Google Adwords Optimisation 1-Page MindMap

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Google Adwords is one of the most effective ways to generate high quality traffic to product and service business websites, but it’s sometimes hard to keep track of all the features and functionality.  That’s why I’ve put together a MindMap of Google Adwords success strategies that fits neatly onto one page:

Download The Google Adwords 1-Page MindMap

This Google Adwords MindMap summarises the fundamental, must-have strategies behind the most successful Google Adwords accounts.  Yes, there are a few advanced strategies that wouldn’t fit onto one page, but in my experience of working with hundreds of Google Adwords accounts, 95% percent of advertisers have NOT covered the fundamentals.

• they have a few dozen keywords, not thousands
• they have 1 or 2 Adgroups per campaign, not 50+
• they don’t track properly
• their ad copy is flabby and ineffectual
• they waste a tonne of cash on overly-broad keywords that don’t produce RESULTS

(As a Google Adwords Qualified Company, Marketing Results manages high-performance campaigns for clients in competitive industries where advanced campaign management yields highly-profitable results. Here’s more about our Google Adwords Management services.)

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Easy Way To Build Links To Your Blog

One of the critical elements of search engine optimisation is creating a network of links to your website or blog. Sounds simple in theory, but it is not as easy as it seems to generate high-quality links on a scale large enough to have a positive effect on your search engine rankings.

One of the easiest ways to build links back to your blog is via commenting on “dofollow” blogs. It’s simple to do, but it’s surprising how many people $*&# it up.

What is “dofollow”, you ask?

To answer that question, you first have to know about “nofollow”. “Nofollow” an attribute of the <a> tag used to specify links in HTML. By placing the “nofollow” attribute on a link, a webmaster can BLOCK any “link juice” passing from their website to your website. In other words, the “nofollow” attribute makes a link useless from an SEO point of view.

When blogs started to become popular, spammers quickly came up with programs to post auto-generated comments containing spammy links (mostly for porn, pharma and gambling sites).

That’s when major blogging platforms such as WordPress instituted the “nofollow” attribute as the default setting for blog comments. The idea was to eliminate the incentive to post comment spam.

Didn’t quite work out that way though… spam comments are still rife. It’s necessary to fit out every blog with a prophylactic anti-comment-spam plugin such as Akismet (my instance has nuked around half a million spam comments already).

<h3>Enter “DoFollow”</h3>

So, instituting the “nofollow” plugin on WordPress has been a total failure. So much so that a plugin has been created called DoFollow that is designed to disable the NoFollow attribute on external links and make comment links “count” for search engine optimisation purposes.

Seeing as it’s pretty much mandatory to moderate blog comments, my view is that it’s OK for comment links to pass some SEO value.

<h3>The Marketing Results Blog Has The DoFollow Plugin Installed</h3>

This blog has the DoFollow plugin installed. In other words, if you leave a comment on this blog, you will gain a search engine benefit.

But that’s by the by — the important thing to note is that there are plenty of other blogs out there which use the DoFollow plugin as well. All you need to do is.

1. Locate DoFollow blogs (one resource for doing this is the website DoFollowBlogs.com)

2. Add to the discussion by posting regular comments on DoFollow blogs

3. Watch your search engine rankings increase

<h3>One strategy of many</h3>

Posting comments on DoFollow blogs is just one link-building strategy out of many. If you’re operating in a competitive niche, it won’t work in isolation. However, for most product and service websites, DoFollow comments are a valuable strategy that can produce tangible results.

The key to this strategy is consistent application. Don’t post one comment and forget about it. Post regularly to key blogs over a period of weeks and months and you’ll start to see the benefits.

Another vital strategy to keep in mind is that comments that offer value are likely to get approved by blogmasters. Many practitioners of the DoFollow strategy shoot themselves in the foot by posting self-promotional drivel that is simply deleted.

High-quality comments that contribute to the discussion will tend to garner more clickthroughs, in addition to potential search engine benefits.

One final point: you can outsource blog commenting to others, providing that the quality of posts is sufficient to ensure that comments get posted.

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Wheel Of Life DVD Launched

If you liked The Secret or What The Bleep, you’ll love the new DVD The Wheel Of Life, which recently premiered in Melbourne.

The Wheel Of Life examines the metaphor of life as a wheel made up of a number of different segments. In order to achieve lasting and positive change, you need to get the segments into balance to allow your “Wheel” to roll smoothly.

This documentary has been a labour of love for producer Rob Anthony, who first envisioned this documentary years ago as a practical self development tool.

The documentary features 17 experts in health, wellness and self-development including Don Tolman, Dave Rogers from XL Results Foundation and Rik Schnabel.

I’ve been involved in the marketing of the documentary online and have been one of the first to see the Final Cut. If self-development is your thing, I whole-heartedly recommend The Wheel Of Life - the DVD would make a great Christmas present as well!

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Lead Volume vs Opportunity Volume

For several years now I’ve been asking subscribers and clients to visualise their online sales process as a funnel with knowable metrics. You’re no doubt familiar with the analogy:

1000 visitors hit your website (”Visits”) –> 100 opt in to your Free Special Report (”Opt Ins”) –> 20 enquire (”Leads”) –> 5 become clients (”Sales”)

Whatever the exact number or specific conversion steps are in your business, you get the idea.

But I recently came across a very useful distinction on a Marketing Experiments webinar that dovetailed with a recent experience working with a client.

That is the distinction between Lead Volume and Opportunity Volume.

Lead Volume is the number of people filling out your enquiry form, but Opportunity Volume is the number of viable sales opportunities available to your sales team (or you, if you’re the only salesperson at your company).

Lead Volume is very often a measure of activity. Opportunity Volume is a measure of results and future expected revenues.

I recently dealt with a client whose only metric was Lead Volume: “Just get us more contact form submissions”.

“More contact form submissions is a brief that is relatively easy to fulfil. For starters, you can make the form easier to complete. Second, remove “strings” from the offer or add a guarantee.

When you do this, will the leads be more qualified? Will you create more viable Sales Opportunities? Not necessarily. In fact, you can very often clog up your sales pipeline with unqualified leads that do nothing more than take up your salespeople’s time and detract from closing genuine sales opportunities.

That’s why I’ve now included Opportunity Volume as one of the key lead generation metrics to track. It is a more reliable indicator of the success of your pre-sales marketing activities.

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7 Step Game Plan For Boosting Your Online Sales In A Slower Economy

Lately the media seem to be rubbing everyone’s faces in the “slower economy”.   I don’t like it - it gets people in the wrong frame of mind, thinking contractionary thoughts rather than expansionary ones.

So it seems there’s a recession on, but I’m refusing to participate.

It’s true that there are fewer discretionary dollars being spent, but all is not doom and gloom, especially in the online space.  On the macro-level, the indicators look strong:

A recent report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers Europe comments that while a contracting ecomomy normally reduces total media spend, investment in online marketing and media continues to increase rapidly:

“…overall online advertising growth is expected to slow down to about 20% according to the Advertising Association. While this is still a very strong growth rate, far stronger than other forms of offline advertising, this represents a slowdown compared with last year’s growth rate of 38%.”

So we can still expect 20% growth in online spend this year.

Another perspective: online was the third biggest media category in the UK in 2007 with a 16% share (behind Print Display and TV).  By 2009, it is expected to become the single largest advertising channel.

[While this is UK data, the general trends are equally applicable to the Australian market]

Here’s a 7-step program that I recommend for any business owner who wants to increase sales, even in a slower economy.  Outsized rewards will go to companies who implement these steps:

