The main goal of your website is LEAD GENERATION
Unfortunately most people believe the main goal is online sales, but that would be considered the ultimate goal. In order to get sales you have to generate leads first. Once you follow up with those individuals, if you do everything right it can produce a sale.

One thing to understand is that if you think about your website as a lead generation portal, then that’s what you’re going to have in front of you. However, if you think of it like a company brochure, then the dullness and approach will be the same. As Earl Nightingale said ‘we become what we think about’ and so it is with our websites.

The Concept of Lead Generation
In order to create a lead one side (your website) has to make an offer, and the other (your potential prospect) has to be interested in it. If you have this scenario then you have yourself a “hot lead” as some people call them. These are definitely the ones you want to follow up with whenever they come across your path.

The Exact Nature of an Online Lead
Let’s be perfectly clear. You absolutely must get visitors to your website to give you their email address. This has to be obtained ethically with the visitor’s permission. Think about it. If you don’t at least get their email address how will you follow up? You can and sometimes must also get a street address, phone number etc. But for now, let’s assume you’re trying to get an email address.

Providing an Offer
In order to get someone to actually provide an email address, you usually need to offer them something. It has to be something they need that will entice them to join your subscriber’s list. It has to be of VALUE to the reader, which in turn their email address will be valuable to you.

So you see; there isn’t much point in just asking people to subscribe to your newsletter. I’m not saying they won’t. I have customers that do just that and get subscribers. But most people are already overloaded with information and their inboxes are bulging, so they probably won’t sign-up unless the information is valuable or specific.

Get the Offer In Front of the Visitor
There is little point in hoping that a visitor will stumble across your website, search for and find your newsletter sign-up link and then subscribe happily to your newsletter. It just isn’t going to happen! Here’s the kicker. The MAJORITY of websites DO EXACTLY THAT! Have you heard the term landing pages? Well, YOU GENERATE YOUR LEADS ON YOUR LANDING PAGES! That’s right. Give your visitor the option to subscribe to a list that is relevant to the content of your landing page, with an offer that is also relevant and valuable.

Lead Generation IS List Building
This article is about lead generation marketing. There are a lot of online marketers that call this effort List Building. It is that, but I prefer lead generation as it makes me think more specifically about whom I’m trying to interest with my offer and how I’m going to follow up with them. You may have heard the saying ‘The Money Is in the List’? Well, the list is the end result of your lead generation efforts. And yes, the money is in the list, but you have to know what to do with the list and how to do it.

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Personalization of your sales message is very important and most people don’t do it. You personalize a message as simply as adding the persons first name into the copy you are writing, so it speaks directly to them.

It’s really simple to do if you are using an autoresponder beacause you can add the name field tag of the autoresponder to the message. Very few people actually take the time to do this though. You really should, because personalizing your message is proven to increase response by 10% or more…

Now the spamming bastards of the world are trying it too! I’ve recently had some unsolicited email form these scumbags with very tardy personalization attempts. But at least they’re trying! Here’s a couple examples for your viewing pleasure…

This one is even made to look like an html newsletter, very sophisticated! Of course, having my actual email address name embedded looks really stupid, but it’s an attempt at personailzation and if my email was just Steve@ then it would work!

This is another, less sophisticated example;

You’ll probably be relieved to know that this article is not all about the technical structure of your website. I could go on about that for days on end, but fortunately, structure for you is non-technical and pretty easy to understand. So here goes…

Getting Rid Of The Brochure Mentality
Most small business owners and entrepreneurs build a website without understanding the fundamental reasons for doing so. As such, they create what I call a ‘brochure’ website. You may have done this already. 

Well don’t be upset, it’s a pretty natural thing to do. For some reason we decide to follow the lead of the majority, thinking if everybody is doing it, it must be the right thing to do… WRONG!

So, going against  all conventional wisdom, why do we put up a website? What is the best way to use it?

(more…)

Twitter is exploding at the moment and everyone is climbing on the bandwagon, blogging about its benefits etc, and you could be forgiven for thinking that this was the new easy way to online success.

In the real world, clients want to talk about search engines, search engine optimization or search engine marketing (Google Adwords / Pay-Per-Click).

Why? The current economic downturn is having an impact on businesses and with the majority of people now using Google (mainly) to find information on an all subjects across the board, many organizations are re-evaluating their online marketing and website strategy. It’s an area that clients in every market are asking for advice on.

Many are now concerned by their visibility to prospective customers. Businesses that previously saw a website as an online brochure are waking up to the fact that online they’re completely invisible to those searching online for the products and services that they offer. Not a good place to be at the best of times, but a business killer in a recession. (more…)

Well, they probably don’t get any slower than this do they?

My good friend and business associate Paul Da Costa and I have just started a joint venture with Rev. Keith Lyndon, Certified Exchange Consultant and the man behind the Academy of Creative Real Estate.

His property exchange training manual, 1031 ways to make money in slow real estate markets is now available online for a bargain price!

