31 Conversion Optimization Tips – and Counting

How can you reduce Distraction on your pages? How many links can you eliminate? … You don’t sell features. You sell solutions to problems.

>> Follow Chris Goward

Copy that Converts: Interview with Copywriting Maven Roberta Rosenberg

You need the words to make the sale, period. Whether we’re looking at text-only email, a simple direct mail letter or even skywriting for that matter, the words are the key to the message. However, as I mentioned in a previous response, good design supports the message and makes it easy, even pleasant to read. It also helps direct the reader from point to point, acting as a visual roadmap to the essential bits and pieces that deserve particular attention. However, what’s even more important than the creative – copy or design – is a strong, attractive offer and visitors who are hungry for what you have to promote.

>> Follow Roberta Rosenberg

If your focus is on receiving commissions from affiliate product referrals, how many of your site’s visitors go on to purchase one of the affiliate products you promote? Think it should be a lot more? So did I, and that’s why I honed my technique to increase the conversion rate. Eventually, I took the lessons I learned and turned them into the Q&A Formula. Check it out sometime.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: affiliate products, Chris Goward, Conversions, Marketing

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5 Dominant Techniques in Social Media Marketing

Different companies with different goals should have different social media marketing techniques. This is a serious pain in the industry because social media marketing is something that truly works and can be very powerful, but most people (companies and consultants alike) have a lot of misconceptions regarding the different strategies and how they should be used.

>> Follow Yu-kai Chou

How Google sets goals and measures success

A while ago I wrote a post about the culture of “failure is not an option” and how, taken the wrong way, that actually conditions people to set modest achievable goals that they are certain they can achieve. Because if they fail … they are fired. Taking great risks, pushing innovation, and striving to achieve the impossible will never happen at companies like that. In that post I discuss how startups definition of “failure is not an option” is completely different. For startups it means they will try 5 or 10 or 20 approaches until they find one that works. They won’t stop until they succeed. Google’s culture seems to follow the Thomas Edison approach which paraphrased is “I haven’t failed, I’ve just found lots of approaches that don’t work, and I am closer to the solution”.

>> Follow Don Dodge

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Post tags: Don Dodge, goals, Social Media Marketing, Yu-kai Chou

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Don’t Miss Marketing Opportunities

Any chance you have of spreading the word about your site should be taken. Smart marketers never miss an opportunity and you shouldn’t either. You never know when one incredibly influential person might stumble over a link to your site, fall in love with your site, and suddenly send a flood of traffic to it by mentioning it on his or her blog or social media stream.

Of course, you do need to consider whether or not your time could be better spent doing something else, so if submitting your site to directories takes up so much time as to outweight the potential benefits, then you’re probably losing the benefits you’d hoped to gain.

Automate Processes, Not Content

So when people ask me if they should submit to directories, I always say yes, but I add a caveat: “Yes, submit to directories, but don’t spend too much time on the task. Automate as much of the process as possible to free up your time for other important marketing tasks.”

Some people cringe when they hear the word “automate”, as they immediately envision black hat spammers evilly autogenerating content in their sleep, polluting the web in the process. That’s definitely not what I’m talking about, so please don’t even go there in your minds. Processes should be automated where possible, not content.

The Tool I’ve Used For Over Four Years

So here’s how I’ve been automating the process of submitting to directories for over four years now. I use a tool called SubmitEaze that gives me the most flexibility I’ve found to reduce the time need to submit to directories. Every now and then I forget to use it, and when I remember again later (usually when an email arrives telling me about some new feature of the software), I kick myself for having put it aside for so long. (Hey, I’m human, and stuff gets lost in the daily flow just like it does for everyone).

I’ve actually reviewed SubmitEaze a few times in the past, beginning way back in January, 2006. You can read those reviews here, here, here and here. I haven’t reviewed it lately, however, and there’s been a ton of great new features since the last time I did, over two years ago. So, here’s an updated review of the product. (And no, this is not a paid review, nor were any of the ones I’ve done over the years).

