MORE IMPORTANTLY, WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

In brief, it means more customers without paying cash for the advertising.

“Groupon for TV” is an expression that conveys the simplicity of a pay-for-performance advertising model offered by SkyworksMarketing.com, which is a digital advertising agency located by the ocean in Ventura, CA.

Although there are a number of advantages to pay-for-performance TV, compared to Groupon, here are the primary points of interest for a forward-thinking business seeking to gain more customers:

1) The merchant pays no money.

2) Skyworks advertises the business on local TV (and online).

3) Skyworks collects the money, keeps half and gives half to the merchant, along with the new customer names.

4) The merchant provides outstanding service so that the customers continue to return and make purchases at regular prices.

The fundamental point is that the merchant pays no money up front, and in most cases, receives money before the customer walks in the door.

The strength of this pay-for-performance advertising model is based upon the merchant offer, not on the creative wizardry of the commercial itself. Although sophisticated TV commercial production services are also available, the TV advertisements for this model are very simple, featuring the main points of the merchant offer accompanied by a picture of the product/service.

In order for the local TV offer to generate enough interest so that it is profitable to run as a TV commercial, without the merchant paying any money, the offer has to be very compelling.

Stated more directly, the TV advertisement needs to offer at least a 50% discount (like Groupon) so that TV viewers will want to make the purchase immediately.

This service is currently only being offered in Southern California, although it is intended to roll out into other major markets across North America, later on.

For more details on this unique advertising opportunity, download the “Pay-for-Performance TV Advertising and Internet Marketing” details from the top right on SkyworksMarketing.com.

Not only do the various technologies provide opportunity for misunderstandings in and of themselves, but there is also misinformation propagated from all manner of sources attempting to lure money from hopeful business owners or entrepreneurs based almost entirely on false claims. (Think of various SEO schemes promoting instant #1 Google rankings).

So it becomes a communication challenge to not only educate prospective clients on what various technologies can (and cannot) do, it’s also a matter of unearthing and debunking false information they have picked up over the years (or even that morning).

A routine challenge I contend with is speaking with prospective clients who have new products that may (or may not) be good ideas to begin with, but who are hoping that there is a way that their product can reach the minds of millions of people overnight without a realistic budget (or even without any budget).

I have encountered hopeful entrepreneurs seeking the creation of overnight viral video sensations, or instant social media successes, etc.

At least based upon some of the video examples we can actually see, it sure seems easy enough! For example, how hard was it to produce whatever it is that’s making the viral video rounds this week?

Regardless of the challenge, it does boil down to sincerely listening to what the prospective client is desiring to achieve, offering a potential solution, asking enough questions to flesh out expectations (especially unrealistic ones) and educating them on what can be achieved.

Having said that, there are some expectations that are so fixed that it’s better just to walk away wishing them much success…ideally with a little levity.

Heck, even the term “Search Engine Marketing” (SEM) has not established a universal definition. To many folks SEM refers to the various forms of paid marketing, such as pay-per-click advertising.

To others, SEM encompasses paid search marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), for developing non-paid traffic.

Regardless of the terminology, paid advertising and SEO are the two general ways to get more traffic to your website.

Ideally, your website marketing efforts would include both, however the most non-optimum circumstance is not taking advantage of either.

How about you? What do you do to get visitors to your website?

A) Shorter website names are better because they are easier to remember, and they are easier to communicate to others. (However, all the really short names are taken).

B) It can be useful to have one keyword in the name to benefit from some extra search engine traffic. However, some companies will use relatively short names that have no keywords and no other meaning, and then build a brand around it. (Think “Google” or “Kodak”). That works great as long as you can gain enough attention to get people to look for that name.

C) If your own personal name is available, that may be useful for certain professionals, artists, or anyone who wants to publish a website using their own name. In fact, if your personal name “is” still available, you SHOULD buy it! For less than $10/yr you would have the opportunity to build a website for your name at any point in the future.

D) What about choosing “.com” “.org” “.net” and all the other “top level domains”? (The top level domain, or TLD, is the last part of the website address). In simple terms, “.com” is the best TLD. But if you are a non-profit, you should get “.org” since that is its intended function. If you buy a website name with anything other than “.com,” just realize that you will lose visitors to your competition because, out of habit, visitors will type your name and type “.com” at the end. By the way, even if you are a non-profit, you should buy “.org” as well as “.com.” You can “redirect” the .com use of your name to your .org website. For example, if your non-profit is named “ABC,” you should by abc.com and abc.org and redirect abc.com to abc.org. What that means is every person who types in abc.com will be sent to abc.org. In fact, it is not uncommon for a business to buy their domain with a number of endings, and even common misspellings of their website name and redirect them all to their primary website. (Actually, there are other strategies that get more complex, but that is beyond the scope of this article).

E) What about buying a website name with hyphens? If you have the option of buying abc-business.com or abcbusiness.com, the non-hyphenated version is best. Hyphenated website names are not the first choice one would make, but they can provide website names that might not otherwise be available. A disadvantage is that if your business name is ABC Business, and abcbusiness (no hyphen) is not available, if you buy abc-business.com (hyphenated) and promote it, some of your potential visitors will end up going to the non-hyphenated website. Alternatively, if both versions are available, you can buy both, and redirect one to the other, to exert greater control over your business name.

Click To Enlarge

What’s the best price to charge for a product? How about, what’s the best price to charge for a product that’s not even developed yet?

Market price-testing is a simple concept: It’s mostly about finding the price that makes the most money.

