Consideration is currently given on the futre content of this blog.

A new sense of “responsible consumerism” has spread–or, if you take a very long view of history, returned–and people now need more sensible, defensible justifications for buying what they want to buy, and what you want to sell to them. The good news is that almost anything can be sold to anybody at any time, if there is desire for it on their part, and if you have a sufficiently compelling money-at-a-discount story to tell. It is imperative that you develop ways to make yours a money-at-a-discount proposition.

I was once retained as a consultant to an individual who lectured on methods of preventing theft by employees and vendors’ delivery staff. This individual was a reformed thief who knew how it was done from having done it. (This kind of theft is a little-known problem of huge magnitude. In the typical convenience store, for example, the theft equals or even exceeds the owner’s profit.)

This expert ex-thief was teaching business owners how to prevent this sort of loss–and they were thrilled. In fact, he had boxes full of testimonial letters from store owners and executives citing specific amounts of money saved in the weeks or months following his seminar. These letters documented the saving of thousands of dollars per store. Some big companies reported savings of as much as $100,000 in just a couple of months by applying what they learned.

He had no idea what he was worth. He was charging only $500 to conduct his all-day seminar, and he had one little reference notebook with six audio recordings that recapped the seminar, simply packaged in a bag, that he was selling for about $30.

Let me confess: The first thing I suggested was that he raise his fees. In fact, I convinced him to triple his fee from $500 to $1,500 immediately. To his shock (but not mine), there was very little protest and no loss of clients. Shortly after that, the fee was raised to $2,500 with just a little client grumbling. Even at $2,500 a day, he was such a bargain that no one could afford to grumble too much. In essence, we were now selling up to $100,000 for $2,500. Who wouldn’t buy that? And we had the proof to demonstrate it. Within a year, his fee was $7,500, and then doubled to $15,000, and he was still attracting more business than he could handle.

This Selling Strategy is Vital in The New Economy
I based his entire marketing program on proving that he was offering money at a discount. In other words, we showed the prospect such a large, compelling return on investment that he or she couldn’t say no, regardless of the price, and provided a preponderance of proof that the bargain was real. So, there is the secret magic formula, in just seven words: Prove you offer money-at-a-discount.

There are numerous consultants in the fields of real estate mortgages, office leases, utility bill auditing, and freight cost reduction who guarantee that they’ll help clients save at least $10,000, and require fees of only $1,000 to $2,000 or a percentage of monies saved. Well, who wouldn’t agree to that deal?

That’s the kind of money-at-a-discount “picture” you have to engineer and present for your product or service. The same basic principle applies to negotiating other types of financial transactions. Again, you can sell just about anything if you can show the buyer how the thing (not the buyer) pays for the purchase–how the thing is, in effect, free.

You may never come across a situation where that demonstration is as clear-cut as it was with my client in the theft control business. I know I haven’t come across another such situation. But the technique can be applied, to some degree, to most businesses. It may take some long, hard thought, some research and some patience, but I assure you it’s worth all that and more.

Sometimes this has a great deal to do with who you choose to sell to. This is a good place to point out the impact of “The Who Factor” in your income and success in selling. In many cases, the single most important factor governing a sales professional’s income is who he chooses to sell to. Not what he is selling, not its virtues and weaknesses, not its price, not competition, not his own sales skill level. Who he chooses to sell to. Stubborn marketers and sales professionals refuse to acknowledge how much “The Who Factor” matters, instead striving for improvement that is fundamentally unavailable from better propositions, better presentations, better skills or greater effort.

Going back to my theft expert, there was a “sweet spot” for him in the grocery store industry once his fees topped $15,000. An owner of one or even two neighborhood stores was not a good prospect; he had the problem, but the entire amount of inventory in the stores and his sales volume was too small. A big corporation with 30, 40, 50 stores was not ideal because he had to sell to salaried executives who weren’t having their own money stolen. The entrepreneurial owner of 4 to 12 stores was ideal.

Consider something like private air travel, whether charter or fractional jet ownership. It is so costly, there’s no possible money-at-a-discount argument to be made, at least to most businesspeople. I fly private, and to fly, say, from one of our homes near Cleveland to Orlando and back can cost $15,000 by private jet. To fly first class on Continental costs no more than $1,500, or $3,000 if Carla and I are both traveling.

