23 Things You Need to Know About Online Marketing Now

May 17, 2011 By 20 Comments

I‘m regularly asked what a small business has to do to succeed with online marketing. This is, of course, not easy to deal with in five minutes; however, if you want the splatter gun answer, here are some of the things I’ve learned over the last 5 years since I’ve been running Jontus Media.

Online marketing

1. Your website is everything! If it’s down, you’re literally dead in the water so choose your web host really, really carefully. I personally use Enginehosting. They rock.

2. Invest in good website design from the offset. You wouldn’t walk into a store that was half finished, looked like it was in need of serious repair and badly stocked now would you? Your credibility starts with your website

3. Make sure that if you go with a designer for your site that they teach you how to use the site properly.

4. Start a blog as soon as possible using WordPress and host it on your own domain. Install must-have plugins to help you with things like site maps, database backups, etc. Make sure your blog is targeted at your key audience and that all the content you generate is for them and not yourself.

5. Ensure your website is optimized for search engines with a site map, great code, keyword rich title tags and regular content. There are plugins to help you achieve this but you’ll have to generate the content yourself (or get other people to do it for you).

6. Learn how to write blog headlines that grab the attention of your audience. Think more like a sensational news hack than a conservative business person.

7. Create audio and video content to complement text posts. People take in information in different ways and you should appeal to as many prospects as possible.

8. Today’s best practice is tomorrow’s dinosaur. Never stop learning about changes in the industry, new communications channels and so on.

9. Track your data in any way that works for you. Data (or analytics as some prefer to call it) is what will make you make informed decisions about what’s working and what’s not.

10. If something’s not working, change it. We all learn through our mistakes. Even successful online marketers. [Read more...]

Filed Under: content marketing, marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Why Your Web Designer is Ruining Your Business

February 25, 2011 By 8 Comments

As I said in yesterday’s video, I’ve been thinking about Landing Pages most of this week. The kind of page that encourages you to book an appointment, purchase a product, elicit leads for follow up or requests for more information about your services.

My concern comes from the many small businesses, in particular, that I talk to who just don’t get how important this kind of page is.

Is your funnel smoking?

Case Study

A friend worked hard to increase their overall traffic to their site. They’ve done well in a relatively short period of time, increasing unique visitors to the site by 60 percent since the autumn. They’ve achieve this primarily through content marketing: three blog posts per week, a daily presence on Twitter and the launch of a weekly podcast.

In spite of the significant increase of traffic only just under 4 percent of overall visitors are making it to the landing page – a page where the business is selling a worthwhile and extremely professionally put together product.

Although I don’t know the exact figure, I do know that conversion on the landing page itself is also poor and the business owner is beginning to wonder whether the whole venture is worth it.

Shoot the Designer

My instinctive response to this having seen the site, even though I’m not a designer myself (the other guys handle that!) is that although it’s very nice to look at with some great branding it so doesn’t work hard enough to make a sale.

The key problems are as follows:

  1. There’s no clear channel for visitors to homepage to get to the landing page. Sure, it’s there. But you need eagle eyes to spot it.
  2. The call-to-action on the homepage, despite being above the fold and smack in the middle of the screen, doesn’t have a link to the landing page! The link is one a button “hidden” underneath the call out image (Buscall exits to bash himself over the head in astonishment!)
  3. When / If you get to the landing page itself, the page doesn’t work hard enough to convince you to make the purchase. The call-out for the sale comes as a jolt immediately after you arrive on the page, without building any trust or persuading you why you need the product. You don’t even get to “see” or “demo” the product.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: design, marketing Tagged With: , , , ,