For example, if you market test the prices of $50 and $100 for the same product, you might expect to make more money on the $100 price.  However, if you sell more than twice the amount of the same product by charging $50, then the lower price would be the most profitable one.

Of course, you really have to analyze this against all your costs, to reflect your overall return-on-investment (ROI) of producing, marketing and delivering the product.

Although in another example you may very well sell less of the same product at $100, as long as you make more overall profit than selling a larger quantity at $50, then the $100 is the way to go.

Oh! Of course, from a business perspective, sometimes it’s best to select the price that creates the most customers, regardless that it may not generate the most profit, simply because more first-time customers means greater opportunities for increased sales later on.

And just to make things more interesting, there are examples of selling a product at a higher price that results in a larger volume of sales than offering it a lower price.

Still, the more pertinent question for this article is how do you determine what’s the best price for a product that’s not even developed?

Market Testing For The Best Price

The accompanying flow chart illustrates a simple way to test 4 different prices via online pay-per-click advertising (in this case, using Google Adwords). This particular example is also constructed to determine if the product in question should be developed at all. (In this example, what is being tested is a potential information product).

An important purpose here is to spend a small amount of advertising money upfront – before creating the product – to determine if the product will be profitable enough to bother developing in the first place.

Another important purpose of this test is to determine the response levels of four different prices. The responses are then evaluated to determine which price is the most profitable.  Of course you would also evaluate the results against your business intent:

• Do you want to use the price that generates the highest ROI?
• Or do you want the price that generates the greatest number of responses with an acceptable ROI?

Price Testing Flow Chart

In this flow chart the four prices are rotated and displayed to searchers looking for the keywords specified for this product. (The same keywords are used for all four ads).

Google Adwords allows rotation of the ads to searchers and provides good metrics to evaluate the responsiveness of each ad. (Which, in this case, is simply how many clicked on the product landing page).

If this were solely a “Price Test,” this campaign could be simplified by ending the test at the landing page to reveal which ad generated the greatest response. However this flow chart depicts a test which goes further by also seeing how many respondents would click on the “Buy” button.

If you were testing different prices with a product that was ready to be delivered, then anyone who clicked the “Buy” button could be charged the indicated price and the product delivery would be executed.

However, in this flow chart example, the product has not been developed.

Hence, each visitor who clicks “Buy” is directed to the Registration Page, informed that the product is not ready, and is given the opportunity to be notified as soon as the product is available.

Of course, not everyone who lands on this page will enter their name and email.  For example, those who would want the product immediately will probably continue their Internet search to buy what they’re after. However, any visitors that do add their name and email would be categorized as “hot prospects” in a database.

So in addition to using this test as a way to determine the best price, it’s also a way to generate potential buyers. (Of course a number of the hot prospects will have been introduced to the offer by any of the other four prices than the price they originally clicked on, so not all “hot prospects” will buy the product in the end with a different price).

From a testing perspective, the amount of visitors who click the “Buy” button represents an important metric, since it would be the best estimate of what percentage of visitors would result in a purchase.

Once the results of the test have been evaluated and the price determined – and in this case, the decision made to even develop the product – then the hot prospects can be sent a series of emails offering them the opportunity to buy the product when it is ready.

In this way, some of the advertising money may be offset by some initial purchasers.

This would also be the time to ramp up all of your marketing efforts to sell this product in volume at the best price.

Future Price Testing

Once a product is developed, price testing for the exact same product can be repeated from time to time, as the market evolves and changes.  Some of the conditions that might indicate an opportunity for a higher or lower price could be accounted for by more (or less) competition, an increase in your brand’s prominence, a greater (or reduced) demand for your product, or even a different business intent for the product itself within your company’s overall business goals.

Of course if the results of the test demonstrate that it won’t be profitable to develop the product at all, then the next step is to abandon this product and test your next product idea.

By the way, it’s worth emphasizing that this article is about “Price Testing,” especially to determine the viability of developing a product. However, there are other types of testing. In fact, testing is an ongoing proposition. For example, once you have determined to develop a product and have determined the best price, a larger body of testing would be directed towards improving various aspects of the ad copy and the landing page presentation, to make the sales process MORE profitable. For more information on this topic visit this link on Internet marketing testing.

Regardless of how you get potential paying customers to arrive at your website, the following six basic mistakes reduce the likelihood those hard-earned visitors will buy your products and/or services.

1. No prominent phone number. Displaying your phone number prominently not only provides a way for potential purchasers to get questions answered when they are read to purchase, in some buyers minds, it’s a credibility assurance knowing the phone is readily available, just in case they have a question after they buy.

2. You’re not attempting to gain email info from visitors who are “just looking.” Most visitors are not going to buy now. But if you offer something of value to these visitors in exchange for their email, you can send them marketing messages into the future to inspire them to buy with a sale or to stay on their radar screen until they are ready to spend their money. (Check out What Are YOU Giving Away For FREE?)

3. Your pages are text heavy instead of visually enticing. Pictures, graphics and videos can convey the benefits of your products and services more effectively and more interestingly than words – and are less boring to boot. If you are trying to sell stuff with too many words and few images, you are losing sales.

4. Your call-to-action buttons, such as “BUY NOW” or “ADD TO CART” blend in with your site and do not pop out with contrasting color to make it easy for visitors to get the goods instantly when they are ready to buy.

5. If you sell a lot of products, and your navigation bar is not segmented into logical and instantly recognizable categories, then you are forcing visitors to read every link to find what they want. Which means some percentage of your visitors are clicking away to another site where the pickings are easier.

