San Diego Web Design Blog

Adding Value Through Appreciation - September 2009

admin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:46:21 +0000

In my work, I get to speak with a lot of people who are focused on either starting or growing a business. In this time of economic recession, it seems as if everyone has been affected on some level; most of my clients have either lost at least some, if not most, of their business in the past year.

The people that I speak with tend to fall into three categories: first, those whose businesses are struggling, and who are seriously concerned about losing their businesses altogether. The second group is people who have struggled, but have started to turn things around. The third group are those that were hit initially by the recession, but quickly responded–and their businesses are as well as, or even better than before.

The people in the first group tend to share similar attitudes toward their businesses and life in general. In most cases they haven’t considered making changes in their business or marketing plans despite serious challenges. When they have considered changes, they seem to struggle with implementing these changes. They tend to have negative attitudes about their businesses, and there seems to be a sense of desperation about their circumstances.

When talking with people in groups two and three, I have made a habit of asking what they have done, or are currently doing, to turn things around. In most cases these individuals have completely overhauled their businesses. Most of them have taken the time to re-educate themselves on several aspects of their business, especially in the areas of marketing and business development. In addition, they actively and promptly take action to implement the strategies and tactics they have learned. And their attitudes reflect their actions: the people in these groups are almost always positive and excited about their businesses, and are looking forward.

Recently, I had the privilege to speak a “category three” client whose business is doing better than ever. Like the others in this category, he was very positive and extremely proactive in transforming every aspect of his business. But when I asked him why he was doing so well, he said he primarily attributes his success to a simple, yet committed practice of gratitude. He told me that, since the recession began, he has taken time every morning to focus on and reflect upon everything that he is grateful for. At first, he said, the list was short. Now he finds that he could easily spend 10 or more minutes listing things to be grateful for. His story reminded me of a saying that I heard years ago: ‘The interesting thing about gratitude is that, when you practice it, in return you receive more to be grateful for’.

My client went on to say that this practice has become one of the most important activities he takes part in. He said it now permeates everything he does, and that this practice gives him the insight and the awareness to see the good in almost everything- which in turn gives him even more to be grateful for.

In order to avoid being in the first category-where struggle and defeatism abound–I try to incorporate things that I learn into my own business. And so, like my client, I have been practicing gratitude regularly. Like him I have also found (in a very short period of time) that it seems to affect every area of my life. It has a huge impact on my attitude and how I feel in general.

This practice has given me a very practical tool to control my attitude, which is quite empowering when we are fearful of circumstances (like a recession) which seem to be beyond our control. I have found that it is very difficult to be negative when you regularly express what you are grateful for- regardless of the circumstances. My tendencies to slip into worry and doubt have been significantly diminished. And for this I am grateful!

Mikel Bruce
WebFlexor

Adword Advertising Tips

admin — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 09:39:02 +0000

Running an effective Adword advertising or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising campaign for any business is not easy. Since PPC has significant benefits for small niche businesses– especially if they are located in small geographic areas) it is a marketing process that is at least worth testing out.

Here are a few tips that will help you get a significant return on your investment? Below are several things every Business should know about Pay- Per-Click – as well as a few helpful tips to give you a fast track to success.

The investment
The portion of your marketing budget that you devote to your PPC campaign is up to you, but it is probably a good idea to “dip your toe in the water” with a smaller investment at firsts – then as the program builds momentum, add to the program with more emphasis on the areas bringing you traffic or returns.

Bidding on the keywords
When you sit down to bid on keywords (the supply-and-demand process which determines who will “own” the terms associated with your ad) you may be a little taken aback by the cost of the more popular keywords. This is where you need to consider employing the “long tail” method of thinking in your keyword selection. Less common search terms associated with your business may not have the traffic numbers you want, BUT they are a lot less expensive, and buying up a large number of them can have the same impact as a couple of more popular keywords. Think about downsizing your keywords with geographical considerations. For example instead of listing ‘San Francisco Roofers’ as a keyword phrase you may narrow it down to several towns that surround your business such as ‘Domingo Roofers’.

The landing page
Take time to think about where you want to direct those people who see your PPC ad. Is the home page where you want to send them? If an aspect of your business is specialized and you are using PPC to market this service, you would want to direct these clicks to the page on your website which has information this aspect of your business. Put some thought into this, since you are likely to experience a bump in traffic based on the PPC ad – and the leads coming in should be highly qualified.