Sure, flying private, you get free valet parking for your car and don’t have to buy magazines at the airport, but c’mon. One of the very few types of people this can be sold to with a money-at-discount story is the person whose time has enormously high value in terms of billable hours or deal-making. In private practice, for example, cosmetic surgeons and cosmetic dentists call it “chair-side value.” So a client of mine, a dentist, (who has case values from $40,000 to $100,000+ and will chalk up about $20,000 for every day chair-side, and has more patients on a waiting list than he can accept) sacrifices $20,000 for every day he’s away. If he goes to speak at a seminar and loses a day going, a day there, and a day flying back, he’s out of pocket $60,000.

So if he flies there by private jet in the morning, speaks, and flies home that same afternoon, he “makes” $40,000. I’m in roughly the same position: My time at home, meeting with clients, or writing is worth, on average, about $30,000 a day. If I can buy a day for less than that with private jet travel vs. a commercial flight, I’m buying money-at-a-discount. Of course, I also have to be the sort of person who really wants to travel this way before it can be sold to me, but then the money-at-discount rationale helps a lot.

There’s a similar, multifaceted profile to be identified for the ideal prospect for any product or service at any price point, and your income and enjoyment from selling will rise dramatically the more time you spend selling only to your ideal prospects.

Widely celebrated as “the millionaire maker,” Dan Kennedy has a long record of taking entrepreneurs to seven-figure incomes. A serial entrepreneur directly influencing over 1 million business owners as a business coach, he’s the author of the popular No B.S. series, including the recently released No B.S. Business Success, accessible for free preview at www.NoBSBooks.com. More information about Dan can be found at FreeGiftFrom.com/entrepreneurpress.

Entrepreneur

But every now and then, an idea comes along that changes the game for good. Yes, the campaign generates huge, instantaneous buzz and moves plenty of product–but it also stands the test of time, infiltrating the culture in subtle ways for decades to come.

“It doesn’t happen often,” says Bruce Vanden Bergh, advertising professor at Michigan State University, “because it takes a combination of the right people with the right skills, the right climate and luck.”

And sometimes, it takes nothing less than a breakthrough.

Selling diamonds during the Great Depression, charging more for a spirit no one can identify blindfolded, pitching a tiny car during the era of chrome and fins–all of these campaigns made Entrepreneur’s list of 10 brilliant marketing ideas. The list spans more than 70 years–from pre-TV to the YouTube era. Just don’t get upset when you learn how you’ve been manipulated. It’s the nature of the business.

In the words of Don Draper, Mad Men’s tortured lead, “What you call love was invented by guys like me,” he says. “To sell nylons.”

Click here to view these ideas.

Entrepreneur

To be sure, SEO is still important and still evolving. There are still plenty of companies that need to adopt its best practices. SEO isn’t dead. But among the giants of SEO, there is a growing restlessness for the next mountain to conquer.

That mountain rises beyond the SERP and beyond the click.

SEOMoz’s Rand Fishkin recently declared that conversion optimization is the most underused and highest ROI activity in the marketing department. Predicting that 2010 is the Year of Conversion Rate Optimization, he wrote, “Online businesses can generate so much revenue from this… 2010 is the year, simply because it’s an inflection point for companies to assess their spend and where they derive value.”

SEO and conversion optimization are a lot alike

Conversion optimization and SEO both thrive at the tumultuous intersection of marketing, IT and customer operations. SEO professionals are experts at navigating this technical and political tempest. They are part engineer, part creative and part strategist—all bundled together in the role of a front-line change agent.

Those same talents, honed over the past decade, are exactly what’s needed deeper in the funnel.

Conversion optimization, like SEO, isn’t a one-shot project. It’s an integral part of the new marketing. The most valuable players will do more than optimize a landing page or run a good A/B test themselves. They will help organizations absorb conversion optimization into their culture and operational rhythm.

Good SEO practitioners know that short-cuts aren’t the answer. Sure, almost anyone can “optimize” a single page’s conversion rate by eliminating all choices and brow-beating visitors with misleading promises. You can myopically increase conversions that way—but at a terrible cost to brand, reputation and customer goodwill. Such black hat conversion optimization, like black hat SEO, isn’t worth the price for legitimate businesses.

(That is one of the reasons I prefer the phrase post-click marketing—it suggests a broader regard for user experiences and long-term relationships.)

Like SEO, conversion optimization is data-driven. Web analytics remain your greatest ally, but you must roll up your sleeves and dig deeper into user behavior. Segmentation analysis becomes even more crucial. How do different segments interact with you, and how can you optimize their particular experiences? Carry that through to revenue (or at least quality-scored leads).

Ultimately, in both SEO and conversion optimization, content is king. Don’t let technicalities overshadow what really matters: compelling value propositions and meaningful brand experiences. In SEO, this wins you links; in conversion optimization, it wins you customers.

