Letters From Dan

Local Business Marketing – What it isn’t

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: blogging, Business, computer monitor, customers, Google, hilltop position, Internet, internet connection, internet marketers, local business marketing, local search, Local Search Marketing, marketer, online, realtor, small business owners, unique selling proposition
Posted in Local Search Marketing

You’re on the verge on being inundated.

While you dote methodically on growing your company, internet marketers are planning to visit your company in droves in the near future. Because the need is so great and the experience level so small, small business owners are going to be getting phone calls by the dozens by June of 2011.

And what you’re going to hear is this, “Let us get your site to the top of Google, so you can stop paying for billboards and yellow pages”. They’re going to tell you about the antiquated nature of newspapers, and the inability to track revenue from billboards. And you’re also going to hear that the ability to follow-up with your customers is where the gold is.

Guess what? That’s all it’s going to take to get millions of business owners to sign the dotted line.

But that is exactly what’s going to get those same millions of companies to switch from one internet marketer to the next, month after month. Because local search marketing is not about getting to the top of Google – and it’s not about following up with your customers.

To acquire customers using the internet, you’re going to have to be found – that’s the part about getting to the top of Google. But being on top doesn’t mean people are taking their credit cards out ready to buy.

Local business owners who are personable on site are going to need to extend that personality to the computer monitor. Products that sell themselves at the register are going to have to be marketed online. Nobody’s buying that last second “Hershey” bar on your site, if they have to wait 7 days for it to arrive.

The bottom line is this: until you’re on the first page of the search results, and until you can both capture and follow-up with your customers – you’re not even in the game. But once you accomplish that – that’s when the game begins.

Realtors for instance get many more leads from Realtor.com, Homes.com and Craigslist than they’ll ever get from their sites alone. So what if you’re at the top of Google for Mayberry Real Estate? If everyone in the town is searching for listings on Homes.com – your hilltop position will be quiet as a mouse. So don’t let a marketer sell you the #1 position for Mayberry Real Estate if all your customers are on Craigslist.

Once you climb the search results to page 1, and get your customers to the front door, then you’re going to have to use your charm, your personality and your guile to meet their every need. You’re going to have to test and restest, to try things and fail, to ultimately become a friend to your customers.

Local Search Marketing isn’t about being on top of the mountain. It’s about getting to the top and then proving to your customers that you deserve to be there. And ultimately to “employ” your customers to help you stay there by blogging about you, tweeting about you and making videos for you.

Local. Likable. Learned.

Read Comments

Getting Website Traffic – Stuff You Don’t Hear About

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: ashton kutcher, conversion rate, followers, internet gurus, Internet Marketing: My Ph.D., minute traffic, rate statistics, relationships, spotlight, traffic tips, video series, willie crawford
Posted in An Internet Marketing Journal

So Darren and I are putting together a video series called 10 Minute Traffic Tips. You could ask why I suppose, but I don’t think the answer is very sexy. Darren came up with the idea, well then I really liked the idea. So we decided to do it. Yep, that’s about it.

So at the NAMS conference, I thought I’d take advantage of the opportunity and shoot some video with website owners that you don’t see in these kinds of tutorials. My goal was to find real website owners who were able to garner massive traffic to their sites. I wasn’t so interested in the likes of Willie Crawford and Lynn Terry – but not because they’re not interesting.

You might say they’re two of the most sought after interviews or relationships in internet marketing. And they’re both sincere, genuine and interesting people whose success is hard to deny. But I really didn’t want to be another gawker, another coat tail. When you’ve attained success like that – how many interviews do you get asked to do?

I would like our series to be more about traffic tips and less about me trying to ride the tails of success to climb my own ladder. If our readers demand that, I’ll take that demand to them and show them with legitimacy, that our intentions are honorable and customer-driven.

Our series will feature some very high profile internet gurus because we all want that nugget, but the bulk will be the little guys who’ve amassed massive traffic out of the spotlight. When you’re not in the spotlight, your name doesn’t help your traffic – it must be gotten other ways.

Ashton Kutcher, for example, what can you learn from his “traffic methods” that really doesn’t boil down to star power? I’m not saying he’s not savvy. . . but I am saying how can his “conversion rate statistics” be translated into stats the Anyday Man can follow? How many no-names announced they wanted to beat Oprah to 1,000,000 followers? And then how many of them actually did?

