Keyword Selection - Advertising Excellence

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KEYWORD SELECTION
Keyword selection is the corner stone of any search engine optimisation campaign and absolutely essential if you are a small
business owner looking for quick wins and the best return on your investment.
Historically marketing involved a fair degree of trial and error hence the old adage “50% of my marketing works I just don’t know
which 50% it is” however online marketing requires much less guess work and you can identify exactly which keywords or phrases
best suit your business, product or service and exactly how many people searched for each keyword or phrase on a monthly basis.
First of all it is important to understand what type of keyword would best suit your needs.
LONG TAIL
The success of the internet and the real opportunity
for all small to medium sized business owners is the
Long Tail.
A typical example of a generic keyword or phrase
that appears in the head of the tail might be “New
Cars”. This phrase would generate lots of searches
each month but it is important to consider what type
of search this might be. It could be that someone is
looking to buy a New Car but are not sure what type
or when? It could also be someone researching New
Cars for some kind of project or report? Therefore
if you are a car dealer specialising in selling New
Peugeot cars then whilst their are many searches
for the phrase”New Car” many of them would be
useless for what you are trying to achieve.
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Another issue when it comes to selecting generic keywords
particularly for small business owners is the management of the results
and the time involved with achieving success.
If we start with the time involved with achieving success - when it comes to high traffic generic
phrases then natural or organic SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) takes time particularly
when it comes to Google. You need a top quality web site with a significant amount of content,
lots of quality inbound links and first class on page optimisation and even with all these items
in place results can still take time. If you are a big business with significant marketing budgets
and resource then this may not be a problem but often small business owners cannot afford
to wait for results in this way, they need quick wins in order to maintain growth and cash flow
and so with this in mind Long Tail Phrases present the best solution particularly if they are
keywords related to high profit margin products and services. The next issue particularly for
small business owners is the management of the results once they achieve first page positions
for generic phrases.Big companies have the internal resource to handle lots of enquiries from
early stage researchers and the software and processes to nurture these leads over time until
they become quality leads and sales. Small Business Owners however often do not have the
resource necessary to sift through the many general enquiries to identify leads that are ready
to buy now and so sales get missed and conversion ratios go worse rather than better. Sales
teams can become demotivated because they are sifting through lots of general enquiries
and missing out on quality opportunities and so whilst the online sales funnel will show an
increase in traffic it will show a decrease at the business end. It is essential therefore that all
business owners should consider a phased plan when it comes to keyword selection. Long
Tail Phrases present business owners with “Quick Wins” and an opportunity to get some early
sales, Mid Tail phrases offer a mixture of higher traffic volumes but still from opportunities that
are close to a buying decision.
Finally Generic Phrases offer high traffic volumes and an opportunity to attract potential
customers early on in their research cycle and nurture them until they become customers.
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MID-TAIL KEYWORD
A typical example of a Mid-Tail Keyword or Phrase might be “New
Car for Sale” this would have fewer searches each month than “New
Car” but again if you are a car dealer selling New Peugeot’s the
this might be much better in terms of quality and conversion
although the searcher could still be looking for other types of
car and might not be looking to buy now.
LONG -TAIL KEYWORD
A typical example of a Long Tail Keyword or Phrase would
be “New Peugeot Car for Sale” or even better “Peugeot 306 for Sale”
each of which represent a perfect set of phrases for our car dealer and
whilst these phrases would carry fewer searches again each month the quality and
conversion to sale would typically be much higher.
Whilst the monthly search volumes for long tail keywords are lower this can be
compensated by selecting more keywords for your campaign. So in our current
example the phrase “New Car” was responsible for 450,000 monthly searches
where as “Peugeot 306 for Sale” was only responsible for 3600 monthly
searches however if you were to optimise your site for 20 Long Tail Phrases in
this way then you would have circa 72,000 really high quality targeted visitors
per month which would undoubtedly result in many more sales.
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SELECTING
YOUR KEYWORDS
As mentioned earlier there is no
excuse for getting this wrong as there are
many tools available to identify the best
possible keywords or phrases for your
business. Probably the easiest (and its
free!!) is Google’s own keyword selection
tool. This is actually designed for potential
pay per click customers but works in
exactly the same way for organic or natural
search.
