Archive for September, 2009
September 21, 2009 at 5:25 pm
By Bob Speyer, President – Web Success Team
On the face of it, more than you think when you consider raising children and obtaining a mortgage as two of the most important and difficult challenges parents face in these modern and uncertain economic times. But that is not really the main thrust of this article; nor is it just an attention grab.
The Web Success Team has just launched two direct response websites with very different yet distinct marketing focuses:
Be Informed. Make the Right Mortgage Decision.
NuCapital.ca, one of Canada’s premier mortgage brokers, contracted the Web Success Team to build their business online and market their outstanding services. They purchased Team’s complete online marketing solution, the Solopreneur Marketing Package, which includes a direct response website and 6 months of online marketing and promotion.
The first assessment we made was to position them as an authority on the mortgage industry with the message to the consumer to be better informed in order to make the right mortgage decision. Then we wanted to show the benefits in using NuCapital to find them the best loan for their unique financial situation. We added the tagline: “A Fresh Nu Approach to Mortgage Lending” to reinforce their online positioning and branding as working for their interest, not the banks.
NuCapital wanted to attract more clients and engage them. Our approach was two-fold. First was to build a direct response marketing website, including an opt-in to capture name and email with a downloadable free report, along with an online application to “know their mortgage options.” The color palette is especially important in that we wanted the visitor to feel “safe.” We selected a lighter and darker shade of cool blue and a complimentary cream. The home page is of course the main focus of any website and we segmented it so the visitor could see the immediate benefits of using NuCapital for all their mortgage needs. The copy was written to give them a quick advantages comparison on their promise of a “nu approach to mortgage lending.”
Having just completed the site, we are now in Phase II — Online Marketing and Promotion. Because the client has a local geographic target area, greater Toronto, we focused on placing NuCapital on several local directories. In addition to fully optimizing the website for the search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN, we created a WordPress blog. Keyword rich articles are being written, blogged and submitted to article aggregators to further increase the company’s Internet footprint. We are also using Social Media Network Marketing to broaden their reach through the use of Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter and achieve web success.
Offline, the client is doing staged postcard mailings to draw visitors to the site and further market their services to the local geo areas.
Helping Parents Raise Extraordinary Children
Great Parenting Academy is the brainchild of Terri Khonsari, a noted author, coach, consultant and successful parent. She created the Academy to assist and educate parents in developing skills on how to raise an exceptional child. She has brought together acclaimed experts in the field of child psychology and child development, including best-selling “Chicken Soup” author Jack Canfield, child psychologist Dr Brenda Wade and Janet Attwood, educator and best selling author of The Passion Test.
The Web Success Team was asked to develop a website to promote their inaugural one-day live event. We branded the site to depict the growth and learning phases of child development and gave it an informational resource feel. The site is easy to navigate where prospective attendees can delve deeper to find topics, speakers and activities that will interest and engage them. There is also an early bird registration request and blog for additional up-to-date information and resources. Again, colors were selected to elicit positive reaction from the target group of young parents. Eggshell yellow is the predominant background color with red accents. Finally, there is a bookmark tag so the site can be shared through social media.
The Web Success Team
SPECIAL: Solopreneur Package – Jump Start Your Business
The Web Success Team’s Solopreneur Package includes a 5-page custom direct response website fully branded and optimized for Search Engines with 6-months of online marketing, social networking, blogging, article marketing and much more. Lock in your special pricing now before the rate goes up! Contact the Web Success Team at 818-222-5643 or email bob@websuccessteam.com. To your web success!
September 14, 2009 at 4:53 pm
by Bob Speyer, President, Web Success Team
As the saying goes, “there are lies, damn lies and statistics.” Well, in the worldwide web, statistics are our gold standard, and always tell the truth, but not the whole story. That’s left for savvy marketing interpretation. But stats are our reality gut check. Point of fact, most websites convert visitors into customers at just over a 2% clip with a few reaching upwards of 9-14%. So how can you increase the conversion rate? This article provides insight into what converts a visitor into a customer and how to increase your percentage to maximize your return on investment.
1. Understand Your Customers, Then Give Them What They Want or Need!
If you want to sell or entice your customers to further inquire or buy, you must get to know their demographic profile: Are they predominately males or females? Males respond more to facts and figures, logically; females respond more emotionally and rely on feelings to influence their decisions. Income, education, age and geographic location also play a part in their decision making. Then of course there are customer goals and objectives — what questions do they ask; what benefits or features are most important; how does your products or services solve their problem or satisfy their need; what are their objections or resistance to buying or signing up; do you have guarantees. By addressing their suspicions or fears, you can bridge the gap. For example, an FAQ section on your website is very helpful in a confronting customer concerns up front.
2. Retool Your Thinking
Stagnation is part of the human condition. We either get too comfortable or too resistant to change. You need to think out of the proverbial box and retool your thinking, reinventing or reinvigorating your thought processes or your company’s personality. In marketing lingo, it’s called a unique selling proposition (USP) and makes you stand above your competition. Often a tagline can help support the branding. The USP should be compelling and benefits-driven. If done right, it will spark a positive imagery in the minds and hopefully hearts and wallets of your potential customers. It can’t be as trivial as “We will save you time and money.” It should state something like, “Our service will free your time to be more productive and improve your bottom line.”
3. Lead Them to Water and Then Let Them Drink
The buying decision is complex. For some it’s emotional, some impulsive, others compulsive, still others information drives them to decide. No website (or psychiatrist) can solve all the complex personalities, but you can help improve your odds. Start with you site navigation and architecture. It’s a step-by-step process to lead site visitors to water and make it so enticing that they not only want taste it but feel good and confident in doing so. If your website is overburdened with information, they will leave. If your website is too flashy, it becomes too distracting and they will be bored and leave. If your website doesn’t make its case in 10-20 seconds, they will leave.