So keep your eye out for announcements on our upcoming series. You’re going to learn things no other course has even touched. For example we’ve already interviewed someone who purposely created a video to go viral – and then amassed 60,000 actives in her database. How about someone else who’s mastered guest blog posting to the tune of 4,000 extra hits to her website the day any of her guest posts come out. We’ve also spoken with people who use SEO, affiliates, syndication and more.

It’s fascinating to do the interviews. Wait till you have 10 minutes to watch them.

Read Comments

Keyword research is like studying for a test

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: keyword research, nams keyword research product, nams seo audio
Posted in The Technical Internet Stuff, Uncategorized

Keyword research is truly like studying for a test. If traffic is the answer then keyword research is the text book.

When people are searching for you, the only tool they have at their disposal are words. Letters and numbers are what people use when searching for products, services, information or entertainment. Put together those letters and numbers entered into the search box are keywords.

A thorough understanding of these keywords is paramount to the success of any webpage, in terms of people finding it via the search engines (ie. . . Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc.)

At the NAMS 4 event in Atlanta, Georgia I sat with Lynn Terry, Susanne Meyers, and Karon Thackston on a keyword research symposium. We talked about search statistics, keyword density, wordtracker, and 10 other vital tips.

And while I’ve been rewarded with #1 positions and great relevant traffic to my clients’ local business websites, I was floored by the information Lynn, Susanne and Karon had at their fingertips. These ladies know their stuff backwards, forwards and upside down. This information is so good, I learned a ton to make my business better. We recorded this 90 minute mastermind session, and are offering it just for you.

This MP3 download:

delivers almost 90 minutes of focused discussion, tips and techniques for easy and practical keyword research.

breaks down complex keyword research ideas into manageable pieces.

explains the various research tools and how to choose the right one for you.

gives you an easy plan of action for finding the best keywords for use with websites, blog posts, articles, and social media.

I guarantee your SEO knowledge will increase, your rankings will get better and your traffic will be more relevant after listening to this audio. Go to the NAMS site and get it now!

No Related Posts

Read all 3 Comments

Notes From #NAMS

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Jeff Herring, Maritz, marketing, Media, NAMS, NAMS conference, Niche Affiliate Marketing System Conference, SMS, YouTube
Posted in Niche Affiliate Marketing

Friday of NAMS 4 was a great day, perhaps the best first day of a NAMS Conference (Niche Affiliate Marketing System). I believe the bugs that were present during NAMS 1 were not only ironed out, but smoothed over with grace. This year I got a chance to speak in front of the group, but that didn’t prevent me from learning.

As you know, each Friday I send out my “notes” from my various activities during the week. If you don’t get my weekly notes, this is the kind of thing you’re missing:

NOTES FROM NAMS

I didn’t expect to learn much in the Social Media 101 for Beginners that Jeff Herring and Maritz Parra put on, but I attended it because I also don’t doubt their deep expertise. And that doubt proved fruitful – I came away with a page of notes.

Did you know that you can get your tweet feeds via SMS to your cell phone? Yep, Jeff and Maritza said if you send a text to 40404 with the message follow@yourtwittername, you’ll get the tweets to your phone. That is awesome for small businesses. Imagine setting up a twitter account just to send out a weekly coupon, and then telling your customers to send that text so they can get the coupons. Very cool.

I also loved a couple of the cross-marketing strategies that they do with their social marketing profiles. Not only do they put the “follow me on Facebook” button on their profile pages, backgrounds and images, but Jeff even has a video on YouTube with Facebook showing on a computer behind him. Check back soon, that discussion made me realize I need to go back and rebrand all my pages. Good stuff.

Those were just a couple of the nuggets. Make sure you sign up for my Notes, I’ll make sure you get all the good stuff from my NAMS experience.

Read all 2 Comments

Marketing small businesses is more than keywords

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Business, customers, e mail addresses, ebay, Google, Internet, internet marketing for small businesses, keywords, ladder of value, marketing, small business owners, website
Posted in Local Search Marketing

Internet marketing for small businesses is marketing. It’s not a separate category, or something special some companies do. The internet is part of our lives and with the advent of the iPad, it’s soon to become a larger part.