6. You don’t implement cross selling and/or upselling for your products, which means your average sale amount is considerably lower than it should be.

There is considerably more information available nowadays, but the common theme is what you and I have understood about evaluating the worth of most any item:  The final value of a website is determined between a buyer and seller.

Regardless, following are some tools, tips, theory, technical and practical info on ways to enter a discussion about website value.

Profitable Websites vs. Websites that are Not.

Although the ways to value a website are quite varied, there is a dividing line between websites that make a profit and those that don’t.

1) Websites that cannot prove profitability are subject to greater whimsy in terms of valuation between buyer and seller.

2) Websites that can prove profitability can be more effectively valued, but the ultimate worth is still subject to many factors that have varying degrees of importance between buyers and sellers.

In either case, sellers tend to believe their sites are worth more than some hypothetical reality, and buyers tend to believe they are worth less than some hypothetical average, so establishing some basis for discussion at least can allow a discussion to occur.

Free Tools for Website Valuation

There are a number of free tools for determining a website’s value, including:

http://directory.sootle.com/website-worth/

http://dnscoop.com/

http://tidget.com/

http://valuemyweb.com/

http://yourwebsitevalue.com/

Independent of the relevance (or not) of such free tools, which arbitrarily assign value to criteria associated with a website, here’s the most useful I’ve encountered.

http://ebizvaluations.com/

This tool includes user-input data as part of its evaluation. I also like the tools comparative analysis against a database of actual website sales.

“This tool values your site based on what hundreds of similar sites have actually sold for. As it’s a tool that is grounded in reality, it can offer an reliable estimation of your web business’s value.”

Theory and Technical Info on Website Valuations

If you want to gain insight into the subject of website valuations, I recommend the following two articles. They are both somewhat lengthy (6 pages each), but offer a good theoretical and technical overview.

The first link is what I consider to be a relatively simple and generally useful overview of the theory of website valuations.

What’s Your Web Site Worth? By Georgina Laidlaw.

The Ultimate Web Site Valuation Guide By Clinton Lee.

The second is more technical, and is an outline of what is behind the ebizvaluations.com tool above.

In the end, the final value of a website is determined between a buyer and seller. But the preceding info can help both buyers and sellers understand a broader spectrum of variables to consider for discussion.

1) How do you convert more of your website traffic to leads?

2) How can you convert more of your visitors to customers?

These are critical questions for any business person interested in making their website work harder for them.

Although converting Internet traffic to leads or customers is only one component of the entire sales process, it’s a very fundamental and critical one.

The answers to both the questions above is not one of opinion or conjecture. The ultimate answer is obtained via testing. And the more testing you conduct, the better. (For more info, click “Testing” Your Way To Internet Marketing Success and view the video).

Testing is not a new thing. In fact, back in 1923 Claude Hopkins emphasized its importance in his book, Scientific Advertising.

What is new is how readily it can be conducted. As a point of comparison, I have a background in direct mail marketing, which includes testing different copy for the letters themselves, as well as different headlines, different envelopes, different offers, different calls-to-action, and other components.

I conduct such tests using volumes of Excel spreadsheets in conjunction with special codes in all the letters to ascertain which variables and combination of variables generate the greatest number of responses and sales.

Each test takes weeks to write, print and mail all the versions, and then measure all the responses. After the results are tabulated, I repeat the process to increase the responses even further.

If this sounds like a lot of work, well … it is.

But since 2006, sophisticated online testing can be conducted using Google Website Optimizer. Although this doesn’t work for direct mail letters, it works fantastically well for websites, which is the point of this article. (However, as a bonus, it can be used to test some variables for direct mail, as well).

Google Website Optimizer is a free testing application that helps online marketers answer the two questions above (and more).

In brief, Google Website Optimizer allows marketers to test different versions of complete web pages as well as specific elements on pages, to let your visitors tell you which variables help them to buy your products, or download your information, or whatever it is that you desire visitors to do on your website.

Following are two general categories of online market testing that can be executed via Google Website Optimizer:

A/B Testing

A/B tests allow you to test two or more versions of different pages against each other to see which performs best. If you are testing 3 different versions of a page, then you are conducting an A/B/C test and so on.

A/B tests are especially useful because they allow you to test major design decisions by placing two or three completely different designs against each other to find out which one resonates best with your visitors.

Of course, the downside is you can not pinpoint the elements that persuaded more visitors to convert.

Multivariate Tests

Multivariate tests allow you to test multiple elements of a page at the same time. This way you are able to test different headlines, different images, or different colors on a single page.

You can always think of A/B tests as a simplified version of multivariate tests.

The beauty of multivariate tests is the speed in which testing multiple elements can be conducted, and distinguishing which combination of elements inspired users to convert.

For more info on Website Optimizer, visit the following links:

Google Website Optimizer

Google Website Optimizer Blog

2) Online and offline marketing can use cash resources very EFFICIENTLY, generating the highest potential ROI – but focusing on the most efficient use of capital can be slower.

Most businesses desire a combination of marketing speed and efficient use of capital, hence they fall somewhere in the middle of those two points.

The “Time” variable supports marketing refinement through the process of testing, testing and testing. Market testing unveils the most effective ways to streamline your marketing activities, which can include determining the best copywriting, the best ad captions, the best graphics, the best email headlines, the best offers, etc. Nowadays, market testing is faster and more cost effective than ever.

