One very basic mistake that many websites make

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This article contains one very basic tip for improving website conversion, and also a more advanced application of the same technique (if the initial paragraphs are a little too obvious for you, scroll down to the middle).

How easy is it for prospects to contact you?

I’m occasionally contracted to analyze the conversion rate of a website and suggest ways to improve conversion. One of the blindingly obvious conversion mistakes that I spot more often than you might think is the complete absence of a “Contact us” page (or one that’s very well hidden).

A “Contact us” page is normally the key response device in a lead generation website, yet many websites leave it out. Simply by making your “Contact us” page highly visible to prospects, you can increase conversion rate by a significant margin. In one case we did this and enquiry volume immediately jumped by 25%.

Make it obvious!

I reviewed one website with dropdown menus that did have a “Contact us” page, but it was “nested” as a sub-item under “About us”. All this does is insert an unnecessary step between you and an interested enquirer. Make sure your “Contact us” page is out in the open where everyone can see it.

Some websites also invent an “original” name for their “Contact Us” page. Sometimes these are easy to understand (e.g. “Enquire here”, “Contact me”, “Make a booking” etc.), but other times they’re far too confusing (e.g. “Details”).

This is a case where it’s wise to avoid being original and use the accepted teminology that the majority of your visitors are used to seeing.

[sort-of-related-article: Usability guy Jakob Nielsen talks about the value of heeding web standards]

A more advanced take on this idea

One technique that I’ve found increases website convertion is to insert multiple instances of your call to action throughout a webpage.

For example, if you place a “Contact us now” link at the end of the first paragraph, a couple of times throughout your ad copy and at the end, you give users more opportunity to contact you.

A “Contact us now” link toward the beginning of your copy is good for repeat visitors who are coming back to enquire (or for trigger-happy prospects who want your service yesterday .

Insert “Contact us” links right after “hot” copy elements such as benefit bullets to invite immediate enquiry when the emotional barometer is at its highest point.

Toward the end of your copy, put your final call to action.

Structuring “Contact us” links in this way is much better than writing a couple of pages of copy and putting one link right at the bottom.

This tip isn’t suited to every type of site, but it does apply to most online lead generation situations.

Test it and see!

Will Swayne
Online Lead Generation Specialist

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Are You Overlooking Marketing Diamonds?

There’s a story (true, I believe) about a farmer in South Africa who became obsessed with finding diamonds. He sold his farm and travelled the continent looking to strike it rich, but met with nothing but disappointment. Years later, he died an ingnominious death.

Meanwhile, another farmer had acquired the first man’s farm. One day he found a funny-looking rock in a river bed and placed it on his mantlepiece as a curio. When a friend saw it he practically fell off his chair – that “funny-looking rock” was a huge uncut diamond.

Further exploration of the property turned up yet more diamonds and was later developed into the richest diamond mine in the world – the Golconda .

The original owner sacrificed his life to search for what lay undeneath his feet.

[Read the whole "Acres of Diamonds" story here]

So what does this have to do with marketing?

Especially in the field of Internet marketing, everyone always seems to be searching for “the next big thing”. The next big affiliate program; the next big SEO technique; the next big conversion strategy.

Yet we often overlook the gems of marketing wisdom that are readily available to anyone who cares to look. This point was brought home to me when I listened to a teleconference recording by Perry Marshall, a well-respected Internet marketing expert.

The topic was “positioning” and how to differentiate even a commodity product (in this instance, granite of all things) from other offerings in the marketplace.

When asked about what resources and methods the business owner being interviewed by Perry had used to grow his business phenomenally (from memory, the growth was something in the order of $1MM to $20MM revenue in one year), the single resource he credited most for his success was Claude Hopkins’ 50-odd page book, Scientific Advertising.

So what?

I was half expecting him to reveal some little-known secret for members of his “Inner Circle” only – not talk about an out-of-copyright book on advertising first published in the 1920s. Today you can buy a copy in any bookshop for under 20 bucks, or even download it free of charge online [for example, I give away a free copy to newsletter subscribers who take the time to leave feedback].