The 7 Step Online Marketing Game Plan

1. Know how much a client is worth to you after the initial transaction, and in the first 3, 6, 12 and 24 months of doing business (or whatever time periods make sense in your particular business) - this gives you your Allowable Cost of Acquisition.
2. Know how much a lead/sale is costing you, split by source. This means that all online goals need to be tracked (this can be done with Google Analytics for general goals and Google Adwords conversion tracking for Adwords-generated conversions).
3. Track everything, not just Adwords. Other types of online campaigns such as email newsletters can be tracked with Google’s URL Builder. This will tell you the exact volume of sales generated from a specific email blast, for example.
4. Make sure ALL ads and promotions are associated with a specific, trackable offer. You should not be running ANY promotions with a generic “call us” offer.  Many of our clients run print ads that invite prospects to download a Special Report or Info Kit by following a special, tracked, URL.  This allows them to do more of what’s working and less of what’s not working.
5. Cultivate and develop MORE THAN ONE successful lead generation approach. Many websites are highly dependent on, say, Adwords alone.  If Google changes their Terms Of Service or the way they serve ads (and they frequently do), this could literally put you out of business.  You need to test and run with at least 5 separate, independent prospecting methods that you can call on if required.Most of our clients have successful PPC accounts, SEO campaigns, referral systems and offline campaigns running simultaneously, automated via their website as the central “hub”.  If any one lead generation channel dries up, they still have a business.
6. Don’t drop new leads quickly - nurture them. You should aim to develop the following three communication sequences to make as much of incoming leads as possible: (a) - one for “soft leads” before they enquire (i.e. an info pack, or Special Report), backed up by a ongoing sequence of education-and-information emails.(b) - one between the initial enquiry and closing the sale - could be a book, a White Paper, or a Feasibility Analysis.(c) - one for un-converted leads who may convert in future. Especially where the value of a new client to your business is high, these communication sequences can deliver exceptional ROI.  You’ll also notice that almost nobody you’ve done business with in the past does this.  If you do it, you’ll be exceptional in the eyes of your prospects - always a good thing!
7. Resell to your existing client base by offering more value. Don’t forget about your current client base - how can you serve them better?  One of the most effective ways to develop a more stable cashflow and serve you clients better is to offer some kind of continuity-based service.For health supplement companies, this means shipping the product every month until the customer says “stop”.  For professional services, this might mean providing a retainer service on an ongoing basis for a set price.

Whatever you do, don’t succumb to the doom-and-gloom in the media.  Executing the 7 Step Game Plan can bulletproof your marketing engine so you can not only survive but thrive in 2009.

Summary for business owners:

• Overall media spend will decline in the short term while online spend will continue to increase rapidly.
• Within the online category, advertisers are moving away from non-accountable methods (e.g. display advertising such as banner advertising) and toward accountable methods (e.g. paid search such as Google Adwords).
• This means that more dollars will be spent online to attract fewer customers (although more customers are shifting their purchasing from offline to online as well).
• Many of the new entrants into the online space will be unsophisitcated players who don’t know what they’re doing (yet).
• Companies with tightly managed and monitored online campaigns can expect to do as well if not better than they have always done.

–

Marketing Results can of course help you ramp up the lead and sales generation capacity of your website with smart, accountable marketing so you can focus on managing and growing your business.  Contact us to enquire about availability on our Gold Client Program for SMEs.

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The Essence Of Lead Generation In One Question

In one of Perry Marshall’s recent newsletters, this gem leapt out at me:

What series of actions is your prospect going to be taken through so that by the time they’re ready to buy, they know you, like you and trust you more than anyone else they are considering?”

That is the essence of lead generation.

Most companies only start to sell when the prospect is ready to buy - by then it’s too late.  Ideally, you need to be there well before your prospect is ready to buy.

Most companies provide too little information and education between initial interest from the prospect and closing the sale. The result is that most prospects are not sufficiently educated about what you do and how you’re different to choose you.

Most companies don’t understand what other options their prospects might be considering, and have a pre-emptive strategy to “unsell” their competitors’ offerings before the prospect has even considered them.

Most companies are too impersonal in their communications.  There’s too many “we”s in their communications and not enough “you”s.

Don’t be like most companies – be like the 1 to 5% of successful companies who do what their competitors don’t and educate and inform prospects prior to, during and after the sale.

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How Much To Be Nice

Seth Godin asks in this post how much it costs to have someone be nice to you as a customer.

Affluent customers in particular will pay a premium for nice - especially when the customer service norm in your industry is not nice.

So how do you deliver nice?

It’s partly a matter of systems and training, but I think a big factor is hiring on personality as much as hiring on skills.   Some people can’t be trained to be nice.

CoCreatr makes the interesting comment on Seth’s post that in Japan, it doesn’t cost any extra for nice.  This brought back some memories of the 4 years I spent in Japan…

….like the convenience store clerk who chased me halfway down the street because I forgot my 1 yen change

…or the two post office employees who visited my company to profusely apologise for the fact that the packaging was ripped on a 200 yen ($2) product sample, complete with a pouch of cash to compensate me for the loss.

