 A business owner asks, "Can I get more traffic to my website without getting a new website?"
Possibly! Are you currently receiving enough new clients through your website to keep you busy? If yes, then you probably don't need a new website to continue your normal operations. However, your website may be missing out on key tools and resources that will improve the experience for customers, and decrease the amount of time you need to spend with customers. If you are not currently receiving enough new clients, then it doesn't matter how much traffic we send to your site, we don't know that your website will work when customers get there. Huh? The process of converting people to customers online is this: 1. Get people to your website. 2. Provide a call to action (call, sign up, register, enroll, schedule, book, buy now). 3. Follow up with those who take action (close the deal, provide the service, send the product). If you have a website already, but you're not getting customers from it, then you need a new website. Why? -The current website was not built for SEO and/or -The current website was not built with a solid offer and call to action We are great at building websites that climb the ranks of Google. We are also great at building out a reasonable call to action that will get your traffic excited about being your customer. We built one site that received more appointment requests in the first 48 hours of its launch, than it had received in the previous 5 years combined. We don't like wasting time on things that aren't going to work. Providing SEO services as an afterthought, without ensuring that your website will bring in customers is a disservice to you. We want to build a longterm relationship with your business. We do that by providing services that work! Call 775-544-6612 to wake up your website and wake up your business!  Question: How can I expedite my online marketing through blogging? We received this question from a client that writes hefty proposals for multi-million dollar government contracts. When we realized that the client is an avid writer (they write proposals that dwarf most John Grisham books), we gave them the instructions on how to get writing, and GET RESULTS! Here is an idea task list to expedite your marketing efforts: Blog like a crazy person (blog as much as you can, as much as you want, every day and night)
DON'T WRITE DIRECTLY IN WEEBLY. Because technology.
BLOG CONTENT BANK (feel free to add your own key phrases!):
SOCIAL MEDIA BLAST
Now that you have your content ^, you can send it out to the masses. To post on Facebook or Twitter or Linkedin: Click on the Blog Title of your post. It should look like this: http://www.wakinggirl.com/business-proposal-writers/business-proposal-writers-in-san-francisco-ca NOT: http://www.wakinggirl.com/business-proposal-writers/ Copy & paste the link and include your opening thoughts. NOT just the link. You can include the opening paragraph or two: We are a content consulting company specializing in new business proposals. Our staff of writing, graphic design, and subject matter professionals work side by side with you to craft and price winning solutions. Or say something like: I had a lot of fun writing this article on the Top 10 Tips for Talking Trash. Somebody dared me to do it, and I did. And it was awesome. You'll never believe #7. Or: This is a must-read for business owners in the construction industry. Tag your construction owner friends (or just print it out and mail it to them, because they're not on Facebook). START THERE- and let us know how we can help!  There are a billion ways to monetize your blogging brilliance. You may not be able to support yourself or family when you first get started (true in any business), but with perseverance and a little strategy, you can at least supplement your income and see what's possible.
Possibilities: Google Ad revenue. You can add Google ads to your website. It takes a little patience to set up, but can give you an immediate return on your blogging bliss. Google: Google Adsense to set up an account and get started. Google Ad Strategies: -your audience needs to be the kind of people who click on ads. I built a website once for gamers. The website was a calculator that helped gamers gauge their risk in making different moves in the game. It was awesome. And useful. And gamers would pull up that site and keep it open all day. But they never once clicked on an ad. Meanwhile, I put ads on a site for Republicans, and oh boy--they went nuts clicking for the whole 17 hours the ads were up. The (elderly) Republican leaders were trying to figure out how ads for Democrats ended up on their site! So they clicked and clicked and clicked to try to get to the bottom of things!! Whoops! Made about $25 before they realized I had the power to remove "the liberal blasphemy" from their site. My most successful Google ad experience brought in about $100/month for several years (with almost no attention given to the website after the initial setup). The website was for a niche product, and customers were being driven to the website from other websites and marketing methods. People clicked on ads because they were in the market for a product, and the ads were generally related to their product search. Product Placement. Ever wonder why someone is drinking a Diet Coke in a TV show? Product Placement! Coca Cola will make more money by influencing people to drink their product, than by telling them directly. Use Product Placement with Trade to get started. Want to get your hair cut, but can't afford the best salon? Ask the salon if you can do a trade--a blog post featuring your hair experience with links to their salon site, in exchange for a hair cut! Tip in cash, please! Once you have a big enough following, you can ask for real money for these sorts of blog posts! SEO. Offer blogs for SEO purposes to local businesses or businesses that hit your niche market (for a fee). Do a story about how awesome a company, service or website is--and include some helpful links to their website in the copy. It's really important that you link properly, or else your blog will come off as spammy, or it won't be effective for your ad client. Effective Linking: -When you're talking about a web design company, link the important words about their SEO services like this. -Do not link like this: wakinggirl.com -And don't bother to link like this: Waking Girl is cool. Link the words that people would use to