Don’t worry that it will take weeks either.

In this article I invite you to consider putting a strategy into action that will bring you new fans, leads, and business. Whether you have a physical store or you sell online, putting the following methods into action will give you the opportunity to tap into 100′s of millions of conversations.

What is your unique selling point?

Before diving on to Facebook, grab your notebook and write down the answers to these questions. How is your business different? What holds it apart from your competition? What would compel someone to connect with what you are offering? Whether you call this a unique selling point or a marketing message, having a unique feature that separates your business from the millionsin the marketplace is crucial.

Tap into conversations

Be prepared to change your traditional message that you use on your sales letters.  Facebook is about conversation. Even the messages on your other marketing pieces won’t work directly when applied to Facebook. When people connect with your business they are letting you know that they want to talk with your business.

You need more than simple sales or new product releases, understand what makes people talk about your business. What will make someone want to stop and suggest your business to their “friends”? Answer these questions effectively, and you will be able to tap into conversations. Tap into the right conversations and you will generate business.

Now Flood Your Facebook Presence with Traffic

Beginners tell me they feel like they are limited to how many friends they have in their personal network. Some don’t even start because they feel trapped by having just a few friends! Most people focus on one source of traffic which leads to frustration and disappointment. I encourage my clients to utilise at least four methods of bringing new prospects directly to you.

1. Facebook Advertising You can target prospects by geography, demographics, and even by what they are already fans of. It has limitless opportunities. The amount of people that you can bring directly to you is only limited by your spend. Facebook Ads are one of the most direct and immediate methods of bringing traffic on a daily basis. As people browse through Facebook you get the opportunity to grab their attention with a tiny ad! Put the right ads in place and watch your business grow.

2. Direct Fan Invites There are a number of companies that offer the service of targeting specific groups of people. They take your desired target market and invite them to your fan page. With the right service and the right “fan” criteria you can bring a few thousand people to your business in just a couple of weeks. Be careful on the service you choose as you don’t want to get banned from Facebook.

3. Cross-Marketing If you already have a powerful online presence, leverage the power of your existing website or blog to get more people to join you on Facebook. With free tools, like Social Plugins, you can tap into the traffic that is already on your website. If you don’t have a website or blog yet, now if the time for action.

4. Email Marketing Email is alive and kicking! Invite your existing customers to join you in the conversation that is occurring on Facebook. With a few targeted emails you can quickly jump to a few thousand raving fans that already know you and will keep the conversation going.

Within facebook, there are at least a dozen different methods of bringing traffic to you. Each method of traffic gives you an opportunity to reach a different type of customer. Simply action a minimum of four to keep your business growing and eliminate your competition.

Transform that Traffic into Leads and Profit

Traffic that doesn’t convert into leads and sales is a waste of money. Some traffic can be quite expensive. Wasting that investment will hurt your bottom line quickly. In order to maximize your traffic, I invite you to consider two stages of conversion. Get these two elements correct and you will have powerful ways to grab the interest of your prospects:

1. Get Prospects to Click “Like” This is your  first goal. For the uninitiated, people on Facebook click “like” for comments, articles, or fan pages. With less than 10 seconds to grab a prospects attention, your fan page needs to quickly pique interest. When you have their attention you can compel them to move their mouse and click that tiny little “like” button.

Grabbing their attention quickly requires rich graphics, possibly incorporating video, and ensuring that your marketing message is obvious. When your fan page is graphically rich, extends the brand of your existing business and compels the prospect to take action you will get people to quickly click “like”. Once they are a fan, they receive a newsfeed from you, and their “friends” can see it too. What a marketing opportunity!

2. Building Your Email List After you get people to click “like” consider offering prospects an opportunity to optin to your email list. You can offer them your email newsletter, a special report, or create something entirely new. Just give them an opportunity to give you their name and email, and keep building your database.

When you have their attention in their email and the newsfeed, you will be developing you relationship with them by maximizing each traffic source.

