Is Your Website Leaving You as Frustrated as this Experience?

Putting on the Ritz

Imagine you’ve met the perfect person, all you ever dreamed of and wanted in an ideal partner. So special that your heart skipped a beat whenever you even thought of them.

Then imagine they’d agreed to a date, with you!

The Perfect Date?

So you set out to impress, yes, you’re going to impress definitely…

You look a million dollars, you feel great, you smell divine, how could they resist?

You’ve laid on the cocktails, taken them to the most exclusive restaurant, ordered the most exquisite dinner imaginable, chosen the most expensive wine and, at the culmination of the evening, as you wait breathlessly on their words, they utter that classic, knee trembling line ‘I’ll call you later’.

How would if it feel if that happened to you? Imagine how you’d feel if it happened every Saturday night?

What if it happened every night?

Then imagine how you would feel if it kept on happening to you, repeatedly, all day and every day.

You’d be really stupid wouldn’t you?

Can you really believe anyone would be daft enough to let that happen to them, over and over again and do nothing about it?

And yet amazingly this sort of thing goes on all the time on the internet.

I daren’t count the amount of times I’ve been told ‘we need more traffic!’. Yet getting more traffic is like asking for more water when you have a hole in your bucket, or asking ever more people out on expensive dates when something you do or say every time makes your perfect partner never want to see you, ever again.

Traffic isn’t the issue, it’s what you do with it, just like it’s not your chat up line that’s not working, it’s your conversion process.

Peter Van Zelst is the founder of Specialist Online Marketing, which runs an integrated online marketing service for small to medium sized UK organisations,using PPC, SEO, Email, Affiliate, Social Media and a number of other activities and utilising Analytics to ensure every click counts.

PPC Myths No 1 – I’m getting conned…. Click Fraud!

As Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing specialists we at Specialist Online Marketing hear a lot of things about PPC when we’re talking to clients and potential clients. Perhaps the commonest stories we hear, certainly here in Yorkshire, are of click fraud. Everyone, it appears, seems to know some tale of office workers returning from the pub on a Friday afternoon to go on t’internet and click on competitors ads; of call centre workers being trained (almost Willy Wonka like) to Google competitors keywords and click onto their websites; of housewives up and down the country repetitively clicking onto rivals sites; of massive budgets being blown and companies being brought to their knees by the devious tactics of mischievous scallywags and the like.

Without delving into the motivation behind such behaviour, perhaps the first thing to consider is whether or not Google, Yahoo et al has considered this and whether their legions of PhDs and other highly trained, educated and paid people could possibly be a match for a load of slightly inebriated blokes and bored call centre workers? Google ranks as the 241st biggest corporation in America (in the 2007 Fortune 500 list – although its sales have grown by 56% then). It has annual revenues of over $16.5bn, almost all of which come from PPC Ads. Call me naïve or blasé but do you think they would put their reputation and the incredible income streams that this reputation allows them to generate, at risk for the sake of not dealing with one of the few potential weaknesses of their product?

There are rumours that some of the lesser search engines are not quite as rigorous in their pursuit of click fraud as the big 3, but in reality stopping repetitive clicking and identifying large volumes of clicks from a single ip address or range is not rocket science, certainly not when considering all the other stuff they are doing and amazing technological advances they are making. In most of our larger advertisers accounts, we see regular ‘quality adjustment’ credits, where Google has concerns over the validity of clicks and automatically pays back the cost of these.

Secondly any PPC manager worth their salt has fraud prevention procedures in place; regularly analysing traffic patterns to identify possible click fraud and notifying the search engines of any dubious traffic. It is the fundamental concept of PPC is that everything is traceable, so if a particular keyword is generating huge volumes of rapidly departing traffic i.e. bounces, or any level of poor quality, i.e. non-converting, traffic, your PPC manager should eliminate it as a matter of course. Likewise, if a particular area of the country is generating large volumes of poor quality/non-converting traffic, your PPC account manager will exclude it, even barring IP addresses or ranges from seeing your ads if necessary.