But SEO and conversion optimization are different too

SEO often prides itself on minimizing the need for PPC search advertising. While that’s a noble achievement in traffic generation, conversion optimization actually flourishes with paid search, for reasons we’ll examine below. So the first step is to clear away any paid media prejudices.

Combined with PPC, conversion optimization enables highly controlled experimentation. Turn on traffic for a specific keyword, with a particular ad, to a matching landing page, and run well-defined tests with a minimum of confounding variables—and do it in a matter of hours. Iterate quickly. If a problem arises, or you strike gold, react instantly. Test, test, test.

Of course, SEO traffic can be optimized too. But take full advantage of the control PPC offers you.

In SEO, the atomic unit of experimentation is the blog post. In conversion optimization, it’s a matched PPC ad and landing page. While most organizations can now blog nimbly, producing coordinated landing pages may still be a slog. It doesn’t have to be: optimize the process, not just the pages.

Conversion optimization extends beyond a single page. SEO usually avoids breaking up content into multiple steps. However, you may find that multi-step landing pages convert better, because they engage respondents in a mutually productive dialogue and facilitate segmentation (they’re also called “conversion paths” for a reason).

While SEO encourages open publication of everything—that great new report you produced makes excellent link bait—conversion optimization often benefits from dangling valuable content as an incentive to convert. A landing page offering your report, in exchange for a name and email address, can still be link bait, but there’s clearly some trade-off.

Furthermore, some conversion-oriented landing pages shouldn’t be indexed by search engines at all. If you’re experimenting with special offers, or running campaigns with short expirations, you want the prerogative to change them or turn them off without leaving residual expectations out in the wild. For limited promotions, the meta robot tags you probably want are “follow, noindex.”

Dream building instead of link building

The driving goal of SEO is link building. At the risk of sounding schmaltzy, the driving goal of conversion optimization is dream building.

You want to get in the mind of individual prospects, starting from their very first search query to learn something new, solve a problem, or satisfy a desire—a need that you can fulfill. That is the stirring of a dream in their consciousness. Everything you do from that point forward—every touchpoint, every landing page, every follow-up email—should help make that dream real.

Success in conversion optimization is when a prospect rejoices, “Wow, this is exactly what I was looking for!” A dream come true.

It’s harder than link building. But it’s a worthy mountain to climb.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Scott Brinker is the president and CTO of ion interactive, a leading provider of post-click marketing software and services. He is also a co-editor of the Post-Click Marketing Blog.

searchengineland.com

If you want to make a journalist very happy here are ten simple ways in which to make sure your press page is stuffed full of the sort of information they crave.

1. First things first – make sure your press page is linked directly from your homepage, not hidden behind an “About Us” or “Resources” link.

2. List press releases and, more importantly, keep them up to date. Often a news story will appear on the newswires but nothing appears on that company’s press page making it difficult for a journalist to cite a source other than a newswire. Remember, by linking to a source from a company press page a journalist is directing traffic to your website.

3. Use RSS feeds. Journalists love RSS feeds, it means they don’t have to keep checking and re-checking individual websites and your news is pushed to them.

4. Provide background data such as annual reports and biographies of key personnel.

5. Provide complete contact information for press enquiries including name, telephone number, address, a linked email address or even a Twitter or LinkedIn page.

6. Make company logos, graphs, diagrams and images available for journalists to use to illustrate their articles.

7. Press releases in several languages can make it easier for your news to spread internationally.

8. Give journalists a choice as to what formats press releases and reports are available in. I can’t put this any better than Rebecca Lieb did in her recent eConsultancy article, “5 reasons your press page should lose the PDFs”.

9. If a report is available for download, that’s great. But if it has to be requested by email, make sure that email is sent out quickly after the request. Journalists have deadlines and a late arriving survey may be pipped at the post by another delivered by return.

10. And finally, don’t require a journalist to sign in, register or subscribe to your press page. We’ve got enough key-bashing to do as it is thank you very much.