By differentiating your business, bringing a flood of traffic, and converting that traffic into “fans” you will have a Facebook marketing strategy that will have you yelling “Eureka!”

“Fertile Ground”

Once you understand – AND IMPLEMENT – this principle your sales and referrals with go through the roof. Plus it will eliminate most price resistance, too.

This is why. Let’s say you were a little family run store in a small town. All of a sudden you got the news that Kmart was coming to town. What would you do?

If you are like most, you’d freak out. Call a town meeting and try to block the retail giant from coming onto your turf, stealing all your clients, and ruining your business. After all, how can you possibly compete with Kmart on price?

You shouldn’t even try, because the answer is you can’t. So The correct solution is to be different. VERY DIFFERENT. You can do this by offering products, services, AND marketing the retail giant can’t or won’t.

You know how some people actually drive 5 or 10 minutes or more to “save” 5 cents per litre. Some people really do buy things solely based on price.

I don’t worry about what petrol costs per litre. I have to buy it. I’m not going to stop when it hits a certain price – especially when you choose to live out in the sticks like we do. And if I spend my time working on my business rather than searching for the cheapest petrol, I’ll make way more then the few cents a litre.

But if a petrol station offers me a service I really like that no others do, I will go there EVERY SINGLE TIME. And that is the key for you to attract and keep clients who are not affected by price.

So what can you offer clients that no other Business in your category can in your area? Absolutely NOTHING.

That’s because all the Retailers and Business Owners in the world – as far as I know – CAN do the same things. But – and this is a very big but – most do not have the tools you have. And some that do are simply not willing to do what it takes.

The biggest and most influential thing you can do to separate your business from all others is…

Build And Then Enhance A Unique Relationship With Your Clients!!!

What you want to do is build a strong emotional bond. A bond so strong your clients almost feel like family.

In today’s fast-paced cold world, if you make a client feel special, most will stay with you and refer. Some will be more loyal than you could ever believe. But since you are busy in your business, or should be, I do not recommend spending a lot of extra time with clients to achieve this bond. The best way to create fertile ground with your clients is constant and consistent contact.

In fact, this IS the #1 most common element that my most successful Members possess. They constantly and consistently communicate with their clients by using various media such as direct mail, voice broadcast, live outbound call, email, loyalty program communications. Social marketing makes it even easier and cheaper to stay in touch with your customers by using facebook and twitter etc.

Some of the best strategies I like are:

* Sending postcards to your client list when you go away
* Sending a ‘double’ Thank You to your clients after they buy
* Sending a monthly newsletter to your client list

Also, unsolicited gifts are extremely powerful. I recommend separating your client list into three categories: A, B and C.

“A” clients are your most valuable clients. “B” is next in line and then “C.” I recommend sending all your clients unsolicited gifts from time to time… but… “A” clients should get special attention.

Obviously for your “A” clients put a little extra thought into it and get them something you know they would like. For example, one of my Members has a great client that loves football, so every year he gives him two tickets to see their local footy team play.

This is extremely powerful. And, if you run stats on your business, you will most likely discover that most of your profit comes from a relatively small percentage of your clients. I know because this is a common denominator in almost all businesses.

Encourage that small percentage, and your return on investment will be enormous.

Plus clients refer new clients just like them – you will be filling your business with clients you love to sell to and will stay with you no matter what your competition is doing.

Unfortunately, most businesses court and win over new clients and then, as soon as they get them, they ignore them and go after someone new. This is backwards thinking. It is much easier and more profitable to do what it takes to keep an existing client then it is to go out and find a new one. Clearly, the most expensive client is the new one.

Just know this: you must constantly be working on your relationship with your clients. It is not something you do once or twice – it’s forever. Ignore your spouse and he or she will leave you. Sooner or later. Ignore your clients and they will leave you, too. Usually sooner than later.