Simply go to Google and do a
search for “Google Keyword
Tool” Select the first entry on
the list marked “Keyword Tool Google” (highlighted in red)
You can also find the Google
Keyword Tool by scrolling to the
bottom of Google’s search page
and clicking on Advertising, you
then need to click on “AdWords
Express” and then click on “Try
Adwords” followed by “Get
Keyword Ideas”.
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Once selected you will be
presented with the following
screen.
The first thing you need to do is enter
the verification password, in this case
“workself 10 go” (highlighted in Red) and
then you can start to look for keywords
or phrases in the box below the section
marked “Find Keywords”(highlighted in
Blue). You will also see that you have the
opportunity to enter a web site address
(highlighted in Green) this takes the
website you specify and offers suggested
keywords based on the content within
the site. If you put your own web site
address and Google suggests keywords
that are significantly different from what
you do then you should seriously look at
your content.
You can also enter a product or industry
search (highlighted in Purple)and find
a list of relevant keywords within your
specified category.
Finally there is a section called “Traffic Estimator” (highlighted in Orange) which is an area specifically for Pay Per Click
customers, Google estimates the volume of people who will click on your web site based on monthly search volumes,
it also looks at the average cost per click and then calculates an estimated daily cost. Whilst it is designed specifically for
customers who are intending to purchase first page positions it is good for people interested in natural optimisation to get
a realistic price comparison when considering using a third party Search Engine Optimisation Company.
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You will then be presented with the following screen:
You can see from this screen we have executed
a search for the phrase “New Car” (highlighted
in Red) and you will also see that the last month of
results showed 3,350,000 global monthly searches
and 450,000 local monthly searches (again highlighted
in Red).
You can personalise your search results so that
you can see how much each search phrase
would cost if you were using a pay per click campaign
(Google Adwords) however to do this you need to set
up an account, this doesn’t cost anything and opens
up more tools to utilise when creating your keyword
campaign . Once you have created an account and
then logged in you will need to click the tab marked
“Columns” (highlighted in the red box), you are then
presented with a variety of options but if you check the
box named “Aproximate CPC” or Cost per Click (again
highlighted in Red) and then click apply you will add a
personlised column to your results. You will see from
this page we have conducted a search in the same
way as described earlier for “New Car” (highlighted
in Blue) however you will also see that at the side of
each result there is an opportunity to click on the star.
This is effectively bookmarking the phrase that you
like and so when you are analysing multiple phrases
for multiple campaigns and multiple subjects you can
save them all in one place to look at later. you access
this by clicking on the “Starred” link (highlighted in
Purple).
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Once you have created a personalised column or columns you will be presented with the following screen:
You will now see we have a personalised
screen that shows your Keywords (i.e.
New Cars), Global Monthly Searches, Local
Monthly Searches and now a new column
that shows the average cost per click for each
phrase. In this case we have highlighted
in the red box the phrase “New Car” which
would cost on average £1.90 per click.
Google has a traffic estimator as
part of their system (detailed earlier)
however it tends to be very conservative
so if you work on a click thru ratio (CTR)
of 1%-2% you should still be erring on the
side of caution. This means that with a total
monthly search volume of 450,000 you could
expect to see at least 4500 visitors to your
web site at an average cost of £1.90 per click
which means this one phrase would cost
approximately £8,550 per month. Often this
is much to expensive for the small business
owner and so with Google Adwords you can
set a monthly or daily budget and so you only
appear on the first page until such time as
your money runs out, the problem here is
that this dramatically reduces the number of
clicks to your site and if the phrase is generic
(head of the tail) then the conversion rate is
lower and hence the chance of generating
sales much slimmer.
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The other problem you face with this “Part Time”
approach is that it significantly effects your overall
online sales funnel (covered in detail later in this book). If
you only appear at the top of Google for part of the day you
have no idea whether or when the quality leads are going
to click on your site, first thing in the morning you could
have your competitors clicking on your advertisement,
or SEO Companies doing some research or existing
customers simply looking for a telephone number and so
the sales funnel and conversion ratio will look really poor.