And finally the main point about PPC is that it is dynamic, flexible, responsive and controllable. If your PPC campaign isn’t working you either change it so that it does or you stop it. Call me naïve again, but I really struggle to understand how anyone can fall foul of some of the anecdotes I hear, with all the potential safeguards that are available.

One area that I do see has more scope for fraud and that is regularly discussed in Search Engine/Online Marketing circles are content ads and, in particularly, AdSense. Because Google shares the revenue of these ads with the owner of the website, there is a genuine incentive for the website owner to become a happy clicker. However, that said, Google deliberately prices content clicks at much lower rates than search clicks, every click is still traceable so particular sites with high levels of poor quality traffic can be excluded and (again) dubious IP addresses be excluded from seeing your ads, so, once more, you can get really good value advertising from the content network if you run it correctly.

When considering the ways that newspapers and television stations regularly over inflate their readership and viewing figures to sell their advertising (which has no guarantee of even being seen, let alone result in an action), it seems almost churlish to moan about people deliberately taking the time to click onto a site and incur a cost to the advertiser of a few pennies each time. Click fraud does happen but you must put it into context. We at Specialist Online Marketing deliver highly effective PPC advertising that gets results, almost always at a far higher level of cost effectiveness and profitability than any other form of advertising. Though the yarns we hear are very entertaining and will always get people talking down the pub, most of what we hear has an element of ‘a bad workmen blames his tools’ about it. Perhaps its not quite so entertaining to talk about really boring nerds who spend hours analysing data to generate high quality traffic which delivers fantastic results and makes PPC marketing the most profitable form of advertising available?

Coming soon PPC Myths No 2 but if you have any PPC Stories, Myths, Fallacies or Rumours you want discussing please contribute!

Peter Van Zelst is founder of Specialist Online Marketing, PPC Search Marketing Specialists and Makers of More Profitable Search Marketing for Your Business. Visit http://www.specialistonlinemarketing.com to see how Profitable PPC Search Marketing could benefit your business.

The New Business Tap

Imagine a tap. You turn on the tap and water flows out. Turn it off and it stops. If you turn it up, water gushes out or you can turn it down to a trickle.

Every human body needs water to survive, too little and we suffer dehydration, can even die of thirst. Too much and we can drown.

Just like the human body needs water, every company needs business. And just like our body, the corporate body needs the right amount of business. Too much and it too can drown, unable to cope, service levels suffer, staff and customers become disenchanted, things start to go wrong. Too little business and the company can’t survive; it shrinks declines or dies.

What if you could turn to a tap for business? Turn it on when you were quiet and turn it off when you were stacked out. And you could regulate this tap for just the amount of business to keep your people busy and maintain your planned rate of growth?

Effective Search Marketing with Specialist Online Marketing is just that. Because we deliver results and talk directly to your customers and prospective customers at the time when they are ready to buy, the amount of money you spend on advertising can be directly related to the amount of business that comes in. If you want or need more business turn the tap on. If you want a little less turn it down. If you can’t cope with any more for the time being turn it off.

For More Information on the New Business Tap Speak to Us Now at Specialist Online Marketing

 

Specialist Online Marketing – Makers of More Profitable Search Marketing.

Peter van Zelst is the Founder of SpecialistOnlineMarketing.com , a practical online marketing agency, providing practical profitable online marketing to businesses. If you want practical help to make your business, website or e-commerce venture more profitable visit or call http://www.specialistonlinemarketing.com/

Prime Time Advertising for Small Business

Imagine you could advertise your business on prime time TV.

Think what effect it could have on your sales if your Advert could be seen in the middle of Coronation Street, News at Ten or a massive Football Match.

How would it feel if your advert appeared alongside or ahead of household brand names and Multinationals?

Now imagine you could advertise to this huge audience but it was only made up of people who wanted to buy or use your products and services?

Most advertising is wasted. Not all of us are in the market for Washing Powder, Beer or a New Car but advertisers need to expose us to this material to get the message across to the part of the audience that are.