Don’t misunderstand. I think Scientific Advertising is fantastic. That is precisely the point. It is so easy to be enticed by the promise of “the next big thing” when you have not yet fully internalised and utilized the information that is already within easy reach.

Why we do this I’m not sure, but I think it comes down to an unwillingness to take ACTION. Do you find yourself agonising over potential marketing decisions so much that by the time you finish thinking about it, you could have already tested your idea? I know I do, and it’s a habit I’m committed to breaking.

So I’ve resolved not to purchase any more information products or “how to” guides until I’ve more fully internalized and implemented the information I already have – starting with Scientific Advertising. I’ve already read it about 5 times, but I figure a sixth can’t hurt…

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How I Plan to Double My Income By Working 30% Less

One of my goals for 2006 is to double my income working only 4 days a week, as opposed to 5-6 days a week in 2005.

In theory, this is easily possible. But will it work in practice? Here’s how I plan to do it…

80 / 20 Insights

The 80 / 20 Principle is one of my favourite rules of thumb. That’s because it’s widely applicable and relatively easy to apply in one’s daily life.

In case you’re not familiar with the 80 / 20 Principle, it says that in any system, roughly 20% of causes will be responsible for 80% of effects.

One application of the 80 / 20 Principle says that 20% of your time is responsible for 80% of your productivity.

What this represents is a great opportunity for productivity growth. If you work a 40 hour week to produce 100 units of productivity, then roughly 80% of those units are produced in only 8 hours (you may need some convincing that this is so. For conclusive proof, read Richard Koch’s excellent book, The 80 / 20 Principle)

My plan is to identify what my 20% of highly-productive activities are, then concentrate my efforts on them at the expense of my low-productivity 80%.

Theoretically, I could produce 240% percent of my current output working only 3 days a week by focussing on my most productive 20% of activities. I hope to get there eventually, but for the time being I’ve decided to aim to double my productivity working 4 days a week.

I’ve started by keeping closer track of my time and identifying what my high-value and low-value tasks are. At the moment my list looks something like this…

Very High Value Activities (the top 20%)

• Selling to interested prospects
• Online marketing strategy consulting

Medium Value Activities (the next 30%)

• Sales lead generation activities for my own business
• Quality assurance of web, sales copy and online advertising work
• Project management liaison with clients

Very Low Value Activities (the bottom 50%)

• Integrating web content
• Invoicing and Accounts Receivable
• Over-checking email
• Commuting (1.5 – 2 hours per day)
• Multi-tasking *
• Distracting work environment **
• Procrastinating

Notes:

* Multi-tasking is a real productivity killer. Time Management experts recommend that you work on tasks in larger time blocks, rather than jumping from task to task.

** A recent study revealed that poor workspace design causes the average office worker to waste an astonishing 1.5 hours a day looking for misplaced items and being distracted by desktop clutter.

Looking at how I’m currently spending my time, all of a sudden a 100% improvement looks not only realistic, but almost easy

The Plan

Cull Productivity Black Holes

1. Redesign my workspace: Clear away unneeded files and get rid of non-essential items on my desk.
2. Move to a home office: Eliminate commuting time (will have to watch being distracted by midday Oprah though)
3. Check email and blog comments no more than 3 times a day: No compulsive clicking the Send / Receive button. Writing and checking emails in one block instead of doing it many times a day.

Systematize and Delegate More Tasks

Many tasks such as integrating web content, project management of websites and invoicing etc. still need to get done. It’s just that I shouldn’t be the one performing those tasks when there are much more productive things that I could be doing. So I plan to…

1. Re-organise my project management systems: our current systems are not nearly as productive as they could be. By organising tasks differently I can free up time.
2. Training, systems and procedures: to make website and integration work easier to delegate while maintaining high standards.
3. Delegate project management: My new web designer Phill starts on Monday. He’ll become the key contact point for project management issues. This one thing will free up a LOT of my time.