No Offer

A website should have a clear offer. There should be something that a visitor can potentially DO: such as buy a product or service; subscribe to a newsletter; download a report; make a phone call for more information; request a consultation; add a comment; or in some way ACT. Particularly when presenting a product or service for purchase, the offer should be very clear, and as simple as possible. But even when you are giving something away for free, just as much importance should be given to the presentation of such an offer, since the freebie is an important way of generating an email list, which is very valuable.

No Call-To-Action

Even if there is an offer, if there’s no Call-To-Action, which is simply asking your visitor to do something, then the amount of responses will be greatly diminished.

The offer is presenting something that a visitor could potentially take advantage of.

The Call-To-Action, is directing the visitor to move from the potential of acting, to ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING.

“Buy Now” is a common Call-to-Action.

Other Calls-to-Action could be asking a visitor to click a link to subscribe to an email course, to enter a survey, to make a phone call, to win a free prize, to enter a contest, etc.

Too Many Choices

Is your website simple? Or is it confusing? Are there too many things that one could do? Are there too many links to click on? Too many ads? Too much of everything which results in a first impression of visual chaos? Visitors will simply go away.  Your web pages should be SIMPLE.

Bad Copywriting

Is your website copy clear and EASILY understandable? Is it presented using simple words with plenty of short sentences? Are there bullet points to break up the text? Is there plenty of white space to offer visual relief to the reader? Do you have engaging headlines in your page titles? Did you spell check your words? Is your punctuation and grammar in harmony with your readers? Is your copy BORING? There is much to know about copywriting, and if you want to boost your sales, hiring a professional copywriter is a powerful way to make the presentation of your products and services more persuasive. (Click here for Effective Copywriting Guidelines).

Not Enough Pages of Content to Attract Natural Traffic

Unless you are buying traffic, having only a few pages of content on your website will not attract much natural traffic. If you really want to attract free traffic through search engines, you need lots of content that is optimized for search engines, by using SEO.

The obvious advantage would be the vested interest in the provider delivering the best and fastest service possible, in order to be optimally remunerated.

Such an arrangement is more like establishing a professional partnership than paying someone that you hope will generate more revenue for your company.

SkyworksMarketing pay-per-performance consulting provides a built-in mutual incentive for increasing your company’s leads, sales and profits as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Click the following link on Pay-For-Performance Marketing and Consulting to find out more, including the advantages and disadvantages for your business.

To get the details, you’ll want to download the free report, “Questions and Answers for Establishing a Pay-per-Performance (PFP) Business Expansion Partnership with SkyworksMarketing” on that page to find out if your company would qualify.

There are myriad ways to establish the following Three Steps To Online Marketing Success. And the likelihood of achieving them all at once is low. (Each step needs to be continuously refined).

Achieving the success you desire with these three points will require some effort and especially testing, testing and more testing to refine what will work best for your products and services in relation to the market you serve. So let’s take a quick look at these three points which are factors of direct response marketing:

1) A Frontend Offer That Converts

Frontend marketing refers to promotional efforts focused on acquiring new customers, as opposed to backend marketing, which is focused on selling to existing customers.

The most important part of turning visitors into new customers is a good OFFER. The better your offer, the more sales you’ll get.

An offer is simply what you are presenting for sale.

However, the WAY YOU PRESENT the sale is where the power and effectiveness of a good offer is realized.

A vital component of frontend marketing is an offer that inspires visitors to purchase, which is a reflection of good copywriting.

Furthermore, a good offer includes an explicit (and often repetitive) call-to-action (“Buy Now”).

It may seem too obvious to state, but it would be fatal to overlook: a good offer must include a way to purchase, which can include a toll free number, web page, mail order form and/or email. In short, there’s got to be an easy way for a potential buyer to make a purchase once they’ve made that “Buy Now” decision.

If you are doing pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, a landing page is where the offer would be presented. (A landing page is where visitors are directed when they click on a PPC ad).

For more info, check out this link on Effective Copywriting Guidelines as well as this link on The Five Most Common Website Problems.

2) An Effective Backend Marketing System

Backend marketing refers to generating sales of additional products and services from your existing customer lists. Backend marketing is extremely important for your long-term business growth and for the overall success of your sales and marketing ventures.

Backend marketing is less expensive than frontend marketing since the largest expense relating to new customer acquisition has already been incurred.

Another important benefit of backend marketing is that response rates and sales conversions will typically be higher because your customers already know, respect and trust you, since they have already purchased from you.

Despite the benefits of backend marketing (low cost, higher sales conversions, higher profits, etc.), it’s the most ignored form of business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing strategies.

An integral component of backend marketing involves managing your customer database (database marketing) to better provide existing customers with the types of products and services that they have already indicated they are interested in, via their earlier purchase decisions, surveys, or other information requests.

3) Qualified Traffic!

Once you’ve got a product or service to sell and you have established an effective offer (with good copywriting), which turns visitors into customers (frontend marketing), and once you have a backend marketing program to sell more products and services to your existing customers, all you need is more traffic. And not just any traffic. You want QUALIFIED traffic.

Qualified traffic refers to visitors to your website who actually have an interest in what you are selling and have the capacity to make a purchase. If you sell pizza in NY, having visitors to your website from California doesn’t do much good for your bottomline. If you sell high-end jewelry and you have visitors who have very little discretionary income and cannot afford your products, that type of traffic is not going to result in sales.

Generating qualified traffic can be broken down into two broad methods:

A) Buying traffic through advertisements (especially PPC) or

B) Acquiring traffic naturally, primarily through search engine optimization (SEO) and social media.

Ideally, you would use components of both these broad methods, since PPC drives traffic immediately and SEO establishes low-cost traffic via search engines, but is not as immediate.

