Podcasts
6 Steps to improving your internet marketing
by Michael Huggins, RGDHello and Welcome to the
FOR GRAPHIC DESIGNERS ONLY.com Live PodCast
My name is Michael Huggins…
… This is the podcast for information, tips and resources for the creative entrepreneur
This week I want to ask you the question…Is your internet marketing set up to help you get the highest results it can, in the most painless way possible?
Let’s start off with a quick definition of internet marketing. And that is simply: using the media of internet to market your design services. And there are 2 things you utilize when you use the internet to do this. And that is through email and with a website.
This week I want to mainly focus on your website.
Is your website working? And if it is – how well is it working? Or is it broken? Many designers have broken websites and they don’t even know it.
In order to know if your website is working you need to ask yourself the question: “what is it exactly that I want my website to do for me?” If your answer is “I want it to get me clients” Then let me ask the question again… “Is your website working or is it broken?”
Quite simply your website should be designed to get you clients. If you don’t know exactly how your website is doing that, and you don’t have a consistent number clients being coming from your website – then your maybe your website is broken.
If you cruse the internet to research other design firm’s sites you won’t find too many examples of websites that generate leads. In fact you’ll find a much more passive approach to their marketing. They display all their information and HOPE that when a potential client for their services visits they will somehow be motivated to call them back at a later date.
And this MIGHT happen. Who knows?
But it’s too haphazard and hit-and-miss for you as a small design entrepreneur. You need to be much more intentional with your internet marketing.
There is a formula I use for creating websites that get Clients – in other words websites that work. That is:
Traffic + Emails + Helpful = Clients
The reason you have any internet marketing at all is to help you sell your design services. So let’s look at some important things you’ll need to have in your internet marketing to get it working for you.
I’m going to share with you 6 things you need if you want a healthy internet marketing program…
The first thing you need to do is…
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1 Drive traffic to your website
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Many designers treat their website as the answer to all their marketing problems.
As if the moment they have their website up, people will automatically start coming to it.
They think prospects will do a search online, see their link displayed, click the link to their site, read about their services and then make a call to start doing business with them.
Of course if you’ve had your design business for even a little while, you know this just isn’t the case.
Reaching your market from the internet is just as challenging as it is in any other media (like advertising or direct mail). And that’s how you should think of the internet – as a media.
Many designers waste their time and effort because they don’t fully understand the web media. They don’t understand what motivates a prospect to go to their site. How they end up on their site. And what they want their prospects to do when they get to their site!
They may have planned out the way their site looks but they haven’t planned how it’s supposed to work.
Your website goal is to have people coming to your website on a continuous basis.
Of those people who come – some will be interested in your services.
Of those people – some will be ready to do business with you.
But this doesn’t just happen magically when you ‘open the doors’ of your website.
You need to DRIVE traffic to your site. Just like a cowboy would drive cattle to a destination. I’m not calling prospects cows or anything – just using a strong ‘word picture’ here so you get the idea.
This of course means you have to be proactive. You can’t wait for prospects to come to you. You need to go and find them and drive them to your site. And there are a couple of ways you can do this.
A) The first way is to get your results registering on the popular search engines like Google and Yahoo and others like them. So that when ‘keywords’ are plugged in by interested prospects your name pops up. To do this you need to create a search-engine friendly website. But this is no easy task.
One way you can do this is by optimizing your site for the search engines by using keywords. This tactic is part of something called SEO – or Search Engine Optimization. The idea behind SEO is to create a site that has content, tags, labeled headers and some behind-the-scenes programming that contain many of the key words that people use in their searches. When your site is discovered by the search engines as the most relevant to what the user is looking for – your site comes up in the top rankings.
Or so you hope.
There are companies out there who specialize in SEO. And you could hire one to help you. But it’s gonna cost you. And it’s not an exact science so there is a some trial and error and testing that’s required.
For you as a small business owner however, this might be a little cost prohibitive. So one simple tactic you can apply right now, is to make sure your site has been written using key words and phrases that are specifically aimed at your target market.
This will help increase your chances of getting higher search results by keeping it as relevant as possible to the search engines. You could also enlist the help of a programmer who can help you set up the tags and headers on your page – to contain those key words as well.