Here’s the story: Not too long ago I was scanning the internet for interesting news and came across this headline…

“Glacial Lake Vanishes in Southern Chile”

I don’t know about you, but… I think that’s a pretty good headline. It did EXACTLY what a headline is supposed to do – it got my attention and forced me to read the next sentence of that story. My curiosity was peaked and I had to know how the heck a lake could vanish.

That’s a little better of a headline than “Furniture 20% OFF Sale,” wouldn’t you say?

Anyway, here’s the opening sentence of that story, “SANTIAGO, Chile – A five-acre glacial lake in Chile’s southern Andes has disappeared and scientists want to know why.”

Great opening line. Makes you want to keep reading, doesn’t it? At least I wanted to keep reading…

The story went on to say that a park ranger found a 100-foot-deep crater in late May where the lake had been in March. One theory is that the lake disappeared through cracks in the lake bottom into underground fissures… but… no one really had a clue.

I’m sure an astonishing and embarrassing amount of tax payer’s money will be spent to figure out exactly why and how this happened. Experts will spend countless hours debating theories – most of which will never be proven right or wrong.

But if you asked me… who really cares “why?” What really matters is one month there was a huge lake… and the next… no lake. The “theory” or possible explanation… although interesting… does not change the result one bit.

Are you wondering what all this has to do with you?

There are TWO reasons why entrepreneurs struggle to achieve success.

The first is always asking “why.”

As entrepreneurs, we are programmed from day one to ask that question. And I am not devaluating its importance. I am talking about something very different.

When it comes to growing your business there are certain strategies and principles that “work.” And when Members read about them in our Glazer-Kennedy newsletters, books, etc., the first reaction is to question “why.” And just like all the money and effort that is going to go into “theorizing” why that lake in Chile disappeared… all your time and effort put into asking why a strategy or technique works is 100% waste.

Why?

See… I knew you’d ask that again right now!

Here’s why: Because there are many things we do not have an answer for. Many… actually most… of the techniques that work to build your business I cannot tell you why they work so well. But, I can tell you this…

Trial And Error Has Proven Them To Work Over And Over And Over

And if you asked me… that’s all that matters. RESULTS. Results do not change whether you like a strategy or not. And results do not change whether you wish or want them to work.

For example, one of my Members played sports in college. This was back in 1986. During pre-season the team had a nutritionist come in and speak to them. My Member vividly remembers this statement… “If You Are Taking Vitamins You Are Wasting Your Money. Vitamins Are Not Good For Anything Except Expensive Pee!”

He said this because there was no “scientific evidence” to prove vitamins were more than expensive pee.

I don’t need to tell you how wrong that statement turned out to be. But that’s not the point. The point is, the end result of taking vitamins had absolutely nothing to do with us knowing how or why they worked. If you took vitamins in 1986, did they not do anything simply because you didn’t know exactly how or why? If you took the same vitamins today, would they work any differently simply because you know why today?

Or should I say know a little more about how and why they work? Either way, the answer is no – it doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter if we understand exactly why one strategy works better than another. The only thing we need to know is it works and yes, there IS a science to marketing, by the way!

And when you approach things that way, it saves you from a lot of unnecessary mental deliberation and allows you to get a lot more done that will lead to positive results.

Know this: Done is all that matters. Not thinking about doing. Not getting ready to get started. Not understanding why something works before you do it. DONE!

Getting a lot of things done is probably the most important characteristic of my most successful Members. They don’t question why. They just do. And they do a lot of things at once. My Members that struggle, question everything. They think about it endlessly before acting.

I guess this makes you feel safe. You won’t make a mistake. But, it also keeps you from achieving any real level of success.

Which brings us back to the Glacial Lake story and one of the most important keys to your success.

In the story, the Glacial Lake vanished almost over night. And if you pay attention to your business… things tend to change almost overnight, too.

For example, as little as 20 years ago, owning a retail business was a dream. All you had to do was open a store in your town and new clients came. Business owners who did even the most basic marketing got swarmed with new clients.

And here’s something really important: What works, CONSTANTLY CHANGES. And CONSTANTLY CHANGES FAST.