find the business in a Google search. That will indicate to Google that "Waking Girl" is a "web design company" and offers "SEO services." Ask for a one-time fee or a monthly fee, or a set up fee + monthly fee (businesses will benefit as long as the blog post is up and traffic is coming to your website). Ads. Run your own graphic ads on the sidebars, footers or headers of your website. Ask businesses or organizations to supply graphics that fit the space, and then charge a monthly, quarterly or annual fee for sharing your web space! Websites generally charge too much for graphic ads. Words are actually worth more than pictures in a blog. The only time an ad would be more worthwhile is if your EXACT readers should be the EXACT customers for the ads. So--if all of your single, mom friends in Mobile, Alabama are reading your blog, then a graphic ad for a Singles Speed Dating event for Moms in Mobile, Alabama would make sense. For ads, go for sponsorship. Who just wants to support you and identify with you to help you out and be a friend? Is there a Women's Crisis Center or a Church or a MicroLoan organization that speaks to you? See if they want to smack their logo on your website for a small monthly fee. If you really want to benefit the organization, take the time to write a proper blog post about them, too! What to charge. Google ads: Google will decide! Product Placement: use this to trade whatever you can trade! Hair care, kid's activities, restaurants. Look for companies that have some extra time or product on their hands, and want to help you get started! SEO: If you write up a full, engaging story on a business, that's worth at least $50. If you use some SEO, and target relevant businesses for your audience, that's worth as much as you can sell it for ($75, $100, $250). I prefer low set up fees with ongoing monthly fees ($50 + $5/month, and yes, you may pay for a year at a time). Ads: $5/month to $500/month. Seriously--the sky is the limit. Try to give people both an ad AND an SEO blog post AND a product placement experience! Important next steps: Keep writing. Quantity! Go! Keep writing! The deeper you allow people into your life, the more valuable your blog will become. Plug into your audience. Seek out Facebook Groups that feature your target market. Who is your target market? People just like you! Find your people! Check in with your sponsors. Follow up regularly with anyone contributing to the cause; communication will help you find new ways to help, and that will ultimately boost your bottom line! :) Blogs: the gateway drug to your new business.  I'm surrounded by business coaches and the industry has one magic formula called "THE SALES FUNNEL." Catchy, right?
Every once in awhile I get caught in the click-bait of a sales funnel and sign up for an email newsletter. Recently one of those emails explained what a sales funnel is. I almost gagged. For those of you who haven't heard the concept, a sales funnel goes like this: Billions of people are out there, and through offers and promotions, you'll catch maybe a hundred or a thousand of them. Then, through frequent harassment (email newsletters) you'll narrow it down to 10 interested people who might want more information. And eventually they'll want a Discovery Call (that's just a phone call where you find out if they can afford your services). And then you sell ONE promotional package to one lucky winner who pops through your little funnel. And then you create the package, and perform the services. And hope the customer doesn't dispute the charge on her credit card. And rinse, repeat. Wow. That's a lot of funneling for ONE sale. Let's take a look at how the process can work if you just flip the funnel over:
At Waking Girl we do not use lead generation funnels, we do not send out solicitous newsletters. We do not waste our energy on trying to win you over before the sale. We save our energy for going above and beyond for our current clients. Rather than turning thousands into one client. We've taken ONE client and turned her into thousands of clients. Thank you, Antique Angel Wedding Chapel, for being our first VIP client! The Internet is the great all-knowing; it puts libraries to shame in its speed, efficiency, full-color graphics, and ability to fit in your pocket. But how did it become so smart and so cool? Because people like you, me and that guy with the long beard who hasn't come out of his home office in two weeks are the ones sharing all the information. Everyone has an opinion that counts on the web! Google favors websites that help people by sharing good information, tools and resources--for free. Google indexes information by reading text (for now). It confirms the information by peeking in to see who is reading the information, how long they're reading it, and if they clicked off in frustration or delved deeper into the data. Google looks for the sales person (website) who really helps people vs. the sales person (website) who just wants to make a commission. Waking Girl websites focus on helping people! We believe that finding ways to help more and more people with less and less effort is the key to success! Blogs should be written with this focus in mind. How to help people by blogging, and in turn, improve a website's SEO (Search Engine Optimization):
Writing is one of the most challenging tasks for business owners. If you love to write, you're in demand! Writing every day will quickly improve your skills; start now! Let me show you the power of blogging and your SEO: The carpet cleaning industry is vast and competitive. It takes quite the budget and a lot of time to do well in a search. We'll take a look at a new client: BEST Services. If we do a search for "carpet cleaning reno" BEST Services is nowhere to be found: 
It's a new site, so this is not a surprise. If we do a search for something more specific that we have blogged about, we'll find this: 
 Here is the respective blog attached to that search.
You can search for almost any key phrase on the blog and it comes up on the first page of Google. As the site performs better and better on these niche services, Google will recognize it as a more and more authoritative site and it will perform better and better for the really important searches. That is the power of blogging! See if you can find the power of blogging in another website. Or see if a website could use some blogging assistance! |
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed