Tracking Where Responses Come From - "Sourcing" Responses

by John Eberhard

One of the most important actions in measuring the effectiveness of any piece of promo is "sourcing" the responses that come in from it. In this case "sourcing" means "to accurately determine with each response that comes in, what prompted or influenced that person to contact you."

Whenever you promote your business or activity, through pay per click advertising, press releases, article marketing, a mail piece, advertisement, trade show, or article, you are testing different messages and media. You want to be able to measure how well that promotional action did in terms of interesting people and getting them to buy your product or service.

On the other hand it is also important to realize that with any promotion you do, particularly if you are doing multiple promotional actions, each piece has a direct and indirect effect that it creates in the prospect's mind. He sees an ad and remembers it, but he may not respond until he later gets an email or sees something on Google. Display advertising particularly has a lot of indirect impact on responses.

But, even though we know that each piece has an indirect effect that we don't see, the direct response that a piece generates IS an important gauge, particularly when compared to other pieces, in telling you how the piece is doing in terms of creating want and selling your product.

DIFFERENT SOURCING METHODS

Effective sourcing means that with every reach from a prospective customer, you must determine what got them to reach for your services. This can be done two ways. One way is to ask every person who responds what prompted them to call you. This has to be done religiously (i.e. every time) in order to get usable information.

An easier way is to include a code number on every piece of promotion. A common way is to put an extension number after your phone number, i.e. (818) 951-8800, ext. 2598. Then when the person calls asking for extension 2598, you know which promo piece he is responding to. On pieces where you include a coupon or business reply card, include the code somewhere on the coupon or card as well.

It's a good idea to assign a separate code each time you use a promo piece, if you are using it more than once. Let's say you designed promo piece X, and you sent it out to the ABC list (rented from a trade magazine). You assign it a code of 2005. And from that mailing you got 55 responses.

Now 6 weeks later you want to send out promo piece X again, but this time to the XYZ list (rented from a mailing list house). Don't use the same code (2005) again. Why? Because if you assign it a separate code (2006) you now have a chance to measure how well the ABC list did compared to the XYZ list. Direct mail texts will tell you that the list can be responsible for up to 60% of the success or failure of a mailing, so it's important to measure that.

The same is true of advertising. Let's say you design ad A, and place it in Software of the Future magazine, with code 1035. It gets 40 responses. Then you take the same ad and run it in Software Just for Fun magazine, with code 1036. This time it gets 85 responses. Now you have a clear picture not only of how well your ad did, but also how well these magazines did.

RECORDING THE SOURCING DATA

In order to get accurate sourcing data, you have to organize your communication lines so that every response coming in gets recorded somehow. This could be done by your receptionist, especially if she handles the mail too. She could record every phone and mail response in a "responses log" on paper or in a spreadsheet, or even better, in a database like GoldMine. The log should contain the person's name, company name, phone number, and what prompted them to contact you. If you have numerous people answering the phone or taking calls, each one of them must record the responses and the source on a log.

A log is one way to keep track of what got people to reach. Then later when a sale is made, you enter that information into that person's record as well, with the dollar amount of the sale. With a good database, you can later run reports telling you how many responses came in to each promo piece, and how much each piece made in sales. I've done it both ways (with a log, and with a database) and I can tell you, setting up a good database will save you HOURS of time whenever you need to do an analysis of the data.

CUSTOMER REACHES

Some people make the mistake of assuming that when a customer calls up about buying more of your product or service, that he is just calling because he was happy with your product or service last time.

This is actually true in a few cases. More often, however, your company is sending out a lot of communication that the customer sees. This is either communication specifically directed at the customer, such as an email targeting the customer or a newsletter or company magazine; or the company is placing advertisements that are being seen by customers and non-customers alike.

In cases where the company is sending out multiple communications on multiple communication lines, it becomes unlikely that the customers are just calling out of the blue strictly on their own origination. Something is at least reminding them of you and prompting them to call. And you want to know what that is, because that tells you what to strengthen. It's wise to pull the string a little bit when the person calls, asking if he is calling off a promo piece, then asking if something reminded him of the company recently, did he get the email?, etc. This will usually get the real answer.

