Real Web Marketing Blog

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing

by John Eberhard

I am reading a book now called “Inbound Marketing, Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs” by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. The authors are founders of HubSpot, makers of online marketing software.

The book has some really good stuff in it. Good advice about how to run your blog and things like that. I’m about a third of the way through.

But their second acknowledgement in the beginning is to Seth Godin, author of several books including “Permission Marketing.” I have written about him before. Let’s summarize by saying that I consider Godin’s assertion that you have to have permission from someone before you can send a marketing message to him to be nonsense, equivalent to saying “Oh pleeeeeaaaaase Mr. Prospect, would it be OK with you if I communicate?” Since I don’t consider the sending of a marketing message to someone to be offensive or bad or a crime, I don’t think we have to bend over backwards to get permission to do so.

Back to “Inbound Marketing.” The concept of the book is that we now have two types of marketing. One is called “inbound marketing,” and that is when you have someone actually reaching or looking for the type of product or service that you offer. So you put your message out there where he will see it when he starts looking. In the category of “inbound marketing” we find search engine organic (non paid) listings, pay per click advertising, blogs, and social media.

The other is “outbound marketing,” or “interruption marketing,” and this is where a marketer puts his message out there and it “interrupts” the prospect who is currently doing something else. In this category we find such things as display advertising, direct mail, radio and TV advertising, promotional emails, and even banner advertising online.

The authors write “Our conclusion was that interruption-based, outbound marketing techniques were fundamentally broken and in order to successfully break through the noise and connect to people, companies needed to rethink the way they marketed from the bottom up. In other words, they had to ensure their customers could find them using inbound marketing.”

“… The outbound marketing era is over. The next 50 years will be the era of inbound marketing.”

They go on to say that ten years ago, you could use all these various outbound marketing techniques and they worked great. But now they’re all bombing.

I agree with this assertion only up to a point. First of all, I agree that the Internet has changed the way people interact with companies. The Internet basically brought about this type of marketing which the authors call “inbound marketing.” If you can put your message in front of someone who is actively looking for your product or service right then, that’s great.

So I think inbound marketing is important and that nearly all companies should have an inbound marketing component in their marketing approach.

The problem with saying that the outbound marketing era is over, is that I don’t think that it works in actual practice. All the clients that I have use a combination of inbound marketing and outbound marketing. But if they tried to rely only on inbound marketing, I don’t think they would get enough business to be viable.

Businesses, in order to be viable today, particularly in the current economic scene, have to do everything they can to generate new leads and sales. I particularly think that with new businesses or small businesses, that you have to incorporate more “interruption” type media in order to establish yourself and survive.

Is it true that most outbound marketing methods don’t work today the way they used to? Yes, I would say so. One of the biggest challenges in marketing today is to find the type of promotional media (ads, magazines, Google AdWords, email, radio, TV, etc.) that will be productive and cost effective for a given type of business. My experience over the last five years has been that sometimes we try new things and the results are mixed.

So it is a major challenge in marketing, not only to find the right message that will motivate people, but also to find the right medium in which to communicate that message.

I believe that the best way is to utilize a combination of inbound and outbound marketing methods. Is the outbound marketing era over? No, I think that is a premature statement. Is it on the way out? Maybe. Time will tell. But for right now, I believe it is vital to utilize both.

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Tracking Where Responses Come From - "Sourcing" Responses

by John Eberhard

One of the most important actions in measuring the effectiveness of any piece of promo is "sourcing" the responses that come in from it. In this case "sourcing" means "to accurately determine with each response that comes in, what prompted or influenced that person to contact you."

Whenever you promote your business or activity, through pay per click advertising, press releases, article marketing, a mail piece, advertisement, trade show, or article, you are testing different messages and media. You want to be able to measure how well that promotional action did in terms of interesting people and getting them to buy your product or service.

On the other hand it is also important to realize that with any promotion you do, particularly if you are doing multiple promotional actions, each piece has a direct and indirect effect that it creates in the prospect's mind. He sees an ad and remembers it, but he may not respond until he later gets an email or sees something on Google. Display advertising particularly has a lot of indirect impact on responses.

But, even though we know that each piece has an indirect effect that we don't see, the direct response that a piece generates IS an important gauge, particularly when compared to other pieces, in telling you how the piece is doing in terms of creating want and selling your product.

DIFFERENT SOURCING METHODS

Effective sourcing means that with every reach from a prospective customer, you must determine what got them to reach for your services. This can be done two ways. One way is to ask every person who responds what prompted them to call you. This has to be done religiously (i.e. every time) in order to get usable information.