Beter Time Management Practices

1. Keep a desktop “to do” list: to help keep track of tasks and priorities.
2. Less multi-tasking: structure work in longer, more focussed blocks.

Results to Come

I’ve started keeping a diary of my activities and results and I’ll report back a month from now on initial progress. If you have any great time management or productivity-boosting tips, I’d love to hear them. I welcome your comments and ideas.

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Welcome, visitors from Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

Thanks to this post over at Entrepreneurs-Journey.com, I’ve received a nice little traffic spike today.

Welcome, visitors from E-J! If you need to generate more sales leads online or just like the content here, I’d love you to subscribe to my feed.

Will

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How to choose a great business name

Your business name can make a big difference – positive or negative – to the branding or positioning of your business, and ultimately to your marketing results.

But how should you choose a business name? I’m sometimes asked by clients to help with the naming of a new venture, and I’ve assembled a list of ideas and concepts that I like to draw on to assist the process.

Quirky or Functional?

Broadly speaking, there are two schools of thought when it comes to business naming.

1. New and Quirky: The Googles, Odeos, Flickrs, Del.icio.uses, Yahoo!s etc.

Quirky neologisms have the advantage of being memorable and unique. This type of name can work well for a mass-market product or service – especially when it’s a first-of-its-kind offering.

If you’re in a non mass-market industry, I recommend that you avoid quirky names and go for a name that is descriptive and functional instead – something that a prospect can understand immediately.

2. Descriptive and Functional:

A good descriptive name should communicate in 1 to 3 words as much as possible about what your business does, and if possible, communicate your unique difference.

Examples:

Marketing Results [Internet marketing consultancy]
BetterEdit.com [Online proofreading and editing business]
Loans Approved [Mortgage broker]
Customized Stickers [specialist sticker retailer]

It’s hard to come up with a truly magnificent name, but it’s not so difficult to think of one that’s fairly good.

Other factors to consider

Focus: Apex Bookkeeping is better than Apex Business Services.

Uniqueness / USP: Expert Plumbing is better than Century Plumbing.

Cadence: The way your name sounds when spoken aloud. Does your name flow off the tongue, or is it difficult to say? This point may sound slightly strange, but it can have a big effect on memorability.

Keywords: As mentioned above, functional keywords contain more communicative power than neutral words. Functional keywords may also have positive search engine optimization effects in the online arena.

Common naming mistakes to avoid

Unfoccussed or irrelevant names: e.g. a florist called ACME Global Products.

Hackneyed names: e.g. Smith Building Services

Obscure aconyms: e.g. WDS Marketing. [IBM was International Business Machines before it became IBM. Only by being first was it able to later gain traction with the name IBM.]

Over-long names: e.g. Quintessential Management Consulting and Marketing Services.

Conclusion

The above guidelines should help you come up with a great business name. Even if you bend a few guidelines above (as you sometimes have to do), starting off with a strong name is the first step toward making your marketing work.

Will Swayne
Marketing Results

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How to use PPC conversion stats to guide profitable SEO

[Note: This tip is of moderate difficulty. Some prior knowledge of Pay Per Click Search Engine Optimisation and Search Engine Optimization is an advantage.]

Targeted traffic is a vital component of online sales lead generation (and one that most web designers neglect).

Not only will targeted traffic convert into sales leads and enquiries, but traffic volume is also highly leveragable. Especially if you’re starting from a low base, it can be possible to multiply traffic volume by ten times or even one hundred times.

But rather than thinking only about sheer numbers, it also pays to think about traffic quality. Certain keyword phrases may convert much better than other phrases. You’ll get superior results if you think about both quantity and quality.

One of the ways you can do this is by using Pay Per Click conversion stats to guide your natural Search Engine Optimization efforts.

Here’s the gist:

Step 1: Set up Google Adwords with a broad range of keywords and conversion tracking turned on. Google Adwords or similar Pay Per Click search engines are the fastest way of generating high-quality search traffic for a new site.