Search Marketing is totally different. You only need to advertise to the people who are users and buyers of your products or services.

Using experienced search marketing specialists like Specialist Online Marketing will make sure you only advertise to your customers and prospective customers and you don’t waste money telling your message to people who aren’t interested. And because so many people now use the internet, you can sell yourself to as few or as many potential customers as you would like, almost no matter how specific your niche is.

That’s why Search Marketing is the most cost efficient and effective advertising medium available and why Search Marketing with Specialist Online Marketing could be the most profitable form of advertising you’ve ever done.

Specialist Online Marketing – Makers of More Profitable Search Marketing

Peter van Zelst is the Founder of SpecialistOnlineMarketing.com , a practical online marketing agency, providing practical profitable online marketing to businesses. If you want practical help to make your business, website or e-commerce venture more profitable visit or call http://www.specialistonlinemarketing.com/

How to Avoid the Cardinal Sin of Online Marketing

What is the Cardinal Sin of Online Marketing? Getting people interested in your product/service or website then not converting them into users or customers. Here are 12 Tried and Tested Golden Rules for Converting Your Internet Traffic into Customers or Users.

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Why Marketing Is SO Important on the Internet

Back in the days of my GCSE/’O’ Level Economics, I remember thinking how irrelevant the Laws of Pricing and Supply & Demand appeared to be.

Brands, Location, Relationships and other such factors made markets ‘imperfect’. The people whose buying patterns I studied used these as prime drivers and certainly didn’t review the market and choose the most logical supplier prior to making their purchase, as the text books seemed to indicate they would.

And that, I believe, is how a lot of businesses survived, even prospered. They weren’t the lowest cost, most efficient, highest quality, etc., supplier – they just happened to be there. People chose them because they were there, they had been there for x years, they had dealt with or were friends of Jack or Jill, they advertised on the local radio station, or a host of other non-logical reasons.

Frighteningly there are still businesses out there operating like this. If you ask these businesses a relatively straightforward question like “Why someone should buy from you?” they’re stumped. Some even look at you strangely, wondering why this idiot is asking such a stupid question. They open the doors every day and business comes to them…. the phone rings…. their mates always buy from them…. they’re the only ones in town…. they’re the only people who sell whatever….

Worryingly, some of these people think they can transfer their business success onto the internet. Those that don’t, are convinced the internet will not change their business – the internet effects other people, rather like crime.

Both these sets of people are wrong, but the first group will wake up first.

When you transfer your business online you have to accept that the rules change. People can switch between one site and another with a simple click.

• They’re not pressured into making a decision by pushy salesmen, they can compare the market at their leisure and take as long as they want looking around and researching, before they commit to a decision. I think this is a major reason why buying online has become so popular.

• They’re not limited to one or two shops or a single local dealer, they can literally scour the world for the best deal without leaving their home or desk.

• The salesmen can’t spot non-buying signals and make that unrepeatable final offer or close the deal when they see the buying signals.

• Unless you’ve got a really interactive site you can’t offer mates rates and nobody’s going to pop in because they like the look of the assistants or fancy a chat.

This is why Marketing (That’s Marketing not just advertising) is SO Important on the Internet.

• Spend a fortune on advertising in your local town and you will get people into your shop. The chances are you will sell something to a high proportion of those people.

• Spend the equivalent on advertising on the internet and you’ll get even more people onto your website. The difference is that unless they like what they see, they’ll click onto the next site that’s offering what you do.

You need to fully understand who your customers are and who they are going to be, what they want, what they will value, who your competitors are and what they offer and then make sure you offer your customers more of what they value than your rivals. And then you need to make sure that all of this is carried through your entire organisation, not just your advertising, but your website, your T&C’s, your service personnel, everything! Everything and everyone must be singing from the same song sheet.

That’s marketing and this is really important on the internet. Ignore it at your peril.

If you want help on marketing your business effectively using the Internet speak to Peter Van Zelst at Specialist Online Marketing. Peter van Zelst is the Founder of SpecialistOnlineMarketing.com , a practical online marketing agency, providing practical online marketing help and support to businesses.

