Coaching For Success
Business Coaching
About The Internet Business Coaching
Encouraging Call-To-Action In Your Business Website
Sep 2nd
These are examples of the most commonly used colours for 'Call to Action' buttons
Internet business marketing is an effective but time consuming technique for online business promotion. Constant monitoring and improvement is required in your online promotional campaigns in order to ensure maximisation of your efforts and naturally you want to have a good return on your efforts and investments.
This can sometimes be easier said than done, however it is possible to achieve if you are able to convince your target audience to take some positive action following your ad campaign in Google, landing page promotion, or web squeeze promotion tactics on your main site. Today’s post discusses the importance of a ‘Call-to-Action’ function in your website to help you get results from your internet traffic.
Call-to-Action on your website
A good internet business website should have a clear objective and strategy for attracting prospective customers. All of the content should definitively be written and promoted with the intent of bringing customers to an end goal on your website.
Consider this, if you have spend time or money (in most case both) to obtain traffic and if you are able to drive traffic to your website, then you must want those visitors to take some action which not only will benefit them but you also.
It is amazing how such a small point can become such a major problem to many internet business online, who simple forget that a website in itself does not bring sales, nor does all the traffic generation in the world. Instead it is that definitive, quietly understated, subliminal call to action message embedded on your site that turns a website into an internet business website that does real business sales.
The action does not have to be drastic or flashy, it can be simply subscribing to your website, signing up, purchase via a button or it can just be the wording of your webcopy, in any case these things need to be your irrestible voice to a potential client. Your call to action should woo your potential customers by appealling to their personality, pain/ problem.
It should not be sales patter or business speak necessarily as many people find that off putting, but if it can get them identifying with your product or services as well as feeling an overwhelming need to take some action then you know you have done a good job.
Call to actions should always have a proper function for both your own business and that of your end purchaser, it is therefore important that each individual page of your site have a clear call to action function set out from the beginning.
How to approach call to action in content development
You should always atempt to boost any advertising you do with supporting content call to actions, even if you do not use ads you should ensure your web copy for each page uses them. This is a key mistake many companies make and it cost them dearly in lost revuenue.
Your homepage should be optimised to a single set of call to actions, do not try to have call to actions for lots of different products or services as this will only serve to negatively impact your efforts. Once you have decided what these are you need to write your webcopy from the perspective of your typical customer.
Do not assume anything in the copy, do not do a sales pitch allow the copy to be a thread with a sharp concise opening to capture attention and then unfold. Each paragraph should make a call to action statement toward the end goal and the final paragraph should be where you make your invisible close – call to action.
The keywords which a user will look for must be incorporated throughout the content on the page. Basic rules for Search Engine Optimisation should be used. If you have not researched your keywords properly then try Google’s keyword tool to help you.
You should also structure the information given on the website by strategically using navigation links from your homepage to redirect visitors to the page which is relevant to them. This redirect is indirectly a call to action as it is making your visitor get involved with your site by compelling them to click the link to get the right information. A call to action really only works if the potential customer is interacting with your internet business site and each page should have an objective which prompts users for further action.
Search engine techniques for Call-to-Action
An ‘action’ can be generated right from when a potential customer clicks a url and follows your webpage from a search engine result. The ‘description tag’ which describes your page in search engine results can be used to encourage click-throughs by using popular keywords in the description.
You can also put your special offers and unique selling proposition (USP) in your site page description tag which can be used to prompt potential customers to go for instant subscription or purchases that you may have discounted for example. If you use WordPress for your site this can also be done by using the excerpt displayed on the category pages.
Promotional tools and call-to-action
If you are doing article marketing you can get targeted traffic visits for your website. You can use a compelling call to action that directly relates to the individual article you have posted. The other option is to link to an internal (specific) page on your website that the reader would be most interested in related to the article (use a backlink) once back at your site on the specific page a full blown call to action can ensue on that landing page.
Call-to-Action in ‘Newsletters’ or ‘Email’ refers to the response which you wring from your potential target audience. Their response can be in the form of feedback, an RSVP to any event or similar actions. The content in the message must explicitly mention what action you expect them to take i.e. ‘click here for your FREE report’.
As you can see from the above tips call to action’s are very important and should be an integral part of your internet business strategy. Online promotions follow a pull strategy by attracting customers to your products and inducing their desire to make a purchase. Desire is no good if it is not converted into action. A ‘Call-to-Action’ function is an explicit way of converting the desire of customers into final action and hence achieving the ultimate objective of generating sales for your internet business.
The Magic Of An Internet Business Coach
Sep 1st
Have you ever had a situation in which you felt yourself floundering and with no idea where to turn or what to do? Have you had problems at school and felt that if you could just get some help or advice you could overcome those seemingly insurmountable hurdles facing you? Have you been on a sports team that’s struggling and can’t seem to find a way to win no matter how hard they try?
If any of this sounds familiar, and your current struggles relate to trying to make your business successful online, then please read on.
The Magic Word
In most cases, the above problems can only be addressed and overcome through the magic of coaching. Let’s face it, nearly everything any of us does in our day-to-day lives we learned from a coach – initially our parents (who taught you your first words? how about right from wrong?, etc.), who taught us our initial life skills, but then the circle of influence is expanded to include teachers, tutors, professors, managers, etc.
