Author Archives: Jim Coon

About Jim Coon

I've been an internet marketer for over 10 years. I am a strong advocate of Web 2.0 strategy. I believe in collaboration and helping people make their businesses thrive.

Online Sales Leads

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ENGAGE VISITORS, RESPECT THEIR ABILITY TO CHOOSE
 

So you now know that you have to engage the visitors to your site with a call to action: Ask visitors to do something. Better yet, invite them to do something or they will leave. Now as an expert in SEO I have seen a lot of websites that ask visitors to do too may things. Some websites are like driving down a highway with multiple billboards shouting for your attention. You don’t know where to look. After all as a visitor, it’s likely that you’re looking for something and hope to find it quickly. So don’t offer too much. In fact maybe making one main offer is enough. And of course this is the theory behind “landing pages”. We will cover that later. For now let’s look at the power of providing a call to action and an incentive for that action.

A CALL TO ACTION IS NOT A SALES PITCH

When I ask you to do something on my home page it is tied to my keyword which led you to  find my site in the first place. A call to action is not, “buy my product because it is the best”. Why not? Because web citizens want to make up their own minds and they want to buy from someone they trust. So a call to action is really an attempt to start a relationship and build trust. In the case of a company selling a product, a typical call might be to “download our white paper which explains 10 ways to use our product”. This is better than an online sales pitch for 2 reasons: First, because you are setting up a relationship with your visitor. You offer an invitation and your potential client responds by downloading your incentive. If the information provided is well written, it will build trust and start a relationship. And this is the critical point, by accepting your white paper, you visitor is also giving something back in the form of his email. The first exchange has happened. You and your visitor are no longer strangers. And as I mentioned, if your white paper has solid content, a sense of trust will follow. This exchange will warm the relationship and make the visitor more likely to explore more of your site and be more receptive to your next email. The romance of transforming a stranger into a customer has begun.

FROM FREE GIFT TO RELATIONSHIP TO SALES

Once this relation has started you need to respect it and guard it and make sure to continue to follow your initial offer with more offers that point to a sale and ultimately a satisfied sale that will cause your client to share about her experience on Twitter or Facebook. If this seem difficult to understand, I will be discussing it in more detail next time when we talk about landing pages.

Website Sales Leads

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YOU CANNOT GET SALES LEADS BY CONVINCING VISITORS

If you believe that you will get significantly more sales leads from your website, you are probably mistaken. The average website tries to sell it’s company or product or service to visitors by trying to convince them. It is hard enough to convince somebody to buy when you are face-to-face. When a visitor lands on your page it is nearly impossible.

THIS IS THE INTERNET, NOT THE YELLOW PAGES

Even if your keyword ranks first and puts you at the top of Google, you will not get new customers unless you engage with them. Asking them to pick up the phone doesn’t work either. And god forbid you should ask them to fill out a form. Why should they. They read part of your attempt to sell them and they are off to another site to see what your competitor has to say. Don’t expect them to come back. This is all the bad news. Is there any good news? Not yet, don’t rush me. First we need to deal with the other fake solution being rabidly sold by web designers and advertising agencies: SOCIAL MEDIA. I am sorry, but this won’t work either. Without the magic sauce, social media is another waste of time and money.

SO WHAT DOES WORK?

To get leads from your website you need to have a plan for engaging the visitor. When she gets to your site you better act fast with something that requires her participation. In short, engagement means “a call to action”. We will be talking about this for the next few blog posts and also on my Twitter Posts. But for now you need to know that any call to action must include a reward or a promise of reward. For example, I am not going to give you my email unless you offer me an ebook, a game, a prize, a special sale, an exclusive subscription, or the secret to the universe. So engagement has at least two parts: first what do you want the visitor to do; and second, how will your reward him.These are important things to think about. And if you need help coming up with calls to action or rewards New Energy can help.

Stay tuned for the next post because in that one I will explain what else you need, to get sales leads from your website.

