In this article I will share 4 methods that we use for our clients to measure the success of their internet marketing and also track the success of their other traditional marketing.

Most of our clients do not sell products or services directly online through their website, but it is still possible to measure their success.

1. Web Analytics

   Your website host may provide some web trends reports that tell you how many visits your site gets and how many hits you receive, but these data are usually very ambiguous and are not actually accurate since they don’t differentiate human visits from electronic/robot visits.

   Google Analytics has become the tool of choice for most internet marketing professionals.  With GA you are able to track all the human visitors to your website and monitor their activity.

   With hundreds of pieces of data available there is plenty of valuable information for the most analytic and detail oriented individuals and the graphs and charts give a very clear visual summary for those who prefer a “big picture” look at things.

   For measuring website success there are a few key factors that we focus on each month for our clients.

   Number of Visits: Obviously this is important.  How many visitors did you get. Once you have had your analytics tracking for a while you can do comparisons with previous months or quarters.  

   We always like to measure a month or quarter and compare it with the same month or quarter in the previous year to show traffic trends during the same period of time.  This is particularly useful for our seasonal clients such as our landscapers and landscape supply companies.

   Traffic Sources:  One of the summary screens I like to share with our clients is the “All Traffic” report.  At a glance it shows the top 10 traffic sources.  Ideally your top source is Google Organic, if you have good SEO on your site and then Google PPC if you are using paid search marketing.

   

   Bounce Rate: This is one of the most important metrics in my opinion.  A bounce occurs when someone enters and exits on the same page without clicking further.   It lets you know how interested your visitors are in your website, perhaps indicates that your visuals or your content is turning people away. 

   I like to see bounce rates between 30-40% for a standard website and 20-30% for an e-commerce website.  A niche e-commerce site with lots of products could have bounce rates between 10-20%.

   Bounce rates between 40-60% is not really bad but it usually indicates that your site could use more content, simplify the navigation or improve the conversion architecture.  Higher than 60% is a good indication that you need some help.

2. Conversion Metrics

   Unless your website is setup for e-commerce, it may be difficult to measure actual sales generated from the website, but it is easy to measure the number of leads your website is driving to you.   

   In Google Analytics you can create “goals” which will count each time a visitor reaches a destination page resulting from a specific action.  For example, if they submit a quote request form, the “thank you” page would be your goal page.  

   This allows you to count the number of leads generated each month, quarter or year.  You can setup multiple goals and measure each one individually.  So you may have a goal for a quote request, another for a newsletter signup, and one for a white paper download.

3. Phone Call Tracking

   About 5 years ago we started tracking all phone calls originating from our client’s websites.  It was a very eye-opening exercise.  On average, our clients get 3:1 phone calls versus forms submitted on their website.

   In their 2009 case study video, Van Beek’s Garden Supplies states that they got 1700 phone calls from their website in the month of May, 2009.

   This year, 2012 they had 1925 phone calls  and 571 form submissions in May.  Divide that by 22,171 website visits and you see a 11.26% conversion rate.  Eleven of every hundred visits contacted them!  Considering the internet average conversion rate is only 1%, these are excellent stats.

   To track your website generated phone calls, you need a unique tracking phone number.  This number should only be used on your website.  It simply forwards our calls to your local number.  There is no technical setup involved.

   The administrators of the phone number can generate reports that show the number of calls, the phone number calling (so you can eliminate duplicates) and the duration of each call.

4. Measuring your Off-Line Marketing

   How can you measure the success of your bus ad, the signs you put on lawns of job sites or direct mail pieces you are sending out?   Obviously if someone calls and says they got your name from that it’s easy, but what if they don’t mention it?  Does that mean it’s not working?

   Here are some things you can try to get a better handle on your non-digital marketing.

   Tracking Phone Numbers:  Just like the one you put on your website, you can have separate numbers for various marketing and advertising you are doing that will help you track them individually.

   Landing Pages: On your ad or display, include a unique website URL that can only be reached by typing it in directly to their browser.  Then your Google Analytics will tell you the exact number of visitors who went to the page

   Your landing page needs to have a unique and attractive offer and a call to action so you can also track the number of visitors who converted.  Plus once they have taken the desired action you will have collected their email address and you can now nurture a relationship with them for future purchases.

   QR Codes:  These are a great way to get visitors to your landing pages.  Anyone with a smart phone can use a QR Code.  Your print ad or display can entice visitors to follow the QR Code link to take advantage of your special offer.

   The goal of all your marketing should be to generate a phone call or a website visitor.  Depending on your type of business, you may also be looking for foot-traffic but in my opinion it is better to get them onto your website before they come into your location.

   By getting them on your website, they are doing their preliminary homework so you can spend less time educating them and they are in a position to convert on your site by taking advantage of your offer so you can collect their email address and begin a lead nurturing process.

   For one of our clients with a large home leisure retail store, we have an offer on their site to join their “Leisure Living Club” and they receive a discount coupon to take into the store with them.  So we can measure the number of visitors who joined the club and they can also measure the number of those who came in to redeem their discount.

I would say that 95% of the small business owners I have met over the last 7 years say that one of their biggest frustrations in business is not being able to measure how well their  marketing is working and decide where to keep investing, where to stop investing, and where to invest more.  If this sounds familiar to you, we can help.

This article about how to Track your Marketing ROI was originally posted in WSI Milton, an Internet marketing blog.

With nearly 6 years of experience in providing successful internet marketing services to the landscaping industry, here are 5 tried and tested, proven tips to drive a landscaping business.

1. The Website Matters!

   Most landscaping and home improvement companies realize the importance of having a website that is visually stunning and shows off the quality of their workmanship. Your gallery and embedding beautiful images within your content can not be overlooked.

   However, an equally important item that is often overlooked is the quantity and quality of your content. Pictures will create initial interest but there has to be more meat in your content to convince people that you are a worthy choice to invest tens of thousands of dollars with.

   As well, don’t forget that your website is a piece of technology and not all technology is created equally. You must ensure your website is technically sound in order to ensure that Google will treat you with respect.

   I recommend you have your existing website analyzed before you start internet marketing to ensure that you are investing your money in the right areas.

2. Pay Per Click

   Everyone wants to show up on the first page of Google!

   The only way to guarantee that your website will appear on Page 1 of Google is by using Pay Per Click advertising through Google AdWords.

   Google AdWords is easy to use and there are lots of tutorials. Some businesses try it out themselves and find it to be very expensive with little or no results. Just like some home owners try to landscape their own yards and end up making a mess.

   I would suggest that for good results, work with a company that has a proven track record of working with Pay Per Click services to generate leads. Trying to do it on your own will only cost you a lot more money in the long run and usually the results will not be great.

   The nice thing about PPC is that you will only display your advertising to those who are searching for or are interested in your service and you will only pay for it if they actually click on the ad.

   Once someone clicks on your ad, they need to see something that catches their interest right away, which is why Tip #1 is so important!

3. Local Search Engine Optimization

   Do you work more than 30 miles/50 kilometers from your central location? Most landscapers that we work with don’t or if they do it’s because of a very lucrative opportunity that draws them out there.

   For the most part it doesn’t make sense to invest time, energy, or money on marketing to generate a lot of leads outside of that radius.

   Today, Google is so smart at zeroing in on a searchers location that it is no longer necessary to type in a location or city name to get local results, but the only way for Google to know that your website matches the location is to tell them that.

4. Social Media

   Your Facebook page is important. You should be updating it, sharing photos and stories on a regular basis. Use it as a way to stay top of mind and present but not to constantly be pushing your services.

   Another priceless social media tool for landscapers is Pinterest. It’s a great way to showcase your work and pin beautiful landscapes you come across with a few comments and a link back to your website. There is a lot of value in that link.

5. Load the top of your sales funnel

   Not every visitor that lands on your website is ready to sign now. In fact, the majority of visitors are going to be in the research phase, looking for ideas, concepts and other things that will help them identify what they want even before they get to the stage of choosing a vendor.

   It is worthwhile to create some whitepaper or how-to guide that answers your buyer’s common questions. Or perhaps you could compile some amazing landscape designs or ideas that your visitors could download.

   When you offer this valuable information to someone in the research phase, in exchange for their contact information and email address, you have an opportunity to nurture a relationship with them early on in their buying cycle.

If you are still relying on those old advertising media for business, you are probably wondering why the results aren’t what they once were.

50 Year Old Business Moves from Traditional to Digital

Original Website Prior to working with WSI

Van Beek’s Garden Supplies started in business in 1962. Here is a screenshot of the website they had until 2008. In May 2008 WSI Milton launched their first website and internet marketing system.

Their 2008 season was tremendous with the addition of pay per click marketing to their new website, and after seeing these results, they decided to invest in search engine optimization (SEO) leading into the 2009 season.

This profile video was created in 2010. 40% growth during a recession!

New site launched May 2008

The company realized that most of their business was being driven by internet marketing and began questioning the worth of traditional print media, especially Yellow Pages advertising.

They decided to test the Yellow Pages results by having a unique tracking phone number inserted into their Yellow Pages ad. This experiment proved to them that they were getting very little value from the $60,000 that they were investing annually for multiple print directories.

Yellow Pages’ traditional business model has been collapsing for years, and they are currently scrambling to reinvent themselves at digital marketing experts, but beware-in my opinion, they have very little to offer in this area.

3rd Generation Website launched Feb 2012

The Yellow Pages have been offering more online marketing to offset their lost revenue from print, and they have a strong sales pitch and years of loyal paying customers to support this initiative.

What the Yellow Pages fails to tell advertisers is that the link to your site from theirs is classified as a “no-follow” which basically means that it offers absolutely no value to your website from an SEO perspective. All the online marketing that they are “selling” their clients is in fact directing traffic to the Yellow Pages directory and not the client’s actual website.

Here is the actual comparison of yellow pages traffic compared to Google traffic, evaluating 4 and a half years of data for the Van Beek’s website: approximately 236,000 visits from search engines compared to about 3500 visits from the Yellow Pages.

Do the math and you will see that they get 6742% more search engine traffic than Yellow Pages traffic. Where would you choose to invest your marketing?

Van Beeks gets Six Thousand Seven Hundred and Fourty-Two (6742%) percent more traffic from Search Engines than from Yellow Pages!

If you’re having trouble deciding where to invest your marketing dollar to get the best return on investment, just ask us for help.

Today, I’ll share an internet marketing case study and prove how properly measuring the results can help you make better marketing investment decisions within 90 days.

To protect client confidentiality I will not mention the company by name, but this is a company that our firm has worked with directly. You can find other case studies here.

Automotive Body Repair Shop

This company originally signed up with us in January 2011. We designed and built a new website, wrote new SEO optimized content, and created a pay per click campaign for them.

The new site launched and leads started pouring in by April 2011.

Through our lead conversion tracking systems we measured that over 10% of the website visitors were converting into leads.

An average website conversion rate is about 1%. Needless to say, this client was getting very good results as the metrics would suggest.

Then in August 2012, the client decided to sign a contract with a consulting company that specializes in the automotive industry and the terms of the contract includes a new website and hosting.

We suggested that it would not be a wise idea to move away from out system that is working so well, but the client was only looking at the cheaper investment and figured it would be a good idea to make the switch.

Yesterday, about 90 days after ending our agreement, the client called me and asked if they could come and see me.

