Engaging in online marketing is all about customer acquisition, ROI and profits. If you see growth in these three areas, you can be reasonably confident that your online marketing efforts are paying off in some form or another.
But things might not always be as they appear. While it’s never a bad thing to grow in profits, ROI or a growing customer base, you may actually be paying good money to lose great customers.
There are a lot of phases to the buying cycle. Searchers begin with a thought and then start researching answers via their favorite search engine. As they learn more about their query, they move into shopping and buying modes that hopefully lead them to a satisfied purchase.
In each phase of this cycle, the searcher is typing in a unique set or words or phrases. Each search is designed to provide more relevant information than the last. As the searcher learns, the search phrases reflect what they know and what new information they need.
There is value in building a website that provides information to each of these searchers, but the value in each isn’t the same. By understanding the full marketing value and potential of your website, you can build an effective sales funnel that provides each and every visitor the information they need to make the decision you are hoping for.
Sometimes getting conversions is like trying to capture mist in a jar or water with your fingers. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to get a secure hold on them.
There are countless test you can do with your website to help increase your conversion rates. A/B and multivariate tests can help you increase your conversion rate a couple of points, which can often translate into thousands of dollars of increased profits. But in all that conversion testing, trial and error, banging your head against the wall and twisting customer’s arms until they cry “UNCLE!,” there is often one overlooked piece of information that can help you dramatically improve your conversions.
That piece of information is: information. Content, to be exact!
In an effort to provide clarity between SEOs and their clients, I created a bill of rights for SEO clients. This post covers the bill of rights for the SEOs.
I.
Receive payment from the client for entire amount contracted.
A contract is a contract. If you change your business model, rethink SEO or decide to invest in other marketing avenues, you still have an obligation to fulfill your end of the SEO agreement. If you really want out, talk to your SEO about a proper buyout of your SEO contract.
While it’s great to know what people want, when you give them what they want, you only give them a partial solution. The want is the symptom. But, when you address the need, you are addressing the underlying problem and providing a much more holistic solution.
In Part 2 of this series, I started discussing a customers wants versus their needs. I continue this list here.
Over the last dozen plus years, unscrupulous SEO’s have given the entire search engine optimization industry a bad rep. It seems like every few months some high profile person in the Internet world says something about how SEO is snake oil, sending ripples throughout the SEO community.
To be fair, some of the complaints about SEOs are deserved. Not for the entire SEO community, but for a small segment of “SEO providers.” Unfortunately, like sleezy lawyers, it only takes one to ruin the whole batch, perceptively.
I’m sure many readers have either heard about, or know someone who has had (or have themselves had) an extremely negative SEO experience. I talk to many business owners who are skeptical about SEO because their last SEO didn’t perform as expected, either over-promised and under-delivered, dropped out of contact, or just wasn’t doing the job as promised.
A few weeks back I was on a flight across the country and I had the pleasure of sitting all the way in the back row… you know… where they used to put the smokers. Ahhh, remember those days? One of the luxuries of sitting in the back is watching people enter and leave the restroom. Oh, and that lovely toilet smell.
But on this particular flight the bathroom was out of commission. The airline helpfully placed the following sign on the bathroom door:
The first six building blocks in creating a Destination Website; expert information, usability, website design, unique value proposition, time and presence, and voice are all things that we, more or less, have direct control over. The exception is time. We don’t control time but we do control how we build up our presence over time.
Trust and credibility are also partly in our control but also one of the most difficult things to achieve. We determine whether we move forward in a trustworthy way, and whether or not to act in a credible manner, but no matter how hard we try, we cannot wish those two things into existence. We cannot force someone else to trust us. We cannot tell someone to find us credible and expect them to do so on our word.
We can go about doing all we can to build both trust and credibility, but, in the end, whether we are trusted or not lies not with our own efforts but other people’s perceptions. If you spend months and years showing you can be trusted and proving that you’re credible, but one one knows or believes it to be true, then you just aren’t. These are not physical things that can be touched, they simply must be understood to be true.
I’ve been a Netflix subscriber since they went by the name Netflix.com and were boasting 7,000 titles in stock. They now claim to have over 100,000. That was many moons ago. But I haven’t necessarily been a Netflix loyalist. Over the years I’ve tried other online movie rental services only to keep finding my way back to Netflix.
But over the years Netflix has begun cutting out key customer features. They say it’s to improve their system, customer service and the traditional yada, yada, but I’m not so sure. But with each feature they eliminate, instead of differentiating themselves from the competition, they are systematically eliminating the benefits of being a Netflix customer.
It is often said that it is important to write for your audience. But what does that really mean? How do you determine who your audience is?
If you write for whom you think your audience is, you might be missing out on a completely different crowd.
(Don't wait for the movie!)
E-Marketing Performance: Effective Strategies for Building, Optimizing & Marketing Your Website Online