An easier way is to include a code number on every piece of promotion. A common way is to put an extension number after your phone number, i.e. (818) 951-8800, ext. 2598. Then when the person calls asking for extension 2598, you know which promo piece he is responding to. On pieces where you include a coupon or business reply card, include the code somewhere on the coupon or card as well.

It's a good idea to assign a separate code each time you use a promo piece, if you are using it more than once. Let's say you designed promo piece X, and you sent it out to the ABC list (rented from a trade magazine). You assign it a code of 2005. And from that mailing you got 55 responses.

Now 6 weeks later you want to send out promo piece X again, but this time to the XYZ list (rented from a mailing list house). Don't use the same code (2005) again. Why? Because if you assign it a separate code (2006) you now have a chance to measure how well the ABC list did compared to the XYZ list. Direct mail texts will tell you that the list can be responsible for up to 60% of the success or failure of a mailing, so it's important to measure that.

The same is true of advertising. Let's say you design ad A, and place it in Software of the Future magazine, with code 1035. It gets 40 responses. Then you take the same ad and run it in Software Just for Fun magazine, with code 1036. This time it gets 85 responses. Now you have a clear picture not only of how well your ad did, but also how well these magazines did.

RECORDING THE SOURCING DATA

In order to get accurate sourcing data, you have to organize your communication lines so that every response coming in gets recorded somehow. This could be done by your receptionist, especially if she handles the mail too. She could record every phone and mail response in a "responses log" on paper or in a spreadsheet, or even better, in a database like GoldMine. The log should contain the person's name, company name, phone number, and what prompted them to contact you. If you have numerous people answering the phone or taking calls, each one of them must record the responses and the source on a log.

A log is one way to keep track of what got people to reach. Then later when a sale is made, you enter that information into that person's record as well, with the dollar amount of the sale. With a good database, you can later run reports telling you how many responses came in to each promo piece, and how much each piece made in sales. I've done it both ways (with a log, and with a database) and I can tell you, setting up a good database will save you HOURS of time whenever you need to do an analysis of the data.

CUSTOMER REACHES

Some people make the mistake of assuming that when a customer calls up about buying more of your product or service, that he is just calling because he was happy with your product or service last time.

This is actually true in a few cases. More often, however, your company is sending out a lot of communication that the customer sees. This is either communication specifically directed at the customer, such as an email targeting the customer or a newsletter or company magazine; or the company is placing advertisements that are being seen by customers and non-customers alike.

In cases where the company is sending out multiple communications on multiple communication lines, it becomes unlikely that the customers are just calling out of the blue strictly on their own origination. Something is at least reminding them of you and prompting them to call. And you want to know what that is, because that tells you what to strengthen. It's wise to pull the string a little bit when the person calls, asking if he is calling off a promo piece, then asking if something reminded him of the company recently, did he get the email?, etc. This will usually get the real answer.

And why is that so important? Because as a company grows, more and more of its business becomes repeat business, and the promotional actions you do to get your customers to call up again and buy more, are some of the most valuable actions you can do.

Developing brand new customers is much more expensive in terms of marketing dollars spent, than getting your existing customers to buy again. So repeat sales from your customers are much more viable. Knowing which of your customer promo actions are working is golden information, allowing you to reinforce those actions.

In summary, sourcing reaches from prospects and customers alike is a vital action, allowing you to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing actions, and allowing you to eliminate guesswork and invest in the promo that will get you the best responses and sales.

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Getting the Most Out of Your Web Site

by John Eberhard

The point of a web site and website marketing is that it is an online place where people can easily find out about your organization, but in most cases the goal is for people to respond. We want them to respond and give us their name and contact information, so we can contact them and sell them something, or at least send them repeated communications about our company (and sell them something later on down the road).

So how can we maximize the number of people that respond to our web site? Here are some tips you can use to increase response.

Navigation

You have to make sure your site navigation is set up so visitors can find their way around easily. Most site navigation is set up across the top or in the left hand column.

Over the past couple years it has become more and more common to have a fairly limited number of navigation buttons, with many of them having dropdown menus that pop up when you move the mouse over them. So your main navigation buttons define the categories or sections, and the dropdowns are the choices within those categories. This idea allows you to have one all-inclusive navigational structure that can go on all your pages, so you can find your way to any page from any other page in the site.

Make it Easy for People to Respond

You need to make it as easy as possible for people to respond to you, and to give them multiple ways of doing so.