Step 2: Optimise your Google Adwords campaigns over 6 to 8 weeks by split testing ads and performing other tweaks.

Step 3: After 6 to 8 weeks, consult your conversion stats. See which keyword phrases are converting best. Some factors to consider are…

• Average cost per conversion (lower is better)
• Daily search volume
• Competitiveness of the phrase in natural (“free”) search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN etc.

Having identified your best phrase (or cluster or similar phrases), you can start to optimise your site for this phrase on natural search engines.

If you can get Top 3 rankings for a search phrase, you’ll normally get somewhere between 5 and 10 times more clickthroughs than you’re getting from Adwords.

This can lead to savings on your PPC account, but more importantly, can also lead to several times more leads or enquiries.

Reasons to use this technique

This technique gives you the hard conversion stats you need to make informed marketing decisions. And because Adwords handles the stats part for you, it’s dead easy to set up.

It’s especially useful to help you choose between two or more similar search phrases. For example, imagine you own a French language school in Perth. Would you rather be ranked well in search engines for the search phrase

French language school Perth

or

Learn French Perth

Although these phrases look quite similar, the search volume, conversion rate and cost per conversion may be significantly different. And it may be difficult in the short term to rank highly for both phrases – you have to choose one or the other.

This technique gives you a method of choosing the most profitable traffic strategy that can boost your results by a significant margin.

For more ideas on profitable Internet lead generation, grab my Free Online Marketing e-Guide here.

Will Swayne
Web analytics geek

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My Story: How I Get All My Clients From the Internet

One of the questions that readers of this blog might have (I think there are about 4 of you ) is how I got started in the Internet marketing business, and why I’m qualified to advise others on Internet marketing strategies.

How I get all my clients from the Internet

There’s a lot of info around about Internet marketing and how to earn a million dollars in your pajamas through affiliate income etc. etc. I’m not trying to compete with that. Seeing as I only make a few hundred a month in affiliate income, I don’t feel that I’m sufficiently qualified to talk about that.

But what I can tell you about is how I built my marketing consulting practice up from zero to over 5 figures in monthly income using Internet marketing strategies only (apart from one $500 space ad that I ran about a year ago).

My marketing costs are around 2% of sales, and I spend zero time directly prospecting or looking for new clients. (OK, there are some activitites such as writing newsletters that play a part in getting new clients, but I see these as distinct from traditional “cold calling” or prospecting activities).

I’m sure there are many people out there who’ve achieved faster and better results. But I also know that there are a lot of people out there who are yet to make their website into a viable lead generation system and are looking for tips on what has worked for others.

So here are some of the strategies that I’ve successfully used to build up my consulting business. Your business may well be different, but if generating high-quality sales leads is a challenge for you, you may find many of the same tactics directly applicable.

I should also point out that most of these tactics have achieved success only after much trial-and-error. You normally need to stick at each one to get over plateaus and achieve lasting results.

1. Be different

How you position yourself has a big effect on how attractive your offerings are to your target audience.

Most web designers are technically competent. They produce nice looking websites. But in most cases, the website is an end unto itself.

Our pitch has always been Results. In other words, “we don’t just build websites, we provide you with an automated revenue-generating tool”.

Then we back up what we say with plenty of useful online marketing information and online marketing case studies that reinforce this claim.

Many business owners appear to be attracted by this pitch. It’s a lot more effective than saying “We’re wizards at PHP, XHTML, Java Script and tonnes of other acronyms that you probably haven’t heard of, but we’re not exactly sure whether or not your website will pay for itself.”

2. Educate. Educate. Educate.

Especially with a “high trust” sale such as marketing consulting, prospective clients need to understand the value that they’re getting and the benefits of using your product or service.

I publish a marketing newsletter and free online marketing guide to first educate prospects about our area of expertise and some of the solutions that are available to the problems that they may be facing.

If a newsletter subscriber finds that our approach meshes with what they want to achieve, they normally contact us to talk about doing business together.