That’s why I keep Members up to date with what is currently working. That’s also why you have to stay involved as a Member. You have to stay current and keep up with and apply new and exciting business building strategies to your company. Because…

If there is one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s this:

Your Business And Income Are Either Going Up Or Going Down. There Is No “staying the same!”

You may think you can get to a certain level and just maintain. That’s the kind of attitude that leads to trouble. When you back off, your stats may stay the same for a short period of time, but – and I GUARANTEE this – if you continue slacking, your numbers will come down.

And the big problem with this is that it’s very difficult to get your numbers back. Because you lost positive MOMENTUM. And not only lost positive momentum… by the time your numbers start visibly coming down… you have created NEGATIVE MOMENTUM.

Now, you must stop the negative momentum before you can start heading back in the right direction.

A fellow Marketing Guru and friend of mine, Jeff Paul, used to say that for every week you do not market, you lose four weeks of income. I don’t know where that stat came from. But I do know this…

The Principle Behind What Jeff Said Is 100% Correct

And it is much easier to keep things rolling once you are on top than it is to get that initial motion going again from the bottom.

Which is the really big message of this newsletter – constant change and momentum!!

Listen. Some entrepreneurs struggle because they are always looking for one thing that will miraculously give them their dream business and life. Some entrepreneurs get spoiled and the first thing they do from my system gets them 20%, 30% or 40% increases in no time. And then they blow it.

They think that one thing is all they need to do. Sooner or later that one thing slows down. Sometimes it dries up. And, since their entire company was built around this one thing – so does their business.

Other entrepreneurs try one thing and don’t get the results they desire. So – they quit altogether.

Both of these entrepreneurs are approaching things all wrong if they want to achieve everlasting success.

To achieve everlasting success – the first concept to understand is nothing lasts forever. You must do several things… as many as humanly possible. And do them all at the same time.

Some things will work well. Others not as well. A small percentage will bomb… and… a small percentage will be a home run for you. Continue doing ALL the things that get you a new client at break even and stop the things that don’t.

For some old time GKIC Members – this may sound a little redundant. But let me ask you a couple questions:

* How many sources of new clients do you have?
* Do a large percentage of your clients and income come from one source?
* Have you ever implemented a strategy that got you clients at break even or better and then stopped doing it?
* Are there ANY strategies in my system that you have not implemented and NOW you should?

You see, no matter who you are… or… how long you have been a GKIC Member… or how successful you are… there is always room for improvement. Even for me…

I constantly look at my business stats and decide what I’m going to continue doing and what I’m going to implement that’s brand new.

I’m constantly re-inventing my business to keep up with the ever- changing world. If I don’t…

My Business And Income Will Rapidly Be Like That Glacial Lake… EMPTY!!!

And so will your business.

I don’t bother with the explanation why. I simply focus my energy on “what’s next.” If you are focused on “what’s next,” you will never, ever struggle with your business or have a problem making money.

All that being said… I’m going to explain the most important factor to building your business WITHOUT external marketing…

However, with the advent of what we call Web 2.0 (interactive, dynamic websites that promote or operate as social networks), people can now easily find information and websites that other human beings recommend.

The most recent instance of this is social bookmarking. Websites like Del.icio.us, Digg, and Furl allow users to share their personal favorites (bookmarks) with others. Users tag each bookmarked website with the keywords they feel are most applicable.

Now, instead of using a search engine to find information, people can search tags that will display all websites bookmarked with that specific tag. This amounts to a human referral or vote for the site and its relevance to the subject being searched.

Other versions of social networking include blogging social networks – primarily Technorati.com. Technorati indexes blogs based on the amount of incoming links those blogs have, as well as the tags associated with their posts.

But the most popular social network is of course MySpace. Though the social giant enjoys over 20 million unique visitors every month, few businesses or website owners have thought to penetrate this incredible resource.