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How To Get Your Customers To Pay For Proposals and Quotes

Are you frustrated by tyre-kickers and free-advice seekers who waste your time, reduce the efficiency of your sales and marketing efforts and cut into your ability to service paying clients?

Many business owners and marketers are.  Especially if you’re in a service-based or professional service business, the time and money it takes to simply attract and convert a paying customer can significantly eat into your billable hours and therefore income.

This is probably the number one reason why many otherwise highly-skilled independent professionals and businesspeople find themselves eking out a relatively modest living (certainly well below their abilities and expectations) and wondering why they got into business in the first place.

Or maybe you’re doing pretty well, yet mindful of the fact that 10 or 20% of your productive time is being wasted on filtering out the tyre-kickers.

I was once there too.  Here’s the story of how I broke out of this particular cell of the entrepreneurial prison…

It all started back in 1928… (oops, wrong story. Reset.)

3 or 4 years ago I found that my ability to do productive work for clients (mainly developing high-ROI lead generation websites on a project basis) was being constrained by the volume of prospects who weren’t converting into paying clients.

Just 1 in 4 proposals were converting into a client engagement. Suppose that every proposal took an hour on the phone, plus 2 hours of writing to prepare - that meant that each new project was taking 12 hours of sales time to close.  Owch.

What’s more, many prospects would soak up my time for free, take our intellectual property in the form of the proposal, then either:

1. Do nothing
2. Take our ideas and (try to) implement them in-house
3. Take our ideas and give them to someone else to implement
4. Proceed with the proposed project

Only Outcome #4 was what I wanted (and only that outcome would typically produce the result the client was looking for too).

What to do?

I put a stop to all free proposals. Instead, I held a 15 minute chat on the phone to pre-qualify the client, then explained that I would prepare an Online Marketing Action Plan [note the syntax: "Proposal" is such a weak word] for them for a nominal fee of $200 + GST.   I also explained:

• an outline of the value that the Action Plan would contain
• that we would present some implementation options for them to consider
• that because they had purchased the Action Plan, they would be free to implement the plan in-house or take it to someone else to implement if they chose to do so
• that the cost of the Action Plan would be attributed to the cost of any future project

Then I asked them to go ahead.

Here’s what happened:

1. “Tyre kickers” went no further - great!
2. Serious prospects proceeded with the Action Plan, and I was happy to deliver it, putting extra effort into its preparation (although you should note that the Action Plan itself was essentially just a renamed version of the “Proposal” from before).
3. The conversion rate to full projects went from 1 in 4 (25%) to 2 in 3 (67%) - an increase of over 2 1/2 times.
4. I spent less time selling and got better sales results, while delivering more value to the prospects and clients whom I really wanted to help.

To successfully institute a fee-based proposal system, here are a few pointers:

1. Warm leads are important. The warmer the lead, the less resistance you will have to your initial fee.  One of the best ways to warm up leads is via a well-orchestrated information-and-education campaign (which can be completely automated via your website).
2. A well-defined USP that addresses the key problem your prospects are facing. You need to know the problem you’re solving for the client and the benefits you can render, and express that in a client-centric way.  (If you can’t recite you USP by heart, you probably don’t have one.)
3. You need to prepare a “mini-pitch” to sell the proposal. I purposely designed my Action Plan content and pricing, not as a revenue generator, but as a “filter” for non-clients.  Nevertheless, I did need a mini-pitch explain the value and sell the plan.
4. A delivery mechanism that is as systematised as possible. (Although the more customised you want to make the proposal, the more you can charge.  I now perform a more advanced Workshop and Action Plan that costs $3,000 + GST)
5. A seamless process to convert proposals into clients. You don’t want to wind up writing tonnes of proposals and lose site of your outcome.

“But my industry is different” / “All my competitors do free quotes so I have to as well” / “This won’t work in my business”

It’s true that certain industries may be a more “logical” fit for paid proposals or quotes, but that doesn’t mean you should dismiss paid proposals out-of-hand.

We are working with one client in a finance-related niche where EVERY OTHER COMPETITOR does everything “Free”, yet we are putting together a series of fee-based offers that are successful because they are based around additional value to the client.

Another option is to have multiple lead “streams” - a “free” stream and a “paid” stream.  Within a short time you will work out where the buyers are and how to attract and service them better.