I find it interesting that most of my “business” clients don’t really do much “marketing”. They do some advertising, but that’s about it. I get the sense that there’s a “build it and they will come” mentality among small business owners. Well, guess what? There is a better mouse trap.

Let’s try this. . . think of the internet as a tool you can use to reach your current customers. That’s it. Don’t think beyond that. What would that allow you to do?

internet marketing for small business

Well, e-mail is an internet utility that is virtually free. If you’re about to introduce a new product, you could tell all your current customers using e-mail – for free. You could invite them to a Grand Opening. You could even help your neighbor and invite them all to his Grand Opening. (If it’s next door, wouldn’t they stop in to say hello?)

Simple enough.

Now, if you can see how efficient that is, and ultimately how successful you could be doing that . . . how do we get more of our customers’ e-mail addresses?

You could have a pad of paper by the cash register. You could have a drawing where people toss their business card into a fishbowl. You could call them all and ask for it. You could even put a form on your website where they type their name and e-mail into it themselves.

So the next question would be how can you get more customers, so you can get more e-mail addresses, so you can send more notices, so you can make more sales?

That’s where it gets personal. For a real estate client we use Craigslist. A buddy of mine uses eBay. My folks use Google. A car dealer may use billboards. And a personal injury lawyer may just find the best tool is the back page of the yellow pages. That’s where you really start to make headway.

My challenge to you is ask your clients how they think they got from not knowing who you were to hiring you. Let’s put together a road map of how someone who’s never heard of you, eventually hears about you, is impressed with you and then hires you.

When we can master that and begin to understand the “ladder of value” we’ve already got in place, then we can start creating a network to find more people who want what you do.

Therein lies the art. the joy. the wonder of internet marketing.

And therein lies success.

Read Comments

Coffee with Jason Elkins

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: 100 cups of coffee in 100 days, customer service, facebook, facebook marketing, facebook marketing strategy, jason elkins, networking
Posted in The Social Media Phenomenon

This week I had coffee with a friend, Jason Elkins. He’s doing a program he calls 100 cups of coffee in 100 days”. While his program is a relationship building program, it makes a great marketing program, too.

He and I spoke at length about our client’s, what we’re doing for them and how that’s working. Fortunately, though we’re both internet marketers, we do entirely different stuff – so it was a great learning experience. (If you’re interested in the ‘notes’ for that meeting, subscribe at the end of this post).

One thing that is clear is that no two clients deserve the same strategy, or should I say no two clients could be successful using the same strategy. And I’d be willing to pen even for similar companies in the same strip mall. The company’s goals, strengths and weaknesses change that strategy completely.

I was amazed at the vast array of things you can do on a Facebook Fan Page these days. Jason’s team have really come up with some great ideas and new functionality. I’ve been reluctant to suggest a Facebook Fan Page to my clients, but am now rethinking that.

My reluctance comes from seeing the great number of companies that have fan pages but no real reason to do so. Without a really good purpose, and one that brings people back to the site, they could become a liability without constant posting and social interaction.

I’ll put together my notes from our meeting expressing what we learned and how you doing these things for your business. No matter what you do, the goal has to be improvement to the bottom line. No questions about that. Whether the activity is exposure, branding, networking, relationship building, sales, customer service or technical help – make sure that you’re activity is supporting the ultimate goal.

What’s the goal of your business? And can you see the little things you do supporting that ultimate goal – no matter how minute.

Read all 2 Comments

Charging the customer for being a customer

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: customer service, gas stations, ladder of value, marketing strategy, membership site, pay-at-the-pump, seat fee, self-checkout, us airways
Posted in Marketing Mistakes

Are they really charging more for this?

Why does it seem like our “preferences” are being used against us? I just read that airlines are now charging an extra fee to sit in a window or aisle seat. US Airways is charging between $5 and $30 for this service. From an economic standpoint, I guess it narrows down who really wants to sit in those seats – but does it also narrow down the passengers who even want to fly?
The last fee US Airways (and others) levied was a raised $25 for a second checked bag. It’s almost as if they’ve forgotten that it’s the customer who we’re trying to please – not the stock holders.

For a while customer service was going the right direction. When consumers said we want things done faster, businesses responded. It seems like this trend started with the credit card companies and the swipe machines that you now do yourself. And then it was the gas stations and their pay-at-the-pump machines, and then grocery stores that added self-checkout cash registers.