Not Just Site Directories – Article Directories Too

The biggest new feature in the last two years has been the ability to not only submit to directories really easily, but to also submit articles to article directories as well. Article marketing is a step up in the marketing chain for several reasons.

1. You aren’t just giving a brief title and description of your site; you’re supplying an entire article about your site’s niche topic, with links back to your site in the author bio – and on top of that – you are authorizing anyone to use that content on their own sites, as long as they also include your bio (with links intact). This not only spreads the word to the article directories themselves, but potentially to many other individual sites who reuse the article as well.

2. Some article directories have a fair amount of influence in the search rankings, so you can potentially get fairly easy rankings for the articles. True, the ranking is a secondary effect, since the directory is ranking instead of your site, but the visitor still gets a chance to find your site, when they might not otherwise.

So to be able to use a tool that makes the task easier of submitting your site to directories – and in addition – makes it easier to submit articles to article directories – well, that’s just a bonus that is really valuable. To top it off, the articles submitted can be spun right within SubmitEaze to ensure that variations of the article are submitted, rather than the exact same content going out to each directory. Woot! I’ve used spinner software before, so it’s nice to not have to dig out a completely different tool to do something that the tool I’m in can do for me.

Other Features

Now, I don’t use every feature available to me. For instance, the tool can automatically set up and manage a reciprocal links directory to make adding recip links easy. But I haven’t traded reciprocal links in years, and I don’t plan to do so now, so I just skip any directories that require a reciprocal link. If asked to recommend doing recips or not, I usually say recommend against it, assuming the person is talking about this kind of generic reciprocal link. It’s just not useful to anyone, so it’s a waste of time and space on your site. But if you disagree with me (and that’s allowed [big grin]), then you’ll probably love the feature that lets you deal with it very easily.

A quick roundup of its major features:

• Submit to both website directories and article directories.
• Turbo Submission mode automates the process so you can submit to directories in super-fast time.
• Over 4,000 website directories and 1,000 article directories currently in the list that can all be sorted by Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Rank, or number of incoming backlinks to the directory.
• Full range of general directories to choose from: Free, Reciprocal Link Required, and Payment Required.
• Ability to select just niche directory listings (i.e. directories which only list websites of one particular topic).
• Lets you set up rotating link title text and description text for each project. This is important for ensuring variation and targetting of different phrases.
• Link page maintenance so you can quickly create and upload reciprocal links to your website (if you disagree with me as mentioned above).
• Tag, categorize, and search your directories exactly how you want, and add your own notes to each.
• Free software and directory updates forever.
• Add your own custom directories to the list.
• Complete control over the auto-fill feature within SubmitEaze – you can even add your own custom fields. This can be hugely useful in some situations.
• Import / export between different computers.
• Create detailed submission reports.
• You can add a rating to each directoy so you can keep track of your favorites.
• And lots more

So, that’s my favorite tool for dealing with directory submissions. What’s yours?

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: article marketing, directory submissions, spinner software, Web directories

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eBusiness Mish-Mash

Why Every Freelancer Should Have a Personal Project

If you have clients willing to pay you to do something, you can also use that skill to make something that would pay you directly. Think about it. Whether it’s a blog earning revenue through advertisements, affiliate sites or a service, you start something now. There is no guarantee that it will make you the income that your clients pay, but you will have something coming in if all else fails. And if it generates an income, soon you could be freelancing just for the joy of it and not solely for the money.

>> Follow Ritu

3 Tips for the Entrepreneur / Workhorse

When we decided (you and I, the risk takers) to ditch the corporate gig and make our dreams a reality (here’s hoping), we had to immediately deal with the certain reality that life would never be the same. To say you can’t approach entrepreneurship (and often true sales) the same way you take on the 9-5 job is obvious and yet, sometimes, we do just that.

>> Follow Microfit

Ruud Questions: Kristy Bolsinger (RealNetworks)

People are talking about you whether you are listening and/or participating or not. Simply ignoring these conversations does not wipe them from existence. In order to get involved in social media successfully, it is critical to define your goals and know your target audience. Simply “jumping in” will probably not result in a positive outcome – let alone any type of ROI. You must first define your goals based on your target audience, and then strategically enter the social media space with these things in mind.

