I do a lot of Website evaluations. Most of the sites I review score very poorly on ”call to action” language and graphics.
Web sites can be active sales vehicles if they ASK visitors to engage. Your site should compel visitors to call, chat, click or come-by; to take the next step in the sales process with you!
What action you want visitors to take depends on the type of Web site. If the site is an ecommerce site, then certainly what you want to do is compel online sales. Even if your business is not a traditional retail business, you should still think like a retail business when it comes to your Web site. Instead of merchandising your site with product for sale online, you should merchandise your site with action language to encourage visitors to call you, visit an onsite location or register online for more information.
One of the biggest mistakes non-retail businesses make is failing to treat their Web site like a store.
A Web site doesn’t have to be a passive brochure that just costs money to develop and maintain. It can be an ACTIVE sales vehicle that generates leads, which properly managed, can develop into offline sales. The number of online sales, calls and/or Internet leads you receive will be in direct correlation to the strength of your call to action language and graphics.
Tips to improve your Web site’s call to action:
> Set aside room on every page for a promotional area that can be updated frequently. In this area promote a featured online or offline product, a price discount, incentive or contest/sweepstake.
> Use graphic buttons/banners with action language to grab visitors’ attention such as “Learn More,” “Sign Up,” “Start Here” and “Get It Now.”
> Include a short email sign-up form on every page.
> Offer visitors a toll-free number to call for more information and post it in the same place on every page in a highly visible location.
> Offer Live Chat or Click-to-Call technology on the site to encourage visitors to interact instantly while they are still on your site.
> Add text links in the copy on every page that link to your online store and/or the Contact Us page. Use sales language and invite visitors to buy or register. Ask and you shall receive!
> Offer an incentive or discount for Web visitors in exchange for a purchase or registration.
> Keep your Contact Us form short! Limit the required fields to what is absolutely necessary.
If you have millions of dollars to spend on marketing stop reading. You probably don’t need to know how to create a marketing strategy. You can afford to throw money around and hope something works.
But, if you are a small or medium size business with a limited marketing budget and staff to support marketing activities, keep reading!
If you are marketing on a shoestring budget, the greater the need for a marketingstrategy. A marketing strategy is a written plan that outlines the following: 1) Target Audience, 2) Marketing Tactics and 3) Timeline. The process of creating a marketing plan will force you to think smart and use your marketing dollars wisely.
First, you must determine your target audience. Look at the demographic and psychographic profile of your typical buyer. Create a fictitional person for each target audience group. Name this person. Pick out a stock photo that looks like the target audience. Post the profile on a large piece of chart paper around the office (away from customer eyes). Get to know this person on a personal level. Where does he/she shop? Eat? Live? What does this person(s) do for fun?
Next, decide what marketing tactics you want to use. I highly recommend online marketing tactics because they are DIY (do-it-yourself) friendly, economically feasible AND highly effective. How do you decide what tactics to use? Draw a wagon wheel. Yes, you read that right. Your entire marketing strategy can be mapped out on a wagon wheel. I like to call this Meredith’s Wagon Wheel of Marketing Principle.
Meredith's Wagon Wheel of Marketing
The hub of your wheel and your strategy should be your Website. Whatever marketing dollars are available spend them here. You need the best, most flexible, visually impactful and sales oriented website you can afford. It is the foundation of everything you do and it must be WOW.
The spokes of your wagon wheel are your traffic drivers. Every Website needs traffic drivers. A Website with no marketing is like a billboard in the Everglades. It doesn’t exist. How will your target audience find your Website? You need traffic drivers.
To market on a shoestring budget, I highly recommend a combination of good old fashioned elbow grease traffic drivers (like Leads Groups, Networking & Charity Partnerships) and online traffic drivers (like social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn because they are FREE and Email Marketing because it is nearly FREE).
Sample Budget Friendly Strategy
Social media and email marketing are incredibly budget friendly. I encourage you to invest in some up front training or coaching to make sure you start out on the right foot. But once you learn your way around sites like iContact, Constant Contact, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, it is easy to maintain them. The set-up and learning curve is the most time consuming and potentially frustrating. Invest in some help early and it will pay dividends a lot faster.
I realize that time is money. But it seems we are always short on one or the other. When you have plenty of money, it seems you have no time. When you have time on your hands, you rarely have any money. No time and no money is a recipe for disaster! Make the time for marketing and if you can’t afford full service marketing support, your best bet are marketing tactics that require your time and not lots of money.
The more spokes on your wagon wheel the better. And of course more pricey marketing traffic drivers like print advertising, radio, television, signage, search engine optimization and paid search marketing are fantastic ways to drive traffic. But they also require a budget and staff support.
The third portion of the marketing strategy is the timing. This is where you make a commitment to carry out certain marketing tactics by a deadline. I recommend timing your marketing promotions around the seasons of the year. I learned this from fellow sales trainer extraordinaire Kerry Mulcrone of Mulcrone & Associates. You can easily map out four promotions each year that correlate with the seasons. The timing is easy to remember and there are lots of seasonal graphic design email and print templates. This saves money on custom graphic design (of course custom design always looks more professional but do what you have to do).
How do you get started?
Identify and profile your target market.
Invest in the best Website (hub) you can afford.
Select at least 2 – 3 traffic drivers.
Write down the promotions and the timing.
Measure and track the first promotion.
Adjust where needed.
Rinse and repeat!
If you enjoyed this blog, you will enjoy my newest workbook, Click Power- Become the Master of Your Domain, which will be out October 15. We invite you to comment and share how you market on a shoestring budget!
If you want your Website to WOW, content is king. Content refers to the copy, images, links and multimedia used on the site. Think about content in terms of building a house. The higher the quality of building materials, the higher the quality of the finished home. The same is true for Web sites.