Give paid proposals a try, or contact us and we can help you optimise your lead generation funnel by orders of magnitude.

But you should know, it’ll cost you

We work with a number of clients in finance and professional services industries.

Here’s the story of how a few years ago I increased my conversion rate of prospects to customers from 20% to 66%, and completely eliminated tyre-kickers and free-advice-seekers from my sales funnel and got PAID to do so…

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The Next “Secret”? Introducing “The Wheel Of Life”

One of the projects I am working on at the moment is the launch of The Wheel Of Life, a new documentary film featuring over a dozen experts in health, wellness and personal development as they explore the ancient symbol of “The Wheel Of Life” (and its predecessor, The Circle Of Life) and how this metaphor can be used to bring about positive change in our lives and in the world.

The documentary footage is under lock-and-key at the moment, so I haven’t see the entire movie myself, but it’s looking extremely promising.  If you liked The Secret or What The Bleep, you’ll be right into this.

Check out the trailer below:

The official launch of The Wheel Of Life is scheduled for Thursday November 13, with both physical DVD or Vividas Pay-Per-View options. The Director’s Cut is also available now to pre-purchase at a discount.

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Lead Generation Survey Of 324 Australian Small Business Owners Released

Earlier this year I conducted a survey focused on Australian Online Lead Generation practices, in collaboration with Dr Marc Dussault of Platinum Programs. The results were telling but not particularly surprising - most Australian SMEs don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to generating leads over the Internet.

And that’s understandable.  I don’t know how to perform brain surgery, build a house or prepare a company tax return because that’s not my core business.  But if I want to do any of those things, I find someone who can do it and outsource it to them.

The Survey:

324 Australian Small to Medium sized businesses from a diverse range of industries were dissected, scrutinised and thoroughly examined via an online survey of 28 questions. 81% of the study participants came from organisations with less than $1 million in annual revenue.

Key Findings:

The findings expose the fundamental reasons why a deadly ‘heart attack’ is almost assured for the majority of Australian small business websites and what needs to be done to stop the bloodshed.

• SMEs understand the importance of online marketing – 77% assess their website as being moderately to critically important for generating enquiries and influencing sales at the present time. A WHOPPING 98% predict that their online channel will be moderately to critically important for generating enquiries and influencing sales within two years’ time.
• 82% suffer from marketing blindness because they don’t track any KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for their website. 65% aren’t tracking ANY conversion rates such as newsletter opt-in rates or shopping cart checkout rates.
• 83% suffer from acute traffic depression and are either moderately dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the traffic volume their website receives.
• 86% admit they have no clue about their Search Engine Optimisation results and can only estimate their Return On Investment in ballpark figures
• A staggering 83% suffer from major cellular damage, running with online promotions that are actually eating their profits. They never realise the consequences of their actions because they don’t TEST to optimise results when they introduce new website features or content.
• 58% suffer form an embarrassing memory loss that’s costing them tens of thousands of dollars in lost profits, as they hardly ever or never send email broadcasts to their suspects, prospects or clients, thus missing out on a major revenue opportunity that could boost their constitution in a matter of days.
• 96% of respondents assess their website as being only minimally to moderately effective at achieving their revenue generation goals.

Dissection of the answers obtained from this extensive survey lead to the conclusion that one of the main problems lies in the lack of systems, strategies and processes that can create and sustain a profitable online lead or sales generation pipeline.

Most Australian SMEs are not doing the basics right (testing and tracking, keep-in-touch marketing, optin-and-followup), let alone the advanced strategies required to get outstanding results.

From a therapeutic standpoint, we recommend that Australian businesses begin taking a much keener interest in the health of their Internet marketing. Prevention is better than cure and as the saying goes, “An ounce of perspiration is worth a gallon of blood”.

A diet high in well-targeted online advertising with attention-grabbing headlines and clear calls to action that leverage proven Internet marketing strategies such as opt-in email marketing, information and education, testimonials, “proof” elements and sales process automation will ensure a long, healthy and prosperous life for any small business.

The full internet marketing survey diagnoses the source of the ailments and proposes several potential cures, providing that the unsuspecting victims are warned in time and take proactive action to protect themselves.

Download the Full Lead Generation Survey Report Here (PDF)

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