Don’t budget shop, use Google There’s really no point in trying to nickel and dime your PPC campaign by using smaller, less trafficked search engines. Google’s tock is high for a reason: their PPC program, Google AdWords is second to none and always delivers the most traffic.

The reporting
Finally, one of the most important yet overlooked aspects of running a successful PPC campaign is reporting. You simply must keep detailed records of what keywords are performing and which ones are not. This information will help you decide – in the coming months – where to focus more precious marketing dollars, and where to cut and run and swap out old keywords for new ones. If you know someone that has experience with setting up a PPC campaign, it would be great to get his or her help.

Mikel Bruce
WebFlexor Websites
888-282-7818
www.webflexor.com

10 Tips for Converting Prospects to Clients

admin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:36:35 +0000

Your prospective clients are the most valuable assets for your business. Without prospects, you wouldn’t have any clients. Therefore, your prospects are the most important things to building your business. Most business owners focus so much on either their clients or getting new prospects that they don’t pay nearly enough attention to converting their prospects to clients. In other words, getting a new prospect is half of the battle and converting the prospect to a client is the most important aspect of successful business development. Here are 10 tips for converting prospects to clients:

Track Leads- Most people don’t have any idea how many prospects are actually coming in at any given time. This lack of awareness can be detrimental. It would be like driving your car without a gas gauge knowing how important gas is to keeping your car going. Do an experiment for just a month and track how many prospects are coming in through your efforts- both on-line and off-line. You may find that one of the main reasons that your business isn’t growing is that you don’t have enough prospects coming in.
Track Conversion Ratios- Once you have an idea of how many prospects or coming in over a month; compare that to how many new clients you convert over the same period of time. This will give you your conversion ratio. This ratio is typically very low and is another major reason that your business may be struggling.
Learn to Close- Closing is simply a name for converting prospects to clients and many people avoid closing since they are either afraid of rejection or concerned about pushing their service/product on to a prospect. Unfortunately, this is a huge problem since, if you don’t ask for the business your chances of converting your prospects shrinks significantly. Simply asking for the business will solve half the problem and learning effective closing techniques can go a long way as well. If you feel that you have a good product or service asking should not be a problem. Come up with a simple 1 sentence close that you feel comfortable with and practice using after speaking with each prospect. It could be as simple as ‘I really look forward to doing business with you and when would you like to get started.’
Use a CRM- Having a poor system for tracking prospects is one of the main reasons that most people do such a poor job of it. There is a statistic in sales that says it takes on average 7 contacts to convert a prospect to a client. If you have 25 prospects coming in each month and if you plan to contact each one 7 times, that is 175 contacts combined with the contacts that you need to make from previous months. That is a huge tracking project and an organized system is crucial if you plan to be successful. There are programs that exist to make this job easy and they are called Client Retention Management (CRM) programs. I would highly suggest considering a CRM for your business. Some of the main programs are www.act.com and www.salesforce.com but there are dozens of good options that exist.
Prioritize Follow-up- Most people don’t actually enjoy following up with their prospects. Set aside at least 30 minutes each day to follow up and stick with that commitment.
Additional Marketing Channels- One of the main reasons that most businesses don’t get enough prospects is that they have only one or two active marketing channels. Some people rely on advertising and others on referrals, but a successful business typically has at least three active channels at any given time. Web based marketing channels such as SEO, Adword Marketing and Email Marketing are especially important in today’s market.
Email Newsletters- Staying in touch with prospects is critical in order to keep your business on their radar. One of the best, easiest and most cost effective ways of doing so is through sending out regular email newsletters. This is a great way to educate and inform your prospects as well as branding your business.
Add Value- Adding value to your clients is important, but in today’s market adding value to your prospects is equally important. Most people want to get some type of value from their service providers before they make a commitment. Some great ways to do so are to send out newsletters, as was mentioned earlier with valuable educational resources and information. Here are some other ideas: Add educational resources/information to your website, offer free e-books, offer free presentations/webinars, have a nice referral program.
Use a Lost Leader- In today’s market, people are shopping around more than ever and are really looking for the best price and value. One way to get a prospect to consider your service is to give them some incentive in the way of a discounted product or service. This is called a ‘Lost Leader’ since in some cases you will either give it away or sell it a reduced rate. The goal is to get them in the door…
Referral Program- Getting new prospects via referral is always nice since you typically need to invest as much less time and money to get the prospect. Most people don’t take full advantage of getting referrals because they either don’t ask for referrals or don’t offer strong enough incentives to their existing clients to incentivize them to give referrals. Consider this ridiculous scenario for a moment: If you were to truly offer each of your clients $1,000,000 for each referral and they knew you were serious, how many referrals do you think they would give you? The answer would undoubtedly be a lot. This example illustrates that given enough incentive, everyone will give referrals. Come up with some type of give-away that is equitable for you and create a formal referral program based on that incentive. One to consider is a refer-a-friend program. This is pretty simple, each time a client refers someone they get something for free as well as the person they refer.

Now is not the time to let prospects slip through the cracks. Prospects are more valuable than every before to your business and there are less prospects to go around. Develop a conscious process for converting prospects to clients.

New Clients May Be Closer Than You Think

admin — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 09:35:34 +0000

If you’re focused on building your business you may be spending exorbitant amounts of time, money, energy and resources trying to find new clients and in many cases they may be right under your nose. In addition to searching for new prospects you should first and foremost look to the prospects that you already have.

Statistically it takes about 7 contacts to convert a prospect to a client and most people give up after only 2 or 3 attempts. This is what I refer to as a HUGE power leak. Prospective clients are a critical part of your business since they are the only thing that can be converted to actual clients. Therefore, they should be treated like gold and should be contacted consistently over a fairly long period of time until it is absolutely clear that they won’t become clients. Some people don’t even keep the contact information of prospective clients, which makes it impossible to follow up with them.

Here are 10 tips to improve your conversion ratio of prospects to clients and to stay in contact with prospective clients:

Email Newsletter Marketing- The easiest way to stay in constant contact with your prospects is through an email marketing campaign. Many people avoid using email marketing since they don’t read email newsletters themselves. Having people read your newsletter is not really the point- it’s getting it in front of your prospects as often as possible. Most people won’t read yours either but they will see your email and some will read it.
CRM- Having a poor system for tracking prospects is one of the main reasons that most people do such a poor job of it. If you have 25 prospects coming in each month and if you plan to contact each one 7 times, that is 175 contacts combined with the contacts that you need to make from previous months. That is a huge tracking project and an organized system is crucial if you plan to be successful. There are programs that exist to make this job easy and they are called Client Retention Management (CRM) programs. I would highly suggest considering using a CRM for your business. Some of the main programs are www.act.com and www.salesforce.com but there are dozens of good options that exist.
Closing- Closing is another name for converting prospects to clients and many people avoid closing since they are either afraid of rejection or concerned about pushing their service/product on to a prospect. Unfortunately, this is a huge problem since, if you don’t ask for the business your chances of converting your prospects shrinks significantly. Simply asking for the business will solve half the problem and learning effective closing techniques can go a long way as well. If you feel that you have a good product or service asking should not be a problem. Come up with a simple 1 sentence closing line that you feel comfortable with and practice using while speaking with each prospect. It could be as simple as ‘I really look forward to doing business with you and when would you like to get started.’
Key Performance Indicators- Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) are
financial and non-financial measures used to help an organization define and evaluate how successful it is, typically in terms of making progress towards its goals. The most common KPI to measure and track is monthly sales. It’s very important to know, right off the top of your head your monthly goal for number of new clients and revenues. The primary statistics used to measure and evaluate your success relative to these goals are the number of prospects and the conversion of prospects to clients. Set up a chart and track these statistics every month and you will have a window to view why you are successful or where you need to improve.
Follow-up Excuses- Most of your prospects are probably fairly busy and it’s very important to have a reason for following up with them. Create a list of 7-10 reasons or excuses to contact your prospective clients over time. Some of the reasons you could consider are: Discounts, Samples or your work, an event/workshop that you are hosting, referral programs/special, etc…
Pleasant Persistence- Most of your prospects will be ok with regular follow up especially if you have a reason for following up. In some cases, your prospects will appreciate the consistency of follow up. Try to mix up follow up’s between phone and email and be pleasant and persistent and you may enjoy it as well.
Prioritize Follow-up- Many of us have the ability to delay gratification and some of us don’t. Taking time to contact prospects during your work day is not the most favorite activity for most of us. But it’s probably one of the most important things that you can do to grow your business. Set aside one hour each day (preferably first thing) to follow up with prospects and you will probably be surprised immediately at the results.
Last Ditch Effort- After contacting a prospect a number of times (hopefully more than 7) it may be time to give up. This is perfect time to do some type of bold last ditch effort to get their business. At this point you have nothing to lose and some people really respond to this type of approach. I recommend calling and or sending an email letting them know why they can’t live without your product or service.
Additional Marketing Channels- One of the main reasons that most businesses don’t get enough prospects is that they have only one or two active marketing channels. Some people rely on advertising and others on referrals, but a successful business typically has at least three active channels at any given time. Web based marketing channels such as SEO, Adword Marketing and Email Marketing are especially important in today’s market.