I was talking to someone last week who only has phone numbers on his site. I think it is much better to include phone numbers, as well as clickable emails, and a form for people to fill out. One of the types of publics that you have to accommodate with your site is people who will search at night (even late at night) or on the weekends. They are much more inclined to fill out a form at those off hours than call. In general the more response options you give, the more responses you will get.

I recommend putting the phone number and possibly the address on the top masthead, or on the sidebar, so it is visible from every page of the site.

Google Analytics

It is vital to be able to see how many people are coming to your site per week or per month. You wouldn’t believe how many people I talk to who have no idea how many people are visiting their site.

The handling is much different if a web site has a ton of visitors but hardly any responses, compared to a site with hardly any traffic. If you don’t have some good web statistics program set up, those two sites will look the same to you.

Google Analytics is a free service, that allows you to see how many people are visiting, what pages they are visiting, what other sites are referring visitors to you, and what keywords they are typing in on search engines to find you. You have to set up an Analytics account, then put some invisible code on each page. Once that’s done you can really see what’s going on.

Offers

Many people think of an offer as “call us now for more information” or “call us now to talk to one of our salesmen.”

The problem with using only this approach is that there are plenty of people visiting your web site who are possible prospects down the road, but are not ready to buy right now for whatever reason. So they’re not going to respond to an offer like that.

If you can get them to respond and get onto your email mailing list, you can communicate to them regularly in a sort of captive audience type of way. You can educate them about your products or services, and more importantly, you can place your company into their mind so they think of YOU when they are ready to buy. This is called “top of mind awareness.”

You are definitely expending resources, either time or money or both, to get someone to your site. So placing items on your site that will entice people to respond and put themselves on your mailing list is very important. But this is getting harder and harder these days because people are deluged with email. So you have to give them a good reason to add one more email to their inbox.

An email newsletter is a great choice, but of course you have to be prepared to create that newsletter and create quality content for it on an ongoing basis. I write mine and send it out once a week, but monthly or twice a month are fine.

Another great way to get people to respond is with information products such as “free reports” or “white papers.” These are written about topics related to your products or services so that everyone who requests it would theoretically be a prospect. Then you set it up so that the visitor has to give you his name and contact info in order to get it. I have used this technique very successfully over the years at a variety of companies.

You can offer a free online course, where the person gives you his name and email and then receives a series of emails with the information (via an autoresponder). It’s like a free report or white paper, but in a different format.

You can also create videos with information that would be useful to your prospects, and then require that people give you their name and email in order to access the videos.

The whole point of these offers is to get the people who are not necessarily ready to buy right now to respond to you and get onto your mailing list. Then to send them regular newsletters and/or sales information.

Hopefully these tips will help you get the most out of your web site.

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Internet Marketing New Year’s Resolutions for 2011

by John Eberhard

Now is the time to make New Year’s resolutions on how to improve your Internet marketing in 2011. Here are my suggestions for you.

Posting to the Blog: I resolve to post new content to my blog at least once a week in 2011, realizing that search engines give more weight or importance to blogs specifically because they usually have fresh content added regularly. I realize that the post doesn’t have to be a full blown article but can be just a comment and link to some other content on the web, or posting a video of interest from YouTube.

Pinging: I resolve to also, always and every single time I post something to my blog, to send a notification, called a ping, to the blog search engines. I realize that although I am witty and brilliant, my wit and brilliance alone will not drive people to my blog unless they can find me in the search engines. The pinging is what drives people to my blog. If my blog uses the Wordpress system, I resolve to ensure that it is configured to automatically send a ping to the blog search engines. Otherwise I resolve to use www.pingomatic.com after every single blog post. Did I mention to do this every time I post?

Link Building: I resolve to greatly increase the number of links to my site from other sites, knowing that Google says that the number of links is the most important criteria they use to determine how high my site will rank for my targeted keywords. I know that submitting articles to article directories and press releases to online PR sites are two excellent ways to do this.

SEO and Keyword Research: I resolve to get keyword research done in 2011, since I know that I should be targeting keywords that have high traffic, but a low number of competing sites. I know that with keywords with 15 billion competing sites, I won’t be able to rank for them at all. Further, if my site has not had search engine optimization in the last two years, I resolve to get it optimized in 2011. 

Web Statistics: I resolve to ensure my site has some sort of good web statistics program, and to regularly check the stats so I know how many people are coming to the site, what pages they are visiting, what sites are referring me traffic, and what keywords people are typing in on search engines to find me. I know that most free web stats programs that come with a hosting plan are total crap, and that Google Analytics is free and very good.