They shared the actual sales figures they were able to measure from their website and Internet Marketing in September, October and November of 2011 compared to 2012.

The impact of their decision was almost immediate and consistent for the 90 days.

They received a very noticeable drop in the number of daily leads and their sales figures dropped by 75% from the same time period last year.

Lesson Learned

Because we cancelled the hosting of the site, everything was lost. There is no available backup of the old site. We do have the original design files and the content that was written but the entire site now needs to be rebuilt.

Not only has this resulted in lost revenue because of a poor business decision but it will now also cost more to bring things back to where they were. But in the long run it will be a much more profitable endeavor for this client.

Today is Step 9, Inbound Marketing.

My business and sales coach always preaches that you must be constantly prospecting if you want to grow your sales and earn more money. He believes that if you aren’t picking up the phone on a regular basis your likelihood of success is very small.

I have been involved in sales my entire career and I would agree that cold calling on the telephone has traditionally been a very successful prospecting method for me. Perhaps you have had the same experience in your sales career.

But there is a problem….

Buyers Don’t Want to Talk to You!

Have you noticed in your cold calling efforts that it is becoming more and more difficult to get decision makers on the phone? And have you noticed that when you do get them on the phone they are usually really quick to brush you off?

Sure, once in a while you happen to get someone who has a particular need right at the moment you called and your perfect timing lands you a sales appointment, but in my experience I have found these opportunities few and far between.

In fact I have not made a sale from a cold call in four and a half years, but my business has grown every year!

Don’t get me wrong, telephone cold calling is still a method of prospecting that works and if you don’t mind beating your head against the wall, getting hung up on a lot, fighting to reach decision makers and having a lot more failure than success, then I would encourage you to continue doing cold calling!

The Death of Outbound

Cold calling and traditional advertising (print, television & radio) are outbound marketing strategies based on interrupting your prospects with your message and hoping they pay attention and have a need for your product or service right now.

If you are like most people, you never pay attention to ads. But when you have a particular need or interest, then you may notice related advertising because the message triggers something subconsciously.

Traditionally, companies entire marketing budgets have gone toward the hope of interrupting someone at the point where they are ready to make a decision or penetrating the subconscious mind with their message so much that the buyer will magically remember them when they are ready to make a decision.

That’s great if you have gobs of time and money to throw at marketing!

The Rise of Inbound

As the Internet and search engines have grown and become more popular, information has become incredibly easy to find. This enables buyers to find information on any topic they are interested in.

They can do their homework on their time and only when they are ready to buy will they pick up the phone or drop by your shop to negotiate a deal.

Usually by the time you are talking to them they already know a lot about your product or service and they just want to talk price and value of buying from you instead of someone else.

Inbound Marketing is about getting involved while your prospective customers are doing their research and becoming a resource in helping their decision making process.

Could Inbound Marketing Improve your Business Results?

Our WSI Milton office recently signed on as a HubSpot business partner. Our motivation to sign up was twofold:

1. We want to generate more of our own inbound sales leads from prospects who are more educated about Internet Marketing when they contact us so that we can invest less time educating and more time servicing them.
2. HubSpot is a global leader in Inbound Marketing, just as WSI is a global leader in Internet Marketing. As a service to our clients we have been offering content marketing services and the HubSpot software is a very valuable add-on to this service with incredible built-in lead tracking and nurturing capabilities.

Here is a case study of a client we are implementing Inbound Marketing for, using HubSpot. We began on October 17, 2012, 34 days ago. Since that time we have posted 20 articles.

Prior to using the HubSpot software we were blogging consistently since the beginning of September. There have been 40 new articles posted since we started.

From the beginning of September to the middle of October we noticed a 177.7% increase in blog traffic and a 30.9% increase in website traffic. Organic search engine traffic increased 22.6% on the blog and 8.1% on the website.

After implementing the HubSpot software, from October 17 until November 20, 2012 we have seen a 5.4% increase in blog traffic and a 70.5% increase in website traffic. Organic search traffic increased 45.9% on the blog and 59% on the website.

Most importantly, since we began implementing inbound marketing strategies for this client, there has been a 142.5% increase in their lead generation results.

Inbound marketing strategies will earn the interest of your prospects who are doing research. When you offer your visitors valuable information to help them in their decision process you have an opportunity to develop a relationship with them.

What Should You Do Now?

WSI Milton helps business owners and presidents get more sales leads with Internet Marketing Strategies and Systems, such as Inbound Marketing.

To learn more about how we can help you start here:

Today I’ll explain exactly what you can do on your web pages to help your on-page search engine optimization.

1. Keyword Research

   For basic SEO, you need to first choose your keywords. The easiest way to select keywords is to use Google’s Keyword Tool. It’s not the most advanced keyword research method but for a Do-It-Yourself SEO job it will give you a good enough analysis of keywords that make sense to your industry and product.

   In this example I have entered the phrase “landscaping” and Google is suggesting 100 keyword ideas and shows how much competition there is for these keywords and how many Global and local (Canada) searches there are for each phrase in an average month.

   

   You will notice that the first keyword suggested is “landscaping ideas”. Most landscaping contractors would probably consider this a poor keyword to choose since it is probably more likely to attract tire kickers who aren’t really ready to buy.

   We’re going to talk more about that when we discuss Inbound Marketing, but for now lets just keep in mind that 80% or so of the visitors who come to your website are in the research phase and if you can start nurturing a relationship with them at this early stage, you have a higher likelihood to earn their business when they are ready to buy than you do if they only discover your business late in their buying process.

   Once you have chosen your keywords, you are ready to begin the process of optimizing your website content so that Google will notice you and you will be in a position to rise to the #1 spot on Google.

2. Title Tag

   Let’s assume your website has a Content Management System (CMS) and you can create or update pages easily. Unless you are skilled with HTML and basic website design, it may be more difficult to optimize your website yourself without a CMS.

   If you don’t have a CMS and want to give it a try, you will need to purchase software for managing your content. Dreamweaver is your best choice and is part of the Adobe Creative Suite.

   For this exercise I will assume you are using a WordPress CMS since it is the most popular and the one I would recommend you use for your website or blog. WordPress has a plugin called the “All in One SEO Pack“. You will need to add this plugin to your site.

   In the field of your All in One SEO Pack that says “Title” you should include your keyword phrase. It is best not to try and stuff extra keywords here. You should keep the title of your page specific and ensure that it is shorter than 60 characters.

   The Title tag is not actually visible on your webpage but it is shown as the title of your article when it appears in Googles Search Results.

   You should only target one primary keyword or phrase per page of content. So for example, the keyword “front yard landscaping” can include variations in the content such as “front yard landscape” and “front yard landscaping ideas” but it is best to reserve “backyard landscaping” for another content page.

3. Headings

   Using headings on your page helps to break up the content, introduce different font sizes and also plays a very important role in your web page optimization. The most important heading on your web page is the H1 or Heading 1 Tag. Usually this is the largest font text on the page

   Ensure you use your primary keyword phrase in the H1 Tag. Usually this is the title of your article and should match the SEO Title tag you used.

4. Keyword Density

   Google’s algorithm for ranking web pages in the search engine results is very sophisticated and if you try and overuse your keyword to boost your ranking, you are very likely to get penalized in the ranking.

   The best idea to optimize your site for your target keyword is to use it once or twice in the content but try using different variations, synonyms or other references that are not exactly the same.

   When you read your content back it should seem conversational rather than repetitive.

5. Description Tag

   In the All in One SEO Pack, the second field is the Description Tag. Like the SEO Title Tag, the Description Tag is not shown in your web content. It is shown in the search engine results beneath the Title Tag, as shown above.

   This is your opportunity to pitch the page content in 160 characters or less. Tell the reader what the page is about and how it will benefit them. This is a mini-sales pitch that tells the reader why they should visit your page.

   Ensure to use your target keyword in the description tag. It doesn’t necessarily have to exactly match the target phrase but it should include all the words you are targeting.

   Using the previous example, a page titled “Front Yard Landscaping Ideas”, could have an SEO Description Tag “Landscaping ideas that will turn your front yard into a neighbourhood centrepiece for your neighbours to adore”.

   In case you’re wondering, that’s 110 characters.

6. Linking to your Text

   Links have two critical purposes in website optimization for search engines. First, links are how search engines find content on your website. Google and other search engines send web crawlers known as bots or spiders to crawl around the web by following links and then copying all the pages found into their results pages.

   If you change the content on your pages you will notice that Google doesn’t immediately show the changes. That is because they are actually only displaying a copy of your page and until the crawl the new content and update their index, the new content will not show up.

   The only way that Google will find your content is if you link to it. So be sure that your new web page is listed on your menu and in your site map.

   Additionally it is a good idea to link certain words in your web content to other pages of your website. When Google crawls your new website page, it will follow those links and look for changes to the content on those pages as well.

   Perhaps more important is the words you use to link your content. You should include keywords in your link text as well. Link words that are relevant to the target page content and this will help get those other pages optimized for your target keywords.

Some are unsure what the term “search engine optimization” really means so here’s a simple definition:

Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO is the process of telling search engines like Google that your content is relevant for a specific topic or keyword.

For this article and the next two, we will be talking about search engine optimization as a method of being found online by potential customers who are searching for information about your products and services.

Write Killer Content

With the changes that Google has made over the past year or so, most notably, the Google Panda & Penguin algorithm updates, it is now absolutely necessary to include blogging and content marketing as the center of your search engine optimization strategy.

Adding fresh new relevant content to your site on a consistent basis, even if you do nothing else, will help you be found on search engines for the words that are used inside your blog post, content page, or article.

4 Content Marketing Steps You Can Start Today!

Here are 4 things you can do, starting today, that will cost you absolutely nothing but your time that will boost your search engine optimization and start sending more visitors to your website.

1. Tell Interesting Stories

   I have no doubt that the products or services that you sell have an amazing benefit to those that buy from you. It has probably helped them solve certain problems, overcome obstacles and perhaps even changed their lives.

   These are great real-life stories that you can write about and share that can help you add content to your website and also provide some case studies that will help buyers in their decision process.

2. Explain How To…

   Do you ever have customers asking the same questions over and over? You could write an article or blog about how to do a certain task. Embed some pictures and perhaps even a video you can create with your iPhone or Android.

   If you have the time to make a how to video, it is still best to write a blog post or article about the video as well. You can post the video in YouTube and optimize it as well as embed it in your content for visual reference to the written description.

3. Share your Expertise

   You may be concerned that if you share your knowledge or expertise, you could be revealing secrets to your competitors or worse, teaching your potential customers how to do what you do which may mean they won’t buy what you have.

   In this series of articles, I am basically sharing all of our Internet Marketing knowledge with you. You may be encouraged by what you’re reading and you may decide to do a lot of this yourself and get some great results. In fact you probably will!

   But when you realize that it actually takes more than just one full time effort to effectively manage your website, search engine optimization, social media marketing, pay per click advertising, email marketing, blogging, and more, you are likely do decide that it makes sense to outsource that activity and maybe you will contact us for help with your internet marketing.

   In your business, you can share some of your knowledge and expertise to establish yourself as an authority in your industry. Chances are your prospects will respect your level of expertise and when it comes to choosing between an expert or trusted advisor and someone else they don’t know or trust.