This policy of “education before selling” is a lot more effective than the traditional sales pitch alone. Use newsletters, white papers, evaluations, and case studies to offer value to your market. If your information is of high-quality, this will turn into sales leads.

Again, there’s a great deal of free information available on the Internet. It can be hard to get traction. To make this strategy work, your subject matter either has to be truly unique or of very high quality. I try to give away information, strategies and advice that prospects would normally have to pay for elsewhere.

3. Test everything

Many of the marketing activities we’ve tried such as banner ad services, paid link exchange and PPC search engines such as Overture have produced sub-par results. But we’ve always known they weren’t working and cut them off before they costed too much money.

On the other hand, some things have worked very well such as Google Adwords. We’ve continued to optimize and expand what’s working to generate ongoing success.

If you know what’s working and keep on expanding on it, it’s actually very difficult to fail.

4. Take charge of your education

Especially on the Internet, it’s important to stay abreast of new developments. One of the best ways to do this is by reading blogs and investing in education products such as ebooks, software and courses. There’s a lot of junk out there, but there’s lots of fantastic profit-building tools as well. Rather than learn by trial and error for yourself, it’s much quicker and easier to pay $50 or $100 to learn from someone who has “been there, done that”.

I spend at least $300 – $500 a month on info products and other self-education resources.

5. Understand the elements of online success

To build a successful online lead generation channel, you need to stay abreast of four things:

1. Strategy – how your sales process is put together. This is particularly important if your product or service is relatively complex or expensive.
2. Design – not flashy graphics and animations, but design that is dead easy for users to understand (for more info, see this article about webpage layout recommendations)
3. Sales copy – you need content that motivates users to act and contact you for further information. The quality of your sales copy can have a significant effect on your lead generation results.
4. Targeted traffic – the more targeted traffic you have, the more sales you’ll generate.

On a regular basis I examine each of these areas and action improvements.

Ongoing improvement

It’s easy to become discouraged or impatient when things aren’t moving fast enough and your lead generation efforts are producing meagre results. But the key to improving your results online is consistent effort over time. You can also beat the learning curve by engaging a pro to do this for you, especially if your core business is not Internet marketing.

The above points are some of the things that have worked for me. Why not test them in your own situation? Also please feel free to comment about your experiences using these or other online marketing tactics.

Will Swayne

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Reaching a Local Customer Base with Online Marketing

Internet marketing is great for reaching a geographically diverse audience, but many bricks-and-mortar businesses cater to a local audience.

For example,

If you’re a chiropractor in Sydney, then your patients will be located in Sydney.
If you’re a lawyer in Brisbane, then (the majority of) your clients will come from Brisbane.
If you’re a pest controller in New York, then you’ll be treating homes located in New York.

This article looks at effective local Internet Marketing techniques that I’ve used to promote my Internet marketing consulting business and also help my clients attract more customers using online marketing.

Why Local Internet Marketing?

Most local businesses are yet to harness the Internet as an effective marketing tool. In my view, they should start doing so. Local Internet marketing can be very cost-effective for two reasons:

1. Ability to target customers at the point of purchase: Like the Yellow Pages, people search on the Internet when they have a need for your products or services. This allows you to target the specific individuals who are most likely to become your customers. Most “offline” marketing methods such as newspaper ads or leaflet drops are not targeted. Not being able to target your potential audience adds greatly to your costs.
2. Weak competition:

Many local businesses use standard offline advertising strategies such as the Yellow Pages, but they don’t have an effective online presence. Whereas in the Yellow Pages, you’re surrounded by your competition, you have far fewer competitors online. Fewer competitors means higher conversion rates and lower marketing costs. In other words, online marketing represents a good arbitrage opportunity for local businesses.

Local Internet Search Growth

Do people really use the Internet to search for product and service providers in their local area? Most definitely yes. Many of my clients do very well out of local Internet marketing.

For example, this Brisbane-based Japanese language school generates almost all of their new clients from the Internet. They get 3 times more clients for half the cost of the offline marketing strategies that they used to employ.

