Aligned Marketing Blog

Web entrepreneurs consider this the point where the rubber meets the road but, too often, it’s where the runner meets the pothole. Here are four of the most common mistakes and what you can do to correct them:

Every page of your site should have a clear focal point, a place where the eye is naturally drawn to, and a clear call-to-action.

That call-to-action can be to actually buy something from you but it can also be a request to have your visitors register (call, click here, etc.) to receive more information, such as a free whitepaper. Different pages may have different calls-to-action.

The good news about this problem is it’s the easiest to fix. You may be able to do this yourself but contact me (800-707-9150 or shartkopf@aligned-marketing.com) if you need help.

(Yes, that was a call-to-action in my blog)

One of the first laws of selling is a confused mind says “No.”

If your website has lots of motion graphics, four or more fonts, poorly contrasted or unappealing colors, clutter, too many choices, unclear copy or 100 other things that distract and confuse the mind, you’re not going to sell anything.

The KISS (keep it simple stupid) approach works best. Again, a clear focal point, call-to-action and lots of whitespace are all that’s needed.

Video and customer testimonials are great for SEO and to help build credibility, see next bullet, but they are more icing than cake.

Your copy, call-to-action and value proposition, your business message, needs to be clear, concise, compelling and written in simple language. It also needs to be believable.

Talk to your visitors in terms of benefits to them, which are usually very different than the way your internal team talks about your product. Internal audiences tend to get wrapped up in features and function. Customers care about benefits. How will your product make them money, healthier, more attractive, save them time, etc.

Similarly, people are skeptical. They know advertising lies, marketing manipulates and even Tiger can’t be trusted anymore. No one can afford to waste money and no one wants to feel foolish.

Talk to your audience in simple believable words.

This one hurts a bit so brace yourself; they just don’t want what you’re selling.

A lot of webpreneurs are so passionate about their product or service they just can’t understand why people aren’t beating a path to their door. Well, I’m sorry, but if you’ve done everything else right, or mostly right, then the market has spoken and you lose.

As one prominent Democrat recently said when they were struggling to sell the Healthcare Bill to the American people, “The problem is the dog doesn’t like the dogfood.” You can fix the message, the packaging, but if the dog won’t eat the dogfood you’re not going to be selling any.

The fix here isn’t redesigning your website or more creative copy, the fix is transitioning your product from something you think people need into something people actually want.

Steve

800-707-9150

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Nichebot - http://www.nichebot.com

Shopping.com Searches – http://www2.shopping.com/top_searches

AOL Hot Searches - http://hot.aol.com/hot/hot

Google Groups - http://groups.google.com

Craig's List - http://www.craigslist.com

Delicious Popular - http://del.icio.us/popular

Digg - http://www.digg.com

Google Catalogs - http://catalogs.google.com

Google Suggest – http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

Technorati - http://www.technorati.com

If you want to focus exclusively on what’s selling visit the Clickbank Marketplace (http://marketplace.clickbank.net).

The web is constantly changing so it requires effort to stay current, to remain relevant.

As a marketing consultant it’s my business to stay abreast of web-trends. Feel free to call me if you’re having trouble finding the information you need.

Steve Hartkopf

800-707-9150

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Sales letters and direct marketing predate the first postage stamp, Shakespeare had children pass out flyers announcing his plays.

The fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 1989) signaled an end to the Cold War (see Reagan's speech at Brandenburg gate) but the changes for the “brick and mortar” world were only beginning because The Wall came down about the same time as the Internet, and online marketing, was ramping up.

In the early days of the Internet security and trust were huge issues and, in case you haven’t been paying attention, they still are. To combat that angst many marketers use recommendations, endorsements and testimonials, which for our purposes, are all the same. If you’re going to use testimonials in your sales copy there are a few things you should know.

1. Add names and website addresses (URL) to your photos.

Names and web addresses make your testimonials more believable. Text and names, I’m sorry to say, can be and are faked. Providing additional information such as a name and/or URL gives your  audience enough information to investigate and verify your claims  The verification opportunity increases the credibility of your testimonials.

Photos of those providing your testimonial are great because they carry a hidden message – our customers are so passionate about our products and services that they are willing to share personal information and be accountable for our results.

2. Audio or video.

Audio and video endorsements are even better than text and photo endorsements. Hearing the sound of someone’s voice and/or seeing them deliver a a testimonial, with all the visual cues that come with direct communication, is more personal and, therefore more believable, than words on a page and a static photo.

It’s also easier for your satisfied customers to communicate their wonderful experiences through the spoken word, something they use every day, than it is in writing, which usually takes more time.

3. Highlight your testimonials.

Using a Light Yellow highlight around your copy (or even a photo or video image) is an excellent way to draw attention to them and  make them stand out on the page. If yellow is too in-our-face for your tastes or conflicts with your color scheme, then a Light Blue or Gray highlight also works well. And don't go nuts with the yellow, you'll look like the schlockmeister.