Helen Leggatt, BizReport

Dos

• Offer your web site visitors an offer they can’t refuse (such as FREE!)
• Make it obvious what you are trying to accomplish (or sell)
• Clearly guide your web site visitor where you want them to go (new buttons, hot, etc).
• Offer a way for people to respond to you with email links and forms
• Offer something of value to your web site visitors. This is important. Put your best information on your site. Web surfers are infomaniacs, and want to learn or discover something.
• Use a “theme” to help the navigation and look of your site
• Keep your message and web pages simple. People have very short attention spans. Make your message direct and straightforward. Avoid long paragraphs.
• Use lists and bullets for quick reading.
• For online ordering, offer a secure server which encrypts information (Netscape Secure Server)
• Test your pages on various browsers and platforms (Mac, AOL, IE, etc.)
• Make a large footprint with your web site so that people are more likely to find you. Post articles, newsletters, etc. to an archives section with a link to your home page.
• Advertise your new web page to your current customers and prospects. Cross-sell customers to new and other services. Make current customers aware of new offerings.
• Ask people unfamiliar with your web site to navigate it, and watch them (in person) as they surf your site. Watch where they go, and what they do.
• Read your ISPs weekly or monthly traffic logs to see which pages are most popular. Also find out which pages or graphic images are not being loaded completely. Redesign and improve your site with what you learn.
• Ask your web site visitors for their email addresses, and send mail to them periodically
• When you update your site, send the new info to all the people on your email list.
• Allocate a large percentage of your budget for web site promotion

Don’ts

• DON’T require your web site visitor to have a web browser plug-in to view important information on your web site. Even worse, don’t use poorly written Java or Java Script which could crash the browser of your web site visitor!
  • Fix: Pull off anything questionable. Or ask your web site visitors if they like a certain advanced plug-in feature, and if they find it useful.
• DON’T design your web site exclusively for graphics navigation, with no text links at all. Forcing your web site visitors to load graphics will alienate some visitors. Additionally, people with slow Internet connections will simply leave.
  • Fix: Offer text navigation links at the bottom of your site.
• DON’T confuse your site visitor with too many frames. Frames can be difficult to navigate for some people, or if the frames are poorly designed.
  • Fix: Avoid frames unless you are confident the use is warranted. Test all frames links to be sure all frames work as you expect. Learn the different features of frames.
• DON’T forget to register your web site with all the search engines. Just because your web site is great, doesn’t mean people will go see it.
  • Fix: Tell all the search engines about your web site.
• DON’T forget to add meta tags to your web pages.
  • Fix: Learn about how meta tags work, and add them to your web site.

www.netatlantic.com

Well, here is a freebie for you. It is humble beginnings but we hope we can and will build it into a formiddable resource – a “Checklist”.

At this stage we only have a checklist on things your website must have, in Word format (if you want to make notes on it). Download it if you want for FREE!!!! The link is below.

MindMaps Checklists V1.01 – See contents below

WEB SITE ESSENTIALS

• Things your website must have
• Press Release Tips

You MUST have your name or company name, phone number, email address, and physical address somewhere on your web site

What is content? If you are selling information, then your written material or data is probably your content. You may be able to offer this in simple text (perhaps with a search engine), or from an organized searchable database of your information.

If you are selling images, video, audio, or computer applications then this is your content. Make it easy to find, easy to use, and the best you have to offer.

Don’t hold back, put your best information on your web site. If your content is getting old and stale, be sure to refresh it with something new and different. Content is the single most important aspect of the overall value and quality of your web site.

You MUST have a good navigation system on your web site. Simple text-based links are normally the fastest and quickest way to navigate. Image maps, when not too big, work well too. However, remember that most web surfers are unimpressed with whiz-bang complex navigation schemes, elaborate graphics, and layers of gateway pages to wade through to get to what they want. Keep it refreshingly simple, and easy to use.

You MUST have a quick loading home page. Your home page should have no more than 60 – 80k in graphics, and must come up quickly for the web surfer. If you have tons of fancy graphics or other bandwidth-intensive content, put them on another page in your site. Additionally, you must be extremely careful when using audio, video, Java, Java Script, Shockwave, and any other browser plug in. Realize that people who cannot manage the technology may have trouble viewing your web site.

You MUST provide an easy way for people to contact you while still online. Although a simple email link works well, we’ve found that short on-line forms can generate almost twice the response! It may well be in part because people like to click on buttons, drop down boxes, etc. Whatever you do, make it easy for people to inquire about your services, while they are still online.

You MUST have a site promotion strategy, if you want people to visit it. This may be the single most important thing you can do! Don’t believe for a minute that “if you build it, they will come.”

Internet search engines are the best way to boost traffic to your site. Second best are links from related web sites. Even banner ads and ads in email newsletters can produce good results. Believe it or not, there is no magic formula for getting traffic to your web site. The best approach is one that uses several different methods to build traffic to your own site. Try to involve several different people in your organization to help promote your site, in different ways.

As a general rule, we’ve found that it is better to promote a web site on the Internet itself, rather that other media (print, TV, radio, etc.) If you need to generate brand recognition, then print works fine. But the best way to drive traffic to your web site is on the Internet itself (it is much more direct).