Another example is Athletic Edge, a personal trainer in Brisbane. Their website generates at least 2 or 3 good leads per week for very little cost. Many of these leads turn into loyal clients who keep coming back again and again.

And industry publications such as DM News [sorry, subscription only, ] predict that the paid local search market will triple in 2006.

Local Internet Marketing Strategies

Local Internet marketing isn’t rocket science. As is any online lead generation situation, your website should be sales-focused and follow sound website conversion practices.

But the real key is generating targeted traffic. That means people searching for your product or service in your geographical area.

Here are my top 5 strategies for generating targeted local traffic. Some of these strategies will be more effective than others. My advice is to test and see which ones work for you.

Strategy #1: Google Adwords

Google Adwords is the bread-and-butter traffic generation technique of local Internet search. It’s easy to set up, highly targeted and cheap. Here are a few guidelines for building effective local campaigns.

1. Build highly targeted keyword lists that include your geographical area.

For example, if you’re a painter in Brisbane, some of your keywords might be:

house painter brisbane
painter brisbane
painting contractor brisbane
commercial painter brisbane
etc…

2. Write ads that feature your geographical location prominently

e.g.

Brisbane House Painter
Make Your Home Sparkle Like New
27 Years Experience and 7-point Guarantee
www.BrisbanePainter.com.au

3. Set up conversion tracking

Conversion tracking is a tool provided by Google Adwords that allows you to see which keywords are producing qualified enquiries and which keywords are wasting your money. Conversion tracking is the key to producing profitable campaigns.

4. Test different ads against each other

Test two ads against each other within each Adgroup to see which ad performs better. Continue until you have an ad that you can’t beat.

TIP: For local campaigns, don’t test more than two ads at a time. If you test more than two ads, it can take forever to get a significant result because the search volume for most local searches is low.

5. Test some generic search phrases too

By “generic”, I mean search terms that don’t include your geographical location. Some people who are looking for a house painter in Brisbane will search only for

house painter

So you should include generic search terms like this as well, preferably in their own separate Adgroup, to allow you to test the results more accurately.

In that Adgroup, include other place names as negative keywords.

E.g.

-Sydney
-Melbourne
-Adelaide
-Queensland
-New South Wales
-QLD
-NSW
etc.

(this is relatively easy in Australia because we just don’t have that many towns and cities here . In the USA, your list would be a lot longer, but it’s probably very much worth testing.)

A list of negative keywords like this will at least ensure that your ad will not appear when a user searches for a term such as

house painters sydney

that is outside of your service area.

TIP: Should you use Google’s geographical targeting function? My advice is, “no”. Adwords offers a tool that supposedly serves your ads only to those people searching from within the geographical area that you specify. So far, our testing has found this tool to be a bit buggy. Test this for yourself, but we’ve found that it’s better to spend a few dollars more overcovering than to miss out on potential clients by using the geographical targeting function.

Strategy #2: Search Engine Optimization for Targeted Local Search Phrases

A small book could be written on this point alone, but I’ll cover the bare bones only.

As mentioned above, local Internet marketing is not highly competitive at this time. So it is relatively easy to gain high search engine rankings for highly targeted search phrases such as

house painter brisbane

OK, your search volume may not be huge, but the quality of this local search traffic can be very high. Several of our clients achieve conversion rates from visitors into enquirers in the 10-20 percent area.

Here are a few tips for local search engine optimisation:

1. Target your search phrase carefully

The first rule of SEO is that you can’t be everything to all people. By focussing on one key phrase you’ll give yourself a much better chance of getting high rankings for that phrase. Lack of focus is the enemy.

A good way to choose which phrase to go for is to look at the conversion stats from your Google Adwords. Find a phrase that gives you a reasonable volume of searches and conversions, then target that phrase for natural (unpaid) search engine results.

Or you can use this default formula, which we have found to be successful in most situations:

[your location] + [your industry name]

e.g.

Brisbane house painter
Melbourne law firm
Sydney financial planner
etc.