   Our WSI Internet Marketing business works with a lot of landscaping companies. A great way for landscapers to create valuable content would be to write about how to maintain your shrubs or bushes or how to maintain your hardscaping to stop weeds from growing in the cracks. There are probably lots of articles like that which you can write about your business.

4. Recycle

   If you go through the content that is already on your website, there are probably items that you could write a lot more about. A great way to create content and enhance the search engine optimization for your website is to blog about the things your site already talks about.

   Elaborate on the content you have. Incorporate some more knowledge. Explain how to do that or how to care for it, what other uses it has or whatever might apply to that particular bit of content. This new content will help boost your website relevance and you will soon start to see your traffic numbers grow with a little do-it-yourself search engine optimization.

Want Better Results from your Email Marketing?

According to the Direct Marketing Association, the return on investment for email marketing in 2011 was $44 for every $1 spent. That 4400% ROI is something to be excited about (and if you’re not already riding the email marketing bandwagon- jump on)!

However, people are getting busier and busier these days and their inboxes are congested. You’re also competing with a multitude of brands and companies who are  looking to capitalize on this effective marketing platform as well.

Make sure your emails are commanding more attention than your competitor’s by following these 5 simple tips.

1. Subject line

There is no perfect science to developing a great subject line. Most email marketing services will tell you the number of contacts who opened your email. If you have already been using an email marketing service like Constant Contact or HubSpot, look back over your past emails and see which ones had the highest open rates. Do they have anything in common? Test different variations of your most successful headlines to see if you can get an even higher open rate.

If you’re looking for a place to start, these 3 tactics have shown to be effective:

Ask a Question

Asking a question in your message’s subject line can pique the interest of your recipients and get them to open your email.

Ex: Could you be spending less on your mobile plan?

Offer Value

As long as your subject is relevant to the recipient (and if they’ve given you their email address, assumedly it is), they will have interest in learning from your expertise. Subject lines that offer valuable information to the recipient can have a high click through rate- particularly if they are timely.

Ex: 4 Tips for getting your lawn ready for winter

Create a Sense of Urgency

In overcrowded inboxes, less important emails often get pushed off until later.  This then turns to never. By crafting a subject line that creates a sense of urgency- either a limited quantity or time limited offer- your recipients will feel compelled to open your message right away.

Ex: Half price soil bag sale today only

2. Be Concise

If you target has opened your message, you have only a few seconds for them to decide whether or not it’s of value to them.  They are looking for an immediate solution to their problem. You need to give them just that before they delete your message in a click.

Be clear about describing the benefits of your offer to your potential customer, instead of describing the attributes of your product/service. Remember that your recipient will be skimming, not reading your message, so shorter the text, the better. Use bulleted lists anywhere you can.

3. Segment & Provide Relevant Content

As your email list grows, you will want to start targeting certain contacts differently than others. If your message is not relevant to the recipient, they will be compelled to unsubscribe.

You want to have the ability to tailor your messaging to a certain type of client. You want to avoid sending a trial offer to existing customers, or a commercial offer to a residential customer.

The best way for you to ensure that your contacts receive relevant messaging is through the segmentation of your email lists. You can do this in many ways; there’s no one size fits all for every business.

Some effective ways to segment your lists include:

• How did you acquire the email address (if existing customer, what service/product have they purchased from you)?
• Where is their location (city/town, urban/suburban/rural)?
• Have they expressed interest in other product/services?
• Are they commercial or residential?
• What is their industry (if you have commercial clients)?

4. Call to Action

Don’t confuse your prospects. By giving them different options to act, you actually increase the chance that they will not act at all. The best email campaigns stick to a single call to action.

You might think that if your only call to action is to request a consultation or a quote, you will miss out on the business of prospects that are not in that stage of the buying cycle- ones that would be interested in viewing your portfolio first, or learning more about your offerings.

This is a non-issue if you are segmenting your email lists properly. Your email contacts should only be receiving messages that contain a call to action that is consistent with their past relationship with your business.

The call to action with the greatest impact has a benefit to your prospect built in.

Ex: Get your coupon code now and put that $50 back in your wallet VS: Get your coupon code now

5. Frequency

Sending marketing emails too often can completely kill an otherwise great campaign. As a general rule, biweekly messages are the most the majority of contacts will tolerate before they become irritated and unsubscribe.  This does vary from business to business, and should only be used as a broad guideline.

To determine the optimal sending frequency for your specific business, pay attention to the unsubscribe metrics in your email marketing tool.  Try sending a weekly email during your busiest time of the year. Do you lose any subscribers? If it’s less than 1% of the total recipients, you can continue to send at this frequency until the unsubscribe rate goes up.

Think Email, Not Direct Mail

How much of your mail is tossed into the trash without a second look? It makes me cringe to think of all of the money that is put into designing, printing and delivering direct mail promotions that are completely ignored by the recipients.

Email marketing gives you instant feedback so that you are able to continuously adjust and improve upon your campaigns. With a lower cost for designing and implementing several different campaigns, and the ability to easily segment your audience, you can ensure that your messages are relevant to each of your contacts, and thus less likely to be ignored.

Email campaigns are an important component of an overall internet marketing strategy. If you’re interested in learning how to use the web to drive your sales, download our Guide to Capturing Better Leads Online.

Original Article can be found here

What is Conversion Architecture?

Today’s article is about conversion architecture.  Sound technical?  It’s really not!

Conversion architecture is simply the process of optimizing your website for lead generation or increasing your e-commerce sales.

Before we go too far into this, let’s first talk about your website conversion rate.  If you divide your total number of leads generated from your website by the total number of visitors to your website during the same time period and multiply that number by 100, you get your conversion rate as a percentage.

Using this equation, 100 leads from 10,000 visits would be a 1% conversion rate.  500 leads would be 5%.  I’m sure you get the point.

The difference between having a 5% conversion rate and a 1% conversion rate is simply how well designed your website is for the conversion process.

Imagine if you could improve the lead conversion process on your website just a little and generate an extra 400 leads each month! 

Here are 5 things you can do immediately to increase your website lead generation:

1. Identify your buyer Personas

   Who buys from you?  Are they male or female?  How old are they?  What do they dofor a living?  What is their education?  What are their interests?  What’s important to them?

   There are probably 2-3 different types of people who typically become your customers. The first thing you must do to generate more
   leads from your website is to identify these visitor personas.

   When any of these individuals land on your website, it is important that they know theyarrived at the right place.  The highest percentage of your website visitors will land on your home page.

   Your home page needs to effectively communicate your message to these 2-3 different personas so that they know they have arrived in the right place and it is very easy for them to navigate to the information that pertains to their persona.

2. Make your contact information visible

   If your website design has done a good job of establishing your credibility,  your visitors might prefer to speak to someone rather than hunting for answers to their questions on your website.

   You should include your full address, phone and fax numbers on your contact us page AND you should include your contact phone number at the top ever every page on your website.  

   Another consideration is to include a tracking phone number on your website so that you can track the number of phone call leads you are getting.

3. Include multiple calls to action

   Imagine you are standing in a room with one door (the exit), where do you go?  The only place to go is out!  Visitors on your website are in the same situation if you don’t give them anywhere to go besides out.

   In order to make the most of each visitor,  you need to give them options of how they can interact with you.  The phone number mentioned above is a good start!

   If your business interactions normally involve providing a quote or a consultation, then you should offer a quote or a consultation as a call to action on your site.

   Other calls to action might include a download of information like a free guide, white paper, or handbook, a discount coupon, etc.

   If you want people to take a certain action on your website and convert from a visitor into a lead, you must tell them how to do that.  Don’t leave it to chance.

4. Use more than one web contact form

   Do you have a contact form on your website?  You should!

   Most business websites have one contact form on their contact page.  Rarely is there more than one.

   Every call to action with the exception of a phone call should include a form.  The least amount of information you will request on your form is the email address.  Be sure to let visitors know that you won’t share their email address.

   If your offer in the call to action is valuable enough, your visitors will be more than willing to trade you their email address for whatever you’re offering.

5. Think about the top of the funnel

   It’s not unusual for you to be thinking, I don’t want an email address, I want a sale. 

   You need to remember that most people do research before they buy.  And most of the time when people find your website it’s because they are in the research phase of their buying process.  Let’s call this the Top of the Funnel in your sales process.

   Give them some information that will help them make their decisions and then use the information they gave you to build a relationship and let them know you are the solution to their problems.

   

With 4 billion connected smartphones, there are nearly as many connected mobile devices as there are humans on the planet.  By 2014, if predictions hold true, mobile web visits will exceed those form desktop or laptop devices.

What does this mean for business owners?

The days of having a single website optimized for the usual web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and others are over.  Now you not only have to concern yourself with the plethora of different browsers and versions there are but also a new dimension of different screen sizes and devices that are being used.

So basically, the way your website looks on someone’s device will be different all the time and that means that it is not fun or easy to use.  Statistics consistently show that users are not wasting their time on websites that don’t work well on whatever device they are using.   A while ago in an article I wrote, I shared that statistics say “75% of users prefer a mobile-friendly site.”

How Can Responsive Web Design Make Life Easier?

1. No Pinching and Squeezing

    If you go to your website on an iPhone or Android device it will squish the site down so that you can see the entire page without scrolling around.  The problem is that you can’t read anything either.  So if you want to actually see the text you have to do a lot of pinching and squeezing and then scrolling with your finger.  Not to mention trying to press a tiny little text link with your fat fingers on the little screen.

   With responsive design your website will automatically size to fit the screen without reducing the size of your text.   The menu, and other visuals are programmed to display for the most optimized visitor experience.

2. Maintain One Set of Content

   Before responsive web design, if you wanted to have a mobile friendly site you needed to actually have 2 different websites.  For example, if you visit Fasada Home Remodelling on your desktop or your mobile phone, you are actually seeing two unique websites, each optimized for viewing on different screen sizes. The content on the sites are different and because the mobile site is optimized for an iPhone screen size, it will appear different or may look odd if you are viewing it from an Android, or tablet device with a different screen resolution.

   With responsive design there is no need to maintain content on two separate websites.   If you change or add content to your website, you don’t need to remember to change it on your mobile site as well.

3. Your Phone Will Ring More Often

   Responsive website design activates your phone number so that when you click on the number your phone will ask if you would like to call that number.  So with just two quick taps on the screen your new customer is calling you.

4. You Will See a Bigger Return on Investment

   Your new responsive website will be easier to use and all the conversion architecture intelligence that went into building your website carries over to the mobile devices.

   Navigation is made easier, reading is simple, and functionality is programmed to work effectively with your mobile device.  So your mobile-friendly website is geared up to reel in more qualified leads for your business.

   

First, I will assume that what you are really after is not more traffic to your website, but more leads for your business.  So the quality of traffic that you reach and what they do when they arrive on your website is more important than just getting droves of visitors.

Be sure to check out our Free Guide to Capturing Better Sales Leads Online.

10 Killer Techniques for your Internet Marketing Success

You need a website that rocks!

1. Responsive Website Design

Your website design is the most important first step to your online success.  All too often business owners are focused on getting more traffic without considering the fact that what your visitors see in the first tenth of a second upon landing on your site will create a first impression.

Not only do you need a professional looking design that stands out from your competition, but you need to keep in mind the growth of mobile web surfing. Statistics prove that when a visitor lands on a web-optimized site from their mobile device, they will spend much less time on the site and the bounce rate (a bounce occurs when a visitor exits your site immediately on the landing page without clicking further) is much higher.