In the afternoon however all the quality customers could
be online and had you been at the top of Google then your
results and sales funnel conversion ratios could have been
much better. You can play around with the time you wish
to start paying money on pay per click (i.e. not starting your
spend until the afternoon or evening) but this can be very
hit and miss and a very hap-hazard way of establishing if
this form of online marketing will suit you. For many small
business owners the only real solution is to generate traffic
from the same phrases but using natural or organic search
and not pay per click. If you have a niche product and high
profit margins then pay per click is still an option but for
most businesses natural search delivers the best results.
Global search results are supposed to be searches from the whole of the internet whereas local
searches are from the specified country (in this case UK) however this never exact and there are
always UK searches contained within the Global search results however it is better to err on the side
of caution and just use local search results for calculating your sales funnel and estimating results.
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Google’s keyword tool obviously only returns results for Google so it is also possible to use other
software that returns results from all the major search engines however you will need to pay for these.
Two of the best are Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com) and Keyword Spy (www.keywordspy.com).
You have various payment
options when it comes to
Wordtracker and you cab
take a Free Trial. The team at
Wordtracker also offer lots of
useful help and advice around
Keyword Selection and SEO
(Search Engine Optimisation
in General.
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Keyword again offer a free trial and multiple payment options
and have some really good features that allow you to analyse
the performance of competitors within your industry, look at top
performing advertisements and the Title’s and Description’s that
these companies have used in order to achieve success.
Whether you are doing a
Pay per Click Campaign
or Natural SEO this type of
analysis is invaluable to ensure
your Title’s & Descriptions
attract as many click through’s
as possible.
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Not so long ago the main source of traffic
would have been Search Engines and so
Keyword analysis and selection would have
been resigned to tools that deals with Google,
Yahoo, Bing and the likes however with the
massive growth of Facebook it is essential
that keyword analysis be undertaken where
Social Media is concerned as well. Facebook
currently has 750 million active users and if
it were a country it would be the third biggest
country in the World it has added over 200
million active users within the last 9 months
with one of the largest growth areas currently
being 50+ women and so it is not just a hang
out for students. To analyse whether Facebook
would be relevant for your business either as
an organic or pay per click opportunity (you can
do pay per click on Facebook in a similar way
to Google) then first of all create a personal or
business page.
Once logged in you will be presented with
your wall and you then need to scroll to the
bottom of the page and click on “Advertising”
(highlighted in Red)
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You are now going to go through the process you would complete to create and
advertisement for Facebook - this part doesn’t cost any money but is you need
to follow the process to get to the section that allows you to demographically
analyse the users. You will now be presented with the following page:
You then need to
click on the button
marked “Create an
Ad” (highlighted in
red)
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The next page you are presented with is the
advertisement creation page and one of the
nice things with Facebook is that it will create an
advertisement for you so if you have no design
flare or skills at all then the system will suggest
and avert based on your existing web site or blog.
You need to enter your wen site or bog details in
the destination and title area (highlighted in red)
in this case it is drawing information from my
personal blog. You will then need to add some
text to the “Body” section (highlighted in Green)
- if you are creating and advert for real then you
need to ensure this is catchy and engaging, if
however you are simply conducting some keyword
research then anything will do here. You will then
see it draws in some images from your site for
you to preview (highlighted in Blue). If you are
genuinely creating an ad for pay per click purposes
I would always recommend that you create your
own advertisement to match the keywords and
audience you select and want to attract rather than
relying on Facebook to create a default ad.
Once you have added
the information click “Continue”
(highlighted in Black).
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You are now presented with the section you want in order to analyse the potential
reach and whether Facebook will be suitable for the type of customer who would
be interested in your products or services. With over 750 million active users it is
highly unlikely that there will not be people to match your demographics but this
section of the site will tell you exactly.
The first thing
you can do is
search by country,
town and county,
state or province
(highlighted in Blue).
The next section
allows you to filter
by exact age or
age range and sex
(highlighted in Purple)
Finally you can filter
for specific interests or
categories (highlighted
in Red).
Once you are happy
with your selections
click “Continue”
(highlighted in Black).
You will notice
to the right
hand side
of this page
there is a total
reach section
(highlighted in
Green) which
alters as you
filter and drill
down your
search more
specifically.
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In the scenario below you will see that I have conducted a search for people in Manchester, England (highlighted in Green) you will also see
as a sub search of this category you can specify a radius so in this case I have selected 25 miles around the target area (highlighted in Blue).