Lastly, two powerful new social media networks have emerged that are revolutionizing audio and video: YouTube and BlogTalkRadio. These mega networks allow citizen filmmakers and broadcasters to share their visions with the world and spread the word about what matters to them.

Few businesses realize it yet, but these media networks are potential goldmines stock full of future Speilbergs, Bloombergs, and Oprahs – all potential broadcasters of your  marketing message.

How Will Social Networking Help My Site Traffic Grow?

Two ut of three people online in June 2006 visited a social networking site. In fact, 1 out of every 20 website visits is to a social networking website. Experts say that social networks are starting to eclipse traffic from the major search engines Yahoo! and Google.

So if your company is not present on any of the major social networks, you’re missing out on the easiest, fastest way to access 67% of internet users.

How Do I Get Involved in Social Networking?

Working with social sites is similar to working with the media. Give them a good enough story, secret, tip, or resource that they can sink their teeth into and you’ll have an army of talkers spreading the word about you and your business.

And this translates into referrals, which convert into sales on an average of 667% better than cold leads (search engine results). So even if you reach less people through social networking, your conversions will be far higher.

We target various social networks through a variety of methods:

Article or Blog Promotion

We manage several blogs for our various clients (as well as article pages) that contain posts written purely to capture the imagination and interest of our client’s target market.

For instance, if you sell pet beds, gifts, and items, we will develop a series of blog posts or articles that discuss a controversial or “hot off the press” topic that pet lovers either find highly valuable as an information resource, or highly intriguing or emotionally stimulating. We will then promote it to various social bookmarking and blogging networks, as well as popular bloggers – who will then circulate the story and generate traffic back to your website.

Social Promotion

Particularly effective for clients who target teens, young adults, musicians, or other highly active social groups, we implement social promotion campaigns on networks like MySpace, FaceBook, Catch27, and CraigsList to spread the word about your business. Even if your business does not target the “myspace crowd,” we can almost always devise a creative campaign to get the net buzzing.

How Does Social Networking Work With SEO?

As more and more internet users begin to use tags to find information (a tag is a keyword that a human associated with a website, vs. a keyword that a search engine attributes to a website), Search Marketing professionals cannot ignore the growing dominance of the social networks.

However, we view the partnership between social networks and search engines as an excellent and balanced marriage. Sure, social networking gets you in front of people who no longer use search engines in lieu of finding their information through referrals or bookmarks/tags.

But the added, and perhaps more exciting bonus, is that while you grow in popularity with social networks like Digg and MySpace, your search rankings will continue to increase as a result!

Your popularity signals Google that you are an authority in your market according to your human audience.

Having your website ranking in the Top 5 of the major search engines is critical to receiving regular enquiries.  For most businesses it’s not about selling online it’s all about generating enquiries.  In fact ranking at the top of the Google can mean you receive up to 10 times the enquiries as a similar business who ranks No 5.  Click here to view statistics relating to Google Rankings and likely visitors to your website.

Marketing guru Jay Abraham teaches that there are really only three ways to grow any business: Increase the number of customers, increase the number of purchases they make, or increase the average amount they spend on each purchase.  In the world of online business, this translates into getting more traffic (people) to your website and collecting their contact information.

There are hundreds (possibly thousands) of ways to get traffic to your website. The way I see it, all of them can be broken down into free traffic, paid traffic, and what I call leveraged traffic.  Depending on your business the amount of online competition and where you are geographically will determine what is the right strategy for you.
Let’s take a closer look at each one…

1. Free Traffic
As its name implies, free traffic is traffic that you don’t have to pay for. The main benefit of this type of traffic is pretty obvious: It’s free. And because of that, your potential return on investment (ROI) is almost unlimited.

The downside (relative to the other two types of traffic) is that it usually takes time to get a consistent, steady flow of visitors to your website, and it does take some work. The good news is that once you get it going, it builds on itself and the effect is long-term.

Here are my two favorite methods of generating free traffic…

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing the amount of traffic you get to your website from the search engines’ natural or “organic” search results. In human language, that means getting your site listed by Google, Yahoo, and other search engines when people search for information related to what you’re selling.