Responsive website design is a new way of building your website so that it automatically adjusts to different screen sizes.  This means that your website will have the same look and feel on all types of devices and browsers but certain elements will adjust and re-size automatically to fit the screen size without jeopardizing the size of important elements like your company logo or the text.

2. Conversion Architecture

What do you want your visitors to do when they arrive on your site?  I’m sure you have lots of great knowledge to share and fantastic photos of your product or service, but your website is not a brochure.

When you are working with your web designer, you need to think about how you can encourage your visitors to take action. In other words, how can they convert from a visitor into a lead?

We all know that the best form of lead is when someone grabs the phone and calls you, purchases directly through your website or submits your request form, but the chances are that not everyone who lands on your website is at that stage in their buying process yet.  So what small actions can they take to, perhaps unknowingly enter into your lead nurturing process?

Conversion architecture is a process of engineering your website to get the most value from each visitor who lands there.  This is the most important piece of your Internet Marketing Success.  If you send traffic to a poorly converting site you are wasting visits.

Let’s use this illustration.  Let’s assume you have a website generating 10,000 visitors per month with a 2% conversion rate.  So 200 website visitors are contacting you each month.

Now let’s assume you could improve your conversion architecture and increase your conversion rate by just 1%.  That would double the number of monthly leads you are now getting!

You might think you already have a great website and all you need is more traffic but I would challenge you to consider the actual percentage of visitors who convert into leads and the potential of improving your conversion architecture before investing to increase your traffic.

You need to show up!

3. Write Killer Content

There is only one thing that is going to attract the right visitors to your website, keep them there and engage them into taking action or converting.  You have to have lots of well written, compelling content!
If you search on Google for almost any topic, one of the top entries will be Wikipedia.  Do you know why?  How about 6210 indexed pages of content in Google’s directory?

You have probably heard before that “content is king“.  Your business involves selling some products or services that people need or want.  Your job is to add content that will help them choose what to buy and from whom.  And if you do it right, they might just choose you!

Just having great content is the first and most important aspect of generating traffic to your website.  This is what Google is looking for and how they will decide if you are special enough to rank in their index.

4. On-Page SEO

You don’t need to be a Search Engine Optimization Expert to know the basics of on-page SEO.  Just follow these simple steps and you are well on your way:

a. Keyword Research – you have to identify keywords relevant to your niche that people in your geographic target are searching for and that have a low level of competition.  There are lots of tools available online to help you with this.  Some are free and others are paid.  The easiest is to simply use Google’s own keyword tool.

b. Title Tag - Including your keyword in your <Title> tag on your web page is the most important aspect of on-page SEO.  Note that your page should only target one keyword phrase.  Don’t try and stuff extra keywords in there as this will confuse Google and water down your results.

c. Headings - Include your keyword in your <H1> primary page heading and you can use variations of your keyword in your subheadings, <H2>, <H3> and so on.  Using headings also helps you break up your content so it is visually pleasing and easy to skim through.

d. Keyword Density – The density of your keyword usage in your content is less strict than it once was but Google’s algorithms are very smart and will sense if your content is stuffed with your keyword and is not written for a human reader.  The best rule of thumb is to read your content over before publishing and ensure that it sounds like a normal person talking.

You DO want to use your keyword in your text at least a few times.  And usually, the longer your article is the more you can use your phrase.  Also, including it in your first paragraph can help.

e. Page Description – Your <description> meta tag should also include the keyword phrase used in it.  Try to keep your description shorter than 152 characters to avoid the … from showing up in the search query.

f. In-Site Links – Linking your content from other content pages, articles and blogs will help Google find the content.  Using the keyword as the anchor text that links to the content will help apply relevance to your page for the target keyword.

On-page SEO is really quite simple.  It is also very time consuming and there are lots of intricacies that make it more complicated to do really well but these are the basics.  If you are worried about messing it up or don’t have tons of spare time to do it yourself, maybe consider hiring a professional SEO service.

5. Off-Page SEO

If content is King, the inbound links are Queen.  Above I said that links within your website tell Google what your content is about, or how it is relevant.  Well if Google sees what you say about yourself and weighs that against what others are saying about you, what do you think they will find more valuable?

The way you build up your relevance is by getting other websites to link to you. The anchor text that links to your content is important.  Try searching “click here” on Google and see who shows up first.  If you look at the Adobe website, nowhere does it mention the words “click here”.  It is not on the site at all!

The only reason that website shows up first is because so many other websites link to it with the anchor text “click here”.  So similarly, if you can get lots of websites to link to you with a particular phrase, it will help you rank for that phrase.

One note.  The authority of the linking source is another very important factor. Try to get highly authoritative sites to link to you.  Better still, leave this to the professionals.

6. Pay Per Click

I know… you never click on those ads on Google and probably never even look at them (that’s what I hear all the time), but somehow Google manages to earn $100 Million per day from advertising!

Let me say something about Pay Per Click Advertising.  It works!  All the time!

In fact if it doesn’t work, it costs you nothing!  You only pay when someone searches for your keywords and clicks on your ad.  Rewind back to the top of this article, the part about conversion architecture, to determine if your website will work as well as your pay per click advertising.

Not all pay per click is search based.  There are plenty of opportunities to advertise online.  In fact Google’s display ad network gets 24.2 billion ad impressions every day and those convert into an average 2.1 million leads or sales, daily!

There are also opportunities for paid advertising on Facebook, Twitter and other social media marketing vehicles

You need to engage!

7. Social Media

Social Media Marketing is in my opinion the least important way to generate traffic to your website.  It is also the slowest and will involve a lot of time and effort.

However by sharing your awesome content within your social networks, you will be spreading that content around, encouraging engagement, sharing and probably getting some good inbound links!

        8. Email Marketing

Don’t spam your subscribers.  Give them value.  Educate them.
Provide  information to help them decide what to buy and where
to buy it.

        9. Inbound Marketing

Nurture, nurture, nurture.  Take a look at my article,
What is Inbound Marketing?

         10. Calls to Action

If you want them to buy something or download something
or sign up for something or request something or whatever
action you want them to take, ask them to take that action!
You might be surprised to see how many actually do
what you ask them to!

This has turned into a much longer blog post than it was intended.  If you got this far, for goodness sake post a comment and let me know so I don’t feel that it was a lot of wasted effort!  And if you have found this intriguing  you should check out our Free Guide to Capturing Better Sales Leads Online.

So to wrap this article up, you can’t expect every person who converts on your site to be an instant sale.  But if you have done a good job at getting them engaged enough to give you their email address, you have an opportunity to turn them into an eventual sale and perhaps even repeat sales and lighting a fire of spreading word of mouth.

For years, your SEO Company has probably been telling you this and the chances are that consistently adding content to your website is not always on top of your priority list. What they haven’t told you is that it doesn’t need to be a really difficult or time consuming thing to create fresh new content that people will love!

The reality is that you really can’t have too much content on your website.  Too often I hear from clients that they really don’t want too much content because “people don’t want to read a bunch of stuff.  They just want to see pictures.”

First of all, pictures are good.  In fact they are a form of content!  Great pictures should be included in all of your content and also should be distributed through the social networks like Facebook, Pinterest and others.

But when it comes to Google, Bing, Yahoo! and other search engines, it’s the written content that matters most! 

5 Tips for Creating Awesome Fresh Website Content for SEO

1. Choose your keywords ahead of time

   Choosing the right keywords will help you ensure your content is more likely to attract the best visitors to your content.  Some keywords are way too competitive so using them in your content would be a futile effort as far as being found on search engines is concerned. 

   You need to select phrases that have a significant enough search volume in your geographic target area our country and that do not have a huge amount of competition going after the same phrases.

   This process is a bit daunting to be honest, and it is something your SEO service should be able to help you with to identify the best words to go after in your content.

2. Do a little research into writing topics

   Writers block is the biggest problem that business owners are faced with.  What  should I write about and how can I make it relevant and interesting to potential readers?

   You probably just shook your head in agreement!  Guess what, as I write this I am saying the exact same thing.  A great resource for doing topical research is Google Reader.   I guarantee that you will find content on every topic known to man there.  

   Don’t copy other people’s content!  Make your own.  But there is nothing wrong with getting some great ideas.

   Once you go to Google Reader you can use their search feature to find resources and subscribe to them to see tons of amazing content.

   

3. Use your Blog – Frequently!

   As I said earlier, there is no such thing as too much content.  However, how the content is organized and how easy it is to locate specific content is very important.
   Using a blog you are able to sort your content by assigning it to categories.  Naturally, your business would have any number of categories that it makes sense to sort your content into.
   Blogs also have built in functionality such as a search feature so that visitors can search by keywords to find relevant information.  You can even choose to display your content by most popular or most recent items.
   Your visitors can also choose to subscribe to your blog so that your posts will appear in their Google Reader or other news feeds they may choose to use.
   You should try to set a blogging frequency of at least 1-2 times per week.  Several times per week is better and every day is optimal.  It needs to work with your schedule.
   It is more important to be consistent with whatever frequency you choose than to blog every day one week and then not again for several weeks.  By consistently adding content to your website or blog you are, in essence, training the search engines to visit your website more regularly.  This means you will have more chances to show up on page 1!

4. Calls to Action

   Serving up great content is a wonderful public service, but it won’t make you any richer if you forget to call visitors to take action.  Make sure you include a button or text link asking them to do something specific that will enter them into your marketing mix.

   A simply information download is often enough to entice visitors to provide their email address to you, giving you permission to send them more valuable information in the future.

5. Distribute & Promote

Search engines will find your content and you will get traffic as a result but this could be a very slow process.  Be sure to share your content throughout your social networks and even send a weekly (or so) summary email out to your subscribers to let them know about all the amazing new content you have created for them.

When hiring a company to help with your business graphic design or web design you should carefully consider your objectives so that you can ensure to contract the right type of company or individual that will help you accomplish your goals.  Here are three important questions to ask when you are choosing who to hire for your graphic design or web design project.

 1. Does this company’s graphic design portfolio impress me?

I run a web design and internet marketing business near Toronto.  One thing we are very transparent about on our website is our own web design portfolio.  We display it with pride because it is an opportunity to showcase our work to potential clients online.  To be honest, some of the designs in our opinion are not excellent, but we show them anyway because it is a real representation of all the work we have done, not just the best of our work.

A design firm, whether it is a graphic design or web design firm is somewhat limited to the clients’ own tastes, interests and desires when it comes to the look and feel of their website or their company branding.  Sometimes we are required to design things that are not our very best work because it is what pleases the person paying for it.  I’m positive this is the case with most design firms.

But when you review the entire portfolio and assess it as an entire indication of the type of work the company is capable of, does it impress you?  Would you say that at least 2/3 of the design work would meet your personal standards for graphic or web design?

2. Do they seem to specialize more in graphic design or web design?

In any industry, there are those who specialize and those who try to be the “Jack of all trades”.  The lines between graphic design and web design are fairly blurred, particularly to someone who doesn’t really know the difference.  Most graphic designers are very highly skilled at brand development and bringing the various pieces of a business graphic marketing together for consistency.

The challenge is that many graphic designers are not very technical and therefore they don’t always know how to build a website that is technically sound or that is setup to be found properly for important keywords on search engines, or the process known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Often times, graphic designers will outsource the web development and search engine optimization to other organizations that they partner with.  This can be a viable solution for your business but it is worthwhile to ask the questions up front so you know that the company you are hiring is not actually doing all the work relating to your project.  In some instances this is not the idea situation for you.

Similarly, many web designers are too technical.  These individuals tend to focus too heavily on the code and search engine optimization aspects of the project and they will often choose simple templates for web design or they will create websites that are not visually appealing to your audience.

There should be a balance between the visual design components of your website and the technology that is used to ensure it works properly and can get you a healthy amount of traffic.

3. Is their expertise mainly in design or do they help track lead generation?

What are your goals for this project?  Are you more interested in simply having a placeholder on the internet, like an online brochure?  If so, then hiring a graphic design firm will likely fill your needs just fine.  Brochure sites are fairly easy to build using simple HTML software like DreamWeaver or even content management systems like WordPress. It is not very difficult for a novice to navigate their way around and produce a decent looking website.

But when it comes to achieving real business goals like driving highly qualified traffic to your website and converting those visitors into good sales leads or opportunities there is more involved than just a simple online brochure.

Be sure to ask the graphic design or web design firm you are considering to hire if they have experience in SEO and other Search Engine Marketing.  Ask them to show you examples of websites that they have successfully driven lots of qualified traffic to.

And keep in mind that online an online brochure, a website that is intended for lead generation much include the appropriate conversion architecture.  Ultimately that is what will generate a good return on investment for your business.

Image by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentbolli/

This article was originally created by WSI Milton

SEO as a process is not difficult.  Depending on how competitive your industry is in fact, I believe that most business owners with very little technical know-how can do their own SEO and generate more leads from Internet Marketing.  You do need to have a website with a Content Management System such as WordPress or Joomla and several others.

The SEO Pyramid

I’m not physics major but I think a rule of physics is that any structure must have a strong foundation if it is going to last.  If you are a physics major and you are reading this, please comment below if I am wrong about that assumption.

Step 1: Rich, Accessible Content

Regardless, in the SEO world for the purpose of lead generation techniques, you do need a strong base and then you can build upon that base to achieve optimal SEO results.  The essential foundation in SEO is to create several pages of unique, well written content.  Each page should only target one keyword phrase.

How you structure your content is also important.  You need to be linking the pages properly amongst each other, using the appropriate keyword anchor text, embedding the keywords into your URL structure, ensuring that you are using the correct .txt files for Bot accessibility and using sitemaps accordingly on the website.

OK I said it is “not difficult”.  I didn’t’ say it is “easy”.

Step 2: Choosing the Right Keywords

Every industry has it’s buzzwords.  For example, in our business we work with a lot of landscapers and in their world they generally use words like “hardscaping” and “softscaping”.  These are common terms within their own four walls so to speak but for the layman homeowner who may be searching Google for a landscaping service, it is much more common for them to say “front yard landscaping” or “backyard landscaping” in their search query than “hardscaping” or “softscaping”.

So the goal is to brainstorm keywords. Use keyword selection tools like the Google Keyword Tool or other keyword research tools to identify search terms that have a high volume of searches and a low amount of competition.

Once you have identified the best terms to use, you simply embed them into your web pages.  Remember, only focus on one keyword per page. Trying to target several keywords on a page is considered “keyword stuffing” and will get you penalized by Google.

Proper SEO for on-page targeting is to include your keyword phrase in the Title, Meta Description, Meta Keywords, H1 Tag, within the text itself and in the anchor text on other pages leading to this page.

One word of caution for on-page SEO is not to overuse the target keyword phrase as this will also get you penalized.  When you read the text it should sound like a human is talking and not a robot repeating the same phrase over and over again.

Step 3: Build Links Back to Your Pages

This is where SEO starts to get very tedious and time consuming.  You have to manually send link requests to tens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of reputable online resources requesting them to post a link back to your web page.

There are tons of methods of getting links.  These include local listings, search engine submissions, social bookmarking, directory submissions, deep link directory submissions, classified ads, social bookmarking. blog commenting, RSS feed submissions, article submissions, web 2.0 backlinks, Yahoo Answers submissions, Writing blog posts, Google Places and more.

Step 4: Social Media

Many business owners try to start with social media.  This is a mistake if you are really trying to drive lead generation for your business.  Sure, it will eventually create some word of mouth referrals but it is a slow process and should not be placed before On-Page and Off-Page SEO.  Once the other pieces are in place however, this is the icing on the cake.  Go out there and engage the audience you have created with your SEO lead generation techniques.

This article was originally posted by WSI Milton

Telemarketing and direct mail marketing used to be a preferred method for lead generation tactics, however these methods in today’s technologically savvy business landscape simply do not provide the results they once did.   The traditional lead generation strategy was to send a direct mail piece with an offer or other specific all to action.  Then follow up with another mailing and telephone calls to create interest and book appointments or gain the person’s email and other contact details so that they can further be marketed to.  This method of marketing can be referred to as “push marketing” or “outbound marketing”.

We have all be overexposed to marketing noise and these push marketing tactics are generally ignored unless there is a very specific immediate need for the service being offered.  And telemarketing calls are becoming more of a challenge with new no-call lists and telemarketing guidelines.  This is not to mention the fact that business people and consumers have been so inundated for years with telemarketing calls that they do everything possible to never speak with telemarketers.

3 Concepts Lead Generation Companies don’t want you to Know About

1. Lead generation companies get paid to lie 

Before I tick off a lot of business professionals, hold on a second.  I’m not calling all lead generation companies liars.  But I am saying that when you hire them to generate leads for your business, that is exactly what they will do.  It has been my personal experience and the experience of many clients and professionals I have worked with that a lead generator is only concerned with getting your foot in the door and often they will say almost anything to accomplish that goal.

The end result may be an appointment generated or a new subscriber to your drip-marketing list, however it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have an individual that is genuinely interested in the product or service you have to sell.

2. Buyers do their research on search engines

Quick research provides that 86% of consumers report that search engines are very important in their buying process.  And at least half of consumers use a combination of search and social media to assist in their purchasing decisions.

This information proves that consumers are no longer interested in your outbound marketing tactics.  When they are ready to buy they know exactly where to look for it.  Regardless of whether your business is selling B2B or B2C, the most successful lead generation tactics will begin with ensuring your business can be found on search engines.

3. The most successful lead generation starts with increasing your website traffic

According to Market Samurai, the number 1 website in the organic search results of Goolge will generate 42% of the available clicks for the page.   And the lower down the page you go the fewer clicks you will get.  Being anywhere besides page 1 means you will generally get no traffic at all.

The tried and tested, guaranteed method of increasing your website traffic is search engine optimization.  It does however take time and effort to effectively optimize a website to appear on the first page of the search engine results and there are no guarantees that you will rank for highly competitive keywords; at least not right away.  But with long-term sustained SEO efforts, even the most competitive keyword phrases are not impossible to get good results for.

Another method of generating traffic to your website that will provide immediate results for most businesses is Pay Per Click marketing.  This is the only sure way to gain a quick first page ranking for your target keywords on Google.  And you only pay if the person searching actually clicks on your ad.

A word of caution, if you want to manage your click costs and maximize your results, you should consider hiring a  PPC Management service.

How will more web traffic help your lead generation efforts?

This strategy of capturing people when they are searching for information on a particular topic and bringing them to your website is known as “inbound marketing”.  You are bringing interested patrons right to your doorstep via search engines and all you need to do is give them what they are looking for in order to generate more leads.  For more on how this method works, download our free checklist, 10 Steps to Capturing Better Sales Leads.

If you’re like most business owners I talk to, you are most interested in generating more leads for your business that are ready to purchase from you right away.

But what you may be missing is that most of the visitors who might find your website are actually in the early stages of their buying process.  This means that they are actually doing research and they may not be quite ready to “buy now” or “request a consultation” or even try a “free trial”.

Asking someone who is just poking around, doing research to do any of those big commitment conversions at this early stage is just like asking someone to marry you on the first date.  I don’t know about you but if someone asks me to marry them on the first date, I’m out of there!  And you can be it will be the last date.

So how can you capture leads online and get them into your sales process so you can nurture a relationship with them and eventually have them buy from you and become a paying customer?

Here are 4 Simple Steps to Online Lead Generation

1. Ask for their name first

Someone who just arrived on your website or an article of your blog was likely searching for some keyword phrase on Google and because you have done a great job with Search Engine Optimization on your website.  Industries vary but depending on the dollar value of your average order most first time visitors are doing research to help them make the best decision for their needs.

A good example would be online lead generation for a home improvement company or a landscaping business.  A typical order size for these types of businesses is $30,000 up to over $100,000.  Home owners need to do their homework when making this kind of investment.  So on their first visit to your website, rather than asking them to immediately request a design consultation, why not offer them a free guide, checklist or list that will help them in evaluating companies during their process?

Most home owners would think that would be a valuable thing to have and would be more than willing to give you their name and email address to receive it.

2. Communicate with them

Once you have their name and email address, why not start some conversations with them?  Email marketing is a beautiful tool when used properly.  I’m not talking about spamming anyone.  They have given you permission to send them more information when they gave you their email address, so do so.

3. Make deposits in their value vault

What you send them is vitally important.  You don’t want to harass them with offers or continuous requests to “buy now” or “book a consultation”.  You want to provide them more valuable resources to help them through their decision making process.

This is where you need to get creative. Write a white paper, create a guide book, a free demonstration etc;  something valuable that relates to your business and that you think would help them make a great decision.

You have to cater the information to various stages they may be at in the buying process.  You should have several pieces of information to provide depending on where they are at and segment your email list according to the stage they are at.  You could use software to help you better track who is engaging with what pieces of information so you know exactly where in the sales process they are at and you can target different people based on how close they are to actually making a decision.

4. Live up to the hype

All the valuable information that has helped them make their decision has come from you!    You are therefore perceived as the expert in your industry.  So who do you think they are going to invite to the table when it is time to make a decision?  Sure they may also evaluate some others but your credibility will be through the roof in comparison.

You need to make sure to deliver what you sold them on.  Now it’s time to let your expertise shine so they will tell all their friends through social media.

This blog was originally posted by WSI Milton

Traditional marketing for home improvement and landscaping companies has historically been a question of being found at the right time, at the moment when buyers were ready to invest into their new kitchen or bath renovation project or landscaping project.  If you were fortunate enough to land your flyer or newspaper ad in the buyers hand at the moment they were ready, you had a good chance at being invited in to quote on the job.

Yellow pages used to be a viable answer for landscapers and home improvement companies.  Buyers could simply flip through the big yellow book and find the services they needed and invite 2 or 3, maybe more companies to the table to negotiate the best deal.  In recent years, Internet Marketing has overtaken the yellow pages as a preferred venue for marketing since most buyers today will spend their time searching and socializing online.

The challenge that home improvement and landscaping business owners face is that apart from a great looking website and portfolio and perhaps some good references, nothing really sets you apart from your competitors.  Heck if they are on the ball, they probably have a great looking website and portfolio and some good references as well!  So at the end of the day, the only thing that actually sets you apart is your price.

How do you feel going into a sales call that is not a direct referral, knowing that the buyer is evaluating you against a handful of competitors and the only thing that they will be basing their decision on is the price.  OK, good salespeople will build relationships and bond with the buyers and all that and perhaps you will get the business because the buyer actually likes you more than the others, but what if your sales job could be much easier and less or perhaps not even at all based on price?