Having said that, since creating traffic revolves around establishing prospects, or leads, for your frontend (and then backend) marketing efforts, it would be useful to look at more specific methods. Hence, check out this link on Ten Lead Generation Models for more details.

Finally, one additional point should be emphasized, since it underlies all three steps: KEYWORDS. For more info, review this link on More About Keywords: How to Rank Fast!

So, although these 3 Steps To Online Marketing Success involve a number of related actions, the three steps comprise important reference points upon which your entire marketing efforts can be oriented.

♦ The branding impact of an online campaign is only as strong as your brand presence: Seek to highlight the brand prominently on all frames of an ad. Intrigue is rarely a good strategy in online campaigns. Consistent branding presence will aid in greater impact on awareness metrics.

♦ Because you often only have a moment to influence a viewer, each frame of an ad should be able to stand on its own: Each frame should work to drive brand awareness, communicate message/ benefits/ differentiation, and provide reasons to purchase and/or a call to action.

♦ “Reveal” ads are almost always ineffective: This is seen across all industries as a key component that differentiates best and worst campaign performers. A few exceptions to this rule are video ads, which are much more likely to succeed in this format but are still risky, as well as ads with high entertainment or comedic value.

♦ Keep the messaging very simple: No more than two messages should be conveyed in an online campaign. For example, within financial services campaigns, ads that were cluttered with heavy copy/text tended to underperform on ad awareness. Within the pharmaceutical industry, formats that allow users to roll over or scroll down to see legal information (not conveyed cluttered in frame) perform better on awareness.

♦ The use of human imagery is important: Human imagery appears to be a key factor in the success of most online campaigns but in particular, among financial services ads which have traditionally been more text heavy and therefore less effective at building awareness and persuasion.

Click here to view the Dynamic Logic announcement.

Demystifying Google Webmaster Tools Reports, Part 1
A look at Google Webmaster Tools site configuration reports and why they are important.

Demystifying Google Webmaster Tools Reports, Part 2
A close look at the “Your site on the web”

Demystifying Google Webmaster Tools Reports, Part 3
Examining the Diagnostics reports of Google Webmaster Tools.

Demystifying Google Webmaster Tools Reports, Part 4
Examining the “Diagnostics” reports, from crawl stats to HTML suggestions.

At the lowest level of effectiveness, a website that simply exists is arguably better than no website at all. (Having said that, a really poor website can lower the repute of your business, which, theoretically, could be worse than having no website in the first place).

Stated another way, if you publish a website expecting it to help you achieve any of the three purposes stated below – it won’t do so effectively – unless you take advantage of any of the many things that can be done “after” you have established a website.

Generally speaking, anything and everything that can be done to make your website proactively work for you, could be categorized as building and realizing its performance potential.

Website Purposes

If we can consider that a website would have one, or more, of the following purposes, we could define performance as anything that improves such attainment:

♦ Selling a product or service

♦ Conveying information to as many individuals as possible

♦ Facilitating social and/or professional interaction

Avoid the Most Common Website Problems

Certainly, for a website that is engaged in selling anything, it would not want to violate The Five Most Common Website Problems.

A website that offers nothing more than a description of a product or service will not likely achieve much of anything, if nothing is done after it is published.

In other words, a commercial website needs to incorporate as many different promotional opportunities as possible, in order to become profitable.

However, even a non-commercial website would still benefit from the majority of web promotion strategies and technologies, to further the attainment of non-commercial purposes.

Leveraging Internet Marketing and Communication Technologies for Greater Website Performance

Very small, or very large amounts of money and resources can be engaged to further the purposes of your website.

From a practical perspective, even with an unlimited budget, it would still be prudent to approach spending on a gradient basis, with the intent of testing and tuning the various marketing elements along the way, to more effectively leverage the return of your dollars and resources.

The following is by no means an exhaustive outline of all the things that can be done to increase your website’s performance, but it certainly delineates some of the most common.

♦ A simple, and inexpensive activity would revolve around establishing and regularly publishing new content to a blog. Search engines like blogs, and this one activity alone will boost your website’s profile on the Internet.

♦ Taking advantage of the “basics” of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will further make your website’s content more friendly to the search engines and establish a greater probability that your pages will be delivered to individuals searching for what you have to offer. SEO encompasses a broad swath of activities to create more traffic to your website. However, the most fundamental points can be learned and integrated to boost the performance of your website. For more info on the basics of SEO, check out this short video on Driving Website Traffic with the SEO Triangle.

♦ Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is the fastest way to generate qualified traffic to your website. It makes the most sense for commercial sites, since every click costs money. PPC advertising is easy to get started, and “used to be” an easy way to make profit. I emphasize “used to be” not because it is less effective nowadays, it’s just that it has proven to be so effective (and become so popular), that the costs have gone up tremendously since its early days and the sophistication required to excel at it has also increased. Regardless, the entire traffic and profit stream for some commercial websites revolves principally around PPC advertising.

♦ The term “joint venture” is used to describe the concept of two or more independent parties working together for economic advantage. In respect to online marketing, this can embrace a number of different types of joint venture relationships. One effective opportunity includes sharing the profits of any of your sales that are generated via an email campaign (or other promotion) from other web entities. For a specific example, check out this Simple Flow Chart for an Email Marketing Joint Venture Campaign. Joint ventures can be one-shot campaigns that may, or may not, be repeated in the future.