And why is that so important? Because as a company grows, more and more of its business becomes repeat business, and the promotional actions you do to get your customers to call up again and buy more, are some of the most valuable actions you can do.

Developing brand new customers is much more expensive in terms of marketing dollars spent, than getting your existing customers to buy again. So repeat sales from your customers are much more viable. Knowing which of your customer promo actions are working is golden information, allowing you to reinforce those actions.

In summary, sourcing reaches from prospects and customers alike is a vital action, allowing you to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing actions, and allowing you to eliminate guesswork and invest in the promo that will get you the best responses and sales.

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The 8 Secrets to Making Your Web Site PRODUCE!

by John Eberhard

Many web sites today are not viable, meaning they are not doing what they are supposed to - i.e. producing leads and/or sales. Now I'll qualify that statement by saying that I'm talking about web sites that are for a commercial purpose. Those sites should be producing leads and/or sales for the business, and it is possible. But in order to do it, you have to drive traffic to the site.

There are certain key actions to driving traffic to your site and getting it producing leads and/or sales.

What's Working Now

In the Internet's short history, the website marketing actions that have been truly effective have changed just about each year. These are the actions that are working right now, and these are the actions you should take as part of a campaign to make your site successful:

a. Pay Per Click Advertising
b. Blogging
c. Press releases
d. Google Maps
e. Content Hub Submissions
f. Collecting Identities on Your Web Site
g. Making sure your site is set up to take advantage of traffic
h. Email Marketing to Your Own Lists
i. Search Engine Optimization

I will explain each action.

a. Pay Per Click Advertising

The term refers to paid advertising that a company can run on search engines, so that when a person enters a specific search term or phrase, your ad appears.

One can choose any word or phrase at all and choose to have your ad appear when people enter that phrase on that search engine. However, you will want to select words or phrases that are at least somewhat popular, i.e. that a lot of people are entering. That way you get decent exposure for your ad.

One of the biggest advantages to this type of advertising is that you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad and thus arrives at your web site. You start an account with one of these search engines, put some money in it, and every time someone clicks on your ad and comes to your site, your account is debited. This is has an advantage over most other types of advertising, where you pay whether there is any result or not. With paid search engine advertising, you only pay for actual traffic coming to your web site.

The main pay per click providers right now are Google AdWords and MSN Ad Center.

b. Blogging

Blogging is a great way to drive traffic to a web site. You set up a blog, either in a sub-directory on your main site (www.yourwebsite.com/blog) or on a separate web address (www.yourblog.com). Then you set up links to your main web site in the sidebars, and also put links to your main web site in the text of your blog posts.

Whenever you post something to the blog, make sure you send out a notification, called a “ping,” to the blog search engines. Wordpress blogs can be set up to do this automatically. For other types of blogs go to www.pingomatic.com.

c. Press releases

An "optimized press release" is a press release which announces an event of some kind, and which contains your selected high priority keywords. These are the keywords that you would like your web site to rank highly for in the regular search engine results pages (SERPs).

By writing press releases that are optimized for the keywords you would like to rank for, and then submitting these to online PR sites, these releases will get listed in Google News, and will then move over into regular Google listings.
It is ideal to write an optimized press release and send it out on online PR sites once a week, and to continue doing this over a several month period. But if you can’t do this every week, once or twice a month is still very helpful.

d. Google Maps

Google Maps is a new feature of Google whereby when Google perceives through the nature of your search that you are searching for something local, it will bring up a map on page one. The map will have balloons on it showing the location of different vendors, and there will be listings shown to the right of the map.

So the Google Maps feature is a great way to get your business listing onto the elusive page one of Google. And with the graphic, it pulls your attention right to the map, which is partway down the page.