>> Follow Kristy Bolsinger

One piece of content, 20 ways to use it

In small business marketing, every penny counts – so if you have some content make sure it works really hard for you. Also don’t be shy in using it, re-using it and re-using it again. At the B2B Marketing Lead Nurturing event (30 Sept 2009), John sagely reminded us that if, as marketers, we’re totally bored by a piece of content, then the market has probably only just noticed it. If the material is relevant, interesting, and not date-defined, you can probably dine out on it for six months to a year, at the very least. Probably longer. I mean, for each new follower on Twitter, for example, it is effectively a brand new piece… don’t be shy in showing them your best stuff.

>> Follow Bryony Thomas

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ebusiness, entrepreneurs, microbusiness

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Every marketer that has a website has learned about bringing visitors to their site through SEO. He knows that a proper SEO campaign takes a lot of time and patience, but in the end, he’s rewarded with great rankings. Conversion optimization is also a patient task and is another never-ending process. But through constant testing, you’ll be able to dramatically improve your conversion rate.

If you offer a service of some sort this will more easily apply to you, but many of these techniques can be applied across the board no matter what kind of niche you are in. Conversion rate doesn’t only apply to selling a product or generating leads from a website. It can be applied to anything that you want a visitor to do when they get to your website/blog.

Perceived Authority and Trust

No one will use a service from someone they don’t trust. Building trust is crucial in getting a customer to complete a transaction. I’ve found (and many agree) that including customer testimonials, press mentions, secure website certificates, a physical address, and a picture, as well as maintaining a personal tone within your web content are all instant solidifiers in capturing the trust of an impatient web visitor. In order to complete the trust picture, you should make sure that you are keeping the search results clean with online reputation management.

Speed of Service

A potential customer doesn’t like wasting a lot of time, so don’t give them junk they don’t want or care about on a landing page. For example, when searching for [surety bonds], people want to get in and out as fast as possible so we keep a clean layout and short, concise content that gets to the point. If you run a fitness site, you may want to have a lengthy article that gets the reader emotional before deciding to buy your service/product. It all depends on your niche, so you’ll have to test to see which method works best. Either way, make sure to show your visitors what you want at the top of the site as you only have a few seconds to grab their attention to start them down the conversion process.

If you offer a service, be sure to have a fast follow-up. Through our bonding site and other experiences I’ve had, I’ve found that the more quickly we follow up with a web site contact, the more likely they are to turn into a completed transaction or customer. It’s important to immediately contact users whether through a live customer agent or even a simple email system to let them know that you received their info and will act on it shortly.

Testing, Testing, Testing

A major aspect of conversion rate optimization is testing. You need to find what works best and what just doesn’t make the cut. An easy way to do this is to use Google’s website optimizer. This allows you to send half of your traffic to one version of a page and the other half to a different version. Not sure if ‘Military Housing‘ converts better than ‘Military Homes‘? This will let you know. Then you can test it against a different phrase and keep the one that works the best. After repeating the test for a while, you will eventually find the phrase that always gives the best conversion.

Test form layouts, test different pictures, test everything. This is the biggest advice I would give people. You may not realize it, but a different picture or even a different background color can increase your conversion rate. With the proper dedication and a little time, you can turn visitors into customers.

This guest post was written by Kevin Kaiser of Surety Bond Co., a surety bonding agency.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Conversion optimization, Conversion rate, Marketing, online reputation management, Search engine optimization

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Now What?

12 Quick Tips to Boost Website Sales in Minutes-Part 2

When site visitors take the time to read your website copy, do they know what to do next? It’s important to lead potential customers through your copy and offer an easy call-to-action on each page. For example, you may want to provide a big button that tells visitors exactly what to do and what happens when they click on that button (Add to Cart, Questions?, Yes! I want your newsletter!, etc.). Try to make it as easy as possible for potential customers to sign up for a newsletter subscription, contact your sales department, read your blog, or make a purchase.