♦ Affiliate marketing might seem similar to a joint venture, in that it incorporates the concept of working with others to sell your products or services. However, there is a critical difference. In a joint venture, two (or more) parties are specifically and personally working together for mutual advantage. Affiliate marketing is more impersonal (at least in the beginning). Affiliates are like free agent marketers. If they are interested in your products and like your commission plan, they will drive some traffic to your site (as a test), and then will only continue to do so if it is profitable for them, and/or until they switch to selling your competitor’s products should they offer a higher commission.

♦ Taking advantage of social media networks is another way to further promote your website and business. Although the cost is low, there is a labor factor that needs to be considered. For an example of using social media for marketing purposes, check out this Social Media Chocolate Strategy article.

♦ Regardless of how few or how many of the aforementioned promotional actions you take advantage of to drive visitors to your website, one very fundamental action is setting up an auto-responder database service to automatically capture the email addresses of interested visitors (usually in exchange for some valuable info), which will then allow you to keep in touch with them, to build a relationship, and to better achieve your website’s purpose. For more info, click on What Are YOU Giving Away For FREE?

Website Metrics

No discussion on increasing the performance of a website would be complete without at least some introduction to The Basic Website Metrics. Monitoring and improving your website’s performance requires a comparative analysis of what has been achieved in the past as opposed to what is going on now, in order to boost the performance for tomorrow.

Conclusion

A performance-oriented website is really the centerpiece of a proactive and strategic marketing activity and process, which includes driving visitors to the site, converting them to take some action (i.e., purchase a product, request some free info, enter their name/email into a form, etc.), all of which is quantified in terms of website metrics for the sake of improving the performance of your website, in respect to it’s individual purposes.

People don’t read on the Web. Study after study has shown that less content on a landing page leads to higher conversion rates. Ruthlessly edit your text down to simple headlines and short, bulleted lists. Cut out the self-promoting marketing speak that people won’t read anyway. You can link to detailed information on supporting pages.

Attendant to that is the concept of using lightweight images to more effectively highlight those bullet points.

Of course one could go too far, and not have enough relevant text to be of value to search engines. A simple solution is presenting info-graphics near the top of a page and featuring text lower on the page.

Click the following link to read the whole article: The Art of the Landing Page: 7 Tips For Increasing Conversions

The business website under discussion certainly does not reflect The Five Most Common Website Problems. In fact, the opposite is the case.

Not only has this client done an excellent job of online marketing with a 3-person web team, their efforts have been rewarded with millions of dollars of annual sales for many years. Furthermore, their website serves as a model example, within its niche industry, for incorporating the majority of best practices and executing them well.

This is a client that has picked off all the low-hanging fruit with SEO, PPC, direct mail and established email joint venture partnerships with the primary movers and shakers within their industry as well as giving away free downloadable information in exchange for visitor name/emails to build up their email list.

So what to say? Well, here were my suggestions:

Even MORE Publicity

Even though this client’s success has included publicity campaigns over the years (to become the dominant player in their niche) , I recommended additional newsworthy publicity events and activities, which are promoted via paid online press releases as well as any traditional offline press opportunities, including local TV stations.

Social Media Marketing

The savvy business owner in question has built a dominant position in his industry through a heavy focus on highly measurable, high return-on-investment, direct response marketing. As a result, this client has not focused on social media, due to its lack of quantifiable ROI, compared to everything that has been working.  (Having said that, this client has not ignored this area, either).

My advice was to establish a greater flow of content creation in terms of blog posts and video productions (and video optimization) – on a scale considerably larger than what had been created previously, which would be supported by social network marketing, as outlined in this social media strategy.

I noted that the preceding would not have the same ROI as currently enjoyed but that it does have a potential to penetrate further into the online world and connect to potential customers that have not been otherwise reached.

Display Advertising

Although PPC has been one of many facets that have served this client well, I suggested some testing in display advertising to reap greater profits from the same advertising expenditures.

Further, a Reverse Banner Ad Tactic could be tested (establishing banner ad images that will rarely be clicked on), as a relatively low-cost branding strategy, especially since they could leverage their name, which is already dominating its industry.  (Although, once again, this is moving away from the highest-ROI value).

Affiliate Offers

One thing that was not apparent was their affiliate program. I suggested emailing their list (containing several hundred thousand subscribers), to actively and directly promote their affiliate offer to substantially propagate their program. Further, I  emphasized that they should confirm that their offer is still currently a very GOOD affiliate program relative other affiliate programs in their industry.

Although I didn’t gain the satisfaction of offering enough suggestions that could yield quick and highly quantifiable returns (excepting the affiliate promotion), I was quite delighted to see an example of a business that was succeeding primarily as a result of very well executed online marketing practices.

The successful offline commercial or residential construction job requires a buttoned-up general contractor (GC) who understands the role every subcontractor plays, can assure that performance is optimal on an overall basis, and requires contractors communicate and coordinate with each other (or through the general contractor) when appropriate.

When it comes to marketing and media, someone has to be the GC. There are lots of pieces in a marketing plan and it’s nearly impossible to find vendors that are at the top of their game with internal resources in SEO, paid search, social media, online PR, e-mail marketing, online display media buying (direct response and/or DR performance), display media creative services (ad creation), CRM messaging, traditional advertising, direct response advertising, package design, and so on.

In his article, he also outlines three options for managing marketing campaigns and requirements, using internal and/or external resources, and proposes the application of hybrid management scenarios to satisfy client needs and optimize efficiencies.

Here’s the link to Lee’s article: Who’s Your Search Marketing General Contractor?