B) Another way to drive traffic to your site or by creating online ads.
This can be as simple as a banner ad placed on a popular website where your target market hangs out. You pay the website owner a fee to be there and the ad links to your website.
Or it can be of the Pay Per Click variety. Pay Per Click (or PPC) ads are those ads you see on the sides and top of search engines that appear when you get the search results for a particular key word.
The idea behind a PPC ad is that you create an ad and have the search engine to display it with relevant search results when people are searching for particular topics and key words. When your ad is displayed with the other search results and the user clicks your ad because it is displayed prominently at the top of the page. PPC means that you pay the Search Engine company a fee every time someone clicks on the link to your ad – whether they use your services or not when they get there.
There are a few cautions to using PPC ads however. The more popular the keyword the more you will pay for the ad. Some words can be a cheap as a few pennies. Other words can be as much as $7 – 10/keyword. This could drive your online marketing costs through the roof if you’re not careful.
Fortunately you can limit how much you want to spend. That means that they will stop running them once you hit your desired budget.
Now even though this can get expensive, this doesn’t mean it’s not a good tactic – it is. You just have to make darn sure you have a plan when they actually get to your site. So your efforts aren’t wasted and your investment is put to good use.
We’ll talk about what that plan should be in just a moment…
Not all web traffic generation has to be done online. There are other ways – just as effective (if not more so in some cases) to drive very targeted, highly potential prospects to your site. The way to do it is to use some traditional offline marketing tactics.
What are they?
They are simple tools like sales letters, postcards or print ads to drive people to your site. These are great tools because you can make them very specific and targeted to your audience. These techniques are often overlooked by a lot of design business owners (and most other business owners for that fact) and that’s one of the reasons they work so well.
Another reason these approaches are so effectively is because you can track them. Just like the online PPC advertising tracks how many people click on your ad link – you can track how many people come to your site with every sales letter you send out or every ad you run. And usually you’ll find you can do it at a huge cost savings (by comparison to PPC).
Either of these tactics work really well. The point is – when you have a website, you NEED to have traffic come to it or it’s useless.
The second thing you need for an effective internet marketing program is…
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2 Track the people who come to your site
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Most web hosting service-providers have some kind of a ‘stats’ interface that let you
know how many unique visitors come to your site each day, week or month. It’s important that you have an idea how many people come to your site because that holds the key to how successful it is.
This is the number that tells you how you are doing with the ‘attraction factor’ with your site. It lets you know if the other stuff we just talked about is working. Or if it needs improvement.
But your analytics also tell you other important things… like the behaviors and interests of the people who visit your site.
You get this information by tracking where people ‘go’ on your site. By what pages they surf once they get to your site. You can see by your stats what topics are most popular to them and what they do when they get to there. Some analytics can even tell you how long a visitor stays on your site and even how long they stay on each page.
This is all important information because it let’s you know what you’re doing right (or wrong) when it comes to your website design.
If you don’t have this type of tracking analytic available from your service provider you can also get this analytic tool from Google. Just search “Google Analytics” and you’ll find it. And the cool thing about it is that it’s free and easy to install and use.
The point here is – don’t create a website without tracking how many people visit, where they come from, and what they do when they get there.
And be sure to review the results on a regular basis so you can get a clear picture of what is happening.
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3 Separate your prospects from your visitors
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Traffic is good, but it’s not as important as identifying those visitors who are potential customers.
Many of the people who come to your site will not be a perfect fit for your services. And that’s OK. But you should have a way of identifying your best prospects from all your other visitors.
If you don’t – then you have no way of knowing if you are making a connection with those individuals who are the key to growing your business. These are the people who want to actually work with you versus the people who are just poking around on your site.
In order for you website to ‘work’ it has to produce good valuable leads for your business so you can convert these leads into paying clients.
So how do you do that?
How do you produce leads from qualified people on your site?
And how do you separate these people from the thousands of others who are ‘just looking’?
One great way is to offer valuable and relevant information that is targeted specifically to their needs.
One of the best ways to do that, is to offer them information like Free Reports, Newsletters, or Tip sheets from the main page of your website.
These marketing tools are great at attracting and identifying good qualified prospects for your business, because they help identify your ideal prospect.