>> Follow Melanie Rembrandt

Selling

The game changer: a client-centered, natural business model

Standing on a stage in front of a group of smiling and supportive audience members, I felt on top of my game. The message resonated, the content was useful and the delivery connected. I had done my job. Afterward, as I mingled in the crowd, people pulled me aside and said “I loved the presentation Pam, but you didn’t sell anything! How can I work with you?” Coming from a blogging and social media culture where direct selling from the stage is frowned upon, I was kind of shocked. Don’t people hate to be sold to? I had a profound mental shift right on the spot. I realized that people hate to be pushed irrelevant crap that does not solve their problems. But they are extremely happy to hear about useful products and programs that will add value to their life and their business.

>> Follow Pamela Slim

Goals

Hack Your Work: 23 Ways to Get Ahead, Work Less and Achieve More

Set a single goal that you want to accomplish this year — I know that we probably want to do 12 goals, but it’s too difficult to maintain your focus on more than one goal, and it diffuses your energy. Pick one goal for the next 12 months, and then a single 3-6 month goal that will lead to your 12-month goal. Then choose something you can accomplish within the next 1-2 weeks that will lead to the 3-6 month goal. Now focus on that short-term goal, giving it all your energy, and when it’s achieved, set your next short-term goal until you’ve accomplished your medium-term goal.

>> Follow Leo Babauta

Each of these special people has a message worth sharing, and I know that their tips are ones you and I can all learn from.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Call To Action, Goal, Leo Babauta, Management, Melanie Rembrandt, Pamela Slim, Selling

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Competitive Advantage

Get Out Your Dancing Shoes

Pop quiz: Over the next three years, what is the number one skill that will be needed by marketing professionals? Answer: An ability to entertain.

>> Follow Mark Schaefer

Link Building

Link Building Trends for 2010

Content development will continue to be crucial but where you place content will be key. Article directories are still OK to use but drive little in the way of link popularity or syndication. Developing relationships with key bloggers, journalists and ezines will become crucial. Look also to topical online communities and the answer sites to find authorities to host your content.

>> Follow Debra Mastaler

Increasing Income

Where to Find a Self-Employed Professional Level Income

If you are going to earn the average income for Portland, Oregon, that means fifty-five thousand dollars a year. How might that much money be generated by an entrepreneur like yourself? Fifty-five people paying $1,000 over the course of a year. This could be $150 per month for eight months, or $250 per month for four months.

>> Follow Mark Silver

Characteristics of Success

Why are some people more successful than others?

Successful people are students for life. They are constantly acquiring specific knowledge in their business or field – as well as a large storehouse of knowledge on all sorts of other topics. As a rule, the more you learn, the more you earn.

>> Follow Bob Bly

Planning

How To Write A Foolproof Marketing Plan For Your Blog

A study released by Babson College found that formal business plans are worthless. Instead, make yours a manifesto for your life. Use pictures, music, crayons – whatever it takes to inspire you.

>> Follow John Haydon

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bob Bly, Debra Mastaler, ebusiness tips, entrepreneur, John Haydon, Mark Schaefer, Mark Silver

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The following wise words from people I respect are a few of the things I’ve read sometime in the past that are timeless enough to pass along to you now.

	The right mindset Search offers so much opportunity that even without talent eventually anyone can stumble into something that works for them. But they have to have the right mindset to succeed. Investing time and money and effort and blood and tears…that is the right mindset. If you got nothing then you got nothing to lose. Give it your all. >> Follow Aaron Wall or get his SEO Book training
	Follow up posts solidify Google positions If you’ve managed to rank on a particular keyword and want to help ensure you stay at the top – write a follow up post, and link through to the original. I’ve done this before to create indented results in the SERP’s – which in some cases puts me at number one and two for some searches – and helps to solidify positions. >> Follow Paul Anthony
	Be imperfect Your content should be imperfect if you hope to forge genuine connections with people. I’m serious. Don’t follow rules, guidelines or styles – in fact embrace being flawed, it’s a beautiful thing. If you refine things too far you’ll bland away all the personality. Embrace your mistakes, you might even learn something. >> Follow Adam Singer
	Make content portable The beauty of the social web is that if you make good content easy to share, real live people will be your “channels.” If your content is really good, the persistent will figure out a way to share it even if you don’t make it easy. But why make them work that hard? >> Follow Kat French
	How to presell Show your prospects a clear path by removing everything in the way and they’ll follow. To sum up in a sentence: Teach people how to fish and they’ll buy the fishing rod from you. >> Follow DoshDosh