Google Maps: I resolve to get my business, if it is a local business, onto Google Maps, which will get me onto page one of Google. I, unlike many people, know that just because I have a Google AdWords or Google Analytics account does NOT mean I have a listing on Google Maps.

Web Design: I resolve to ensure that my web site looks modern and up to date, not like it was designed during the reign of Henry the VIII.

Email Newsletter: I resolve to create an email newsletter if I don’t have one already, and to ensure I get a new one out at least once a month. I resolve to offer the newsletter subscription on my site and build my email list.

Social Media: I resolve to use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter more often in 2011 to market my business. But I know that I also have to be engaged with my friends and followers, respond to their posts, and to sometimes post things about my personal life, not just hammer people with “buy my products” type messages. I resolve to significantly increase my number of friends and followers on social media sites in 2011.

Leads/Sales: I resolve to get my web site really producing leads and/or sales in 2011, so that the site is a real contributing force towards the success of my business and not just a source of frustration and embarrassment.

Consultant: I resolve to respect and take the sagely advice of my marketing consultant, and to pay him on time.

I wish you the best in keeping your New Year’s resolutions, and I feel confident that 2011 will be the best year ever for you.

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Internet Marketing On Into the New Decade

by John Eberhard

At this time of year I usually try to look forward into the coming year and predict or make a statement of what I think are going to be the most important Internet marketing strategies for the coming year.

While it is impossible to know what new technologies will be developed in the coming year, here’s an overview of my take on Internet marketing into the new decade.

1. Pay Per Click Advertising: PPC advertising continues to be a dominant aspect of Internet marketing, partly because you can directly control it, whereas with some other website marketing actions, you can only indirectly control them. PPC is a great fit for local companies of medium to large size. Google AdWords is the major player. Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Ad Center merged in October, now both under the banner of MSN. Facebook also has a pay per click advertising program. In some industries it does not work well because of excessive competition. I think it’s best to work with an experienced consultant.

2. Google Maps: This is a relatively new offering from Google. When they detect that your search is local in nature, i.e. you are searching for a local business such as a pizza restaurant or a dentist or a home improvement company, they will display a map showing where the local businesses are. The map is shown in the right hand column, with balloons marking where the businesses are. Then in the left hand column, the listings for those businesses appear, with balloons to show that they are associated with the map.

You have to go through a specific procedure to get your business on Google Maps. Just because you have a Google AdWords or Google Analytics account does not mean you will appear on Google Maps. It also helps to put up accounts on about 8-10 other specific sites, which Google recognizes, and that helps to push your Google Maps listing toward the top.

With local businesses, getting a listing on Google Maps is vital, because if you can get near the top of the Google Maps listings, it immediately puts your listing on page one of Google results.

3. SEO and Link Building: SEO and link building remain a vital aspect of getting your web site to rank well for your targeted keywords. SEO or search engine optimization means to select keywords for your business that have good traffic but not a ton of sites competing for them, then putting those keywords into specific areas of your web site.

Link building means to create links to your web site, on other web sites. Google says that the number of links to your site from other sites is the number one criteria they use in how high to rank your site for your keywords.

Many companies used to do what is called reciprocal link building, where you contact owners of other sites and offer to trade links. Google downgraded the value of these links about two years ago, so I don’t do this and don’t recommend it. But a lot of people still think this is what you do when you’re talking about link building.

The best methods for link building, in my opinion, continue to be article marketing and optimized press releases. These methods can be used to build your links up to 2,000-3,000 in just a couple months. I have heard of some new link building methods on the horizon and we’ll see how they shake out in the new year.

4. Blogging: Blogging continues to be a vital part of website marketing. You write anything from a short post (100-200 words) up to a full article (400 words or more) or a press release, and post them to your blog. The key is to write and post things on your blog regularly, i.e. once a week or more. Then you must notify the blog search engines that you have new content, using www.pingomatic.com. Wordpress sites allow you to do this automatically. You can also link up to 3 keywords in your post back to your main web site, which creates links.

5. Social Media Marketing: Facebook and Twitter remain the top social media sites. The trick in marketing your business through these is two-fold: 1) get lots of friends or followers, and 2) engage with your friend or follower group via regular communication. On Facebook, as an example, you can post things about your business, but you also have to post personal comments occasionally, like about your family or your vacations or whatever. If you only post things about your business, your friends will get bored with you or even remove you from their friends list. This is especially true if you are constantly asking people to buy your book or attend your webinar or sign up for your teleseminar. It is also vital to view the updates of other people and make comments about them occasionally. That’s part of the social media interaction or engagement. For Twitter I use a software program called Tweet Adder to build up followers. With this product I have built up my own Twitter account to 6,800 followers.