Finally I have selected
an age range of
between 30 - 45
and selected Male’s
(highlighted in Black).
Once you are in this
section you can filter
as many times as you
want in order to look at
multiple opportunities
and target groups.
As you will see
from the filtering
that there
are 570,500
people who are
active users on
Facebook that
meet the criteria
I have specified
(highlighted in
Red).
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KEYWORD SELECTION IS AN ESSENTIAL ASPECT OF ANY
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION CAMPAIGN AND MORE
SO FOR SMALL TO MEDIUM SIZED BUSINESSES
Small to medium sized businesses owners should focus on Long tail Keywords
Long Tail Keywords offer smaller monthly search volumes but typically much higher conversion rates
When selecting keywords use tools like Google’s Keyword Tool or Wordtracker or Keywordspy
Long Tail Keywords tend to be less competitive when it comes to natural search engine optimisation
A good way to determine how much competition there is for a particular search phrase when it
comes to natural search engine optimisation is to do an “exact match” search. To do this place
quotation marks around the phrase and then search Google as normal i.e. “New Cars”. If
there are fewer than 30,000 results for this search then the optimisation project should be fairly
straight forward.
Start by selecting Long Tail Phrases for products and services that offer
the highest profit margins this way you will generate good income quickly.
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ONLINE
SALES
FUNNEL
For all small to medium sized business owners it is essential that they understand, consider and
bring into play the online sales funnel when implementing an online marketing project.
In the offline world most entrepreneurs and small business owners tend to be good at sales and marketing, they
have to be, as they often do not have the funds to employ external agencies. However when it comes to online
marketing for some reason they tend to throw all existing, tried and tested principles out of the window. Whether it is
the technology or the fast pace at which the online landscape changes is hard to tell but the reality is there is little
or no difference between online and offline marketing. The only thing that changes is the delivery mechanism
i.e. directories like Yell have been replaced by much bigger and more powerful Search Engines (Google
obviously being the big daddy), referral programmes have been replaced by Social Media and or Social
Networking like Facebook, Twitter and Linked In. Newspapers have been replaced by online newspapers
and blogs, even television and radio are now online and video streaming sites have opened up a whole
new opportunity to businesses and aspiring film makers alike.
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Just as in the offline world
the sales funnel is essential
and understanding what your
conversion rates are and how to
improve each facet is essential.
All too often SEO (Search Engine
Optimisation) and Web Design
Companies
concentrate
on
improving traffic and nothing else.
The main reason for this is that
they are not sales and marketing
people, they are technical people
and they tend to understand the
technology and platforms but vary
rarely understand the principles of
sales and marketing.
One of the biggest mistakes
small businesses make is
to trust their online marketing
to their technical department or
web design company and in this
section we explore why.
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There are many different variations
of the online sales funnel and many
marketeers will have a their own view on
which aspect is more important and what
items should or shouldn’t be included.
However it is my intention to focus on small
to medium sized business owners and so
the sales funnel we will be working with
is dedicated to that aim and includes the
aspects that can make an impact on their
business, leads and sales.
When you embark on an online
marketing campaign it is important to
outline the aims of the campaign, the role
your web site will play and if it is to replace or
work in conjunction with your offline activity.
Conventional wisdom states that
you should always have a marketing
mix that includes both online and offline
mediums however reality says that many
small business owners cannot afford both
so we will simply focus on the online funnel.
It is possible however that there may be some cross over in that if you have a shopping
cart and you sell online then the sales funnel above represents the whole of a users
experience however if your site is dedicated to lead generation then there will be
some offline activity involved to finalise any sales transaction. Also if your site is
dedicated to brand awareness and is some kind of online brochure then the
online sales funnel may not apply in this way, however if the primary role
of your web site is improve sales this funnel works well.
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To start it would be useful to look at who would typically
deal with each part of the online sales funnel.
SECTION ONE
Covers traffic generation from PPC to natural search, social media
and social networking and is more often than not the realm of the
Search Engine Optimisation or Search Engine Marketing Company.
Some web design companies offer SEO services however this
tends to be on page optimisation and rarely covers all the areas
needed for a successful SEO campaign. Many business owners
attempt to run their own PPC programme via Google Adwords or
Yahoo but most struggle to make it work as they either lack the
skills, time or budget to mount a serious campaign.