4. If you have lots of testimonials, sprinkle them.

Having a bunch testimonials is fantastic. My recommendation is to sprinkle them around the page to avoid having a “testimonial section.” A testimonial section, where you list 4, 5, 6 or more testimonials, is a bad idea since most people will only read one or two. Testimonials are precious so you’ll want to extract as much value as you can from each one.

A good place to insert them is right below your sub headlines.

5. If you have only one or two testimonials insert them below the mid-point of your sales copy.

Inserting one or two testimonials below the mid-point of your sales copy gives you enough time to make your pitch and, then, have it reinforced by satisfied customers.

Some marketers argue that your testimonials should be inserted right after your first sub-headline, to encourage your audience to keep reading, but I disagree. If you’ve pulled someone into your website they, typically, will read a paragraph or two before they consider leaving. If your copy is well-written that’s enough time to make your strongest points and then use your testimonials for reinforcement.

6. Testimonials need to be results-oriented.

In short, your testimonials shouldn’t be “Yippee, Sam’s the best ever!” Testimonials need to be about the results produced by your product or service. Those results are even more believable if they are qualified (“excellent service”) and quantified (“the work was delivered as promised in 4-hours”).

What do you think? Are testimonials part of your sales arsenal?

Steve

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1. Grab your reader's attention. Begin with an interesting fact, important question, comment on a current event or something personal, such as congratulations for being named Person of the Year.
2. Then transition your reader into the purpose of your letter - introduce your company, request an appointment, or a free offer, for example. Be sure to connect your request with your grabber from (what will be) paragraph one. Your transition is key, it must be both smooth and brief, people are busy. See next bullet.
3. In today's hurry-up, get-to-the-point world, many people switch the first two bullets of their outline. they begin letters by coming right out and stating, "The purpose of this letter is to request a 30-minute appointment to..." and then write their grabber. I prefer a subtler approach but will use the direct approach if I know the reader well.
4. Insert numbers or testimonials that back up your claims next. A list of indented bullets works well for either. People like reading lists of tightly written facts - summaries.
5. Your fourth section/paragraph is your call-to-action. Tie your attention grabber or your reader's self-interest into the benefits of responding to your solicitation. I don't sell actual products so I often use mutual gain as my call-to-action: "I propose a 30-minute meeting to better understand your business objectives, review our capabilities and determine if we can help one another achieve our  goals..."
6. Your final outline point let's your reader know that your letter is one of a series of contacts, that there are more to come. Explain that you will be following up by voicemail, email or both. Basically, you're telling them "you're not going away, so let's have our conversation and see where it leads."

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To help solve the problem, Twitter recently launched Lists, which is a tool that allows you to group the people you follow into categories,. The benefit is you can reduce the number of people you truly want follow and avoid the noise created by those that, for whatever reason, are included in you officially Follow. You can now drill down into the conversations/news that matters to you. Here’s a summary of the benefits I see with Lists:

1. Saves You Time.
Someone else has already discovered the best people to Follow for your keyword. As you scan the lists you’ll notice that many of them include the same people. That’s ok,. That means the crowd has spoken and a consensus was reached.

2. Keep Control Over Your Followers.
You don’t have to actually Follow all the people on a list.  You can just follow a list and dive in occasionally to see what people on your list are tweeting about and then go back to your main feed to see what everyone you are Following are tweeting about. In the end, you actually gain more control. That’s huge, I Follow over 1,000 people and have over 1,000 Following me, there’s no way I can keep up all the Tweets.

3. Keep Your Lists Public or Private
You can create your own lists and set them up as either public or private. There will be times and topics where you want to create your own list. For example, I’m going to create a list of tweople in the Lake Wylie, (SC) area.

4. New Application is Awesome – Listorious
There’s a complimentary service that just came out called Listorious. Listorious aggregates the best lists from everyone who has created a list and, then, lets you use them as a resource. It’s very cool! It was created by Sawhorse Media in New York City and has over 6.5 million lists already. You simply type in a word such as “news,” for example, and the tool delivers you the best lists.

5. What else? Increase Followers
I use Listorious and Lists to search for people I want to Follow and, as you would expect, once I started Following all these great people they started Following me. In addition, a bunch of other people, some good and some not-so-good, started Following me back. Here's the data: In three days I went from about 875 Followers to 1,167 and the quality of those new Followers is much better than is typically found with other Twitter tools.

Some of my favorites Lists are:
Linkers: http://listorious.com/palafo/linkers
Thought Leaders: http://listorious.com/kitson/thought-leaders
New Media: http://listorious.com/palafo/newmedia
Great Content: http://listorious.com/Jason_Pollock/great-content
Blogging: http://listorious.com/bloggersblog/blogging
Marketing: http://listorious.com/dannysullivan/marketing

Steve

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