Now is not the time to let prospects slip through the cracks - Prospects are more valuable than every before to your business. Develop a conscious process for converting prospects to clients and shut down your power leak.

Mikel Bruce
WebFlexor Websites
www.webflexor.com

The Ups and Downs of Internet Marketing

admin — Sat, 09 May 2009 09:35:12 +0000

For many of our clients that use our web design services marketing through the Internet does not appeal to them in the least. For some it’s because they are unaware of the potential and for others it’s based on fear or a lack of knowledge as to where to get started. I also speak to clients who look to Internet marketing as the silver bullet that will either save or completely transform their businesses. In my experience, both of these perspectives are very limited and could either constrain or destroy a business’s potential. When it comes to marketing, I believe that the Internet is a critical tool but it should be well balanced and supported by other forms of marketing. Here are 10 tips to either help you use the Internet to build your business and to avoid over-depending on the Internet.

1. There are very specific benefits that web marketing techniques have to offer that are unavailable through traditional forms of marketing. For example, email marketing is probably the most cost effective forms of marketing that has ever existed. You can literally send 100,000 emails for $100 once you have obtained an email list. Pay-Per-Click or Adword marketing is probably the most targeted forms of marketing available - You only pay when someone finds your website and you know for a fact that they are searching for exactly what you are promoting because of the keywords they type in.

2. In today’s market, most of your prospective clients will expect that you have a website no matter what you do. In fact, your website is one of the primary indicators that you are established and professional. In addition, your business will be judged based on your website. That being said, if you are a newer or smaller business it presents an incredible opportunity to appear more established and bigger than you actually are. This can be accomplished by optimizing form and function- having a well designed website that is easy to navigate with features such as video, flash slide shows, professional logo, etc… - Remember that your website is probably the first thing that most of your prospective clients will see and it’s probably the most important place to put your best foot forward.

3. Your website can allow you to quickly connect with and deepen your connection with more people. If you were actively out in your community or cold calling prospective clients you could probably never make contact with as many people as your website could allow you to do. 2 of the best tools that I know of to take advantage of that connection are through video and email marketing. Statistically, more people are searching the Internet for video than any other form of media. People enjoy watching short video clips and will spend much more time on a web page if it contains a video. In addition, it gives them a chance to see you, hear you and learn more about you as a person and as a business owner. In addition, because of YouTube people are totally ok with watching video that is not produced professionally. This makes it much easier and more affordable for the average person to add video to their website. Sending email newsletters is probably the best way to stay in constant contact with a prospective client. All you need to do is to somehow get them to sign up for your newsletter and send it out once a month. Remember that an email newsletter should be educational vs. promotional or your subscriber will more likely than not eventually opt-out.

4. Over 80% of the people searching for any product or service are now using the Internet, so not having an Internet presence could be one of the biggest mistakes that you could make. Getting tapped into the search engines can be difficult especially for competitive markets, but there is plenty of free information available to help you succeed on the Internet. If you can manage to get well ranked in the search engines (especially Google) the benefits could be huge.

5. Probably the most important place to be in terms of having a promotional presence is the first page of Google. Consider these statistics: Of the 80% of the people that are using the Internet to search for your product or service about 65% of them are on Google and 90% of these searchers never leave the first page of a Google search. Getting on to the first page of Google may not be easy, but it is certainly worth focusing on - for at least a long-term strategy - and it could literally transform your business. You could do it either through Google Adword marketing or getting listed on a natural search through search engine optimization. The one thing that I would recommend doing is to focus on keywords related to your business that are both competitive and non-competitive. The competitive ones will either be more expensive or take more time but will be more lucrative in form of results, but the non-competitive keywords could heed results in a short period of time. Be sure to get all of the keywords plugged into the webpage text and meta tags on your website.

