Internet Marketing

Every month I sit down either one or one or as a group with a wide range of clients all interested in improving their own website marketing. Every one of them would have had a list of tasks to complete between each session. Some come to the session with these finished – others manage to slay some from the list while a few – well their list seems to remain the same month by month.

No surprises to hear that the ones that make the most progress are the ones that nail their tasks. This month I asked the efficient ones that what their secret was.

I received a range of responses. In all the bunch there was one common response – time blocking. That is the setting of a specific time each month or week to work on their website. For some it was a Friday afternoon, others started the week with some web work. Whatever the day and time they chose it went into the diary or electronic calendar as an appointment that was rarely cancelled.

I’m convinced that an hour a week over a three month period is all it takes to make great strides in your website marketing. Once you know where to focus and what to do then all that’s left is implementation – the bit that separates knowledge from results.

So where is your website marketing block?

Earlier on in the week we launched our first monthly online coaching course.

This course is targeted towards those that are interested in optimising their website for lead generation capabilities. There is a long sales page to help people find out what they get - how it is being delivered and how much it all costs - you can find this here

http://www.permission.co.nz/amember/sales.htm

Next Thursday the first teleconference is to start - the subject is how to go about planning your online marketing activities. It will be an open call that allows those attending to ask all the questions they have. The following week will be the call in day.

If this sounds like you then get clicking.

(Sorry this launch intake is just for NZ residents.)

I am creating a new coaching product - it has a blog associated with the launch.

Rather than develop it in isolation I now have over 50 responses from both customers and prospects on what they want it to include - how much they want to spend on it and if they would be keen to purchase - it’s been a very interesting process.

The launch will be in around a week - join in if you are interested

Cheers

Chris

(Sorry these two spaces have now been taken. Contact me at Chris@permissiondotcodotnz if you would like to be on the waiting list for next month’s intake.)

Having too many prospect leads coming in is a nice problem to have.

Part of what we do here is online lead generation. It’s a fancy term for using all that we know of the online space to deliver prospects and customers to our own clients. While others may be measured on search engine rankings or increased website traffic, our measurements are quite blunt - more leads and sales.

To be honest it takes a while to get a site really humming. But once going then big things really start to change. Other advertising channels start to get shut down - business targets get revised (upwards) and bold goals become even bolder.

It’s quite cool to see this type of thing happen. We price the solution so that most established businesses can see a quick return on the investment. The only limiter we have is that there are just two of us here and so only a few projects can be run effectively each month.

One lead generation client called the other day to discuss ways in which we could “throttle” the process back a bit- they were having problems keeping up with the leads they were receiving.

Growth does need to be managed; I remember from my early academic days that there is a formula you can run to work out your optimal growth rate so you don’t run out of cash in the process. But even so it’s nice to be told to slow down rather than speed up.

Anyway we have a couple of places available this month for two more companies that are interested in growing their online prospect lead flow.

We are a bit picky in who we can work with. For example we can’t work in the same industry for different clients.

So if you are keen to learn more about what we offer then contact me at chris@permission(dot)co(dot)nz in the first instance.

All the best

Chris

P.S. When you come by I’ll let you know of the testimonial I am allowed to share of the business that I mention above who called wanting us to throttle things back - its quite a neat story.

Just a new ride on mower site I’m working on in Australia - early days but things are progressing well.

A few weeks back we published the August Edition of Subscribe. You can get your copy by going here. If you would like your own copy, and delivered a bit earlier on in the month… then subscribe off our home page here (you get some extra content for subscribing).

Earlier on in the month my company Permission NZ Ltd helped Hockey New Zealand set up and deploy their first email newsletter. You can locate a copy of this edition here.

Here are some words about this project from Rebecca Hendl-Smith the Marketing & Sponsorship Manager at Hockey NZ.

“I have been looking forward to working with Permission in my new role here at Hockey New Zealand having had a brilliant association with them whilst working with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

With Permission’s support and guidance we launched Hockey New Zealand’s first e-newsletter to our email database on July 7th and have since been overwhelmed by positive feedback.

We knew we were part of a close knit and passionate group of hockey supporters nationally, but since sending out our e-newsletter with Permission we have fielded enquiries and words of encouragement from Black Sticks fans and hockey supporters from all over the world, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Australia.

Thanks to the team at Permission we now have a way to communicate regularily with our supporters in a cost effective manner. And as a result of the success of this project we are receiving direct and valuable feedback from supporters to help us better represent Hockey and the Black Sticks into the future.”

You can contact my team at Permission here if you would like to learn more about this solution.

Serving nice coffee is one of the many benefits that bricks and mortar shops have over their web cousins. One other less obvious are the roads and pathways that line their front door.

From these roads, malls and neighbourhoods people have no option but to drive, walk and ride past their shop. For customers these nearby excursions serve as a gentle reminder to drop in and pick up something. For prospects it could be the chance to peer through the window to check things out. All this “foot traffic” helps make the mantra for many a successful physical store be location, location, location.

But what about those same stores online?

Some mistakenly call the Internet the information superhighway. But I see no ordered way in which people traverse from website to website. To me it’s more a spider’s web of individual paths than an group treck across well worn roads.

So if there are no highways or malls to help bring people back to the front of a web store what can store owners use in their place?

Well for those online retailers that are well funded there is always traditional media advertising. Billboards seem to be the flavour of the month at the moment for those owners with deep pockets. The ads look good in whatever form they take – the agency is your best friend but you need a storehouse of cash to keep this strategy going to create ongoing traffic.

Then there’s online advertising. Here you can take those billboards, face them towards the web and see what happens. Banners of all shapes and sizes can be wrapped around high traffic sites to hook people back. Yes banners, remember those squares of advertising that you mentally block out when bouncing from website to website?

Paid search advertising is another tool to entice new and repeat visitors – especially if your site is hard to find in the generic search options. But those keywords are rising in both popularity and cost.

So all of these options will bring first time visitors to your site for a varying amount of cost per visit but having to continue to invest in any of them to make visitors return is too costly for most to achieve.

This is where effective email marketing can be rather handy.

Email is by far the cheapest and most effective way to call people back to your website. Asking, cajouling, begging and bribing all website visitors to subcribe to your email list has to be high up on your website goals.

Well written email newsletters create their own virtual “foot traffic” by enticing visitors to return to your website pages through the links contained in your copy.

But while this logic is sound and the Internet is abound with successful case studies of email marketing being used this way it still amazes me how many website fail to entice their visitors to join any email newsletter of sorts.

Yes they have billboards extolling their website, some even tell their story with television but when you visit there is no “hard to say no” option to join a newsletter so they can bring you back for cents when they brought you there with dollars.

It doesn’t take much to design an email communication that has strong appeal and set up a web form to capture subscriptions.

Please make sure it’s part of your website strategy – and failing that make mine a flat white when I drop by your bricks and mortar store next time.

Here is June’s edition – you can subscribe here to get your own copy as soon as it is published.

How about printing a copy of your next email newsletter newsletter to help your next proofing run? You will be surprised what was previously missed online now stands out on paper. Plus you get the added benefit of seeing what happens when your subscribers do the same and convert bytes to paper.

I am on the hunt for another team member.

This person will be based in our Auckland, NZ office and will manage a range of email marketing and lead generation campaigns for our growing list of clients.

You will need to be proficient around HTML, have a fondness for detail and like working on a variety of projects.

This role will suit those that have a few years work experience in web development with some client facing involvement and can show an ability and desire to uncover all there is to know about online marketing.

If you are interested in knowing more then it is probably best to go here and use the sales enquiry form to kick things off.

All the best

Chris

….. for a few clients I am working with at the moment that are doing some good work.

Need a good chartered accountant? Check out Clive’s site and let them know I sent you across?

How about a mortgage broker, Adam’s service comes with some good guarantees

Or a new content management system? Solutionists work next door to me and have a mean system to help you manage your web words.