SECTION TWO
Covers web site design, performance, functionality and reporting
and is usually the realm of the web design company. Bigger
companies will typically have invested heavily in their web sites
and have an ongoing relationship and so they will certainly be
involved with more than web design and will more often that not
assist with functionality and reporting. Small business owners
however tend to get their web site built on a budget and do
not always have an ongoing relationship with their web design
company and so very rarely have assistance with functionality,
performance. Nowadays many business owners do have access
to reporting via programmes like Google analytics but again
many haven’t had training and don’t have the necessary time to
maximise the information available.
1
2
3
SECTION THREE
Covers lead generation, data capture and sales and usually involves some specialist software
and the business owner themselves. The software will be some kind of Lead Generation
or CRM System and again bigger companies will have an internal technical department
who’s role is to analyse, report and maximise opportunities. Yet again small business
owners rarely have this kind of resource and tend to rely on leads being generated
via outlook or some kind web response form through the “Contact Us” button
on their web site.
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Improving traffic to a web site will of course increase sales and without traffic it is pointless worrying about the rest of the sales funnel. However
a small increase in other areas of the funnel can often have a much bigger impact than the more expensive or time consuming increase in traffic.
If we first look at an example of a sales funnel and the impact an increase in traffic can have on sales:
As you can see Sales Funnel
1 shows 1000 Searches and a
5% CTR (Click Thru Ratio) in
order to achieve 50 visitors to
the web site.
From here we can see a 10%
data capture rate with 80%
of these turning into Leads
and finally a 1:4 closing ratio
leading to one sale
If we now look at Sales Funnel 2 you can see we have increased traffic
by 100% which in the real world would be expensive if you were using
PPC (Pay per Click) and time consuming if using Natural Search.
We keep the same conversion metrics and as you can see a huge
increase in traffic still only results in one extra sale.
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If we now look at the impact of improving various areas of the sales funnel other than traffic to see how this improves sales:
As you can see we have not increased
traffic at all however we have made a
10% increase in site visitors (or click thru
ratio) from 5% to 15% along with a 10%
increase in the data capture rate from
10% to 20%. As you can see from this
example a relatively small improvement in
other less expensive areas of the funnel
can see a much bigger increase in sales
in this case six sales as opposed to two
sales in the earlier example.
I am not suggesting for one moment that
businesses shouldn’t attempt to increase
traffic as this is the life blood of any sales
funnel whether online or offline however
neglecting other areas of the sales funnel
is a massive mistake.
I often believe success masks inefficiency and large companies who can keep throwing money at the top end of the funnel
i.e. traffic, often achieve results but with a significant amount of wastage. For example a large blue chip spends £200,000 per
month on pay per click and ultimately achieves circa £250,000 in sales therefore the following month they spend £500,000
on pay per click to achieve £600,000 in sales. This is much easier and quicker than trying to improve the sales funnel and
become more efficient.
Small to Medium sized business owners however do not have the luxury of huge marketing budgets and given the
toughening economy it is absolutely essential that they maximise every single opportunity presented to them.
With this in mind I have ensured that the remainder of the books in this series are designed to help you improve
every facet of the online sales funnel with practical advice, real examples and
projects you can introduce immediately to achieve instant results.
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HINTS & TIPS FOR IMPROVING
ONLINE SALES FUNNEL
This section is designed to bring some inspiration and to deliver an overview
of what and where you should be channeling your energies for each section
of the Online Sales Funnel. Every item mentioned in this section are covered
in detail in one or all of the other EBooks in this series including detailed tried
and tested methods of implementation with proven track records of success.
SECTION 1 - TRAFFIC GENERATION
It is important to remember particularly if you are a small businesses that traffic should be good
quality, relevant and targeted and come from multiple sources. Do not put all your “Eggs in Google’s
Basket” - Google is very important (some would say essential when it comes to traffic generation)
but for a small business owner it can have too much impact if things go wrong. Google is set to
make over 500 changes to its algorithm this year alone (by their own admission) and whilst many of
these are innocuous some could effect the positions your web site has. If as a company you solely
rely on traffic from Google then a drop in positions can have a devastating effect on your business
and sometimes small business owners do not recover. Therefore small business owners should
aim to do well on Google but have a variety of traffic generation options so that they are not over
reliant on one source.