3 Simple Steps to an Inbound Marketing System

Step 1: The Bait

Home owners who are considering a big investment in a kitchen or bath renovation project or a landscaping design and build project for their property won’t usually make the decision quickly or easily.  They will do research.  And they will do that research on the internet.

So the first thing you need to do is create content to put on the internet that will help them during their research phase.  Answer the common questions buyers ask.  Give some buyers tips or suggestions of what to ask when evaluating the vendors.  Provide useful, value-add information and ensure you use search engine optimization techniques to ensure it is found on Google!

Step 2: The Hook

Just bringing visitors to your lovely content and giving them free information does nothing to help you grow your business, unless as I said earlier they are in the immediate buying stage.  If that’s the case, let the buyer-seller dance begin and be prepared to offer a lower price than you want to.

What you need to do here is give them an offer they can’t refuse!  You need to create a checklist, step by step guide, whitepaper or some other really valuable offer that you will offer to them absolutely free and embed that offer into your amazing content page that drew them into your website.

Step 3: The Catch

Absolutely free, yes but there is a little more to it.  They need to be kind enough to provide their contact information, at least their name and email address in exchange for the information.  No, you aren’t going to start spamming them or harassing them to buy now and you need to let them know that.

The point of capturing their contact information is to start building a database of interested prospects that you can then nurture by sending them other information to help further their research and decision making process until they either become a customer or disqualify themselves.

The beauty of Inbound Marketing is that once your prospect is at the point of making their decision, you will have positioned yourself as the obvious choice since you were the source of much of their research materials.  And suddenly the conversation will become a lot less about price and a lot more about when you can start and when it will be finished.



This article was originally posted on the WSI Milton Blog.

Well, I guess the short answer is yes, content marketing is the evolution of social media marketing.  I think that social media marketing in it’s infancy involved a lot of marketers spinning their wheels, trying to figure out how to monetize this new world where everyone seems to be engaging in an entirely new and different digital fashion. It isn’t really new, it has been happening all along but it may have been disguised, or perhaps it hadn’t fully blossomed into what it has become today.

Today, content marketing is the creation of a piece of content that is so good that others will love it, comment on it, and share it.   I say this is an evolution of social media marketing because in the early days of social it was about connecting and chatting with friends, family and colleagues while marketers were essentially standing around in the crowd trying to be noticed.   Perhaps they were eavesdropping on conversations and injecting their two cents where relevant, whether it was welcome or not.  But the biggest struggle marketers were having within the social media world was how to create the conversations.

3 Content Marketing Strategies You Can Implement Immediately

1. Blogging

Do you have a WordPress Blog?  It’s easy to set one up and there are lots of design templates to choose from.  WordPress is a very powerful blogging tool, in my opinion the best.  I’m sure many would agree.  Not only is it a blog but you can build your entire website in WordPress and there are tons of available plug-ins for certain functionality.

Joomla websites also have a blog plug-in and Joomla release 2.5 enables WordPress integration so you can have the best of both worlds.  If you don’t know how to setup a blog or need help with custom design and integration with your existing website, I suggest consulting with a professional Internet Marketing Company.

Blogging is about sharing information that your target audience wants to learn about.  The more engaging and honest your content is the more your audience will love it and share it with their friends.  You have an opportunity through your blog to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry.

Search Engine Optimization is another important reason to blog.  If you haven’t heard, search engines like Google love text content.  It’s how your website or blog gets found!  So make sure to include lots of written content and use your keywords in the title, description, headings and in the body content.  For more on how to do SEO for your blog, check out http://blog.yourwsiadvantage.com/simple-seo-advice-from-the-smartest-guy-in-canada/.

After you create excellent content on your blog, you need to make sure to spread the word by tweeting on Twitter, sharing on Facebook and LinkedIn etc.

2. Pictures

Most people are visuals.  Pictures are a great way to engage people visually. You should use pictures in your blog content and share pictures though your Facebook Page, Pinterest and Instagram.  You can add captions to your pictures to make them funnier which is more apt to get comments and shares than just a plain boring picture.

With your smartphone, you should always have a camera on you. Take pictures of your business in action.  Take pictures of happy customers, busy staff, or your finished product. These are the types of images that your audience will love and share.  You can download the Instagram app for your iPhone to add cool effects to your images.

3: Viral Video

I happen to be a fairly regular Facebook user (along with about 1 billion of my closest friends).  Maybe a little more regular than some since it is part of my business and a pretty good social outlet for busy people.  Anyway, the other day a friend shared a video that was posted on YouTube October 7, 2012.  That’s just one week prior to my writing this post.  So far, in 7 days the video has been viewed by over 11.25 million people.

College Football is huge in the US, probably bigger than the NFL.  When the Ohio State University Marching Band took the field for half time, every single person was in their seat.  To be honest I have no idea if the person who took this video was planted there or not but I assume his perfect center field position and the post of this particular video was no accident.

Not only was this one of the best half time shows ever but it held an online audience captive for nearly 10 full minutes, which is rare to say the least.  I watched every second of it and I hope that you just did also because it’s quite amazing right to the very end.

The point being here that online video is one of the most engaging ways to create content and it doesn’t have to be expensive.  You just need to come up with some great ideas and give it a try.  Not every video goes viral, of course, but if you are ever fortunate enough to have one go viral it is like striking oil.

Most of the businesses my WSI Internet Marketing business works with don’t have enough time in the day to run their businesses and spend the time it takes to create valuable blogs, pictures and videos for their content marketing strategies.  If that sounds like you, perhaps you should contact us for some help.

This article was originally posted on the WSI Milton Blog.

Mat is a also a pastor at our Church in Milton, The Village Community Church.  Cliche as it may seem, he is as honest as they come, which I’m sure is a common characteristic among mortgage brokers, not just the ones who moonlight as a pastor.

The point here being that reverse mortgages are not always the right option for everyone so Mat will guide the home owners in the direction that makes the most sense for their equity situation and their individual financial needs.  Often times refinancing the mortgage makes sense and other times a line of credit is a better option.

So why am I writing about Milton mortgage brokers, and what does it have to do with Internet Marketing or lead generation?  Mortgage professionals, especially the individual ones that don’t work for the large banks or companies with deep pockets are faced with a huge amount of competition in the online space when it comes to lead generation.  So what can one do?

Lead Generation for Mortgage Brokers in 3 Simple Steps

Step 1: Pay Per Click (PPC)

As I pointed out in my recent blog post, there are over 1 billion searches conducted on Google each day and only 6% of those searches result in a click on a PPC ad!  Clearly Pay Per Click doesn’t work!  That means that on Google, paid search ads only get clicked on about 60 million times per day.  How can they possibly turn a profit with that?

Seriously, that’s an insane number of clicks on PPC ads every day!  This is where Google makes upwards of 90% of their gross revenue from.  So even though it’s much more common for people to click on the free links, the organic search results, there is a still quite a lot of attention going to the pay per click ads.

Bidding for keywords like “mortgages” or “home financing” on Pay Per Click is a very expensive proposition.  And on a limited budget it is likely not the best alternative.  It does make sense to hire a professional company that provides pay per click management services.  Sure you can try it on your own first if you want, but be prepared to spend more than you should  on clicks and getting poor results.  It’s kind of like the last time you tried to do a brake job on your car.

In our experience, with our reverse mortgage website we have had our most success with Pay Per Click and since I am personally financing the marketing side of our little side business I am not sharing this information with you only as the expert but also the one footing the bill.  In our first year of operation we have closed 20 mortgage deals and only 8 of them were actually reverse mortgages.  Not quite setting the world on fire yet but it is making decent progress.

Step 2: Local Search Optimization

Most mortgage brokers I know (yes there are quite a few) tend to do the majority of their mortgage business in their own home town.  Such is the case with Mat as a Mortgage Edge Broker.  So the first thing you should do is register your local listing on all the local search engine directories.

Start with your Google+ Page (formerly Google Places) since this one will get you the most traffic.  Make sure you complete all the information for the best results and do keyword research so that you optimize it for keywords that will actually help you get more leads and make more money and not ones that will just satisfy your ego.

Then register will all the other FREE local directories,  Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, etc.  I generally say not to pay for local directory listings!  It is not worth the investment and won’t get you results.  Again I generally say that.  Use your discretion and if it’s a really good deal that seems too good to be true, it is.  Just walk away.  Yellow pages in my opinion is not a worthwhile investment for online advertising.  Again, use your discretion and when in doubt, hire a professional to help you make wise decisions for online marketing.

Step 3: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Yes, I did intentionally separate SEO from Local Search Optimization.  If you search on Google (.ca) for “mortgage broker” you get over 40 billion listings.  How easy is it to get on page 1 for that?  But if you search “mortgage broker milton” you have only just over 1 millon to compete with.  Much easier to get to page 1!  For more on that read my blog post Simple SEO Advice from the Smartest Guy in Canada.

Notice that our little Reverse Mortgage project doesn’t come up on the first page!  We have gotten the results we have so far using only PPC.  Step 2 and 3 of this article are under way.  I will have to blog again once we start getting some traction and let you know how it’s going.  This very article you just read is our first piece heading in that direction.

If you got to this page hoping for help from a Mortgage Broker I invite you to….

In a recent article, Hubspot provides A Crystal Clear Exlplantion of How Social Media Influences SEO.

The Magic Organic SEO Formula

Simply stated, search engines’ (aka Google) algorithm for determining your website ranking evaluated the quality of your website based on 2 things: relevancy and authority.  Let’s break this down.

Relevancy is how well matched your website content is to the keywords you are hoping to rank well for.  In other words, to appear in the organic search results your keyword or phrase should appear sporadically in the content and be included in your Title, Headings and Sub-Headings.

Authority is related to popularity, or how many inbound links do you have and the importance or authority of the link source is also a big factor.  Link building is an important aspect of any proper SEO Strategy.

Until the last year or so, those two things were all you needed to be successful on the organic search engine results pages (SERPs).  But recently the new kid has taken on a much bigger role in SEO.  Now we need to add influence into our search engine optimization toolkit.

The role of Influence in SEO

With all the recent changes to Google’s organic search engine ranking algorithm, including the major Panda release and its 20 subsequent updates, social context has become a more integral part of how search engines determine their SERPs.  Google is calling this an increase in the importance of ‘social signals’.

3 Power Players to Integrate with your Social Search Strategy

1.  Google Plus Your World

It’s not so easy to keep in ignoring Google as a Social Media player.  With the release of Search, Plus Your World, Google now gives preference in their SERPs to content that has been shared or received a +1.  So the first step in achieving better organic search results is to learn and start using Google+ for your business.

2: Bing

Our world is often so focused on Google that we forget they aren’t actually alone in the organic search results game.  In fact, Bing has been gaining ground lately.  Who knows if eventually Bing will catch up or not but regardless they are a serious player and they aren’t gong anywhere any time soon.  With the new version of its search engine, Bing has begun integrating a searcher’s social network into the results displayed for their search term.

Check out this promo video that shows their new social search features.

Bing also recently announced a strategic partnership with Klout, which is a service that calculates an individual’s social influence score.  Now, individuals who have a higher clout score will show up more frequently for particular search phrases.

3. Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg has been hinting for quite some time toward their interest in operating more as a social search engine than simply a social network.  According to Zuckerberg, Facebook handles close to 1 billion search queries per day.  Most often these are people searching for other people they know.

This is certainly something to keep an eye on as Facebook evolves in the coming months and years.

This article was originally posted on the WSI Milton Blog.

Today I was listening in on a WSI Webinar put on by our Toronto Home Office.  The presenter was Krista LaRiviere of gShift Labs, which is one of the suppliers in the WSI Global eMarketplace.  Krista’s topic was The Power of 3: Content Marketing + SEO + Social Media.

Here are some noteworthy points that Krista made:

• There are over 1 billion searches per day on Google
• 94% of searchers click on SEO (left side) links while only 6% click on PPC (right side) links
• SEO is the #1 converting marketing tactic, boasting higher conversion rates than both PPC and email marketing

The noteworthy thing about these points is that although Google makes the majority of it’s revenue from PPC or “Paid Search Marketing”, the paid ads get clicked on far less often than do organic links and marketers, in general are spending far more for PPC than they are for SEO or “Organic Search Engine Optimization”.   So the majority of marketing budgets are going toward only 6% of the available audience.

Krista also talked extensively about how strong Google’s play in the whole SEO/Social Media game is.  What is it that makes Google the #1 search engine?  Relevance!  Google’s ranking algorithm’s whole purpose is to calculate which websites are the most relevant for a given search term or phrase.  And they are constantly changing little bits and pieces to ensure they are always providing relevance.  In fact, Google’s Matt Cutts himself shared that they make algorithmic changes 1-2 times every day.  And every few weeks or so they make bigger changes that often impact large percentages of websites, maybe even yours.

Internet Marketing Strategies Your Business is Missing

I don’t want to overgeneralize as some of you reading this may be doing some of these things already, but I would suggest that using this formula would enhance whatever your current results are and insulate you from, if not eliminate any future possibility of being impacted by Google’s ongoing algorithm updates.

1: Create Content that People will Love!

I often hear from clients or prospective clients that they don’t want a lot of content on their website because it’s all cluttered and no-one wants to read content anyway.  My WSI Internet MarketingFranchise works with a lot of landscapers and home remodeling businesses in southern Ontario.  These businesses are very much design focused and how things look are very important to them.  So it makes sense that visual aspects of their website design are more important to them than content.

Here’s something to think about though.  If you went to a website searching for landscaping  design where you may invest anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 or even more to have a professional landscape design and installation, do you think that you would be comfortable making that investment with lots of great pictures and very little written content?  Of course not!

I’m not suggesting that the content on your website is going to close the sale but it is the beginning of your sales process in most cases.  Your content is what tells the visitor how you work with clients, what they can expect, the process, etc.  All the credibility of what you are offering is conveyed though your content.

If you had a heart condition and went searching for remedies online you aren’t going to get much out of beautiful pictures of healthy hearts.  There has to be good content on how to get a healthy heart.

Don’t forget, content isn’t just the written words.  In fact the images on your website are a form of content.  And like any content, those pictures can be pinned, shared and tweeted on social networks.  More on that later.

Other non-written content could be video content.  Videos can be created by having expensive production and editing crews involved or much more cost effectively,  by simply filming with your portable camera or smartphone.  You can even create video from still images with a bit of panning effect, some captions and a bit of music.  You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to make compelling video content.

2. Search Engine Optimize all your Content

It’s all too common for content marketers to write up a great piece of content and forget that one of the primary reasons to blog is that it’s first and formost an internet marketing strategy and when done right, that content will be picked up by Google for your target keywords.   Don’t worry about getting too fancy with your keyword density or more advanced SEO strategies.  You should simply do some research to identify keywords to target for your blogging or content marketing strategy and ensure you include that keyword in the title of your blog or article.  Use the keyword a few times in the body of your article and then if possible include it in your SEO Title tag and mention it again in the description if you can do so naturally for the reader.

Remember that all these Google algorithm changes are intended to cut out SEO magic.  So if you are doing things in your content to trick the search engines or that will not seem natural to the reader, the chances are it won’t last.

Don’t for get to optimize your pictures and videos for search engines!  YouTube is a huge search engine in its own right and well optimized videos will also show up directly in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) so make sure you are writing good descriptions including your target keywords.  And use alt tags on your images to ensure they are being found in Google Image searches.

3.  Spread the Word with Social Media

A while back in an article I wrote about how to improve your search engine ranking using social media and in also my article Simple SEO Advice from the Smartest Guy in Canada, I point out the importance of back links in SEO.  Part of a healthy SEO strategy is to request links from other reputable websites, directories, portals, blogs and so on so that you can boost your link popularity.

Sounds like high school  but the more votes or links you have the more popular you are which influences Google’s SERPs.  And the credibility or reputation of the source of that link is also very important.  With Google’s recent Panda & Penguin updates, low quality links were a main target.

What is the best way to get pure, highly valued links?  Social media!  Share great content with people and if it really is great, they will also share it!  Let’s face it, your biggest content marketing dream is to create some article, video or picture that gets spread all over the world and goes viral. So spread the word!

Your beautiful gallery of work should be pinned. Cool pictures can also be shared on Facebook and Twitter or with Instagram.  Blogs or articles should be distributed through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.  In fact you can generate several tweets from just one article in most cases.  Don’t do it all at once, spread it out and keep the Twitter love flowing.  The lifespan of a tweet is only 20 minutes or so.

4. Measure What Works

Doing content marketing and getting lots of traffic to your website to read and engage with you is not really the end goal.  In business there needs to be a good return on investment to make all that time, energy and perhaps financial investment worthwhile.

Ensure you are tracking what’s working.  How are visitors finding you?  What aspects of your internet marketing strategy is working and where can you tweak to improve the results?  There are lots of resources available to help you measure the results.  Google Analytics is a great place to start.  Other lead nurturing systems such as HubSpot have fantastic metrics embedded in their software.

These 4 internet marketing strategies used correctly and in combination are the only sure-fire way to ensure long term sustained website traffic growth and lead generation to increase your profits in the long run.  For more information about implementing these strategies in your business, contact WSI Milton today.

This article was originally posted on the WSI Milton Blog.

I’m taking some time this Thanksgiving weekend to catch up on some reading that I’ve been lagging on for a while.

There is a really interesting story in “Return on Influence” by Mark W. Schaefer that I thought would be worth sharing.

One well known, influential blogger named Robert Scoble blogged about a user generated Q&A site similar to Wikipedia in that the content is entirely user generated, known as Quora.

The popularity of the site was growing fairly steadily for its first year of existence and then suddenly between Dec 26, 2010 and Jan 30, 2011 it experienced a 400 percent traffic increase with skyrocketing account registrations and servers being pushed to capacity.

The blog post that sparked this growth was titled “Is Quora the Biggest Blogging Innovation in 10 Years?”.Then at the peak of the sites popularity, Scoble changed his mind and blogged again with “Why I Was Wrong about Quora as a Blogging Service…”

This subsequent blog post caused Quora traffic to plummet by more than 50 percent, almost down to levels prior to the original post that sent the website traffic sparking.

This story makes me think more seriously about the power of influence. Many of the businesses that myWSI Digital Marketing franchise services are related to home improvement in one fashion or another. We service many landscaping and lawn care businesses and also companies that sell landscaping supplies. We also have a number of clients who sell windows and doors, carpeting and flooring, window fashions, home and kitchen remodeling etc.

Often our clients say they don’t understand why they should be thinking about or bother spending their time with social media. I think this example of Scoble and Quora is an excellent representation of why every business should be involved with social media or at the very least paying attention to it.

Word of mouth is everywhere. Home improvement companies will all say it is the best form of marketing. Did you ever think of how influential your own customers might be? Imagine if just one highly influential person blogged or tweeted about how awesome you are. What if lots of influential people did that? Do you think that could have a positive impact on your revenue?

Now imagine if someone with the same influential power is upset for some reason about your business or the service you provided and blogged or tweeted that. What impact might that have on your revenue?

The bottom line is that there are lots of influential people that are probably talking about your business in one way or another in their social channels. You have the option of ignoring the conversations, participating in the conversations or starting the conversations. Which option do you think might have the best impact on your bottom line?

This blog post was originally posted on Your WSI Advantage.

In my blog post the other day which included simple SEO advice for landscapers and home improvement companies, or any business that needs more traffic for lead generation, I discussed strategies and techniques for being found on the search engines for important keywords.

The challenge is that if your website does a poor job of quickly communicating what you do, how it will solve a particular problem the visitor may have and what action they should take next to engage with your company, then the time, energy and potential money you invested in bringing them there in the first place is a complete waste.

The goal of your website should be to fulfill the personal reason for a visitor coming to your site. The challenge is that there could be a variety of different people visiting for a variety of different reasons.  How can you address them all?

If you can successfully profile your visitors personas, clearly communicate that you have the answer or solution that they need at that particular moment, then you are on track to building a long lasting, loving relationship with people who will sooner or later become your customers.

Steps to Converting Website Visitors into Qualified Sales Leads

Step 1: Visitor Profiling

Landscaping website with clearly defined visitor persona funnels

Most businesses can identify 3 or more different types of customers who would normally hire them.  For example, a landscaping company night typically work with home owners in need of landscaping for their front or backyard and they may have particular services such as pool and patio installation, garden design & construction, waterfalls or natural stonework, paving for walkways or driveways, general lawn and garden maintenance and snow removal.

These are three very unique types of individuals who may be visiting your website.  You can’t communicate the same with each one of them or you will lose their interest very quickly.

Your website home page needs to clearly and visually call out to those three personas so that they will immediately recognize that they are in the right place and know instantly where they need to go to find more information pertinent to them.

Yes, there is a menu on your website and yes, people can click and poke around until they find that information but did you know that about 65% of people are visual learners?  That means that within less than one second of landing on your website visitors should see that they arrived in the right place and why they should stay, even before they read a single word.

Step 2: Feed them well

Here’s a surprise, not every visitor to your website will get there via the home page.  In fact, if you are doing a good job of search engine optimization, many of your visitors will land on an internal page of your website.  However they got to these inside pages, whether it’s via following the funnels from your home page or finding that page from a specific keyword search on Google, they need more than a few pretty pictures and some bullet points to earn their interest.

The idea is to create rich, valuable content that will entice them to keep reading.  If you just read that line of this article, then you should understand what I mean.   You are some 700 words into this text and it has captured your interest enough to continue reading.  You need to do the same with your visitors.

Step 3: Spill some candy

Many first time website visitors are searching for free information like “how to” whatever or “do it yourself” something, or perhaps “front yard landscaping ideas“.  You need to fill these visitors up with information to satisfy their needs.

It’s not unusual to think that giving away your ideas is counter-intuitive to getting more sales leads and growing your revenue.  However, by giving some good ideas and painting a mental picture in the visitors’ psyche you are positioning yourself as a thought leader since you are the source of this information.

Step 4: Give them some value

Now you’ve got a targeted audience on your website reading your valuable content.  What’s next?  Chances are someone looking for “ideas” is not at the pinnacle of their buying cycle.  In fact, they are probably at the beginning stages.  What better time to introduce yourself and entice them with some value?