This new feature is great for local businesses like restaurants, home improvement companies, health care practices, dance studios, attorneys, private schools, or any business that services a local area. When you consider that 66% of Americans use the Internet to find local businesses, and 73% of all Internet activity is related to local content, if you have a local business, you need to get onto Google Maps.

e. Content Hub Submissions

A content hub, also called an article directory, is a type of web site that has lots of informational articles on it. A person with a web site, who needs article content for their site, can go to a content hub and download articles for free on a wide variety of topics, and then post them on their web site. These content hubs allow you to search by topic or category or by keyword.

Writers can post articles on the content hubs. The benefit for the writer is that he can mention his company and include his web site address in the article. And that provides in-bound links to his web site, from the content hubs themselves, and from every web site where that article is posted. In-bound links, meaning links from other web sites that link to yours, increase link popularity, which is one of the main criteria used by Google and other search engines to determine web site ranking.

So the content hubs service both writers who want to get the word out on their company or products or services, and people who have web sites who need article content.

Content hubs have been and continue to be a great way to build links to your web site.

f. Collecting Identities on a Web Site

One of the most vitally important - and often neglected - aspects of designing a web site is to include ways to capture identities of people visiting the site. This means to get the name and email address (minimally) of people who visit the site, so you can promote your product or service to them in the future.

The solution is to include reasons on your site for the person who is interested, but not going to buy right away, to give you his name and email address now. This allows you to build an email list, which over time, can become a formidable part of your marketing strategy. Free offers of various types, usually of information, are the best way to do this.

 g. Making Sure Your Site is Set Up to Take Advantage of Traffic

Once you finally get people coming to your site, you have to have the site set up in order to properly take advantage of the traffic. Aside from having free offers, this includes:

1. Having well written and compelling sales text
2. Having photos of your product readily visible, especially if the product is unusual in some way
3. Provide a "BUY" button, large and easy to find on every page
4. Make sure the buying process is easy and intuitive

I have seen mistakes on web sites, with omissions on all of the points mentioned above. Any one of those mistakes can kill your sales, and missing out on all four is certain death.

h. Email Marketing to Your Own Lists

Once you have built up an email list, the thing to do is to start marketing to that list with email, either with individual offers for products or services, or with newsletters that contain information articles as well as information on your products or services.

8-10 years ago, emailing to rented email lists was a great way to find brand new customers. Unfortunately, certain unscrupulous people overdid it, emailing to email lists endlessly, and ignoring accepted ethical practices that eventually became law in the Federal CAN-SPAM Act. As a result most people are very skeptical of promotional email unless they have "opted in" to some list.

So that's the key. Once you have gotten someone to opt-in to your list, they have given you the OK to send them newsletters or other material. This now gives you the opportunity to give that person more familiarity with you and your company and product.

For years marketing experts have said that it takes multiple exposures to you or communications from you to get someone to buy. In other words, someone is not as likely to buy from you the first time they hear of you. It takes repeated exposures, to email to them on a regular basis.

i. Search Engine Optimization

It's important to have your web site set up in order to get the best possible rankings from search engines. There are a lot of factors involved and let's just say that unless you have a LOT of free time on your hands, it is best to have a professional handle this for you.

Summary

Once again, the most important actions to take in order to get your web site producing, are:

a. Pay Per Click Advertising
b. Blogging
c. Press releases
d. Google Maps
e. Content Hub Submissions
f. Collecting Identities on Your Web Site
g. Making sure your site is set up to take advantage of traffic
h. Email Marketing to Your Own Lists
i. Search Engine Optimization

And there is one more factor, maybe even more important than the rest – which is to do these actions regularly, month after month.

Submitting one article to a couple of content hubs isn't going to accomplish very much. But if you submit a new article twice a month, to the top 100 hubs, for several months, you're really going to see results. The same goes for paid search engine advertising, blogging, press releases, and emailing to your opt-in lists.

The key is doing them on a regular basis and keeping it up for several months. Then you will start seeing some real results.