6. Email Marketing: This is still a very relevant and valid way to market your company. But in my opinion rented email lists no longer seem to have much punch. So I’m talking about developing your own in-house list of prospects and customers. You have to have some offerings on your web site that will entice people to give you their name and email address, such as a free email newsletter, free reports or white papers on topics related to your products or services, or free tools or software demos (for software companies). Then send them regular emails offering your services. Also, use one of the online email services like Aweber or Mailchimp.

That’s my summary of Internet marketing in the coming year. May the New Year be your most prosperous yet.

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Capturing Identities on a Web Site in 2010 and Beyond

by John Eberhard

One of the most vitally important - and often neglected - aspects of designing a web site and website marketing is to include ways to capture identities of people visiting the site. This means to get the name and email address (minimally) of people who visit the site, so you can promote your product or service to them in the future.

Most sites should be set up, first of all, so that you can either capture a lead, i.e. someone interested in buying your product, or the site should allow people to buy directly online.

But even with people who theoretically don’t want to pitched on your product by a salesman right now, or who don’t want to buy your product directly online right now, you can often entice them to fill out a form with some kind of offer and give you their email address.

 The Solution

The solution is to include reasons on your site for the person who is interested, but not going to buy right away, to give you his name and email address now. This allows you to build an email list, which over time, can become a formidable part of your marketing strategy, because you can email to those people for free.

Here are some different ways you can capture the identities of people who aren't going to buy right now:

1. Offering a free email newsletter subscription. This is probably the most important solution and the one that is applicable to the most types of web sites. Offer a free email newsletter containing information articles and news about your industry or subject matter, or specifically about your company or products. Then put a small form in your sidebar, so it appears on every page.

Then put out the newsletter on a regular basis, usually monthly. In all probability there is someone in your company who can write information articles that will interest your public. You should sign up with one of the online emailing services. I have found that Mailchimp and Aweber are the best.

2. Offer software demos. If you are a software vendor, offering free software demos is a great way to collect names. And of course all the people signing up are interested in the product.

3. Offer free information products. Web surfers, for the most part, are already looking for information. Offering free articles, white papers, e-books, etc., is a great way to generate interest in your product and collect email addresses. And of course, the articles, white papers or e-books should be on the topic of your product or service. That way you are pre-qualifying the people who respond, as someone who would be interested in the product.

The key to an identity capturing strategy is to find free things that will appeal to the public that is coming to your web site, and get them up there. Then, keep statistics on each offer and how many responses it gets.

I don't recommend offering free items that cost you money to acquire or deliver, like T-shirts, pens, hard-copy books, etc. If possible come up with something you can offer for free, that can be downloaded from your web site (once they give you their name and email address).

You can measure how many people are coming to the site and what your conversion rate is. In other words, you can measure what percentage of the people coming to the site are either buying something from you or giving you their email address.

Your Marketing Strategy Once You Start Collecting a List

Being able to work with these strategies requires the ability to see the big picture and stick to a plan by envisioning the gains in the future. You might start out with zero list, but by developing some offers and methodically collecting all the names, week after week, you will develop a very valuable resource. For example, one company I worked with started out with no list, and 18 months later had over 300,000 names. And believe me, that's a hell of a promotional resource! Because for one thing, you can email out to them regularly virtually for free!

OK, now let's say that you have some free offers up there on the site and you're getting people signing up for your newsletter or whatever.

The first thing to do is to put those names onto a list. Depending on what you're offering, you might want to make a separate list for each of the offers. Use one of the online email services for this. Both Aweber and Mailchimp allow you to set up a series of email letters going out to them - one today, one in 7 days, 14 days, 21 days, etc. Each one gives a bit more data about your products or services and sells them.

The beauty of an autoresponder system and setting up a series of sales letters to go out to the people who respond, is that it sells your product on an automated basis. Once you write the letters and set it up, it just goes, selling the product without you having to do much.

But beyond setting up an autoresponder, the concept or strategy is just to start sending out regular emails to your list, selling your products and services. Create a series of emails to send to the list.

Good luck with the establishment of your email list.

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Growing Your Business Using the Internet

by John Eberhard

If you have a small or medium sized business, here is a summary of the website marketing actions you can take online to grow your business.

Google Maps

If you have a business that serves a local community, such as a restaurant, a health care practice, or a home improvement company, probably the first thing you should do is to set up a Google Maps account (and save the login info so you can get in later and make adjustments).