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SEARCH ENGINE
OPTIMISATION
KEYWORD
SELECTION
FACEBOOK
Google is clearly essential but do not overlook Yahoo, Bing, Ask and any other engine that carries a volume of regular traffic. Natural
optimisation offers the best results for small business owners both in terms of the volume of enquiries but also the quality of that enquiry
however if budget allows then PPC (normally categorised as SEM) can help with “Quick Wins” particularly for high margin niche products.
This is essential for any small to medium sized business, create yourself a “keyword Map” and designate certain phrases for certain
pages. Try and imaging a three phase plan with Long Tail Phrases (covered above) dealing with “Quick Wins” offering an early opportunity
to generate cash from good quality, high profit margin (if your business has these) phrases from people who are at the sharp end of the
buying decision. Then look at Mid-Term Phrases (again covered above) which will offer more volumes in terms of traffic but from people
who need a little help with a buying decision so make sure you have follow up material. Finally you will need generic phrases which offer
the largest volume of traffic but can take many months to achieve and will often be early stage researches and therefore will need quite
a bit of help with the buying decision. This is where you need to consider “Online Credibility” (covered in other EBooks in the series) with
the conventional wisdom being that it takes 5 touch points to establish good Online Credibility with the usual subjects being Facebook,
Twitter, Video, Blogs, Articles etc. You will also need to ensure that you have very good follow up material and access to e-marketing and
Lead Management software with again the conventional wisdom being 5-7 contacts before a generic or early stage enquiry becomes a
sale. If a business has the resource the strength of attacking Generic Phrases is that they can often take the opportunity out of the market
early before their competitors get to them.
Facebook now has over 750 million active users with over 200 million active users being added within the last 9 months alone. If
Facebook were a country it would be the third biggest country in the World and the largest growth area is 50+ women so it is no longer
the hangout for students and geeks! The average Facebook user has over 130 friends and so it offers small business owners the
opportunity to compete with the big boys by being “small” allowing them to engage, share thoughts, discuss and educate groups of like
minded individuals who in turn may become evangelists of your products, services and or company. Often large corporates engage PR
companies or Marketing companies to speak for them and lose the opportunity and miss the real strength of Social Media (again covered
in depth in another book in the series). A simple example of how Facebook could help a small business would be to ask every customer
that bought from them within a week to “Like” them on Facebook - even if it meanʼt giving a 5% discount - if a business sells to only
ten people each week and they all liked the business on their Facebook account then that business would now be presented to 1300
(average Facebook user has 130 friends multiplied by ten customers) other friends and like minded people, if half of them then “Liked”
you company you have now been put in front of another 84,500 (half of 1300 equals 650 multiplied by 130 average friends) like minded
people! Can you see how quickly this could explode by just asking everyone that buys from you to “Like” you. Make sure you have a
professional Facebook business page that has something to say.
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YOUTUBE
BLOGS
TWITTER
Video is now the biggest growth area in lead generation online with many busy people choosing to watch a 1-3 minute video about what you
do rather than trying to read a 20-30 page web site (which very often is frustrating and confusing). YouTube itself is now the second biggest
Search Engine in the World and so offers large volumes of traffic in its own right but it isnʼt the only video streaming web site with the likes
of Daily Motion, Vimeo, Metacafe to name but a few all delivering good quality content in the same way Google, Yahoo & Bing does. The
other real strength with video is that Google (and all the other major search engines) want to offer their users all the results from differing
media options that are available so if a searcher enters a query for Jaguar Cars the Google wants to deliver web pages, images and video.
as this goes to press video is much less competitive when it comes to search engine optimisation than web pages and so you can often
have “Quick Wins” using video where optimising your web site could take months. If you optimise a video onto the first page of Google they
display it as a thumbnail and so it stands out on the page often encouraging more click throughs.
If you can write then write. blogs offer a great opportunity to demonstrate your expertise, passion and beliefs for your chosen fields, subject
and or business. A web site needs to be punchy and sell to your customers a blog can be your personality. It offers you the opportunity
to show your customers and potential customers that you care about your subject, them and the people that work for you. You can write
about your industry, services, products, marketplace, customers and do not be frightened to share your hopes, fears dreams and ideas.
