…Insights on Business and Social Marketing…

Archive for January, 2010

Website Terminology

Published by Networking Professor on 29th January 2010

Filed Under Uncategorized

An increase in web traffic is attracting traditional brick and mortar businesses to bring their business online.

Here are some basic terms to help new internet users understand some of the basic terms used to analyze the effectiveness of a website in terms of generating traffic and lead conversion.

1) Visitors
This is the number of people who have come to your website for the first time or who are coming back for a second time. This is important, because this is the size of the pool of people from which you are trying to get leads. The bigger the number of visitors, the more potential for you to get leads.

2) Leads
This is the number of people who self-select on your website and do something to give you their contact information. It could be signing up for a demonstration, requesting a whitepaper, or viewing a video, but there must be a form where they give you at least their email address and sometimes more information as well. This number is critical since your website leads are where your sales come from.

3) Conversion Rate
This is the percentage of your total website visitors who become a lead. So, if you had 200 visitors to your website today, and you generated 3 leads, that would be a 1.5% conversion rate. Most people will tell you that a 1-2% conversion rate is the average for a b2b website. The conversion rate is important because it is telling you how efficient your website is at turning visitors into leads. Remember, you can double your company’s number of leads by either doubling your website traffic or doubling your conversion rate.

4) Website Grade
Websites are graded on a scale from 1 to 100 - a score of 100 is excellent and a score of 1 means no one will find your site. This analysis gives you an excellent overview of the marketing effectiveness of your website, including things like your Google Page Rank, number of inbound links and other key statistics. What is nice about a website grade is that it summarizes this all into one number from 1 to 100. You should know what your website grade is and track it over time to make sure you improve (or if you already get a good score, to make sure you don’t slip.

5) Keyword Search Rank
For most business websites, the most efficient traffic and leads will come from organic search. This is the traffic that comes from people searching on Google, MSN and Yahoo and other engines and finding your website in the results. This traffic is not completely “free”, since you need to work on your website to really maximize it, but it is usually much more cost effective than other sources. You need to know how you rank in the search engines for at least a few key terms related to your business, and you also want to know how that rank is changing over time - are you moving up or down - since that will determine the future success of your website visitors and leads.

Fusion Methodology

Published by Networking Professor on 13th January 2010

Filed Under Uncategorized

There is no question that effective marketing can boost a company’s profits. One question business owners should address regarding their marketing is the ROI with their current programs. This information will lay out the data of whether or not the money spent on marketing and advertising is providing them maximum exposure, sales and profit for minimal costs? The result should not be just an increase in sales, but an increase in PROFIT. There is a big different between sales and profits.

One way to maximize costs is Fusion Marketing, a combination of offline and online methods that work synergistically to produce results in multi-dimensional markets.

If you are a business owner, regardless of the size or type of your business, you should be sending a monthly newsletter to past, current and future customers by way of either email or direct mail. One suggestion is to have a capture box on your website to capture the email address of the inquiring minds, ask permission to send them your monthly newsletter and then make sure that newsletter is not all sales. It should be informative yet entertaining with just a bit of sales or business information.

A great new service is set to launch next Monday offering a newsletter that is professional and top notch. When the site goes live, the information will be posted here.

This newsletter service will offer a “done for you” customized newsletter that you can send to your clients, customers and prospects.

Another tactic is to brand your business - how do your customers identify you or your business? If you were to mention your business name to 100 people and ask them to tell you the first thing that came to mind - would it be the same message you are trying to convey? Hummmmm, good question is it not. Think about that for a while. Is your brand in synergy with all other aspects of your marketing and marketplace? Do both your name and your business name have a good reputation? Is your brand in alignment with your product offering? If not, it is perhaps time to change and there is no time like the present? If you need help with providing clarity to your business, send an email to www.strategicmarketingprofits.com

Martha
www.strategicmarketingprofits.com
email: strategicmarkeingprofits@gmail.com