Google has created Google Maps recently so that whenever someone types in a search query that appears to be a local business, either by the nature of the business (pizza, plumber) or by the fact that searcher included the name of a city, they will provide a Google Map. And just recently they changed the format to make the Google Maps listings look like regular organic listings in the left hand column. So if you’re a local business, this is the place to be.

By the way, there is a formula to getting your listing to the top. And failing this, in competitive areas you can find your listing doesn’t even appear on the first page. Contact us for more details.

Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay per click advertising (PPC) on Google AdWords, MSN Ad Center (just merged with Yahoo Search Marketing) and Facebook, is a great way to drive traffic and get leads. However, due to the competition which has driven up the bid costs, for the most part this works best for promoting high ticket items these days, i.e. items over say $500. I do have some clients using PPC where the cost per lead is very low and it’s working for a low ticket item, but these are in the minority.

So PPC is a great way to drive traffic for businesses like home improvement companies, health care practices, or consulting companies. And it can be set up and start generating leads fast, i.e. in a couple of days.

For the right types of businesses pay per click can provide a constant flow of good quality leads or sales, month in and month out. If you’re not sure PPC is right for your business, contact me.

Blogging

Blogging can be a great way to drive traffic to your web site. Here’s the formula:

1. Write something to post on the blog at least once a week.
2. If your blog is a Wordpress blog, make sure it is configured to send out notifications (called “pings”) to blog search engines after every post. If your blog is not a Wordpress blog, use www.pingomatic.com to send out pings after every single post.
3. Have your blog set up so that you have links to your main web site in the sidebars.
4. Have a picture of yourself on the blog to personalize it.

If you follow this formula you can drive a high volume of traffic to your blog and best of all, once your blog is all set up, posting to it is free.

SEO and Link Building

I don’t like it, but I have to accept that many people have sort of merged these two terms together, with link building now sort of considered to be a part of SEO. To clarify, search engine optimization, or SEO, consists of keyword research to find the best keywords to use, then inserting those keywords in all the appropriate places on your web site so it will have a better chance at ranking well on the search engines for those keywords.

Link building is the process of creating links on other web sites that point to your site, since Google says this is their top criteria for deciding how high to rank your site for any given keywords.

The best way to build links, that we have discovered to date, are:

1. Writing articles and submitting them to hundreds of article directories
2. Writing press releases and submitting them to online PR sites
3. Having several blogs and posting both the articles and press releases from above to the blogs, and including text links to pages in our main web site in the articles and releases

SEO (keyword research and inserting the keywords into your web site) is a one time process, while link building is an ongoing process that is done each month and should be continued for 6-12 months or more.

Good luck with your online growth strategies.

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Internet Marketing Definitions

by John Eberhard

I am writing this article because I’ve observed that there are some confusions out there on some terms used in website marketing, and this can lead to wrong actions being taken.

SEO: Stands for search engine optimization. This is the process of selecting the best keywords, according to high traffic and low competition, and then placing these keywords in the appropriate places on the website. SEO is a one-time action, not something one tinkers with month by month. It should be redone every 2-3 years, as keyword traffic and competition can change significantly.

Link Building: I have observed some people have glommed this activity into SEO and use the term SEO to refer to both SEO and link building. For the purposes of clarity I think it is best to keep them as separate terms. Link building is the action of creating links on other websites linking back to yours. Google states that the number of links to your site from other sites is its primary criteria for deciding the ranking of a site. So link building is a vital activity if you want your site to rank well on search engines and thus get increased traffic.

Pay Per Click Advertising: Pay per click, called PPC for short, is the putting up of paid ads on Google, Yahoo, MSN, that appear when a visitor types in keywords that you select. You get charged money when the visitor clicks on your ad and thus arrives at a pre-selected page on your site. PPC is extremely effective at driving new traffic to your website. It is not best for low ticket items, say under $100. But for lead generation for high ticket items, it works very well. In most cases, due to the amount of competition from other advertisers, I recommend working with a consultant to set up and manage an account.

Blogs and Blogging: A blog is a special type of website that is used when you have regularly updated or new information being put up on the website. When you put up new content, the older content moves down the page. So the visitor scrolls down the page to see older and older content. Blogs are given higher importance by search engines, mainly because of the regularly updated content. If you add new content to your blog regularly, say once a week, and then also notify the blog search engines each time, you will drive quite a bit of traffic to the blog. My own blogs drive more traffic to my website than Google.