The Importance of ‘Long Tail Phrases’ or ‘Deep Keywords’ In Search Marketing

I was shopping in Sainsbury’s the other evening, when I encountered a young man looking for Water Biscuits. He was in the middle of asking an appropriately orange uniformed and rather spotty youth where he could locate them. The spotty youth was equally perplexed and was considering reinforcements prior to my intervention.

This incident, however, did get me thinking of one of the main issues I find myself discussing with clients. Just like the young man and the spotty Sainsbury’s employee, we are conditioned into categorising items, products or services. Lumping a group of similar things together to make it easier to locate them. Fine for most but when you don’t actually know that a water biscuit is a savoury cracker usually eaten with cheese, it can be problematic.

Categorisation Conditioning
Similarly, most advertisers are used to categorisation, particularly in relation to directories, which has been principle advertising medium for many years. The Water Biscuit Manufacturer would thus seek to get to the top of the directory listings for crackers or savoury biscuits or at least make his advertisement the biggest and boldest.

User Defined Categorisation
The fundamental difference with search engines and one reason why they are so popular, is that the listings are not pre-categorised, the user invents their own categorisation each time they search.

In fact, if they tried to search by categorisation they would be so swamped by responses they would naturally refine their search. Thus if our water biscuit searcher typed in crackers he would find entries for Christmas crackers, Chinese crackers, animal crackers, nut crackers, mental illness, psychological detective series, ballet performances and so on.

Power to the Searcher
Search engines should allow the perplexed man to be able to find exactly what he wants, however he describes it, whether it be water biscuits, posh biscuits for cheese, small round thin crackers, table biscuits or whatever. The challenge for the search marketer therefore, is to understand all the words and thought processes that the prospective buyer or user may employ, match the response to those and ensure their entry is significantly placed, though not necessarily, top of those particular listings (see How Important is Search Engine Ranking?).

The Refinement of Search into Deep Keyword Phrases
It is the advancement of the user search, the refining and refining of terms until they describe exactly what they want, that makes search engine marketing so efficient. The proficient searcher will refine their terms increasingly until they have found a set of words which describes their requirements. They may use terms like “calorific content of water biscuits“, “how much salt is in water biscuits“,”buy cheapest water biscuits online“, “water biscuits for next day delivery” and so on. Each of these distinct phrases (“Long tail phrases” or “deep keywords” to use the terminology), describes a precise requirement for that particular person. The volume of searches on all of these will be considerably less than a general term like “crackers” but are they more valuable? Almost certainly, yes. Furthermore, because you are not competing with as many people for those terms, the price you will have to bid for these phrases will normally be significantly less. In addition, because there are less competing sites in that particular space, the chances of your ad being seen and clicked through to are much higher. Moreover, and most importantly, provided your landing page accurately meets the need of the search requirement that was stated, your conversion rate, the likelihood that the visitor will actually buy your proposition, is much, much higher.

Does Broad Matching Allow You To Cheat?
Now, the broad search term “water biscuits” would potentially pick up all these searches but is the marketeer looking for all of these enquiries? Whatsmore the term will also pick up queries like “allergic reaction to water biscuits“, “competition in the water biscuits market“, “water biscuits flood“,” dunking water biscuits” and so on. Are these target enquiries? Even if they were, would one advert and landing page suit all of these particular requirements?

The Significance of Ad Copy
Which leads us to the importance of ad copy. This is the creative bit that is sorely neglected by many. Admittedly there are limitations to potential creativity with less than 100 characters (including spaces!), that’s about 20 words max, however your copy still needs to impress. Conversely it needs to be descriptive and informational and succinctly tell the user exactly why they need to visit your site and what they can expect. It also needs to filter non-target traffic and discourage visitors who will not convert, so there are limits to the creativity that can be used. Suffice to say there is a lot to do in those 100 characters and a particular style that works and a great many that don’t.