To get the most bang for your buck, you should identify the specific keywords that your potential customers are typing into the search engines, and create useful content for your website based on those keywords. There are many tools out there to assist you with this.

The idea, here, is that by adding valuable content to your website, the rankings will follow.

• Article Marketing — submitting articles to other websites and article directories (like EzineArticles.com) — is another good way to get free traffic to your website.  As with the content you create for your website, you write useful articles based on the keywords that your potential customers are searching for.

When submitting articles, I like to find websites related to my niche that already have high rankings in the search engines and already get a lot of traffic. Let’s say you run a business that sells stationery. To find likely websites to submit articles to, you might go to Google, type in “wedding stationery,” and make a list of the search results for that keyword. Then you’d do another search, this time for “bridal shower note cards.” You’d repeat the process for 10 or 20 related keywords. Once you have a list of top-ranked websites, you’d contact them and offer to submit articles in exchange for a link back to your site.

2. Paid Traffic

The advantage of paid traffic is that it is immediate. Also, as compared to most free traffic, it is quantifiable — and, thus, it is easy to tell whether a paid traffic campaign is profitable or will be profitable in the future. The disadvantage is that it costs money, and you’ll probably experience some losses up front when you begin testing.  I am not a big fan of paid online advertising. Like to know why then Click here…

Here are two of my preferred methods of generating paid website traffic…

• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising works in a way that is similar to SEO. When a user types a phrase into the search engine, they get a list of organic results. On the same page, they see a list of paid results — ads placed by advertisers based on the keywords that had been typed in.

Getting started with PPC is fairly simple. You set up an account with one of the major PPC networks (like Google). You select the keywords you want to bid on and get listed for, and you write a short ad that will entice qualified prospects to click on your ad and visit your site. You can begin driving traffic to your website within minutes.

There are many factors that will determine your success with PPC, including how much you bid for the keywords and your ad copy. To make PPC work, you have to constantly test, test, and then test some more. It may take some trial and error, but once you find a winning combination, you can roll it out and be more aggressive.

• E-zine Advertising can help your reach a large group of highly targeted prospects. You can find e-zines and online newsletters that are related to your niche simply by doing a search on Google. Let’s say you are in the credit repair niche. You might search Google for:”credit repair newsletter,” “credit repair e-zine,” and “credit repair e-newsletter.” Then check with the e-zines/websites that come up to see if they run paid advertising. Those that do will probably offer several options, including short, inexpensive classified ads and more-expensive dedicated e-mail blasts.

Before testing an ad with an e-zine, I would first subscribe to it to see what it’s like to be one of their subscribers. Do they send out good, useful content? Do they publish regularly? And do they have ads for products/services that are similar to those you plan to advertise? If the answer to those questions is yes, that publication is a good candidate for you.

Another tip is to look at the top ranked websites for your niche and see if they are acquiring names with any type of lead-capture or subscription box. If they are, contact them to see if they would be open to running your ad to their list.

3. Leveraged Traffic

What is unique about leveraged traffic is that it has all the positives of free and paid traffic without the negatives. It is both free and immediate — and highly responsive, to boot. There are several ways to get leveraged traffic, including viral marketing and affiliate marketing. But I want to talk about my favorite: joint ventures (JVs).

JVs give you a quick and powerful way to get traffic to your website, build your list, and make sales. It’s one of the methods I used to start and grow my online business — and it’s a key strategy for big, growing companies like Early to Rise.

While there is no one way to do joint ventures, the most common JVs in the online world involve cross promotions, also known as e-mail swaps. Your JV partner sends an e-mail to their list promoting your product or service. In exchange, you send an e-mail to your list promoting their product or service.

With the kind of traffic generated this way, not only will you get a lot of it fast, but it will be much more responsive to your offer because it comes as the result of an endorsement from your partner (assuming you selected a good JV partner). And as you do more joint ventures, you’ll build your in-house e-mail list and will be able to leverage off of that to do more joint ventures with the owners of larger lists.