Customers or potential customers want to see the human face behind the corporate speak. You are a success for a reason if you have
just started your business you are still a success and clearly have a passion about something and have something to say so say it! Blogs
offer a great opportunity to get your message to the world, generate leads, increase link popularity to your main web site for SEO and build
the Online Credibility that is so important now if you want to generate leads and sales online and particularly if you want to target generic
phrases. Wordpress and Blogger offer to very easy to use Free platforms to get involved with blogging now whilst the likes of Technorati
offer the opportunity to promote your blog to your very specific and targeted audience.
Is often seen by business owners as a “geeky fad”. I like to look at Twitter as the glue between my other activity - if i write something on my
blog and want to let people know about it I Tweet, if I have an offer on my web site and want to let people know I Tweet, if I have created a
Video and want to get people viewing it I Tweet. Twitter offers the opportunity to create a group of followers who are customers or potential
customers and so if you have something to say on any of your other platforms it is quick and easy to let them know about it on Twitter. In
the prehistoric World of “Offline Marketing” it was very difficult for a small business owner to quickly have an impact or change their sales
results however online is different. If we imagine a small business owner walking into their business on Friday morning and their sales are
down how would they make a difference in the past? They couldnʼt place an advert in the newspaper, or instigate a leaflet drop or send
some direct mail or create a Radio or TV ad - they could possibly put a poster in their retail outlet (if they have one) and hope that some
people who are in town spot it but they could do very little else to change the course of that weeks results. However today they could create
a special offer and put it on their Facebook Page, they could then go to Twitter and let everyone know about it, they could potential offer
some kind of referral opportunity if they themselves passed it onto friends or they could create a discount voucher and promote it through
one of the many voucher delivery sites all of which can be done instantly and have an impact immediately. As with blogs, Facebook and
YouTube - Twitter offers the opportunity to improve your SEO and develop your online credibility.
The above list is clearly not exhaustive and we cover Traffic Generation in much more depth in one of our other books in the series but it is a good insight
into where small business owners in particular should be channeling their energies and what is available other than Google to create leads and sales.
O N L I N E S A L E S F U N N E L - PA G E 2 7
SECTION 2 - WEB SITE FUNCTIONALITY & USABILITY
Top quality web site design companies will take this into
consideration when they build the web site in the first
place however most web designers and certainly most
web designers or web design companies that small
business owners would use are not sales and marketing
professionals. They build web sites that they believe
look good they will very rarely consider does this sell in
the way the clients wants it to sell, or does it grab and
engage customers or is there a purpose, structure, flow
and outcome built into the design? I have an exceptional
designer and every time he produces work I am blown
away but I have to step back and say as good as this
looks is it doing what it is supposed to do? I had an
occasion recently where we created a promotion for our
Facebook page and whilst the design was as good as I
have seen the special offer was lost within the design and
didnʼt stand out. Aesthetically this was a thing of beauty
functionality wise it was pointless. The other issue with
web sites is that they often evolve and so the aim of the
web site is never really clear with bits added on here and
bits added on there. You spend a considerable amount
of time and money generating traffic to your web site
make sure it does its job and deliver sales and leads. Do
not leave your web site to your technical team or a web
design company get them to build what you or your sales
and marketing department want.
O N L I N E S A L E S F U N N E L - PA G E 2 8
KISS
KISS
Keep It Simple Stupid - The Car industry are the worst in the world for having every gadget and gizmo known to man built into their web
site with 360 degree views or the ability to configure your own car or build your own model but try and go to the Mercedes Web site and
find a picture of the exact model you want and a price and you will be there all week. I recently bought one of their cars in spite of their
online attempts to put me off! Why do they try and show you endless images of a tail light or a tyre when what I really want to do is look at
what my exact model looks like inside? The old idea was to give you a taster so you have to go to the dealership however seller beware I
almost bought an Audi and I am sure many people have! Make sure your web site lets your customers get the information they need quickly
and easily and navigate your web site efficiently. Make sure you have plenty of quality images, multi media options are great where it is
warranted and make sure you right your content for your users not Google. SEO Companies will want you to write your content in a way
that Google likes it which might not be what your customer wants - make them earn their living and write for your customers there are other
ways to achieve success on Google.