You can find it here;
1031 ways to make money in slow real estate markets

On Friday 02/06/2009 siteBOSS, TRS Technology’s Internet Marketing Website system, was tested by Microsoft and successfully passed!

siteBOSS PASSES Microsoft Platform Test For Hosted Solutions

That’s quite a mouthful, so what does it mean?

Well, it means a couple things;

1. siteBOSS is built to recognized development standards. This means that the system architecture is correct for a hosted solution, as determined by Microsoft. If you want to find out exactly what that means look at the test guidelines. Go on, I dare you…
2. It means that TRS Technology Group Inc is now a Microsoft Certified Partner.

Of course the system architecture is correct! I’ve been doing this for a long time and with a certain amount of flair. Let me tell you though, it aint easy! Many people think that development is now a fairly simple task, requiring low level skills and the ability to point a mouse and click. Not so my friends. I don’t think it’s gotten any easier, just different.

I also get to brandish a new partner logo, which I’m ok with. I’ve been a Microsoft Certified Professional for years now, so a new designation is cool.

Here is mine and Microsofts, yep, I’m a Microsoft shop and I think Bill Gates is a genius and have nothing but total respect for the man.

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I’ve been using YouTube for some time now and have had no problems at all when posting videos, uploading etc. The only real restriction is the 10 minute time limit for video length, which isn’t very long when you’re doing business related training etc (plenty long enough when watching Tiffany dance in her bedroom :))

The only possible downsides with YouTube in my humble opinion are;

1. Length restricted to 10 minutes; you have to chop up your videos into shorter segments
2. Private videos; if you want to have private videos they can be viewable by up to 25 people and these people need to be added to your contact list. This is a pain if you want video content to be for private members or list members. I suppose YouTube is really for public consumption though…

Because of these restrictions I started looking at Google video. I was very pleased to see a NEW feature which allows you to upload your video as UNLISTED, so your video will not be included in the search results. This is a handy feature, as you could post a private video and not have it found by the general public. Pretty neat, or so I thought…

I downloaded the Google Video Uploader utility, which lets you upload multiple files with bigger than 100MB. If your video file size is less than 100MB you can use the web based form to upload.

I uploaded one video using the web form and one using the uploader. That was 2 days ago. Since then, I haven’t been able to login using the Google Video Uploader and if I try using the web form I get an error.

It seems that this has been an ongoing problem for a while, you can follow the link at the end of this post to see a recent Google groups discussion about the problem.

I wonder if Google video is still viable as an option? As Google own YouTube, for which they paid around $1.6 billion! Do you think they care much about Google video? If YouTube had these problems over an extended period of time it would be in serious trouble, no doubt…

Here’s the post;
http://groups.google.com/group/google-video-general/browse_thread/thread/3fd7d33a2ab1bd13/ad9c33706b2f1a74

I’ve been looking at a variety of options for allowing a simple email notification from Wordpress when a post is made. Although we are still heavily entrenched in email marketing and it doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon, email marketing is still a big pain in the butt! It’s a pain to send email and a pain to recieve email, so I’m opting for a lightweight email notification system and hoping that RSS will be a big help in getting my messages out to my clients and subscribers.

The first thing I had to do was add SMTP email capability to Wordpress. It seems that the standard email function is a slack old send function expecting an open relay (tsk tsk). So I had to put in the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) plugin to enable me to send via SMTP with a username and password.

I used WP-Mail-SMTP. It was simple to install, i.e. point and click and simple to configure. There is even a test button so you can check it works on the config form. Nice. Thank you!

Then, after looking at a couple different post notification plugins I ended up selecting http://subscribe2.wordpress.com/. This is a bigger plugin, with a few config pages. Install was a snap. I still have to configure the messages, under settings>subscribe2 but the good news is you can easily create any message you want for your subscibers, optins and reminders.

You simple add a new page (easy in Worpress 2.5) to put the subscribe / unsubscribe form on and away you go.

I also noticed that Feedburner (now owned by Google) were offering email updates as a service, plus a ton of tracking options in the feedburner PRO version, which I believe is free. It would probably be the easiest option to go for if you didn’t have your own web design, development and hosting company!
http://www.feedburner.com

I found this script in the root of my Wordpress blog the other day. It’s a script that generates links to a web server in Germany. The links point to advertizing pages etc. It’s a nasty pain in the ass and you should delete it and block the server ip etc. I have no idea how it got there yet, but I’ve been trying a lot of different plugins lately so who knows…

Details:
Filename:ph.php
Location: blog root
Server: http://km20725.keymachine.de
IP: 62.141.48.94

If I find anything more out about this I’ll post it here. You can see the full details of the domain
here http://whois.domaintools.com/keymachine.de

I just recieved a spoof email from some douchebag in Canada. It’s a very sophisticated request for me to login to my Google adwords account. The email starts with the subject line;

Your AdWords Google Account is stoped.