Posted via email from Real Web Marketing's Posterous

Blogging Basics

by John Eberhard

So you want to start a blog? Where do you go and how do you do it?

First of all you have to decide whether you want to do this as a professional business or if it’s just a hobby. That will determine how you set it up.

Free Blogging Sites

If you want to start a blog as a hobby and it’s not something where you want to sell products or services as a professional business, you can start a blog at one of the five free blogging sites:

www.wordpress.com
www.blogger.com
www.posterous.com
www.livejournal.com
www.blog.com

Each one of these sites will allow you to start a free account and put up a blog, and to customize it to some degree. Each site has a selection of “themes,” i.e. stock designs that you can choose for your blog. If you really dig into the interface you can also customize the items that appear in your sidebar. In some cases you can customize the header graphic at the top.

All of these free blogging sites will set up your blog address so it has their name in it, i.e. http://yourblog.wordpress.com, or http://yourblog.blogspot.com.

Of the five free blogging sites I like www.Wordpress.com the best, because it is built on the Wordpress architecture and gives you the most options.

Wordpress and Typepad

If you want to start a blog for a professional business, then I recommend that you use either Wordpress or Typepad to set up the blog, as these are both professional blogging platforms.

Setting up a blog with Wordpress is different from setting up a free blog at www.wordpress.com. You have to have a hosting account, or you can set up a blog in a sub-directory on an existing site. Doing it this way will give you quite a bit more customization options. You can set it up via your hosting company (on their web site or calling them), or you can download the files from www.wordpress.org (not .com), and upload them to your site. Doing it via your hosting company tends to be much faster. And of course doing it this way with Wordpress allows you to choose your own site address.

You can either pick an existing Wordpress theme and then customize it, or you can have the blog customized by a Wordpress expert so that it looks just like your existing web site. Or you can have a brand new design done by a web designer and then have that converted into a Wordpress theme. Using an existing Wordpress theme is the less expensive way to go. Having a design converted into a Wordpress theme will add significant cost.

Setting up a Wordpress blog has many advantages, such as the fact that the Wordpress system has quite a few plugins that can give you added features or functionality to your site, such as search features, nice looking photo galleries, connection with Facebook or Twitter, or search engine optimization functions.

Typepad is another very professional blogging system. You pay a monthly fee (either $9 or $15 depending on what service you choose). The $15 per month option allows you to have unlimited blogs, and you don’t have to also pay a hosting fee. The default is that the blog address will have Typepad’s name in it (http://yourblog.typepad.com) but you can register a URL and set it so that that URL goes to your blog (http://www.yourblog.com).

Typepad has quite a few themes you can choose from, and it is relatively easy to customize your graphic header at the top and your sidebars, and put in pictures of yourself or products you sell or whatever. Typepad also has a good selection of plugins to add special functionality.

Summary

I think it is a good idea to decide BEFORE you start on whether your blog is going to be a pro thing where you will be selling something, or just a hobby blog.

If it will be a pro thing, it is better to select Wordpress or Typepad in the beginning, and set up your own custom URL. The reason is that having a web address with “wordpress” or “blogspot” in the address, sort of indicates that it is not a professional thing. It makes it look sort of amateurish. Not that a lot of companies don’t do it. They do, but I think it looks cheesy.

And I have seen some people start a blog on Blogger for instance, and then build up lots of traffic and fans for it, and then they are stuck with being on Blogger. Because to move the blog would for the most part result in having to start over with traffic building.

Good luck with your blogging.

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Keyword Research Today in 2011

by John Eberhard

Keyword research is a vital part of search engine optimization, and is the first step of SEO.

The overall concept for keyword research is that you want to find keywords that have a good amount of traffic (i.e. people are searching on search engines for those keywords) but do not have a ton of competition.

With SEO, the amount of competition is key, because if you try to rank for a keyword that has very high amounts of sites competing for it, you just won’t be able to rank, period. So you have to find and select keywords that have good traffic and not high competition. And sometimes you might have to abandon some keywords that you thought were “the ones” for your market. I note that this is very hard for clients sometimes.