Consider this: if you had a retail store on pricey Madison Avenue would you merchandise the window display with old, damaged mannequins wearing torn, worn out clothing? No! You would put the best possible quality display in the window to attract traffic to come in the store and buy, buy, buy!
Then please explain why you are using amateur digital photographs and copy with grammar and spelling mistakes on your homepage?!
You get what you pay for and that is so true in the Web world. Spend a little bit of money on high quality graphicsand images and you will reap big time benefits in terms of online sales, eLead registrations, phone calls and walk-in traffic. I highly recommend www.iStockPhoto.com for affordable high-quality stock photos.
Remember the classic scene in the Wizard of Oz when Toto pulled back the curtain to reveal the “real” wizard? In the movie, the wizard turned out to be an ordinary person with an amazing machine that made munchkins, scarecrows and lions shake in their boots.
In the real world of online sales and marketing, the opposite is true. Ultimately, converting online leads into sales is not about technology (although it is very important to have a solid Web site as your foundation); it’s about the extraordinary people behind the technology.
Many industries, including homebuilding, have found that a dedicated Online Sales Counselor (OSC) is the BEST way to respond quickly, follow-up and manage Internet leads. In short, the Online Sales Counselor’s job is to build a virtual relationship with each and every Internet lead, one email, phone call or live chat at a time. The OSC’s magnetic personality, disciplined follow-up and killer communication skills engage and delight the dot com customer resulting in new sales.
Online Sales Counselors are a growing community of sales professionals and many are among the best salespeople in our industry. Well honed online sales and marketing programs often produce as much as 30% of total sales each and every month. Because of the nature of OSC’s behind the scenes work, there hasn’t been a lot written about the position or the people involved. The purpose of this article is to “pull back the curtain” on four of the best Online Sales Counselor’s in our industry and answer one central question – What makes an Online Sales Counselor WOW?
Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting the “High Tech, High Touch” webinar version of our LIVE session at the 50+ Housing Symposium in Philadelphia, PA with Janis Ehlers of The Ehlers Group and Josh Shron of Stampless Marketing. We spoke on how to balance high tech and high touch marketing to active adult homebuyers. The webinar was fantastic and we received great feedback:
“Great webinar! I got some great tips but also learned that we are heading in the right direction. Thanks again to all of you!” Sarah Dulong
Ron Clark Construction & Design
“Thanks Meredith. I appreciated the opportunity to attend today’s webinar. My wife is a residential Realtor who is working the waterfront area of Fort Lauderdale, FL. A great baby boomer 2nd home opportunity. I believe that we will be able to integrate some of the ideas into her website and into mine! Thanks again for sharing all that you did.” Cliff Steffen
It’s like high school all over again! Doesn’t social media feel that way somtimes! Good news Facebook fans; even if you weren’t popular in high school, if you are on Facebook, you are in the most popular online “club” in the online universe.
eMarketer.com reported today that Facebook has overtaken MySpace as the most popular social networking site on the Web. According to comScore, Facebook totaled 70,278,000 unique visitors, up 97% from May 2008 to May 2009. MySpace hits shrank 5% over the same timeframe, fading to 70,255,000 unique visitors. Which is one is better for marketers? Read the full article and you be the judge!
I had a cool Internet marketing experience this morning! I was working on the next edition of our eNewsletter when our Live Chat account dinged to let me know someone was visiting our Web site. I checked the Live Chat operator control panel and was able to see the visitor’s IP address, what pages had been viewed and the Google search terms used to find our Web site. This is one of the huge benefits to Live Chat; you can see everyone who is on your site in real time!
Live Chat Operator Control Panel
The Google search term this person used was “meredith oliver seminar.” I clicked on the link in the Live Chat operator control panel and it took me to Google where I was able to see what the Web visitor searched! Cool!
I am speaking tomorrow in Atlanta, GA at the Southern Building Show and look what I found in the Orlando airport! Best Buy has a kiosk selling every type of technology you can imagine.
Technology kiosks are nothing new in the airport but I hadn’t seen any of the bix box stores venture out with a branded, interactive kiosk before.
This is a WOW! It took me forever to get a photo and be able to film my video because people kept coming up to the kiosk and playing with the interactive touch screen. No one bought anything while I was standing there but I am sure they do. After all it was VERY early in the morning and most of us hadn’t had our caffeine yet.
If you are as busy as I am, you don’t have time for technology to make your personal and professional life more complicated! In fact, great technology is supposed to do just the opposite, make life simpler and smoother.
In this post, I am going to give you my top 10 technology tips and tools; thingsI use on a daily basis to save time and money. I don’t represent any of these tools or receive any kind or commission or referral fee. I just love them and hope you will too. I use technology to help me multi-task so I have time for the most important things in life namely my friends, faith and family.
In the part 1 of Blogging for Builders, I talked about the basics of blogging such as why blog, what is a blog and how to set up a blog. Today I am teaching part 2 of the webinar and wanted to post some of the ideas here. If you are interested in the webinar, it is part of a series, Insight into On-Site & On-Line in 2009.
Now that you’ve got your blog going, it is time to think about marketing your blog. First, you need to establish a baseline of how much traffic your blog is currently getting. Within your blog account you should have a tool called “blog stats.” If you are using WordPress.com, click on Dashboard/Blog Stats. The blog stats in WordPress.com are powered by Google Analytics so everything you need is built right in. If you are using WordPress.org you can download a number of plug-ins to track your blog traffic or you can use the free Blog Stats powered by Google Analytics that is built in.
This post is an excerpt from Meredith’s new book “Click Power- Become the Master of Your Domain.” If you like what you read here, you will love the new book!