6. The Internet in most cases in not a salesperson. Until your brand is reputable, most consumers won’t make purchases or even buying decisions over your website until you have established either a personal or email newsletter connection with them. You should initially not expect to offer your products or services on-line for sale and expect many sales. I would recommend having a toll free number posted in a prominent place on every page and to make yourself as available as possible to handle live questions. In addition, add an incentive based opt-in form on your website to entice your visitors to sign up for your newsletter with some type of give-a-away (free e-book, report, etc…)

7. Just like most marketing techniques, Internet marketing takes longer than you think to bear fruit. Even seemingly instant types of marketing such as Pay- Per-Click advertising typically takes time to learn the process, find the right key words, and to prepare your website for conversions. I would recommend talking to as many people as possible that have engaged in Internet marketing to find out how they have used their websites to enhance their businesses. You could avoid pitfalls that most people fall into.

8. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket by depending entirely on Internet marketing to promote your business. Balance out your web marketing strategies with traditional forms of marketing such as networking or prospecting. You may even find that you can begin to intermingle on-line and off-line marketing techniques by doing such things as adding email addresses of people that you meet to your email newsletter list.

9. Especially in the beginning, your web presence is probably better served by using it as a tool to either get leads for you to follow up with or to add credibility to your business. Once a lead comes in through your website get in the habit of calling them as soon as possible. Treat each lead like gold since it is the only thing that you can convert to real paying client. To that end, I would recommend adding a contact form to your website with a phone number as a required field.

10. Internet Marketing is typically not the easy way out of the slow business slums like some people think it is. In most cases, especially at the beginning it may require more time, money and effort to get the same results as you might expect with more traditional forms of marketing. For most people there is a whole new learning curve and Internet Marketing is still much less predictable because of the unknown factors such as search engine optimization. Be willing to be patient with the Internet and take the time to learn about Internet marketing. As I mentioned before, there is a ton of free information out there in the forms of websites, e-books, e-courses, etc…

Now is not the time to sit back and to wait for business to come to you. A well balanced approach toward marketing that includes both on-line and off-line marketing strategies is almost a must if you want to succeed to today’s market. Take the time to work ‘on’ your business vs. just ‘in’ your business by setting time aside each day to learn about Internet marketing and marketing in general.

Mikel Bruce
WebFlexor Technologies
www.webflexor.com

Affiliate Marketing

admin — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 09:41:24 +0000

Very few companies have ever considered using affiliate marketing as a tool for generating revenue for their business. As an affiliate, you can sell products for another business and get commissions for each sale and in some cases the commissions can be as high as 50% and you will never need to stock inventory, process any financial transactions, or service any clients. In most cases, the efforts on your part are nominal since the process typically consists of adding a link from your website to a website in
which products are being sold and then when someone purchases a product having come from your site, you will get compensated. The Affiliate Marketer is responsible for tracking the traffic from your website.

Other reasons why a small business might get involved in affiliate marketing:

Add additional revenue streams to your business.
If you want to offer products to your clients but don’t have the time, money or effort to put together a product line.
You can represent a wide variety of companies and/or product lines.
Being an affiliate can give clients another reason to re-visit your website.
You can become an additional resource for your clients.
If you are already taking the time to drive traffic to your website you can benefit in another way.

When choosing companies to represent you as an affiliate, you want to take your time and make sure that you feel comfortable with their products. You want to ensure that they have an active affiliate program and are able to reliably track traffic that comes from your site. Most reputable affiliate marketers have affiliate marketing software that effectively tracks affiliate sales. Additional precautions to consider when evaluating acting as an affiliate for affiliate marketing companies are:

Carefully read the terms and conditions of an affiliate agreement before signing on as an affiliate.
Be wary of affiliate programs that pay small commissions.
It is quite normal to join most affiliate programs for free, after all you are selling their products, so be warned about those that ask for a membership charge.
Make sure that they are able to provide regular (monthly or less) affiliate reports as well as pay affiliate checks on a monthly basis.

If you are looking to develop a professional web presence and succeed on the Web, WebFlexor specializes in affordable and quality customized websites starting at only $199.00!

Mikel Bruce
WebFlexor Yoga Websites
888-282-7818
www.websitesforyoga.com