My Travels on the Net

Labels: articles, best of, blog posts, internet marketing

You know when you’re reading website copy that’s compelling and gets the job done. Even if it’s for a product or service you don’t need, you want to bookmark the site or forward the URL to someone who needs it. You want to take action! But, do you know why it’s good?

Nine times out of ten it’s because the good copy enters into the conversation the reader is having in their mind. This is especially important on the internet because

Writing for the internet is different from other forms of advertising because of how people access the information. Other than the phone book, I can’t think of an advertising method where your potential customers are actively looking for you. They have a problem and are looking for a solution. So it makes sense that most copy writing coaches and courses subscribe to the problem/solution/benefit model.

It’s been my experience that writing compelling copy is a process of evolution. Typically we start with “This is who I am and these are my services.” When this fails to yield results, we go to the problem/solution/benefit model. Most service professionals stay stuck at this level. They wonder why they don’t get more clients from the internet and live with poor internet marketing results.

If you do the hard work of crafting copy that enters into the conversation going on in your prospect’s mind, it will improve all your results from newsletter sign ups to phone calls.

Take a look at the following websites:

http://www.sensiblecoaching.com/

http://www.millionairemind.com/

Now I’m really not trying to slam Shell’s website. For all I know, she’s perfectly happy with the copy on her home page. However, when you compare it to T. Harv’s you can see the difference. Where Shell starts with a list of problems, T. Harv’s jumps right into “Have you ever wondered why this is the case? Here’s why that’s the case.”

Although they’re both selling products designed to help you change your relationship to money, T. Harv’s is more likely to make the reader say “This guy has the solution to my problem! I want that!” He assumes you’re both discussing the same problem and puts the majority of his word toward describing his solution and benefits, benefits, benefits.

You can even see this difference in their domain names. Would you rather have ‘sensible coaching’ or a ‘millionaire mind’?

Labels: enter the conversation, internet marketing, internet marketing best practices, website copywriting, website text

Internet marketing is often overwhelming and confusing. As if designing your website to rank well and getting other websites to link to it weren’t hard enough, now you have to factor Web 2.0 and all that entails into your internet marketing mix.

I’ll be honest with you, it even drives me nuts. And I do this stuff for a living! But, I wrote a proposal for a new client today and found myself creating a brief summary of what’s involved with internet marketing.

The goal of internet marketing is to sell stuff. Whether that’s a physical product, an information product or a service, it doesn’t matter. The ultimate goal is to sell something.

There are two main components to internet sales; drive more traffic to your website and convert that traffic by giving the visitor what they want.

This sounds pretty basic but it’s easy to lose sight of the primary goal. We tend to focus on statistics like: how high my website ranks for certain key words, or how many unique visitors were there last month, or how many people signed up for my newsletter or blog feed. But you know what? Ultimately, none of that matters! What matters is how much money you made!

Selling stuff comes down to two things: driving traffic to your website and converting traffic into customers.

Driving traffic to the website can be done in two ways.
1. Your customer is looking for you. They have a problem and they are actively looking for a solution. They go to a search engine like Google or Yahoo, type in a key phrase and find your website in the search results.
2. Your customer may be aware that they have a problem but aren’t necessarily looking for a solution. They hear about your company in an article, blog, forum, podcast, video, social media or social networking website and because they like what they hear, they visit your website.

When people land on your website, it’s time to give them what they want. It’s a lot of work to get customers to your website and once they’re there, if you don’t give them what they want you’ve wasted your time and money. That’s why a customer centric website is crucial to converting visitors to customers. It’s also the most commonly overlooked piece of the sales process.

I’m not going to tell you what your website should say because I could write the most brilliant description and the vast majority of you are going to tell yourself, “My website says that.”

You know what? It doesn’t! I will straight up bet you $100 (donated to your favorite charity) that I can find 10 things on your website that are not turning visitors into customers.

Want to know why visitors are not customers? Have a friend (who doesn’t owe you anything and will tell you the truth) look over your website. Then shut your mouth, stop defending it and listen. Your bank account will thank you for it.

Labels: converting visitors, driving traffic, internet marketing, internet marketing best practices, turning visitors into customers

I recently signed up for Ed Dale's Thirty Day Challenge. I highly recommend it. It's no BS, straight ahead, good info about how to make money online. Oh yeah, and it's free.

As part of signing up for the Thirty Day Challenge, I get a few promotional emails. Nothing outrageous just emails about their other products. One of those emails was about their membership site called Immediate Edge. The sales page has a great 30 minute video where Ed essentially explains how internet marketing (aka making money online) works. Yeah, he promotes his product a bit but it's just to demonstrate how it can help.

If you've ever wondered, "How the heck do you make money from the internet!" you need to watch this video.

Labels: Immediate Edge, internet marketing, making money online, Thirty Day Challenge

Labels: internet marketing, internet marketing best practices, Stompernet

The company that ranks #1 for “internet marketing articles” has quite a few articles on the subject. I’m sure it took a lot of work to write all those articles but I’d be willing to bet all that work hasn’t paid off. Why?

First, consider the words used buy people looking to buy a service versus people looking for information.

When people want to find a service provider, they use words like:
Consultant
Consulting
Strategy
Expert

When people are looking for information, they use words like:
Articles
Case studies
Examples
Information
Data

Second, the articles tell you how to do something but they don’t show you why you should hire this search engine optimization firm. The author could argue that the purpose of the articles is to build the perception of expertise. Providing good information is one way to do it but these articles aren’t particularly well written or all that helpful.

If you’re going to try to improve your website’s rankings with articles make sure your articles demonstrate your expertise AND subtly show the reader why they should hire you to do the job. Otherwise, you will just wind up with a bunch of looky-loos and no customers.

(*I’m giving them a link for “internet marketing articles” as a consolation prize for being my "how not to do it" example.)

Labels: internet marketing, seo, writing articles

No matter how much we wish it were true, you can’t just hang out a shingle and wait for clients to show up. Yes, it’s anxiety provoking but in order to find clients you have to network face-to-face. Even if there isn’t an entrance fee, networking isn’t free. At the very least it costs you time; the time in attending the event and the time in preparation. So when attending a face-to-face networking event you wouldn’t put on your best suit, get a haircut, make sure you’ve got your business cards, practice your elevator speech – and then go stand in the corner. So why do you do it on the internet?

You don’t think you do that, eh? I bet you put dozens of hours and hundreds if not thousands of dollars into your website. Then when that didn’t get your phone ringing, you spent more time and money on search engine optimization, a newsletter and maybe a blog. Phone ringing yet? If it is, it’s probably not enough to cover the expense of all that work.

Maybe you’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t find clients via the internet. That’s not true. The reason why you “can’t” find clients via the internet is that you’re lurking in the background.

You Are a Wall Flower.

Don’t think you’re a wall flower? Let’s start by looking at your blog. (This example could apply to your website and your newsletter too.) Here’s the litmus test: of the two questions below, which did you spend more time thinking about?
What will I write about?
How will I get people to read this?

If you spent more time on the first question, you are a wall flower. It’s easy to do. You spend more time thinking about infrastructure than connecting. You ask yourself: What blogging system or newsletter system will I use? When will I post to my blog or send my newsletter? What will I say? How does it look?

Not that these questions aren’t important, but in these questions you have focused on what you can directly control instead of what seems nebulous i.e. getting people to read your blog, sign up for your newsletter or visit your website. That’s only half the equation.

“If You Build It They Will Come” Only Applies to the Movies

Yes. You have to build a website, blog and newsletter. But, that’s not enough. You have to think about “Who do I want to read this?” and “How do I get them here?” The answers to those questions are longer than I fit in this post. But you can start to answer those questions by asking yourself “Where does my target market hang out on the internet?” Then go there. Really. It’s that easy. Stop being a wall flower and go say “Hi.” If you can do it in person, you can do it on the internet.

Labels: blogging, enewsletter, internet marketing