In this video, Tim Ash, author of “Landing Page Optimization,” presents a webinar on the “7 Deadly Sins” of landing page design … and how to correct them. The video is over 1 hour and 15 min and presents a good amount of valuable content. Here is an overview of the webinar:

1) Unclear Call-to-Action

You want to make it as easy as possible for visitors to take the intended action. If the intent of the landing page is for visitors to buy a product, call a phone number, or sign up for a free download, make sure that action is the easiest for a visitor to see, understand and execute.

Be sure to have very clear call-to-actions (CTA) and have your CTA above the fold.

De-emphasize secondary or competing CTAs.

2) Visual Distractions

There may be lots of information you want visitors to know about your company, product or service, but a cluttered page with too many things to look at, will distract a visitor from the purpose of the landing page, and is a sure way to inspire the visitor to go away.

Don’t have too many choices on your landing page.

3) Too Much Text

Too much text can appear imposing to a visitor. Keep sentences short and simple, use plenty of white space and short paragraphs. Also, use clear titles, headings and bullet points to convey your message.

In the later questions and answers period, Tim noted that long sales letters do work for some consumer categories, for lower price points, for some naive users.

4) Lack of Upstream Continuity

Your landing page should provide a logical or appropriate continuity for the visitor, whose expectations would have been established by an ad, or any other traffic source, an instant earlier before arriving to your landing page.

If the ad, or traffic source says “Click here for a free report” and the user clicks to find a paid report, then the user’s expectation is not met.

Or, if the ad says “Click here for a review of ABC product,” and the user clicks to find a review of XYZ product, there is a disconnect between the visitor’s expectation and your landing page.

5) Long Registration Forms

For registration forms, ask only for vital information. (Stated another way, ask as little as possible). Although marketers would prefer to have a lot of information about their visitors, visitors prefer not to give any. Hence, asking for less upfront is best, and then gather additional info at at later visits. The longer the registration form, the lower the conversion rate.

6) Invisible Risk Reducers

Make credible trust signals, like major brands for your industry, readily apparent and not hidden away. Keep them above the fold.

7) Lack of Trust Indicators

Include client logos and/or testimonials to raise the trust level of visitors who do not know you.

Additional Points:

Make a mostly graphically oriented user experience at the top of the page and place your SEO text further down at the bottom of the page. SiteTuner.com is an example of this.

Use 350-450 words of thematic text with the right anchor links for SEO purposes.

Tim recommends designing for 1024 width, as well as making smaller headers to make better use of the top 2/3 of the page.

He also recommends placing navigation on the left instead of across the top to optimally take advantage of the primary space (top) for conveying your message.

Take advantage of Google’s free Website Optimizer for testing site content. Of course testing, testing and testing was emphasized throughout the presentation.

♦ Traffic Rank is a stat via Alexa.com that represents a relative ranking compared to other sites on the Internet. It’s not a perfect number, but it’s readily available. It’s also a stat that many advertising-funded sites are interested in. In this case, a lower number is better, since that represents higher relative importance on the Internet.

♦ PageRank is Google’s rough assessment of SEO power, on a 1-10 scale (higher is better).

♦ Indexed Pages are a measure of the volume of content visible to search engines. This is one of the numbers where more is better since the more pages, photos, and videos that are available, the more reasons search engines have for bringing traffic to your website.

♦ Inbound Links is a measure of SEO reputation and relevance for your industry and/or keywords. In other words, the more incoming links that are visible to search engines, the more your site is being referenced by others as noteworthy.

♦ Email Subscriptions are vital for ecommerce sites, but also reflect a non-commercial website’s outreach. More subscriptions are better, and in terms of evaluating a website’s resale value, this number can be quite important, since the ability to market to a large database of subscribers is very valuable.

♦ Comments are specifically pertinent to blogs and indicate the level of engagement from readers. Higher is better, especially since only a small number of visitors will leave comments.

How is your website performing?

Claude C. Hopkins (1866-1932) was one of the great marketing pioneers.  He believed advertising existed only to sell something and that is should be measurable.  He considered that advertising dollars needed to justify their expenditure.  (To this day, such is not always a widely held belief within advertising firms).

Here is what Mr. Hopkins had to say about direct mail and testing:

Mail order advertising is traced down to the fraction of a penny. The cost per reply and cost per dollar of sale show up with utter exactness.

One ad is compared with another, one method with another. Headlines, settings, sizes, arguments and pictures are compared. To reduce the cost of results even one percent means much in some mail order advertising. So no guesswork is permitted. One must know what is best. Thus mail order advertising first established many of our basic laws.

Scientific Advertising, by Claude C. Hopkins, 1923

Testing all aspects of any direct response campaign can reflect the sole difference between a profitable business and an unprofitable enterprise. And for a marketing campaign that is doing well, adequate testing of every potential element leading into and along the sales funnel reaps golden rewards.

For more information on market testing click “Testing” Your Way To Internet Marketing Success.

The notion of NOT meticulously tracking such activity is typically outside the general awareness of a professional marketer.  It would be similar to departing on an ocean journey by boat without using any method of navigation to get you where you want to go.

An even more direct question I ask when consulting is “What are you getting in exchange for your marketing dollars?”

If you are spending money for some kind of promotional activity, or along a variety of marketing channels and seeing sales go up, that’s good.

Even so, a more effective utilization of marketing expenditures would determine which marketing endeavors are yielding the greatest return and what can be done to maximize that further?

Further, even if you are not making money on a certain marketing channel, that does not mean that it cannot be made profitable – given a strategic approach using careful measurements and refinements.