Thats the first indication, a spelling mistake in the subject. Those PhDs at G are smarter than that. The email then says;

Dear Advertiser,
———————————-
We were unable to process your payment.
Your ads will be suspended soon unless we can process your payment.
To prevent your ads from being suspended, please update your payment information.
————————
Please sign in
to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login,
and update your payment information.
————————————————-
We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.
Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords.
———————————–
The Google AdWords Team

The interesting thing is the email address is actually on the Google domain, which is another more sophisticated technique, so I followed the link, which is included above but may not be working for very long. Below is a screen capture of the landing page;

It’s pretty darn sophisticated isn’t it. I wonder how many people have gone there and logged in, thus giving the perp their adwords account login. Pretty serious stuff eh? I always forward the email to spoof@google.com, and I usually get an email back from them within a few days…

 

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Well I know I keep banging on about Google but you’ve got to hand it them, they keep on rolling on and pushing more and more advertising and marketing services.

Recently launched is Google TV Ads, which allows you to place televison network ads from the comfort of your office chair no less!

Now you have to realise that if your going to put an ad on a TV network it should be pretty good quality (I don’t mean hd!!), I mean a good script and well shot and produced etc. Come to think of it, going by some of the low budget local ads I’ve seen on the local tv channels, maybe it doesn’t matter?

It’s interesting how the video space has opened up, what with live tv broadcasting on USTREAM etc and now the ability to run tv ads from Googles interface. Plus, with G you can apparently track usage and measure results…

Here’s a nifty little tutorial from Google for your viewing pleasure;

Audio campaigns and print media campaigns are also available. You can check them out here http://www.google.com/adwords/tvads/index.html and on their blog here http://google-tmads.blogspot.com/

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I got an email from Marlon Sanders the other day. I went to his sales page and he was broadcasting live on the internet using USTREAM.tv. He was so excited he could hardly contain himself.

I didn’t buy his trainign program, but I did go create an account on ustream.tv to see how easy it was to setup and what you could do with it. I have to say, I’m blown away! Desktop video, dvd camcorders and all of the technology to create an uploadable video have been with us for a while now and are pretty stable. But to be able to stream live on the internet at the click of a button, literally. That’s bloody awesome!

Check out my quick tutorial, then go get your account and have some fun. Try not to get arrested though!

Just created another screen video using Camtasia 5. This is the latest version and its really cool. You can put in a picture in picture (I know you don’t want to see my ugly mug!), which might be useful in some situations. However, the filesize increases dramatically with PIP.

See what you think…

I’ve just been reading an interesting article in Forbes magazine about YouTube. Apparently advertising rates for display ads on pages with user generated content has collapsed with rates on FaceBook, MySpace and YouTube having fallen 45% since Febuary this year… Forbes state the cost is now 18cents per 1000 page views… hmmm much cheaper than Google! But whats the problem here?

Well, it may have something to do with the fact that the conversion rates for those 1000 page views are extremely low. They can’t be very well targetted at all, so you just stick your ad up there and hope for the best. Just like a lot of people to with magazine ads or the Yellow book…

Apparently YouTube has done a lot of experimenting with ad formats and found some (Forbes says surprising) results.

Get this: Pre-roll video ads prior to the main video cause the viwer to click away 70% of the time. Surprising? I don’t think so. Those pre-roll, pre-view ads are abnoxious. Theres an example of advertisers thinking ‘we’ve got you by the short hairs so you just be a good girl and sit and watch our advertising dross for 20 seconds before we give you what you’re really looking for’… 70% say ‘F*&% you!’ and click away… go figure…

Short banners that pop-up from the bottom of the video window are better, with people clicking those ads 8 times as often as standard display ads next to the video… means you gotta get your ad integrated with the content, bet thats pricey :). These pop-up or roll-over ads are more effective if they appear 15 seconds into the video. So what that tells me is 15 seconds is all you got before the viewers attantion span has waned and they are looking to move on, ‘oh look, a banner has appeared, lets click on it aimlessley…’ yehaaw, the miracle of the internet as an advertising media.

When the roll-over is run in tandem with a display ad next to the video the chance of someone clicking can be 46 times as good, whew.

I’ve just finished reading the latest reviews and such about the new (Jan this year) Kindle eBook reader from Amazon. I buy nearly all my books from Amazon and have quite an extensive library now, shelves and shelves of hardback, paperback and manuals etc. In fact, I’ve been running out of room for all of them for a while now.

So, after reading the reviews I think I’m going to get one of these puppies. I just checked and a couple of books that I was going to buy are available for it.

Plus, you can get a FREE converter / creator that will allow you to put your personal docs and files on there too, sounds fair enough.

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I hadn’t bothered to make a MySpace page yet but because I’m starting to grow my business I thought I might put up a page and make some new contacts, both professionally and personally.

Well, no surprise how much spam you get from good looking girls (as a man) that direct you to dating sites LOL. But it does seem to be OK. I haven’t had that much and I have connected with some interesting people too! So thats cool. I’m going to try their classifieds section soon to see how that works…

http://www.myspace.com/stevetickner