CMS: Stands for Content Management System. A CMS is a system allowing a website owner to easily update or make changes to his website via an online interface, eliminating the need of using a web design program like Dreamweaver or Web Expressions. Popular CMSes are Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal. I recently started using Wordpress for this purpose for any clients who wanted to use a CMS.

Online PR: This term refers to writing press releases that prominently contain the keywords that you are targeting and for which you want your site to rank well. There are a number of online PR sites where you can post a press release, and these all rank very well with search engines. So posting to the online PR sites creates high quality links coming back to your site and is a form of link building. Also consumers go to these sites and will see your press release. It is also good to post these press releases on your blog or blogs. This drives traffic to the blog and creates more links to your main site.

Article Marketing: This means to write articles on topics of interest related to your industry (not directly pitching your products or services), and posting them to article directory sites, which are sites that contain thousands of articles on various topics. This has been and continues to be one of the most effective methods of building high quantities of links to a website.

Reciprocal Linking: This is the activity of contacting website owners and asking them to link to you and offering to add a link to them on your website. Reciprocal link building used to be the primary method of building links, but Google discounted its value several years ago and so it is not of high value today.

Social Media Marketing: This is the activity of using social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and others, to market a product or service. Social media marketing is very effective and does work. I have closed a large amount of business through social media. The key is to build up a large number of friends or followers, then communicate regularly with the type of communications that are considered appropriate for the social media sites.

Email Marketing: Ten years ago you could make serious hay by renting email lists and sending out HTML emails to them. I myself did this and made millions for a software company. However, due to the cast increase in commercial email, my opinion is this is no longer very effective. But it is effective to build up a list of customers and prospects who have contacted you (this is called a “house list”), and send regular email to them. For one thing, once you build up this list, communicating to them is free.

Best of luck in your Internet marketing efforts.

Posted via web from Real Web Marketing's Posterous

Website Marketing Made Easy, Part 3

by John Eberhard

As I covered in the last 2 weeks, most people who have a website for marketing their business have one of three problems with it.

1. The website is producing no leads or sales and they have no idea what to do, or whether anyone is even coming to the site

1. The website is producing a few leads or sales, but the owner doesn’t know how to increase it

1. The website is producing a decent flow of leads or sales, and the website owner wants to increase that, but doesn’t know how

Website Marketing Made Easy

There are essentially four methods of driving people to a web site:

1. Pay per click advertising (PPC)
2. Non-paid, or “organic” traffic from search engines
3. Driving traffic to a blog, then referring visitors over to the main website
4. Social media marketing

In the last two weeks I covered PPC, organic traffic and blogs. In this article I’ll cover social media.

Driving Traffic with a Social Media

The trick with social media marketing is to set up accounts with the various sites, get lots of “friends” or “followers,” then communicate regularly on those sites, and include links to your web site.

The top four social media sites are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace. What I call the second tier sites are Plaxo, Plurk, FriendFeed, and Vox. If you have limited time to devote to this, just start accounts on Facebook and Twitter.

The next thing to do after you start accounts and fill out info on your profile (and include links to your web site or sites on the profiles), is to start connecting with people and add friends.

Some people like to use these sites just as a way to connect with personal friends, and if so that’s fine. But if you want to use social media as a way to promote your business and your web site, you should think in terms of getting thousands of friends or followers. Facebook allows you a maximum of 5,000 friends, and Twitter has a sort of ceiling at 2,000 but you can break through that if you work at it. I currently have 3,500 friends on Facebook, and 4,400 followers on Twitter. I wrote an earlier article on developing lots of followers on Twitter.

I have had a policy on Facebook for a long time, that I will propose being a Facebook friend to people that have at least 20 friends in common with me.

Once you start developing some friends/followers, then you have to post what are called “status updates” regularly saying what you are doing. It’s best to do this several times a day if possible. This is a bit of an art form, because you do not want to post “Buy my stuff” messages all day long as you will really turn people off and they will “un-friend” you or at least block you so they can’t see your updates.

I see even some web marketing “gurus” who should know better, who post stuff about their products all day long.

Here is my status update posting advice:

1. Post updates throughout the day, talking about what you are doing with your business. This reinforces the fact and reminds people of what you do and what your business is, but not in an obnoxious way. For instance, if you a real estate agent, post that you just had a sale go through escrow, or that you have a new listing (with a link to it), or a comment on the current market.
2. Occasionally include links to any new things you have done online, such as a link to a new blog post or article, a link to a free white paper offering, or a book you are selling.
3. Post links to interesting articles by others that you have found, or articles about interesting things in your industry. However, don’t let this be the only thing you ever post. I see some people who do this and my thought is “Do you ever have an original thought yourself?”
4. Post things about personal stuff in your life occasionally, like your kids, your vacation, your personal interests, etc. You may think this is dumb, but it personalizes you, and tends to avoid people shutting you off because you’re always just hyping your business.