Look for more of these Wise Words from Round the Web in the future.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Aaron Wall, Adam Singer, DoshDosh, imperfection, Kat French, mindset, Paul Anthony, portable, presell, rankings

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My plan for this blog includes giving you as much practical, actionable advice as possible in 2010. That means I’ll try to focus on specifics that you can use to start or grow your online business. I’ll look at more tools that can help make your business more profitable or easier to manage, and try to answer your specific questions over the next year.

So… what do you want to know? I’m listening. Feel free to send questions to me via my contact form or in the comments below. I’ll do my best to answer them with as much detail as possible while still keeping things general enough to be able to help the largest number of people. In other words, I may not answer you directly, but I’ll do my best to answer your question within a blog post at some point in 2010.

Oh, and yes, to keep up the tradition of giving a little something to you on my birthday, I’ve got 18 Google Wave invites to give out. I was hoping Google would have granted me 50 to hand out, since I turn 50 years old today, but 18 is the best I can do. Sorry that it’s not much this year, but I promise to try to come up with something better next year. Anyway, if you want an invite to Google Wave, use my contact form to send me whatever Gmail address you use. I’ll send the invite to that address. (Yes, I think for now Google requires a Google account email address, so if you don’t yet have one, you’ll first need to sign up for a Gmail address, and then let me know what it is). Once the 18 invites are gone, they’re gone, so the first 18 who ask will get them. Don’t leave your email address in the comments below, as that will just invite spammers into your life. Instead, be sure to use my contact form, and that way, it’ll remain private.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ebusiness, faq, success tips

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I was having a similar conversation with my stepdaughter recently. She’s an out-of-work, young mom who hasn’t figured out what she wants to do to earn money. She hasn’t yet found my love of ebusiness, despite my best debating skills, but we may have found something that will work for her.

Recently, I hired her to do some podcast transcribing for me. I paid her $3/podcast-minute, which might be a little higher than the average, but hey, she’s my kid, right?. If I remember correctly, I think it rounded out to about $12/hour of her actual working time at the kitchen table, which was a lot better than flinging burgers for minimum wage somewhere.

Because that went well (she did a great job), she may be interested in trying to make a business out of it. I’m ready to help her get that going, so the first thing I did was order a little guide for her to read and think about. I bought her the Transcription Starter Pack * by Nicole Dean for less than twenty bucks. It gives a really good overview of the General Transcription business, what skills are needed, what tools are needed, and what needs to be done to turn those skills into an actual business.

(Note: We’re talking about general transcription here, not medical transcription. This is just literally listening to audio and video, and creating text documents from them).

Of course, if she decides to pursue this (and who knows, she could change her mind at any time), she’ll have me around to coach her as much as she wants. Like most of my professional coaching gigs, I may not know everything there is to know about a client’s actual business niche, but I know a lot about ebusiness in general. Between my broad knowledge and her indepth experience (which she’ll get immersed in rather quickly), we should be able to steer her into a successful direction, as long as she enjoys the work and is willing to pursue it full-on.

I decided to write this post for two reasons:

1. To throw out an idea for others who might be interested in the same type of business
2. To start documenting the steps to creating and building this business. If this business actually gets off the ground, it will be a wonderful chance for me to do a case study from the very beginning of a new ebusiness.

If she decides to pursue this, I’ll document the various steps involved in setting up the ebusiness, marketing it, and managing it. And of course, I’ll come back here to share it with all of you.

*

** Image adapted and modified from this pic, which coincidentally, is a photo of an online friend of mine. I stumbled across it while I was searching for an appropriate image for this post, and thought, “Oh, that pic is perfect. Hey! I know him!”

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: e - business, online ebusiness, transcribe, transcription

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