You can persuade people to engage your site and give you a fair chance if you can address their quest for answers. They don’t have to leave a web-page to continue the buying. But if they seek more information, simply provide them with a helpful hyperlink directing them to another page. Once satisfied, they will click back and continue the process. I also highly recommend calls to action and inducements or promotions. People respond favorably if the offers are credible, and not just too good to be true. Sometimes offering them less will get you more play or credibility.
4. First Impressions Are the Only Ones that Count
Your best chance for conversion (whether they choose to buy on contact you on the first visit, or bookmark to return to the conversion process) is with your first time visitor. Hence their first impression is the only one that counts. In redesigning a website it is always best to keep to recognized formats: conservative colors familiar with your industry (i.e. green or blue for medical); keeping your navigation horizontal below your header or either in a left or right column; contact links in the upper corner and on the bottom of the website.
5. Converting Visitors into Customers
If you want to improve your conversion rates, you must study also your metrics. Which pages are being visited most; when do visitors leave the buying cycle; and ask yourself why. You need to analyze the data, then revise, reword, rewrite, test and track. If you have a form that is not converting, maybe it is too long, or too short. Test and track. Another method is A/B testing. You can test an offer or promotion with two similar pages, changing it to suit your test. With two test market webpages, you can see what and which converts higher, then implement the results and continually test and tweak. You can test anything and everything, from colors, layouts, images, offers, calls to action, home pages, and navigation.
Often times, adding a button and repositioning it or writing more direct response call to action copy will give you a boost in conversions. Remember, like your customers, your website is a living and breathing entity and needs to be feed and cared for if it is to grow up to be productive adult websites.
Sources for this article: SeoChat and ClickZ
The Web Success Team
SPECIAL: Solopreneur Package – Jump Start Your Business
The Web Success Team’s Solopreneur Package includes a 5-page custom direct response website fully branded and optimized for Search Engines with 6-months of online marketing, social networking, blogging, article marketing and much more. Lock in your special pricing now before the rate goes up! Contact the Web Success Team at 818-222-5643 or email bob@websuccessteam.com. To your web success!
September 8, 2009 at 1:38 pm
By Janette Speyer and Eric Pangburn, Web Success Team
Many people that have online businesses have climbed aboard the Facebook bandwagon as a means to web success. Plus, you probably have several friends and family members on the network that you share messages and photos with on a regular basis. Facebook makes it remarkably easy for you to share a wide range of content from the these photos to videos, and even use specially written applications to communicate in unique and interesting ways. As you can imagine, this can be a tremendous business aid in your online marketing and social media marketing efforts.
Creating Your Personal and Business Profiles
Unfortunately, this convenient access also makes it easy for certain parts of your account to be seen by people you don’t really want them to see. One of the common challenges regarding Facebook usage is keeping your personal life separate from your business, and it is a concern facing more and more people who use the service for business.
Interestingly enough, it really isn’t all that hard to keep the various aspects of your personal and business lives separated on Facebook, and there are included features such as friends lists and privacy settings that allow you to manage your different Facebook personas more effectively.
The first step is to segregate your “friends” contacts into different lists. As you can see in the example above, you could create a custom group under which you could set up more specific groups. Of course there are many ways by which you can use the Facebook friends list, but one of its best features is the ability to label your contacts for ease in setting privacy options.
The Importance of Privacy Management
You may have two or more different Facebook friends lists (for business or personal use) depending on how extensively you use Facebook. You may have a list for people you don’t know personally for instance, and another for friends that you know in real life. You may also assign contacts to lists for work relationships or business contacts. As you can see, you can get very detailed about the different categories that you place your contacts in.
The purpose of all these different friends lists is to be able to set access levels for each of these groups easily. While you may want to create smaller and more focused lists for contacts that you plan to message or tag regularly, you are pretty much able to make your lists as large as you want for privacy settings.
Friends lists can be created right from the Friends page, or you could select names while setting up your privacy options. You first choose the feature that you want to restrict access to and select the “customize” option from the menu. You could enter the name of the individual or the friends list that you want to block, or you could type in multiple names, upon which you will be asked to create a list. The Privacy settings for each list can then be changed by clicking on the appropriate link on the upper right of the Facebook page.
The beauty of this business solution is that no one on any of your lists will be able to tell that you have made changes to your access settings. You don’t have to worry about any of your business contacts finding out that you have blocked them from certain parts of your account, nor will you have to worry about your personal details being seen by anyone other than the friends you select.
A Powerful Marketing Tool for Your Business
Another way to keep your business separate from your personal is by creating a Facebook Fan Page. The Fan Page is a powerful marketing tool that enables you to help build your business online. You can share your business and products with your customers and your fans, as well as post relevant links, news, updates and specials for your company. Once you get a fan base they will interact with your page and their comments and posts will be shared by their connections, giving you a very broad audience and a quick and easy way to market your services and products.
You may want to start by creating a page for your business so you can use this to promote and share your products and services. The graphics below illustrate how easy it is:
You may then want to create a Page Badge or a Page Feed to place on your website or your blog to further promote your services and capture a fan base. Below are sample Facebook fan page badges and feeds.
Facebook can be an effective business solution for your online social marketing needs. It is always advisable to keep your business separate from your private life. That is not to say you can’t personalize or humanize your business face for a more well rounded profile.
The Web Success Team
SPECIAL: Solopreneur Package – Jump Start Your Business
The Web Success Team’s Solopreneur Package includes a 5-page custom direct response website fully branded and optimized for Search Engines with 6-months of online marketing, social networking, blogging, article marketing and much more. Lock in your special pricing now before the rate goes up! Contact the Web Success Team at 818-222-5643 or email bob@websuccessteam.com. To your web success!
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