This is where the inbound marketing process begins.  First you need to create a white paper, e-book, 10 step guide or something of equal value that will entice the reader to opt-in to your lead nurturing/email marketing database.  Perhaps it’s a 10 step guide to selecting a reputable landscaping service, or a white paper on How to avoid a landscaping contractor nightmare, or even an e-book about Planting a beautiful garden that will last a lifetime.  I think you get my drift.  (These valuable content pieces can be quite the task to create, so consider a professional copywriting service.)

But don’t simply put the document PDF in open view for any visitor to download.  It’s the bait!  The hook is that when they click on the call to action that invites them to download the document they go to a landing page that gives them a list of all the features advantages and benefits that they will get by having the document.

The catch is that in order to download it they have to provide you with their name and email address, maybe even their phone number and any other important information that would help you to categorize them based on their interest, budget, age group, needs, or any other type of valuable information you would like to have on a prospect.

Step 5: Nurture them

Once you have begun gathering a list of potential customers who have expressed an interest in your product or service and given you their contact information in exchange for something valuable, you need to build a trusting relationship with them.  Using email marketing and other lead nurturing software you will be able to continue providing more valuable information to assist them in their buying process.

If they decide to unsubscribe, that’s OK.   They have disqualified themselves and saved you a lot of wasted time, energy and money trying to sell to them.  One sure thing that has been proven time and time again however is that people buy from those they like and trust.  And one sure way to build trust is to give valuable information when it is needed.

image by glaak
http://www.flickr.com/photos/keso/108805307/

Did that title get your attention?  I’m not the smartest guy in Canada but for the past 3 plus years Google has had me ranked #1 for that search phrase.  When I did that in July  of 2009 it was a neat little gimmick to first, see how fast I could get to page 1 and then top spot and second to show people how easy it can be to rank for long tail search phrases with low competition.

Long Tail Search Phrases

Did that just make you say “what”?  Let me explain.  If you search on Google for “landscaping”,  the search engine algorithm (a long, ever-changing equation that calculates over 200 minute factors on every website page to determine search engine results) searches through its database of billions of web pages and delivers up the top 167 Million of them that relate to the search phrase “landscaping”.

But then if you search for “front yard landscaping” the competition is narrowed down to just over 4.7 Million results.  And then when you add the word “ideas” to the end of that, you are down to just 1.25 Million competitors.

Coincidentally our client Cedargate Landscaping comes up in position 5 in the organic search ranking for that phrase but also in position 3 for the short tail search phrase “landscaping”.  The point being, that it is easier to rank high for a phrase that includes three or more words in the search query and once you gain a high position for the less competitive phrases you can turn your focus onto the more competitive ones.

So the phrases of three or more words are the long tail search phrases.  To gain quick ranking in the search engine results, going after the long tail first is the key.  By doing proper keyword research to identify long tail phrases with low competition and relatively high search volume, you can be assured quick positioning at the top of search engines as long as you use the right strategies and best practices.  More on that later.

My example of  the Smartest Guy in Canada is a great example of a long tail phrase with low competition, but actually very low search volume.  It was fairly easy for me to rank well for that term and it has taken a bit of effort to maintain since we did have someone try to compete for the top spotbut they gave up after a year.

Content is King (yawn), Content is Jedi Master Yoda!

The term “content is king” has been thrown around so much that it has become like white noise.  I don’t think it has the same impact that it once did.  So think of content as Jedi Master Yoda, the most powerful Jedi in the whole galaxy!

However you think of it, well written keyword focused content is critical to your SEO success.  Once you have identified the long tail keyword phrase you want to target for that page you need to sit down and start writing or hire an SEO copywriter to help create powerful content.

Good content is not about you.  You need to focus on your visitor.  What problem do they have that would cause them to search for that phrase.  In my landscaping example above, the best long tail phrase in terms of lowest competition and high search volume is “front yard landscaping ideas”.   So the content on the page should not be focused on landscape design, or landscape architecture or anything other than front yard landscape ideas.

Writing great content is not as easy as you might expect, or perhaps you are well aware of how challenging it can be.  My recommendation would be to hire an experienced SEO copywriter who can put your thoughts and expertise into content worthy of a Jedi Master.

Are people searching for ideas in the early or later stages of their buying process?  Probably early, so it’s a good time to give them something of value in exchange for their email address and start nurturing a relationship with them.  More on that in a future blog post.  Be sure to subscribe to my blog.

Back-Links are The Force

A Jedi is nothing but a guy (or elf) with a fancy sword without The Force.  The Force is where a Jedi gets his power.  Similarly, high-quality inbound links are where your content will get its power with the search engines.  Each link pointing to your content is like a vote, telling Google that your content is important and valuable.  Links are like referrals for your business.

Credible inbound links are preferred.  Just like a referral, the more credible or believable the referral source the more likely it is you will get the business.  So a .gov website linking to you or from amazon.com or facebook.com will carry a lot more weight than a link from bobsyouruncle.com.

Professional link-building services are a great way to create hundreds of high quality inbound links to your web pages.  The process of building high quality links is extremely time consuming and requires a certain skill set to do properly.

There are some good tips that I recently came across if you prefer DIY Link Building:

Guest blogging

Other ideas for a successful link building campaign include guest blogging. The general idea behind guest blogs is to get a link to your website posted on an already established website/blog. These links tend to carry more weight in Google because they are harder to acquire. Some sites will have very stringent requirements for the types of articles they will accept, so links from these sites have more value. Another popular and highly successful method is to contact bloggers or webmasters in your niche and simply ask them for a link. Or, ask to be a guest blogger for the sole purpose of getting the chance to link your guest blog posting back to your site. Establishing relationships with reviewers, authors, professors, enthusiasts, topic experts or anyone else who is operating a website in your niche area, whether it be through social networking or message boards, is a great way to build a network of people who might be willing to reference your website in their content.

Join web 2.0 site

Joining a web 2.0 site is an excellent method of developing search engine friendly links. If you are not familiar with the name, web 2.0 is the term used to describe websites that have a social networking component to them. Sites like Squidoo, StumbleUpon, and Delicious generate most of their content from the site users themselves. These types of pages facilitate interactive information sharing as well as collaboration, where you yourself can add articles that include up to 9 free backlinks per article to your website. Don’t duplicate any of your existing articles on your website and use them for either Squidoo or HubPages though, as search engines are filtering out content that way.

The best way to build links and create strong SEO benefits through Squidoo.com is by creating unique content that focuses on your keywords. Always try to incorporate multimedia, such as videos or images to gain more trust and authority quickly. It only takes a few articles until you’ll be able to add on a number of backlinks in your articles to your main site. I also really like Squidoo’s RSS feed widget, as this gives nice backlinks plus context to the links, which is great for search engines.

Link request to your connections

And finally, source your own networks for possible opportunities to build more links. Business contacts, suppliers, distributors, family members, friends, even your children’s school, all have the potential for providing you backlink opportunities. If you have been nice to them and they like you, ask for a free backlink on their website. Of course, the higher page rank or relevant websites you can link to, the better. If you can manage to obtain powerful and valuable links from websites like edu.com, that would be highly beneficial to you SEO efforts.

There are a lot more tactics involved in SEO to help you compete and surpass your competitors in search engine ranking results. The aforementioned tactics are basic initial strategies that help build a strong foundation and starting point for your SEO efforts, and will immediately help you move your website traffic and search engine ranking results to the next level.

Read more.

And there you have it!  SEO 101.  In a nutshell that is all I did to rank #1 for “Smartest Guy in Canada”  was write some good content, blog about it and build some links from various Social Media channels.  It took about 4 hours to get to page 1 and within a couple days I was in the top spot.

There are tons of marketing strategies for landscaping business owners to use, including direct mail, flyers, print & display advertising, Yellow Pages, etc.  The problem is that these  ”outbound marketing” strategies don’t work anymore.  Landscapers that have been around for longer than 10 years can remember the days when the Yellow Pages was their best source of lead generation.

Unfortunately, in 2012 Yellow Pages is barely hanging on because their print directory advertising model is no longer viable and they are investing tremendous resources into trying to reinvent themselves as a digital marketing avenue.  Sadly, they are way too late in the game to compete with massive search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Bing and social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to name only a few!

Most savvy landscaping business owners know that their best bet for effective marketing strategies these days include a professional website design, a form of traffic generation through search engines and an effective traffic conversion process to generate more leads.

In this article I want to focus on traffic generation.  I will assume that your landscaping business has already invested in a beautiful website that does everything necessary to entice your visitors to contact you and become a sales lead.  So what is a great, inexpensive way for you to send droves of visitors to your website that you can incorporate into your 2013 marketing strategy?

Content Marketing Strategies for Landscaping Business

Here are the 6 key things you need to incorporate into your marketing strategy for your landscaping business.

1. You need a blog.  If you don’t have a blog on your website, you need to get one.  WordPress is an excellent blogging tool that we would recommend.  WordPress is also a website CMS which allows you to build your entire website and blog within the same platform.  It is simple and easy to use for non-technical people and Search Engines love it!
2. You need to spend some time blogging.  Blogging is an imperative aspect of your content marketing strategy.  I would recommend posting 1-2 blogs per week when you start.  It should be consistent so pick a schedule you can stick to.
3. Write about things people want to know.  It’s OK to spill some of your candy.  The point here is that you are giving valuable information to people searching for it and as the source of that knowledge you are becoming a thought leader!  When it comes to spending tens of thousands of dollars on a landscaping project would you rather spend it with someone who follows what the thought leaders are suggesting or someone who is a thought leader?
4. Don’t forget to use the right keywords!  You can easily figure out what users actually search for that relates to your topic.  How?  Did you ever notice that when you search for something onGoogle, it actually starts to complete your thought by filling in words as you type, almost as though it knows what you are thinking.  Well, Google does know what people are thinking because they have billions of pieces of data from actual search queries from real people.  So they are suggesting phrases to you that are from that database of what people really search for.  So it’s as simple as using those words in your blog title, headings and sprinkled throughout your blog post, just like this one about content marketing strategies for landscaping business.  Here’s a tool that will help you: http://ubersuggest.org/.  There will be so many suggestions you won’t know where to start.  That’s OK, just start.
5. Most landscaping business owners are excellent landscapers and pretty good business people but they may not have the best ideas when it comes to creating valuable content marketing.  Here’s a resource you can use: Top 10 Mind Mapping Productivity Tips for Content Marketing Success.
6. Just creating the content is NOT ENOUGH.  Google likes links.  When you have links pointing to your website from other sources, it’s like adding fertilizer to your soil in a garden.  It grows bigger and quicker!  So if you want to get traffic to your website, the more links the better.  But these links should be from credible sources and now more than ever, with the Google Panda & Penguin updates, links from social media shares and comments are critical to your success.  So when you blog, share it to your social networks.  Post it on Facebook, tweet it on Twitter, share it on LinkedIn and be sure to include a pretty picture and pin it on Pinterest!  Once you’ve built up a list of people following you on these social media channels that LOVE what you are saying, they will also, post it, tweet it, share it and pin it!  And you will be bragging at the nextLandscape Ontario get together about how you spend next to nothing on advertising and generated tons of new business because you created and stuck to a content marketing strategy for your landscaping business.

I came across this excellent case study the other day about a company that created over $400K in revenue through content marketing.  Do you really need more evidence that you should be dong this?  Case Study:: Content Marketing: McGladrey’s 4-step process increases content production 300%, Web traffic 100%