It’s like being in a crowded room full of people and asking the question: “who needs design services?” and getting those who are interested to raise their hands to you in reply.
But the only way your information will motivate them is to be sure to make it relevant. Keep your reports valuable and focused on their common needs or pain points.
Creating these tools is a lot easier that you may think. And they really are effective in identifying your prospects from the tire-kickers.
If you want MORE information on how to create Free Reports you can find that information on the ForGraphicDesignersOnly.com website under the resource section.
Now let’s move on to the next thing you’ll need to do, which is….
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4 Build an online email list
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As I just said – attracting qualified prospects to your web site is crucial.
But attracting them is no good unless you can clearly identify them from all your other visitors and keep track of them in the future. So you need to have a process to collect the names and the contact information of true prospects.
To do that you’ll need to create a web form that collects this information, so that you are able to follow-up with them in the future.
Collecting contact information gives you the opportunity to start a dialogue with them. It allows you to ‘talk’ to them in the future via email. You want to start an online relationship with them. This will give you the ability to convert a prospect into a paying client.
And that’s not all your online connection will give you.
Your connection will also provide valuable feedback to you and your future marketing efforts. It will help you understand in more detail about their real problems, issues and pains and concerns. This means you can improve the effectiveness of your message so that it addresses the issues and desires that are most relevant to them.
Having the contact information of your prospect is important to develop and continue an online relationship. And it’s your online relationship that is your connection to an offline one, which will convert into a client relationship.
But make sure you go about getting this information in the right way…
Which leads directly to our next point…
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5 Always ask for permission
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Many designers think that because you have someone’s email address you can email them newsletters or other types of helpful information.
But you can’t.
It doesn’t matter if a friend gives you an associate’s email address, you find it online or if they pass their card to you at a trade show event. If they haven’t given you expressed permission to send them material – then you can’t do it.
Non-requested email is spam. And spam can leave a bad first impression in the mind of your prospects (not to mention get you into legal trouble in certain areas).
Don’t be tempted to do this kind of marketing. Spamming can ruin any chance of ever doing work with a prospect in the future. So never make the mistake of just adding someone to your list without their expressed permission.
On your website near your contact form be sure to explain that the person is giving you permission to send further emails to them in the future. This is called an “Opt-in”
When you are asking someone to Opt-in for future emails, make sure you reassure them that you will not distribute or sell their contact info to any other party. Or use it for any other purpose. Include a link to your privacy policy that outlines how you treat and handle email addresses.
Make them feel comfortable and secure when they sign-up for your information. Never let them wonder what will happen when they give you their information. So be careful to always get permission by getting them to “opt-in” to your email marketing.
Which leads us to our last and final item…
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6 Automate your follow up messages
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Now that you have your client’s email and contact information you need to protect it. To nurture it. And to help it grow into something meaningful – which is an offline relationship with them – as your new client.
So your email connection to your prospect is critical if you’re going to get new clients. But trying to manage all your new contacts can be quite a job. You could have hundreds of new leads to manage every month. Who do you contact? And when?
Lucky for you there are many services out there that can handle your email marketing for you. And what’s better is that they can make contacting your entire email list as easy as a click of a button.
The best thing about these services is that some of them allow full control over you’re your auto-responders. This means that you can create planned responses and offers in your email follow up at strategic times in the relationship. Without any further work or management from you. So your follow up system works without you.
You can also create email blasts so you can contact to your entire list in one easy step. Without having to email every new prospect individually when they join your list.
You can also group contacts into special lists so you can customize your messages. So if you service more than one target market group you can target your message to each specific group for more impact and a higher response rate from each group.
Well that’s it for another episode…
I hope you take some time this week to look at your website and do a quick diagnostic on it. To see if it’s working the way it should or not.
Do you have a healthy a stream of prospects for your business coming from your internet marketing prgram? If not, then maybe it’s time to get out the repair kit..
Have a great week…
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© 2008 Michael Huggins, forgraphicdesignersonly.com
For Graphic Designers Only is a service of Mindwalk Design Group Inc.
Mindwalk Design Group Inc., 74 Mill Street, Suite 106, Georgetown, Ontario L7G 2C9, CANADA
Dedicated to Graphic Designer SuccessMichael Huggins
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