Isolating Marketing Channels

Isolating the revenue of each marketing channel is vital towards increasing the profit from your marketing expenditures. (By the way, I have brought this to the attention of some clients and STILL observed they did not implement this – but that’s a different story).

Alternatively, I have interviewed a number of business owners and/or marketers who have “tried” PPC advertising (without actually knowing what they were doing), and after failing to yield a profit in a short time span, considered PPC unworkable.

Although PPC is not going to be profitable for every business model, I would argue that “trying” PPC out to see if it works, without a defined strategy of iterative, measurable testing to prove profitability, leads only to the inevitable result of losing money.

Stated another way, any marketing channel – even if unprofitable at first – will remain as an “unknown” marketing variable unless it were strategically tested through a process of repetitive refinements to accurately access its value towards increasing your bottom line.

In simple terms, if you have found a profitable marketing channel without testing, then that is a sure indication that it can be made more profitable with proper measurements, comparisons and refinements. And if you abandoned a marketing channel without adequate measurements and testing, then you’ll never know for sure if that channel might have resulted in an ongoing source of new business for you.

The point is that if you are not measuring the results of your marketing expenditures, how can you improve your marketing return on investment (ROI)?

Where Are Your Leads/Sales Coming From?

Certainly, the most basic fact to establish about every new client and sale, and indeed, every inquiry, is the answer to what prompted them to contact you in the first place?

♦ What is it an online ad? (Which one?)

♦ What is it some offline ad? (Which one?)

♦ What is a referral? (From where?)

♦ Did they read an article that prompted them to visit your website? (Which article and where was it published?)

♦ Did they find you by an online search? (Even if your business is primarily local, you should still find out if your local customers are finding you via the Internet.)

♦ Was your product or service reviewed on another website which inspired the searcher to contact you?

♦ Did they simply see your store or business while driving by?

Optimize Your Marketing Return on Investment

There are many more questions that could be asked, especially taking into account how your specific customers have found you in the past.  But the first step towards refining and maximizing your marketing ROI is to determine what each marketing expenditure is generating for your business, in terms of sales and profit.

1. The best model is a mix of free and paid
2. You can’t charge for an exclusive that will be repeated elsewhere
3. Don’t charge for the most popular content on your site
4. Content behind a pay wall should appeal to niches, the narrower the niche the better

At a time when newspapers, traditional music and other media outlets are getting wiped out by plummeting revenues due to the proliferation of “free” online content, a future model is attempting to emerge. Whether charging for the most specialized media while giving away the most popular content proves out to be the dominant media monetizing strategy, or not. it’s been very clear that what has been working for a long time in the past as a media monetization model is not working anymore.

♦ Buying Traffic

♦ Creating, building or growing traffic naturally

Buying traffic has the great advantage of immediacy and control. You can buy traffic today via pay-per-click advertising and control the traffic by determining not only when and where it will display on the Internet, but this type of traffic is readily refined by ongoing testing (some of which is built into the advertising process). Of course buying traffic costs money and it is not at all difficult to spend more than you make, setting up a losing proposition. Furthermore, when you stop buying traffic, it’s gone. Regardless, the benefits of intelligently purchasing and refining traffic mark the foundation upon which entire business models are built.

Creating, building or growing traffic naturally is slower, but has the great advantage of sustaining itself over time. In other words, once you have generated streams of traffic arriving to your website, it continues to keep on arriving. Although the most obvious advantage about this kind of traffic is that you don’t have to pay for it, describing it as free traffic is not entirely accurate since there is work involved. In fact, the more work you are willing to do, the more traffic you can generate. There is so much work that can be done, that you might elect to hire others to do it for you – in which case it’s definitely not free. Certainly when you do it yourself, there’s the cost of your own time to consider, as well. As may seem apparent, creating and building natural traffic establishes a real asset for your website and business.

Creating, Building or Growing Traffic Naturally

Search Engine Optimization is a key factor in regards to helping the search engines deliver your content to visitors who are looking for such content.

“Content,” which includes all the information, articles, photos, videos, etc., that you publish on the Internet are what search engines direct searchers to. So, the more content you have published, the more opportunities there are for visitors to find your website.

Blogs are a fundamental factor in growing traffic naturally. A strategically utilized blog presents a stream of fresh, relevant content, targeted to a particularly subject or niche, and can feature specific and pertinent keywords as a traffic attracting engine.

Article marketing, or more specifically, publishing articles on the topic of your target market – on other websites that syndicate such articles – are a long-time, and still workable strategy. Of course, including links in the articles that point back to your website are a central elements to this strategy.

Using videos, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and photo sharing sites, such as Flickr, as well as any of the gazillion other social media channels are all ways to engage with others and flow traffic to your website.

In an ideal world, you would be driving traffic to your website with Paid and non-paid strategies.

The question then becomes, how many of these opportunities are you taking advantage of?

For more information, click Should I Use SEO or PPC to Generate More Sales for My Business?

That is only one part of a custom SkyworksMarketing Website Performance Analysis of your website.

How can you get more leads, money and profit from your website if you don’t know what are your strongest points and what needs to be improved?

Your custom SkyworksMarketing Website Performance Analysis will include:

♦ Keyword Analysis of Your Website

♦ Basic Search Engine Optimization Evaluation

♦ Assessment of Essential Marketing Points

♦ What is Working Well for You

♦ What and HOW to Improve Your Website Performance

Your custom SkyworksMarketing Website Performance Analysis is only $600.00 and is usually delivered within 2 weeks from date of payment.

For questions, click “Contact GA.”

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