The Landing Page
This then leads us to the most important bit. Having got the visitor to describe what they are looking for, described your offer in a distilled 20 word piece and taken them to your website, you then have to tell them in greater (but precise) detail your exact offer, how what you have particularly serves the wants and needs of your visitor and then tell them exactly and simply what to do next. Why is it the most important bit? Well, it’s arguable really but, having paid to get your prospective customer this far and knowing that every visitor costs you money, its vital you convert them from casual browsers, or worse, disinterested or disenfranchised visitors, to paying customers or hot leads.

Should You Still Bid on Generic or Category Terms?
Another chief discussion I have with many clients is whether they should still advertise within broad categories. Should a water biscuit manufacturer bid on the term “crackers” or a manufacturer of speciality ultra lightweight high tensile IM42 carbon blank fishing rods advertise under the term “fishing rod”? The short answer is it depends. It depends upon the market, the research cycle, buying cycle, the lead time from research to buying decision, the target customer, the purchase price, the financing options, the relative bid prices of the terms, the vanity of the advertiser and so on. In many cases it is important simply as a brand awareness exercise, though I’m not convinced that search is the best medium for raising brand awareness. In my experience, however (and key to me) conversion rates for categorised terms are dramatically lower than precise “deep” phrases.

Conclusion
Search is about giving control back to the user (albeit Google & Yahoo have a significant say). It is allowing the user to define exactly what they want rather than Yellow Pages telling them what they should be looking for. This creates tremendous opportunities for people to market specific products to specific users without incurring tremendous advertising costs, as well as allowing the large volume marketing of mass market items cost effectively by only marketing directly to those people who wish to buy them.

To do this effectively requires a lot of effort, however, and understanding of your customers, target customers, offering, proposition, competitors and so on. You then have to use that understanding to communicate your precise offer, to your precise customers with pin point precision!

For help on how to use search marketing most effectively to develop your business optimally and profitably visit Specialist Online Marketing now.

Peter van Zelst is the Principle of SpecialistOnlineMarketing.com , a practical online marketing company. If you want practical help to make your business or e-commerce venture fly visit http://www.specialistonlinemarketing.com/

How to Avoid the Cardinal Sin of Online Marketing – 12 Tried and Tested Golden Rules for Converting Your Internet Traffic into Customers

12 Tried and Tested Golden Rules for Converting Your Internet Traffic into Customers
Imagine that thing you’ve most wanted to buy……

You’ve seen the adverts, read the reviews and write ups, talked to all your friends about it and heard loads of stuff that’s got you so excited.

You’ve seen it in the window and now you’re there, seeing, feeling, touching and trying it. You’re all ready to part with your money and it’s yours. But then….. the Sales Person scare you off, or you can’t find any sales people to take your order, or they close the checkout, or the queue is around half an hour, or they make you complete a three page form before you’re even considered worthy of becoming a customer, or …. Well I’m sure you’ve got your own examples.

We’ve all been there – we’re sold, we want to buy, all we need is….. And the stupid retailer puts a barrier before us.

How frustrated do we feel? How annoyed do we get? Will we ever go back there again? And what about the retailer? What a chump? To get that close? And to have wasted all that effort and expense on a customer who will NEVER come back?

This happens every day in shops throughout the world but it also happens all the time online and, in my opinion, is the cardinal sin of online marketing.

Companies make great efforts to get people to their website and lose them before they even get past the landing page, because they don’t properly engage them and convert them from browsers to visitors?

Website owners set an objective like getting people to sign up for something or request an appointment and then don’t properly consider how it works and what they are actually asking people to do.

So here are our 12, tried and tested, golden rules for converting internet traffic into customers:-

1. Set Clear Objectives, i.e. Conversion Targets.

Sounds simple but you’d be surprised how many site owners just want to get people to visit their website and think everything else will follow. What do you want people to do:-

• Buy Something?
• Request a telephone call?
• Book an appointment?
• View a specific information page
• Download something?
• Sign up for newsletter, mailing list, subscription, etc?