Unlike the airline plan, these are all new advances that we’re not even being charged for. (I know we are, but it’s not like it’s cheaper to pay inside the gas station). To start charging customers for things that aren’t new, advanced, special or better is just plain wrong.

So in your business, take a look at what your customers love about you, your website, your business. Then give them more of it. If you’re using the “Ladder of value”, you certainly can charge more money for more stuff – but don’t think that applies to the level and volume of service or products you’re giving them now.

If you find out your customers really like your information, don’t automatically turn that information into a paid “membership site”. While your clientele might not figure out at first, they will at some point. Instead create the “membership site” with more of what they love already. More videos. More articles. More workshops. More analysis.

More. More. More.

Remember, money is just paper. That’s it. It’s really, really high-tech paper with green ink on it. It’s only worth something to you and me because Money = Work. The only way you can charge more money is if you put more work into the outcome. You might be able to get away with it for a while.

But eventually someone is going to figure out that you don’t really care about your audience. And that’s when you’ll see notes on Facebook and Twitter that say “The airlines are now charging extra money to sit down.”

Read all 4 Comments

Marketing Mistakes: conversion rate blinders

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: conversion rate, converting sales, marketing mistakes, source conversion, website conversion rate
Posted in Marketing Mistakes

I approached an affiliate network this week to see if I could place some banner ads on my sites for a couple products I thought were cool. And the response I got was “let us review your sites and see if there is a match”.

I thought that was odd. Well, once I totally over-thought it, that’s when I decided it was odd.

The upside for them: It doesn’t cost them anything to e-mail me the url so I can download a banner ad. It doesn’t cost them anything if 1 million people visit my site and no one clicks the ad. And it doesn’t cost them anything if no one visits the site and no one clicks the ad. Therefore the upside is potential sales, actual sales and exposure. If it takes 7 impressions before you buy I could be one of those.

The downside for them: If 1,000,000 people click the ad and no one buys, their conversion rate looks really bad. (see related posts to see the truth behind conversion rates). If they put their ads on porn sites, their reputation may suffer. If they allow everyone to put banner ads on their sites and 95% sell 1 unit, that’s a lot of paperwork to deal with. Legitimate concerns? I’d say so.

But after totally over-thinking it, I believe they’re trying to protect their conversion rate. Oddly enough the conversion rate tells you so little that it really means nothing. A conversion rate that is too low means you’re fishing with too wide a net, driving the wrong kind of traffic or a poorly worded ad. Or finally does it mean that your site isn’t converting good prospects into paying customers? The only way you learn those answers is to get lots of traffic and test new things.

And that brought me to these questions. She didn’t ask a single question about what visitors to my sites have bought before or what is their demographic makeup. Nor was she curious as to the size of my e-mail marketing database – or the response rate I get when I e-mail information to my database.

Which leads me to believe that they’re interested in ads that are similar in content to the websites themselves. For example, they’d be happy to promote an Oprah book on an Oprah site. Unfortunately, it’s often the traffic itself that drives sales. A site about Kite Flying that is heavily viewed by people over 50 may do well with Enzyte ads – but that has nothing to do with kites.

So here are two potential marketing mistakes you could find yourself making. I’m not saying the affiliate company I contacted was making a mistake – you’ve got to run business as you see fit. But if you’re motivated by either of these wrongs, you may be missing out on income.

Don’t limit yourself to products and services that are similar to yours. If you’re a home builder – feel free to send your audience a coupon for tax planning at H&R Block. Homeowners and taxes go together. And stop worrying about your overall conversion rate. Look at it as a function of source – not as a function of performance.

Read Comments

Don’t join the “follow us on Twitter” heat wave.

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: 5k marketing, facebook, facebook strategy, follow us on Facebook, follow us on twitter, Local Search Marketing, My Twitter Clinics, social media strategy, twitter strategy
Posted in The Social Media Phenomenon

Arghh. . . Don’t just follow us on Twitter. . .

I got a 5K flyer in the mail yesterday, and the Twitter/Facebook logo duo caught my eye immediately. That’s probably strange to you, but I see them everywhere – and most of the time I take pictures of them or clip them out and put them in my ‘workshops example folder’.

So the entire flyer was about a 5K race coming up. Great imagery, cool logo and art. Then they had the date, race starting times and the “Register at Active.com” statement. And then to finish up the flyer, the footer including the host organization’s mission statement and the Twitter/Facebook duo.