SHOPPING CARTS
Many small business owners go to a lot of expense and time having really good quality ecommerce and shopping cart capabilities however
less than 5% of people who visit your web site for the first time will buy so what about the other 95%? If you havenʼt invested as much time
and effort into Data capture then you are missing a massive opportunity to capture potential clients information and re-market to them and
drive them back to your wonderful shopping cart. A lot of people fill their shopping carts and opt out when it comes to the payment gateway
- often this is because they have doubts about parting with their money and whether they will get their goods (particularly if you are not a
household name) so can you capture their email address early in the process and capture what they put in their shopping cart so that you
can email them afterwards and provide them with a special offer on the bundle they selected? It demonstrates you are real and that you
are keen to do business with them by offering a discount as a new customer? If you cannot capture information in this way then could you
have a pop up that acknowledges a customers fears when they try and opt out at this stage and offer them the opportunity for a live chat?
REPORTING
Having software like Google Analytics on your site is invaluable for improving functionality and usability however make sure you get help
and set it up in a way you get the benefit from all its functionality. I have visited many small business owners who have analytics on their
site but are barely scratching the surface of what is available to them. Measuring “Bounce Rates” is a great start (the speed at which a
potential customer clicks on and off your web site) if you cannot grab their attention you will lose opportunities to your competition. Bounce
Rate can be improved by making sure you optimise the correct page within your web site for the correct phrases so if you sell sports wear
and a customer searches on Google for “red running shoes” make sure they go immediately to your red running shoe page and not your
homepage which will undoubtedly wax lyrical about how long you have been in business and how wonderful you are! Look at where people
typically exit your web site and so if they go to page one then page two and everyone leaves at page three, why are they leaving at page
three? If they are spend ing a lot of time on page three then you may giving too much information away in which case reduce the amount
on the page and get them to request the rest?
O N L I N E S A L E S F U N N E L - PA G E 2 9
SECTION 3 - DATA CAPTURE & LEAD MANAGEMENT
DATA CAPTURE
LEAD
MANAGEMENT
One of the biggest mistakes made by companies large and small when it comes to their web site. Unfortunately it again comes down to
trusting your sales to designers! Most web sites have a tiny “Contact Us” Button tucked away in the top right or left of their site as part of
their navigation menu and very little else. As consumers we are very lazy of we do not have to make a decision we wonʼt so why should
they contact you? What are you going to do for them? I often liken this to a company creating a Television advertisement and picking the
best slots they can afford but not putting a proposition on the advert, a reason to buy and not putting their telephone number or any other
means of getting in touch with them! Crazy surely no one would do that? Now have a look at your web site and be really critical? Have you
given your customers multiple reason to leave their details? Have you given them various opportunities to leave their details with bold, stand
out data capture buttons? Have you taken into account that customers who visit your web site will be at various stages of the buying cycle
and so early stage researchers may not be inclined to leave lots of information - they might be prepared to give you their email address to
receive a newsletter or a list of special offers or a white paper or to download a brochure. Someone who is at the sharp end of the buying
process and ready to buy very soon will be more inclined to give you detailed information as long as it is relevant to their enquiry so with
this in mind consider putting detailed data capture deep within the bowls of your site whilst top level pages carry data capture for early stage
researchers. What ever you do make it easy and make it stand out and give your customers a reason to interact.
Every business should have some form of Lead Management Software - It is a fact that it takes between 5-7 contacts before a prospect
becomes a sale it is also a fact that most small business owners give up at three contacts so how much business are they letting slip
through their fingers? It isnʼt because small business owners are stupid they just donʼt have the manpower or resource so it is vital that they
implement a good quality but very easy to use Lead Management System. The system should have the facility to capture leads direct from
their web site or other online collateral like Facebook or YouTube as well as the facility to re-market to their leads via good quality email
marketing. The system should have the facility to filter their data base and send targeted emails to targeted groups (thinks Amazon - people
who bought this also bought that!). Finally the system should definitely have a diary system with the facility to set recalls and schedule email
campaigns with the option of looking at a prospects full contact history.
Again this is clearly not an exhaustive list as we cover this in much more detail in one of the other books but a
good start for any small business to implement now and have an impact tomorrow.