Most people who I talk to who are not trained in these facts tend to think that they want to target keywords that describe the overall category, usually single word keywords, like “golf,” “consulting,” “dentist,” “chiropractor,” “marketing,” “computers,” etc. Although these single word keywords tend to have lots of searches, because of competition, usually in the millions, you won’t usually ever be able to rank well for them.

Compiling Your List

Here is how to compile your list.

1. Make up a list of at least 20-30 potential keywords, by trying to think of what phrases people would type in to find your product or service. Put these phrases into a spreadsheet, one keyword per row.

2. Go to one or two competitor websites. Select View | Source and see if they have a group of keywords in the HTML code near the top (not everyone does but many will). Select any that are appropriate for your business and add them to your list.

3. Use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and paste your list of keywords into the tool. It will then come up with additional suggestions, many of which are very good. Paste them into your spreadsheet, but go through the list carefully and delete any that are not appropriate for your business.

You should now have a pretty good sized list, anywhere from 100 to 300 keywords.

Researching the Keywords

Now we have to find out the amount of traffic and the number of competing sites for each keyword. There are several good tools to do this, none of which are free. Google’s keyword tool shows traffic and then gives you a percentage which supposedly gives you an idea of the number of competing sites, but I don’t find this very helpful.

Over the years I have used a number of tools for this research, including Wordtracker, which is a paid monthly online service ($45 per month I think) and Keyword Discovery ($75 per month). I found Wordtracker to be kludgy and confusing although some people swear by it. Keyword Discovery is easier to use but more expensive.

Then a couple years ago I discovered Market Samurai, a desktop based software product that you only have to buy once. I tested it, then bought it and have been using it ever since. This product also has some other very useful features, including determining how high you rank on Google, Yahoo and MSN for your entire list of keywords, which is a report I run monthly for some of my clients.

Through Market Samurai you can find out how many people are searching for each keyword, and the number of competing sites.

I sort the list according to the number of competing sites, from low to high. I then go through the list and highlight the ones that have more than a certain amount of traffic.

Next I take the highlighted ones and place them into several groups, based on how many competing sites they have. This gives us groups that are graded according to desirability for use in search engine optimization. I won’t give you my number criteria because I can’t give away all my secrets.

Use of Your Keywords

Now that you have your list of keywords that are most desirable and useful for SEO purposes, what do you do with them?

1. On-Page Optimization: This term refers to putting the keywords into appropriate places on the pages of your web site. This includes meta-titles and descriptions. These are the titles and descriptions that appear on Google (title underlined in blue) when the listing for your page comes up. You can also create a meta keyword block, though some people argue that this is not relevant any more. You can also put the keywords into your headlines on the page, using the H1 and H2 tags, and you can put them into the “alt tags,” which you see when you mouse over an image on a page.

2. Off-Page Optimization: Off-page optimization refers to creating links to your site from other sites on the web. Google says that the number of links to your site is the most important criteria in how high they will rank your site. So the trick is to build up lots of links to your site. The most valuable link, so say some SEO gurus, is an “anchor text” link, which means a keyword of some kind that is linked to your site. Now that you have a list of the best keywords to use, you should use those keywords in your blog posts, press releases and articles, and link them to your site when you can. All of these actions are geared towards getting your site to rank well for those keywords and raise them up onto the first page of search results for those keywords. That gets you traffic from search engines.

3. Pay Per Click Advertising: For pay per click advertising (PPC), you want to select keywords with high traffic. But here you are not really concerned with how much competition there is for a keyword. And with PPC you want to choose both multiple word keywords and more general keywords. PPC is a different animal and if you only choose long tail keywords (multiple word, more specific keywords) you will probably not get enough traffic to make it worth your while. There is a lot to know about PPC and I’ve covered that in other articles and will continue to write more in the future.

Good luck with your keyword finding efforts.

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