I didn’t include an image of the flyer itself. It’s a local event for charity and I really just thought they didn’t need to hear this at this point. But I’ll tell you this is a perfect lesson in Marketing that I think all small businesses should heed.

To be blunt “Nobody wants to follow you”. Or me. Or anyone else for that matter. We want information. We want discourse, tips, strategies, etc. . . We just don’t want to follow you on Twitter for the hell of it. That’s no incentive whatsoever. And I have “liked” so many companies with poor Facebook pages, I’m not inclined to visit too many more.

On the flipside, their Facebook page is 1000% better than most. They’ve got actual social interaction going on. They’ve got videos of people talking about their race last year, race maps, updates on training run times and practice race days. Just great stuff. It’s too bad their flyer doesn’t say that.

On top of that, they ask you to register at Active.com right on the flyer, when they could easily have had you get the link to the Active registration page on their Facebook page. In fact, their fan page is so good, I bet it would even improve their conversion rate over the Active.com order page.

1 more missed opportunity.

So my charge to you is: Don’t ask anyone to follow your business on Twitter. Don’t set up a fan page on Facebook and don’t put that “Follow us on Facebook” sign on your company invoices. Nope. Resist. Don’t do it. In fact, don’t even start a social media strategy unless you know what you’re going to do.

The 5K folks had a great plan in mind for their Facebook page. They should have said, “Get up to date information about the race, get registered for door prizes and hear what past participants have had to say about the race – all on our Facebook page. Also, become a fan and then get all the Registration Information.”

How many more fans would a race of 700 people get to their page with that marketing plan? With only a week to go – they have 114 fans. That’s 586 fans shy of the number who registered directly through Active.com.

I would encourage you to jump over to this Social Media Examiner article where they interviewed the folks at Intel about how they manage their Facebook page. You can see here how important it is to have an objective – and how to drive people there using that objective.

Don’t ask people to “follow you on Twitter” – give them a reason.

Read all 3 Comments

Local Business Marketing: It’s not all me

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Business, Business and Economy, Clients, Google, local business marketing, Mail, marketing, Time, up to date, website
Posted in Local Search Marketing

Some important folks visited my blog this week. I say important because they’re important to me, but it’s not like the guy who invented Oreo’s stopped by to read this stuff. They’re stopping by occurred the same time I was working with a new client. And unfortunately the lesson I was trying to teach the client, I hadn’t adopted myself.

In our first meeting together, I was explaining what my role would be. I was explaining how my job was to bring new clients in the door using the internet, how I was going to go about capturing the information about the new clients and then how we were going to keep marketing to them via e-mail or mail or whatever.

Well, it occurred to me while I was there that the local business had a job too. While it’s my job to get new clients there, it’s the local businesses job to keep them there and leave the door of possibility open that the person would come back. What I mean by that is their job is to be friendly, clean, current and fair. Even if you have what the client wants, if the place is not inviting – they’ll unsubscribe from our e-mails.

That lesson came back on me. It’s hard to have a dirty blog, but it’s not hard to have outdated information. After getting back from my meeting with them, I took a look at this blog and realized the About Me section is from the first week I started. Lettersfromdan has morphed over time and that part is just not relevant.

What my important visitors thought when they visited, I’m not sure. But I can tell you right now the About Me section doesn’t reflect what I told them I was writing about. So this weekend, it’s time to take my own medicine. You can read the old “About Me” section right here, otherwise, I’m committing to you that all parts of this blog will be up to date.

Thanks for stopping by!

Letters From Dan

Local Business Marketing – What it isn’t

Related Posts:

Read Comments

Getting Website Traffic – Stuff You Don’t Hear About

Related Posts:

Read Comments

Keyword research is like studying for a test

Related Posts:

Read all 3 Comments

Notes From #NAMS

Related Posts:

Read all 2 Comments

Marketing small businesses is more than keywords

Related Posts:

Read Comments

Charging the customer for being a customer

Related Posts:

Read all 4 Comments

Marketing Mistakes: conversion rate blinders

Related Posts:

Read Comments

Local Business Marketing: It’s not all me

Related Posts:

Read all 2 Comments

.

Favorite Tools

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

.

Favorite Tools

Common Tags