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Brand Your Consulting Brilliance
Today's competitive marketplace for consulting services is no longer responsive to the marketing strategies that worked in the past. The services you provide should speak volumes about your consulting business. Think about what happens when you...
Business Exit Strategy
After a few years, you might find yourself with a successful
home business. After a few more, you might find yourself sick of
it and ready to retire, only to realise that you have no idea
what to do with the business and all the customers who...
Creating A Space of Your Own
One of the great privileges of direct selling profession is being able to work from home. But with the freedom of your career, also come the challenges. The sink is full of dishes, your son left his crayons /on your desk, and the laundry is piled...
Do You Know Where Your Brand Promise Is?
When I address business audiences, I often ask people to share
their companies' brand promises. To my amazement, many don't
have articulated promises at all. And those that do are often
given to promises so fuzzy as to seem indistinguishable...
Interview With Michael Murray: "Autoresponder Basics"
This interview is with Michael Murray, the author of a top selling ebook titled “Autoresponder Basics.” Michael is also involved with many excellent affiliate programs. Terry: Michael, this is a real pleasure to talk about your experience...
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Ten Basic Steps For Building A Web Site That Works
"1. Assemble a web site development plan that is integrated with
your overall marketing processes; the content should be
consistent with offline materials, the graphics/images don't
have to be identical with traditional media, but should be
consistent with your overall branding, style guide, usage of
colors etc.
2. Hire a web site design firm that understands your market
position and one that won't get ""geek crazy"" - meaning they
are so in love with their own design capabilities, your site
gets bogged down with graphics, plug ins, GIF garbage, etc. But,
conversely, check your ego at the door when you work with your
design firm - I've see so many good web site designs get ruined
by clients who can't or won't listen to what we tell them!
3. Pay attention to ""load times,"" how long it takes a web
site to load on a 56 KBPS modem (this is an industry average),
if its more than 12-18 seconds you may experience the ""click of
death"" - the site doesn't load quickly and the surfer is gone.
Of course, if your targeting broadband customers who are
reaching your site via ISDN or DSL then you can build a site
that incorporates multimedia-ready content that may include
streaming audio or video, or Shockwave or Flash capabilities -
go ahead and let those digital geeks get carried away with
cutting edge content!
4. Dare I say it, ""keep it simple"" - make your site easy to
move around in, build a menu structure that is consistent with
industry standards, local menus (for a page or section) on the
left and global menus (overall site navigation) at the top
and/or bottom of each page, keep as much information ""above the
fold"" (above the cutoff point at the bottom of a monitor),
don't make people use horizontal scroll bars unless absolutely
necessary.
5. Inculcate ""digital speed"" into your overall site design,
your client/customers should be able to get to their desired
area of your site within one or two mouse clicks; they will
quickly get frustrated if they have to click-through multiple
menus to find information they are seeking.
6. Develop content that is web-enabled, people don't read web
site content like they do offline media, keep your paragraphs
short no more than two to three sentences, build in white space
with your content, include links in your pages - don't try to
tell your whole marketing story on your site - get people to
call you (hello the telephone still works!), e-mail or fill out
a profile form (see below).
7. Make your site permission-based marketing ready - I love
Seth Godin's ""Permission Marketing"" book,
http://www.permission.com, and we recommend it to all of our
clients
Sazoo Boys Christening Outfits and Girls Bridesmaid Dresses Accessories Sazoo.co.uk
- he champions building a long term relationship with a
customer by asking their permission to continue to market to
them and incorporating value/information in all marcom
processes.
8. Ensure your site is optimized for Search Engines by
identifying 8-12 keywords that people will use to find your
site, then incorporate these keywords in your site content (to
drive relevancy with s/engine spiders/bots) and then manually
submit your site to the top ten search engines. We don't'
recommend most of the free or $19.99 specials available; yes,
all will get your registered with the s/engines, but getting
listed on page 75 of 350 pages (for example) won't really drive
qualified traffic to your site, you need page 1-3 listings on
the top ten engines to really drive qualified traffic.
9. Delve into your log server files to uncover ""digital
tracks"" made through your web site - your log files are raw
files that show how and from where (in most cases) people
accessed your web site, where they went on your web site, how
long they stayed, etc. Web Trends is the defacto industry
standard, http://www.webtrends.com/default.htm, but we use and
recommend a market-experienced firm in Europe, Fantomaster, Ltd.
to our clients http://www.fantomaster.com - they have a suite of
Search Engine products that can be downloaded for free or
purchased.
10. Think global in your overall site design - the greatest
Internet growth is occurring outside North America, so it is
essential to build a site that can be accessed easily by people
around the world. What issues do you need to look at? Load times
are very important (again), develop content that avoids
colloquialisms that may not be understood by others who may not
speak the same language, you may want to make your site content
available in diverse languages, there are a number of emerging
applications that will facilitate this process, ensure your
e-commerce capabilities can be utilized by all.
Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development and
marketing experience. He is the founder/CEO of a Northern
California based, privately held, profitable Interactive
Marketing Agency and Software Company, Intelective
Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com, and can be
reached via e-mail at Lee@intelective.com. "
About the author:
Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development and
marketing experience. He is the founder/CEO of a Northern
California based, privately held, profitable Interactive
Marketing Agency and Software Company, Intelective
Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com, and can be
reached via e-mail at Lee@intelective.com.
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