Handling Outflow and Inflow

This is tricky because if you don’t watch it social media sites can just soak up hours of your time, and you end up wondering “What did I do all day?”

For outflow, meaning your outgoing communications to these sites, I recommend starting an account on www.Ping.fm, then hooking up all your social media accounts to it. That way you can post a status update on Ping.fm and it automatically goes out on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Ping.fm has a 140 character limit to your status update, which is the same as Twitter. So by using that site you don’t have to log into each account and post things separately, which saves you time and gets your message out to more people.

Both Facebook and Twitter will send you an email every time someone interacts with you, so it is good to set up mail rules and have those emails dumped into a sub-folder automatically rather than cluttering up your inbox.

I think it is best to set aside a certain time each day to look at these emails and to browse through what your friends are posting, and possibly limit how much time you spend on it.

With that said, however, I believe it is important to spend some time reviewing what other people are saying and to respond to it, comment on it, etc. This keeps you engaged and real to people on your friends list.

Social media marketing can be a good source of traffic and business. I have closed a number of sales from it, including the biggest web design project I have done so far.

Posted via web from Realwebmarketing's posterous

Website Marketing Made Easy, Part 2

by John Eberhard

As I covered last week, most people who have a website for marketing their business have one of three problems with it.

1. The website is producing no leads or sales and they have no idea what to do, or whether anyone is even coming to the site.
2. The website is producing a few leads or sales, but the owner doesn’t know how to increase it.
3. The website is producing a decent flow of leads or sales, and the website owner wants to increase that, but doesn’t know how.

Website Marketing Made Easy

There are essentially four methods of driving people to a web site:

1. Pay per click advertising (PPC)
2. Non-paid, or “organic” traffic from search engines
3. Driving traffic to a blog, then referring visitors over to the main website
4. Social media marketing

Last week I covered PPC and organic traffic. In this article I’ll cover blogs and next week social media.

Driving Traffic with a Blog

Most people don’t realize that blogging is a powerful tool for driving traffic to a web site.

A blog is a special type of web site that makes it easy for you to add new content on a regular basis. New content gets added at the top, and you scroll down to see the older content.

Wordpress is one of the most common blogging systems, allowing you to put up a blog within your web site, as a subfolder (http://www.yourwebsite.com/blog). Typepad is another common blogging system, allowing you to either having it set up under Typepad’s URL (http://yourblogname.typepad.com) or you can set up a separate web address for the blog (http://www.yourblogname.com).

There are also several free blogging sites, where you can set up a blog, such as Blogger.com and Tumblr.com, and then your blog URL is something like http://yourblogname.blogspot.com or http://yourblogname.tumblr.com. But these sites are much more limited in the features and design templates you can use. It’s much harder to customize the blog to your needs than with Wordpress or Typepad.

Blog design: When setting up a blog it is vital to design it with one or two sidebars, then add your contact information, and several links to features on your main web site. For example you could link to your home page, your “about us” page, your services page, and so on. If you sell any items such as books you can put an ad for the book in one of the sidebars. You want to set up the blog in such a way that as many people as possible who come to the blog also go over to your web site.

Now, you should put new content up on your blog regularly. By regularly, ideally I mean once a week or more often. Content can be anything from a long article (700-1,000 words), to a press release, to a shorter post or comment about something related to the topic of your blog (100-200 words).

In the case of blogs there are over 20 search engines that are geared just to blogs. If you notify them, with what is called a “ping,” those search engines will all stop by your blog immediately and include your new article or other post in their search engine listings. There is a site called www.pingomatic.com that allows you to easily send a ping to 22 of these search engines.

This means that if your article was about how to lower your golf score, and someone went to one of these blog search engines and typed in “how to lower your golf score,” and your article contained that phrase, your listing would come up, allowing that person to click through and come to your blog.

I have two blogs for my marketing business, one for articles and a separate one for press releases. I post something to one of the two blogs a minimum of once a week. And I always send a ping to all of the blog search engines after every single post.

For the entire year of 2010 up to today, my two blogs have generated more traffic to my main web site, than any other source. In fact, if you add them up, it is three times the traffic that I got from Google.

So blogging can be a very powerful way to drive traffic to your web site.

Next week I will cover driving traffic with social media.

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