Google and Freshness

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Chris Crum recently wrote a post on Web Pro News about Google’s changing algorithm around the issue of timeliness, or freshness. Specifically my interest has been to see my Twitter and Facebook efforts make a difference with regard to organic listings. I understand that Google is between a rock and a hard place, because it wants to be up-to-date, but also relevant. I think with a foot in both camps, it’s having a difficult time. Google needs to have a separate box for its freshness listing. I really think it is missing the boat, but then so is Twitter. Twitter search tends to be incredibly limited because of its focus on “exact phrase”. Twitter needs a more contextual dimension to its search and Google needs to find a way to stop blocking relevancy with its freshness attempts.

For Google this could be achieved with the separate box strategy or even a new fresh search offering. Twitter’s problem is more serious. How do you develop a contextual search without spending the kind of money Google has? Think about it and let me know what you come up with. You can reach me on my twitter handle: https://twitter.com/#!/NewEnergyCom

Trackback Blocker

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I’ve been talking recently about spam generated by black hat linking systems. I want to call your attention to Topsy Blocker: http://www.sjmp.de/blogging/simple-trackback-validation-with-topsy-blocker/. This plugin really works. As I said in a previous post my blog has been plagued by software generated comment and trackback spam. I can now say that the trackback spam is being effectively blocked, thanks to this great plugin. Of course not everybody has this problem, but if you are a blogger, sooner or later, they will find you. They will unless Google finds a way to clamp down on them.

So Topsy Blocker is one plugin I’m using and Spam Free WordPress is the other. It seems to be working very well too. Unfortunately my spamming friends are so determined that I have had to eliminate all comments for the present time. Until the storm has passed I will be operating without comments. You can however reach me on Twitter @NewEnergyCom. in fact please do follow me on twitter and address your comments there temporarily.

I would really like to hear about your adventures with the spam army and also how you have defended yourself. It helps for the good guys to stick together.

WordPress Spam

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Why The Stupid Comments?

These stupid comments are not meant to sell me anything. They are simply trying to move up on the search engines by placing a link on my blog. And it doesn’t work well, but people keep doing it. I made some changes in this site to hopefully stop it but some still slip through. Before I added the plugins I received 352 comments in a 10 minute period.Take it from me you do not want to get put on the spammer’s list as an easy mark for spam comments. I believe this happened because I interviewed a prominent web marketing authority and people following her jumped on my band wagon.

What Can You Do About It?

I will recommend some plugins after I’ve finished testing them. Stay tuned.

What Google Panda Really Means

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What seems to be more and more evident, is that Google’s Panda is rewarding big companies and crowding out smaller ones. Let’s face it, big companies can afford big adword budgets. I guess the dream of the web being a place where small business could compete with the giants is over. The sad thing is that Google doesn’t have to do this. It rose on the backs of us little guys and is rewarding us with a kick in the teeth.

Social Media Management Platforms

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More Trouble For Small Business

Everybody knows that it’s important to promote yourself using social media. But now with the rise of SMMS’s (social media management systems). The web is more and more looking like a playground for giants –– similar to the way big networks took over TV. Why is this so? These systems are impressive in their reach, but they are way too expensive for a smaller company. Add to that the fact that they require dedicated staff and you have left a lot of people outside the circle.

How They Work

The idea is simple, you go to a single program to integrate social media with all the other promotion strategies. But what if you can’t afford a dedicated staff to run these SMMS’s? In an economic environment where small business is taking a more damaging hit than the giants, it’s just one more blow. There’s another aspect to pay attention to. The whole idea of social media was to reach out and share your experience with other individuals. This idea can be undermined pretty quickly if the user experience is controlled by corporations battling for your attention. Where is the place for individuals, small groups and small companies to stand?

I think it’s important to keep social media, well, social. Let me know what you think.

 

Number One On Google

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I’m sure if you have a business you’ve gotten those calls about making your site number one on Google. Well, here is the bad news. There is no such thing. You rank on Google for a title, a keyword, or a URL, but when somebody promises you will be number one, they imply that people will just do a search and your company will appear at the top. Actually, it’s very easy to have your URL at the top of Google if you have a unique web address. For example, our web address is NewEnergyCom.com . If you google this term we will almost always be on top. But what does that give you or me? It’s not very useful. What I want is to be on top for search terms like, “internet marketing hartford”. And the last time I looked, I was at the top for Google’s organic or non-paying slots.  And once I was able to secure that position, I started working on other keyword phrases that would help businesses find me when they wanted help with their online marketing in Hartford, and all over Connecticut.