All the best

You need some new curtains.

Rather than trying to locate the printed directory that someone has left around the office/house you fire up the web and land on your search engine of choice.

Once there you stop and think… start to type, and then click the button to see the results.

Your screen refreshes and reveals a mix of web sites that the search engine thinks best fits with what you are looking for plus for good measure it throws in a scattering of paid advertising.

You digest all that’s there and if something appeals then you click on the link and start weaving through what’s on offer.

For those that sell curtains with some online marketing expertise worth its salt then as you arrive on their web pages their site adds one more visitor to its statistics. Plus if they are really onto it you will be persuaded to fill in some form of sorts to become a lead for their sales team to work with.

All this could take a matter of minutes from the time you start looking at the tattered drapes in your office to the submit button on the curtain web site page.

The key point in this short process is the few seconds just before the prospect starts typing. Here they are pondering what search terms best suit what they are looking for. By knowing with a high degree of certainty what words will appear you have a better chance of ensuring your site is listed as part of the refreshed screen.

There are around four popular ways that people use to build a list of search terms that their prospects have a good chance of using:

• They guess
• They pay someone to guess for them
• They copy their competitors
• They conduct some online paid advertising research

The first two are more common than you would like to think. My money is on the last one.

Cold hard facts always seem to cut through the clutter and help you see what people are really searching for.

To make this strategy work you need to employ the services of Google Paid Advertising with their Adwords service and some online marketing expertise.

Placing paid ads with Adwords will not only provide you click-through traffic as people click on the ads as they appear but the reporting tools provided will reveal to you the amount of times your ad was shown and not clicked. From here you can see which terms are the most used.

When setting such a research program up you need to cast your net wide to bring in as many possible search terms as you can think of. (Permission has access to a range of databases that can help you here.)

Once you have your list then it’s a simple case of loading up your campaign with this search term list “behind” your Google ad and letting your campaign run its course.

Within a few weeks of monitoring you should start to see those terms that bring you the best clickers (best being the ones more likely to convert into a prospect) and those that are not registering any action at all.

There will gradually appear a few search term “stars” that continually deliver the goods. These are the ones your web site needs to become friends with. Then all you need to do is to take the time to work through the changes necessary to ensure your web pages are refreshed somewhere in the first page every time your prospects use them in their searches.

Here are just 20 questions that are worth an answer.

Lead Generation Questions

Email Marketing

Both

I picked this up from a MarketingSherpa email update just in over the weekend. In it they talk through how Sony Ericsson puts together its global email programs – it’s quite a good read and worth a look over.

Part of the story is how Sony Ericsson has invested in their own heat map technology and use it for testing each campaign before they send it out. I have seen heat maps referenced for web pages but never email – here’s the example email heat map they show.

Another feature added to the blog – chat is in testing and should be on the top right hand side of the blog – do drop by and share the occasional word or two.

All the best

Chris

Just for those who would like an email containing the latest post – just head down to the bottom right hand side of the blog and type away.

Have fun

Ok so we all now know that email is great for one to many direct coms – its quite simple to set up – has a good chance of being read and delivered well will make the personal connection you want.

But how about the time when the value you are trying to unlock is going to come from an ongoing conversation across time – not just a one message event?

When tried with email this ends up as an ongoing iteration of notes in each person’s Inbox with no one place where all the communication effort is stored. Online forums go someway to make this happen but they are not the easiest of things to edit at the best of times. Now wikis are starting to make an impact. A wiki is a web site that you can set up to allow whoever you want to have the power to edit the content shown.

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that uses this type of technology and method for building content

I am trialing the use of a few wikis for customers that want a central space to capture the workings of a nationally dispersed worker team. I think that a wiki well implemented could take team collaboration to a whole new level. I’ll let you know if my thoughts are well founded.

For all those in RSS land here’s a link to the latest newsletter from Permission. Have fun.

At last there is some way to stop Xtra subscribers that want to CC their address book with their next newsletter and in the process reveal to all who they are sending it to.