2. Put your key search phrase in your homepage title tags.

title tags contain the text that appears in the blue bar at the top of your browser. Search engines rely to some degree on these tags to rank websites. Keep your title tags short, focussed and concise.

Our house painter might put this text in the title tag:

Brisbane house painter

In some cases, it may be hard to choose between two commonly used terms. In that case, try putting them both in:

Melbourne law firm – Melbourne lawyers

3. Build some backlinks.

Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. Backlinks tell search engines such as Google that your website is important, and important websites get higher rankings.

Again, this topic can be as advanced as you want to make it, but here are some simple guidelines for building backlinks to your website:

*** List your site in as many online directories as possible.
*** Trade or exchange links with other websites
*** Write articles about your area of expertise and link them back to your website
*** Start a blog, and link it back to your website
*** Buy links through link-buying services such as www.text-link-ads.com
*** Ask friends or associates who have websites to link to you

IMPORTANT: If possible, you want the text of incoming links to contain the keywords for which you want to rank well. One of our clients is Pink Pest Services. If they wanted to get high rankings for a targeted geographical search, rather than linking to them with their company name:

Pink Pest Services

it would be better to link to them using keyword-rich link text such as:

Sydney pest controllers

Link text is not always in your control, but it’s useful to keep in mind if you’re aiming for high rankings.

TIP: How to put link text back under your control – use a domain name that contains keywords such as www.SydneyBookkeeper.com.au, www.JapaneseBrisbane.com.au or www.BetterEdit.com. When other sites link to your site using your domain name as the link text (as they often do), your keywords will be included.

4. Use your keywords in your website content

Again, this can get very technical, but you’ll do fairly well just by including your keywords throughout your website content in a natural way (DON’T overdo it).

If possible, use your keywords in the headline and in the first paragraph of text, then here and there throughout the content.

Strategy #3: Other Pay-Per-Click Search Engines

If your campaigns are working well in Google Adwords, try other PPC [Pay Per Click] search engines such as Overture and Sensis [Australia]. In my tests to date, these services haven’t produced the ROI that Adwords does, but they can nevertheless add value.

Strategy #4:?Yellow Pages Online

This is mainly addressed at an Australian audience – the same may apply in other markets but you’d have to test for yourself.

Our tests have revealed that the Online Yellow Pages produces a better ROI than the print version – in some cases up to 10 times better. But it’s not for every type of business.

If the value of one new client to your business is relatively high ($500+), then the YP online is worth testing. It may not produce tonnes of leads, but it should be ROI-positive.

Strategy #5: Integrate your offline marketing promotions

It goes without saying that you should include your URL in as many of your “offline” promotional tools as possible (e.g. business cards, leaflets, newspaper ads, letterhead, signage etc.). But this alone is hardly likely to lead to many leads (despite what some marketers say).

You can accelerate your results if you draw special attention to your website in your offline promotions. For example, prompt prospects to download a Free Report or White Paper in your direct mail letters or space ads.

Extending Your Geographical Reach

This article is about local Internet marketing, but it’s worth commenting about the flipside. That is, extending the geographical reach of businesses that have traditionally been “local” operations.

Three examples:

Although my Internet consulting business is based in Brisbane, most of my clients come from outside of Brisbane. We liaise via phone and email with no problems.

Another of my clients, mortgage broker Loans Approved, extends their geographical range by dealing with clients from all around Australia (and sometimes overseas) via phone and fax.

Friend and client Yaro Starak from proofreading business BetterEdit uses his website to attract clients from all over Australia and the world.

In other words, the Internet allows you to break the rules of “traditional” business. The exact strategy you choose will depend on your industry, your business model and the kind of client that you want to attract. In a future article, I’ll comment more on specific strategies for extending your geographical reach.

In the meantime, good luck with your local marketing!

Will Swayne

P.S. Want to stay up to date with future articles and blog posts? Subscribe to this blog’s feed. [Click here to find out more about how to subscribe].

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