So regardless of what the fast-talking guy says about being number one, you need to use those keywords that we discovered in my last post. A short digression: why do they call them keywords? Because those are the words or phrases that visitors will use to find what you are selling. So if you want to be ranked for a particular keyword, it needs to be part of your site. We’ll discuss this in a future blog. But here is something to keep in mind: using keywords is part science and part art. You’ll get better the more you use the system, and there is a huge universe of ways to use them on your site and ways to make sure seekers find them. Until next time be thinking about ways your customers are searching for you. Are they looking outside Google? Do they use Bing, or Yahoo? Are they looking on facebook and or twitter. The possibilities are not endless, but to be cost and time efficient you need to plan. Planning more now will save you dollars and hours.

Web Strategy Part 3

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Know Your Niche

Now that you have some free gifts in the form of whitepapers, discounts, and or merchandise, it’s a good time to focus on your market niche. There are two reasons for this, first you may find out your freebies are not that attractive to your desired visitors, second the keyword testing I recommend, will be the platform for the rest of your online marketing.

Almost everybody knows the free Google Keyword Tool. It’s good for finding what people are searching for and even more useful because it tells you how much competition there is for that keyword or phrase within your niche. Keywords are tricky however and it’s great if you have some money to spend on Google Adwords that will allow you to do some testing.You can test by running two or three different keywords in your ads and also by trying whole different campaigns that use different sets of keywords. Personally I’ve found Adwords somewhat unreliable. And I have to think it’s because Google has it’s own interests in mind and not mine. There are other keyword suggestion tools that are useful, for example, Seo Book’s keyword suggestion tool. And for an all-in-one tool you should try Submit Express. And if you are willing to buy a keyword software product Wordtracker seems to have a good product, although I have only tried the free version.

What To Do With Keywords

Now that you have a set of popular keywords in your chosen niche you can use them in the content, headlines, titles and links. More importantly, the process of looking for good keywords should have helped you discover if there is enough interest in what you’re selling. If you can’t fine a lot of interest and competition for your service or product, that might not be bad. It means you’ve got something that people need to know about and your job is to teach them and create the desire to have it. Believe it or not, that’s often easier than finding a niche that’s overcrowded. If you are joining a very large party you will need a fancy dress to get noticed.

I’ll cover in detail how to use the keywords and how important they are. For now your job is to see if you can handle the demand –– either too much or too little. What sort of marketing problem are you trying to solve? Do you have too many competitors or are you ahead of the pack with new mousetrap. Fortunately there are good ways to work with both issues. Join me on twitter or facebook for more.

Web Strategy Part 2

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I’ve been talking in this series about using your website for more than just brand building. It seems like a lot of companies, would rather use social media for getting customers and leads. But social media as many folks soon find out, is not a quick solution. If you are avoiding an interactive site because it’s too much trouble, don’t expect social media to be any easier. So how do you set up you site to be a leads funnel?

I’ve already written about freemiums, incentives, and give-aways. The key here is to have a call to action and a reward for following that action. In most cases the call is to get the visitor’s name and email address in return for a valuable gift. Getting a visitor to respond is valuable in two ways however. Yes it’s important to get her contact information, but it’s just as important to engage with a potential client in a way the builds trust. For example, if I offer you a guide to Twitter and it’s smart, easy to read, and provides you with unique actionable insights, you will gain some respect for me as a source. All of a sudden a relationship is born. And you will be receptive to other information I have to offer. You may even look around the site and buy something if the price is right.

Does this sound too good to be true? In many cases it is, but that’s why it’s so important to structure your site with multiple offers and incentives. And as I stressed in my last post every premium is your chance to win trust, so make sure you are giving away quality stuff. I would go so far as to say, before you build or redesign your website, make sure you have a basket of these freebies.

One final point: The freebies you offer have to be valuable to you desired customer. So in designing your incentives you need to know everything possible about this customer. Two things are critical however, know what he wants, and know how he will be searching for it on the net. Next time we will talk about researching your ideal customer and how to get the most from giving away something valuable. Reply below or share this post with your friends.