2. Design Your Site/Page Around Those Objectives

If you want people to book a follow up call or visit, make sure your visitors understand that and are clearly requested to do that. My old uncle (who was professional salesman) used to tell me that the biggest mistake most salespeople made was not to ask for the order. And this is the same with a lot of websites. You’ve got a visitor who has found the site, wants what you’ve got, has read all about your company and wants to do business but they don’t know what to do next because it hasn’t been spelled out.

3. Make It As Easy As Possible For Your Visitors To Complete Your Objective

If you want someone to sign up to a newsletter all you need is their name and email address, you don’t need them to complete a 10 item form. If you want someone to buy something don’t put obstacles in the way. Ask for the minimum amount of information you need to complete their request and make it as simple and easy to complete as possible.

4. Keep It Short, Sweet And Simple

Minimise the content on each and every conversion page. Do not fill your page with words and complications; just keep it very simple with straightforward bullet points telling them what they need to know and what they need to do next

5. Finish Every Page With A Strong Call To Action

Whether you want them to submit a form, send a payment, give you their email address or just view another page, issue a strong, compelling call to action, telling them what you want them to do and how it will benefit them when they do it.

6. Make Everything As Simple, Straightforward And Obvious As Possible

Look at your website with your customers eyes. Understand how they think and try to imagine every conceivable scenario that may make them confused or unsure. Don’t use jargon, acronyms or long words where simple English is possible. Try to keep everything to a minimum of clicks, think of Amazon & Apple’s 1-click shopping.

7. Test Everything… Repeatedly

Think of every possible scenario and test it. Get your friends and staff to test it in every conceivable way. Once your site or pages are live, monitor it! If you can see issues which you think may be hindering conversions, test out different alternatives and monitor them closely.

8. Know Your Site & Conversion Process Inside Out

I’m often staggered when I find companies that don’t regularly test their check out process, sign up form, or other conversion processes. When we take on a client we get to know the conversion processes backwards and test them out from all different scenarios;- using different types of internet user, different browsers, different operating systems and computers, different internet connections, different network locations, different times of day and so on. Then we monitor the process closely using analytics to see if there are common drop out points that we haven’t spotted. Then we try to replicate and get the site developer to fix the issues.

9. Build Trust And Establish Empathy

You want your visitors/customers to empathise and bond with you, you also need them to trust you. If you want them to give you their email address tell them all about how you protect their data and privacy, how you will not sell their information and how much you hate spam. If you want their credit card details, make sure you have top notch security procedures and SSLs in place and you back it up with security & privacy policies. Lack of trust is one of the biggest causes of conversion failure and customers bailing out of a transaction

10. Don’t Sting Them With Extras

A Great Headline Price, a Free Offer or Subscription can often bring people in and get them so far, but if you then sting them with extra charges or additional requirements expect your conversion rates to plummet. Extra charges, conditions and the like have traditionally been the number 1 obstacle to converting a transaction.

11. Make Sure Your Site And Pages Are Quick To Load

Your pages need to load quickly, if not instantly. People are impatient and will not hang around for your tardy site when there are plenty of others who do what you do. Research shows that anything up to 60% of your visitors will exit your page if it takes more than 6 to 8 seconds to load (and you can bet your bottom dollar they will NEVER return).

12. Did I Mention Testing?

Yes I know it’s boring but you need to test everything. Retail is detail as the saying goes and online it’s just as, if not more important. If you website crashes, page fails to load, if your SSL is out of date, if there’s a spelling mistake, or a broken link, your visitors will find it and they’ll leave, never to return! Make sure everything works and then test it again.

And the bonus rule, Don’t spend time and money marketing your website until you have fully understood and implemented the above. If you do, not only will you be wasting your time and money but you’ll be alienating your potential new customers in the process!

Peter van Zelst is the Founder of SpecialistOnlineMarketing.com , a practical online marketing agency, providing practical online marketing help and support to businesses. If you want practical help to make your business, website or e-commerce venture fly visit or call http://www.specialistonlinemarketing.com/