So how do you find a joint venture partner? It’s as simple as sending an e-mail, picking up the phone, or meeting someone at a conference or event. Introduce yourself, develop a relationship, and see if it makes sense for you to do business together. Once you experience the power of a joint venture, you’ll never look back.

There you have it — five specific ways to start driving traffic to your website and build your in-house e-list.   As you can see, we use a multi-channel approach to online marketing, and so should you.

Improve on what you are already doing, and continue to learn new ways to generate more traffic and, ultimately, more sales.  If you some questions or would like to know more please give us a call on 0407660198 or visit our website and request your FREE Website Ranking and Optimisation Report.

Over 64% of people looking for information online, use search engines. If they can type what they want into a search engine and find what they need, then they don’t need to go through the 100 pages of ads in the Yellow Pages.

Think about it – in the Yellow Pages, your advertisement sits right there with all of your local competitors! Using search engines, you can differentiate yourself from everyone else. Given that your site is optimized, when the ideal client is looking for what you do, they find you, not your competitors.

Did you know that a large percent of Internet users who make purchases online prefer search engines to conventional Yellow Pages?

That’s very powerful for your business!

In fact over 80% of people are searching online to determine where they will do business locally.

If you would like to know how to reduce your Yellow Pages spend and reach more of your potential customers online then call our specialist online marketing team on 0407660198

Over the last few months and mainly through my own research I have been challenging the long term value of paid online advertising. Now like many business owners I know they are taking at least 2-3 calls a week form firms who are trying to sell paid online advertising.

So what should business owners be doing when it comes to their online marketing as I am keen to get the argument out there and allow people to make up there own minds.

Having used Pay oer click advertising for over 5 years I believe I am fairly well positioned to comment. Our accommodation business up until recently used pay per click advertising and have done so for the last 5 years, possibly being one of the first to use PPC as a strategy to drive customers to our website in our industry. There is no doubt that it had great success for us in early days, but as competition for terms increased we found it more and more expensive to get the positioning we needed to get the result. It ultimately became unprofitable to continue.

As a result of canceling our Pay per click campaign we have seen a slight drop in our page visitors per day although this is turning around as we invest more into our website presence. As a result of doing this our page position on Google has jumped from position 8/9 to position 4 and we believe it will get higher. The good news here is I can turn off some of our Search Engine Optimisation strategies and it will take a considerable amount of time before it impacts on our position.

The important question that needs answering is which one will stand the test of time, no matter whether you choose paid advertising or organic techniques. The results of one of them will be worth your effort and energy – but WHICH one? Just as important, will it multiply and continue to generate income for you into the future without sinking any MORE money into the pit.

STICK is the factor that determines this. If you want to stay viable, in the public’s eye in front of your market and out there making a profit then you need STICK. If you haven’t got it you better get it and quick.

So, Do you have Stickability and do you know what it takes to get it and more importantly keep it? We do …

Paid Ads & Stick…

Paid advertising does work but only while you keep paying. But the minute the money dries up so does your monopoly on selling your product or service or even the ability to get it in front of your target market. As soon as YOU stop paying, your pay per clicks, banners, and links are gone …. dead in the water …. Paid advertising simply wont stand the test of time unless you have bottomless pots of money to keep it up there. In other words it just doesn’t have stick. And it can’t generate income for you on its own without consistent effort and finance. No Stick – No Success!

Once you’re out there, you’re not going anywhere. Organic content takes the bar to a whole new level. If you content stays on the net, then your backlinks stay on the net, they multiply, go further afield every day, creating more links and generating more income for you. You submit your content to a directory – And you’re live.

Your content stays on the net long term, which means your backlinks do as well. As long as your organic content is helpful, informative or interesting it can be shared via articles, or go viral through social marketing networks, video, podcasts and blogs.

So which one are you going to choose for your business? Surely you want the option that will stick!