You MUST have a web site that is legible and works on all systems. Your site must work with all web browsers and all screen resolutions. Don’t design your site on a huge monitor at high resolution set, only to discover it looks funny and is almost impossible to read on a small monitor at low resolution.

Additionally, be very careful when using offbeat fonts, sizes, colors, contrasts, and combinations. If you want to do business on your web site, make it easy to do so. Also, if you want to sell, it may be best if your site looks a little on the conservative side (trustworthy), rather than leading edge (here today, gone tomorrow).

You MUST have a way to ask your web site visitors for their email address, in one way or another. This provides you with the opportunity to resell them later, by sending them quality, informative helpful email at a later date as a follow-up. There is nothing immoral or unethical about this, as long as it is done responsibly and in good faith.

You MUST have an offer on your web site that your visitors simply can’t refuse ….. such as FREE!

You MUST have focus. Is your web site trying to be all things to all people? This may have worked a few years ago, but not anymore. There are just too many web sites out there. You must find your specialty, niche, or targeted area, and become the resource for that area. Focus all efforts on servicing that one targeted area, and your web site will be much more effective.

You MUST offer a secure server to encrypt customer credit card information, for their safety and confidence in your organization. Money spent on this additional capability should be offset by an increase in orders as a result.

You MUST make it easy for the customer to buy from you with clear item numbers and prices, sales tax and shipping information, etc. Many shopping cart programs solve these potential obstacles effectively.

The above was excerpted from a Net Atlantic presentation about web design and development topics delivered to the Annual Conference of the New England Telemessaging Association.

www.netatlantic.com

Why waste time and effort sending e-mails to recipients who don’t need what you sell, don’t want your products and know nothing about you? We recommend sticking with “opt-in” e-mail lists to optimize results. Don’t have an address list of hot prospects primed to buy? Not to worry. This can be accomplished in a number of different ways.

You can entice individuals to visit your Web site with special offers to those who opt-in. Banner ads can also drive people who have an interest in your offers. Of course, marketing materials of any kind should include your Web site. Once there, make it easy for people to act, driving your sales.

Rule No. 2: The e-mail must be Relevant

We recommend that our clients use information they gain about their customers selectively to keep them informed. If you are a jeweler, for example, and one of your customers purchased an anniversary ring for his wife in 2005, your messaging can remind this customer of the approaching date and also provide selective information about new jewelry designs and styles that would be perfect for the up-and-coming anniversary.

This puts the sender in the position of providing information that is needed and wanted. It’s time-sensitive and it provides new product information based upon past behavior.

Rule No. 3: The e-mail must Offer Value

Research shows that consumers act on offers of value more than anything else. Having a sale on widgets? Customers who bought widgets in the past are the perfect customers to buy widgets when they go on sale. The most successful e-mail marketing programs track this data and use it intelligently. I often ask company owners to think like their customers and answer the question: “Is my e-mail address worth parting with?” In this day and age, it’s the equivalent of asking for a phone number that’s privately listed.

Rule No. 4: The e-mail must be Integrated

For maximum benefit, your e-mail messaging must be integrated with both content and commerce feedback loops in the form of product up-sells that leverage database data to meet needs (e.g., the next most likely product model) and surveys that allow the customer to provide data points that are used to better service and connect with the consumer.

It’s also important to know that any company, regardless of size, can afford an e-mail marketing program. In this day and age, with the ease of measuring your real-time ROI, who can afford not to? Moreover, small businesses can get in the game for a relatively small investment. Using this marketing strategy won’t break the bank and, better still, will help you make a trip to one.

Excepts from The Four Golden Rules of E-Mail Marketing by Mike Ferranti E-Commerce Times – 05/16/07 Michael Ferranti is CEO of Endai Worldwide, an Internet marketing and search engine optimization firm.

www.netatlantic.com

Now, however, the church’s leader, Pope Benedict XVI, is urging priests to embrace social media to spread the good word and bond with the faithful across greater distances. The announcement was made via a message regarding the theme of this year’s World Communications Day (May 16, 2010), “The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word”.

“The increased availability of the new technologies demands greater responsibility on the part of those called to proclaim the Word, but it also requires them to become more focused, efficient and compelling in their efforts,” said the Pope’s message.

“Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources–images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites–which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis.”

Of course, the Pope’s message also included words of caution for any priests who might be inspired to become Internet celebrities or spend their Sunday mornings preaching from a virtual pulpit from the comfort of their lounge suite. “Priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart, their closeness to Christ.”

Helen Leggatt

BizReport