It’s vital to get the coaching and training needed to succeed in any endeavour, but this applies especially to business. It’s a sad fact, but most businesses fail within the first 5 years of their existence. And, on the internet, the rate of attrition is even greater, so it’s even more important to get the help you need from a good internet business coach as soon as possible.
But, what qualifies an internet business coach as a “good” one?
Qualities Of A Good Internet Business Coach
There are many people and companies out there offering advice and assistance as so-called business coaches, but most of these are trying to foist their own agenda on you and are mainly interested in their bottom line, rather than yours. Don’t get me wrong – that’s not to say that there aren’t a lot of top notch internet coaches out there, but weeding out the good from the bad is a project in and of itself.
So, let’s look at the qualities that qualify somebody as a good internet business coach to help you reduce the amount of time you need to invest in finding one.
1. Customer Comes First
If you interview a coach and they only speak to you in technical terms, using internet marketing terminology (search engine optimisation, blogging, pay-per-click, video marketing, article marketing, etc.), and assuring you they’ll generate “x” number of leads for you, you should run the other way as fast as you can! Unless you’re very familiar with internet marketing and its terminology, all they’ll do is leave you confused, with more questions than you had initially and wondering if getting your business online is really such a good thing.
What a good business coach should do is not speak to you in processes but in results, detailing the value they can bring to you and your business in a value proposition that speaks to you in your language.
2. Results Not Processes
A good internet business coach should do a thorough analysis of your business and its current situation, both offline and, if applicable, online, interviewing you as to what you want from your business and where you’d like it to be. They should be able to come back to you with a set of recommendations and a clearly defined strategy that tells you exactly what you want and need to know, not what they want you to know.
What you need to know is the number of visitors you can expect to your site, how many of those will become leads, how many leads will become customers, the dollar value of a customer, and their value to your business over an extended period of time, along with their lifetime value, etc.
If you can see you’re going to get a positive return on your investment based on real, not imagined, statistics, then you’ll no doubt perceive that as a great value proposition and one that shows this coach has your bottom line in mind, and not theirs.
3. Readily Available
Your coach should also be your guide, your mentor and your partner with a vested interest in helping you achieve the kind of success you want and deserve. To that end, your coach should be readily available at all times to provide you with help and be able to offer solutions to your problems as you travel along your internet marketing journey together.
You should find out up front how accessible your potential coach will be so you’re not disappointed once your project gets underway. Any contract you enter into with a business coach should specify their availability for you and your business, and should be a condition of the viability of that contract.
In any endeavour, a great coach can make the difference between success and failure. Finding the right coach is vital, since your coach will be your partner and will have a vested interest in helping you succeed, because your success is their success. Armed with the above knowledge, you’ll be well on your way to selecting the perfect internet business coach for you and your business, so get your coach on your side and get ready to see your online business explode.
Show The World Who You Are With Video Marketing
Aug 30th
Video marketing is now one of the quickest and fastest ways to let potential clients and customers know who you are and what your business is about. It is also very cheap to produce and easy to upload to the web and in most cases has virtually an immediate impact on your websites traffic.
Did you know that up to 75% of Internet users prefer watching videos online to reading articles? In other words, all they need to know about you and your business can be summed up in a video presentation that gives your internet business all the jump-start it needs to keep them coming back for more. People talk about video marketing as an effective means to conveying your marketing personality and brand.
Videos work better more often than text because more people tend to respond better to visual representations. If you think about ads on your TV even though you may go and make a cup of tea through them the fact is 65 – 80% of people have full recall of an ad. The reason for this is simple – people’s attention spans are short, so are the ads. Generally speaking a TV ad is 30 secs – thats all the time any advertiser has to make an impression and get people to recall their product or service, this is all the time they have to turn a potential customer into a paying customer.
You as an internet business owner should be thinking the same, your video marketing campaigns should be , short, sharp and to the point if you want it to be remembered. if you cannot say it in a minute then you need to rethink your ad. On the internet a video can make the difference between being good and being great, being visible and being invisible.
Some internet business owners have beautiful text based sites which bring in customers no problem, others have not so good looking web sites that have video which bring in even more customers this is because the video made the difference. Search engines love videos and generally videos show higher in search engine results and online, visibility is everything.
Statistics Clearly Show A Rise in Internet Video Viewing - Image Courtesy of eMarketer.com
If a picture can tell a thousand words! Imagine how much more a video marketing your product or service can do for you. You can have spoken content in your video conveying your product or service, there can be inviting music in the background to give listeners a mood lift, you can showing your expertise in your field to selling your brand and most importantly you can use footage of your clients’ experience savouring your products or services. All this with just a one minute video clip!
A site that is text based relies on visitor’s attention being caught by visual images or by reading the text, which is no problem if you can get them to stop long enough. Any good internet marketer or internet consultant will tell you you have approximately three to five seconds to make an impact on your site opening or people will leave.
Now most business owners believe that putting a video online is difficult or has to be some work of art but this is really not the case and should not hinder any small business from using video, I mean it’s no big deal to grab your camcorder and film scenes of your business’ day to day natural life. This creates a wonderful effect of being right there, where all the action is taking place, just by viewing a presentation video.
How do you publish the video? – Simple! – There are many huge sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Livestream and Google Video where your infomercial can really stand out. You can use theme to your advantage by publishing your videos on multiple platforms which is a common strategy, as it increases your exposure seven-fold so you become highly visible and not only that!
People are attracted to video it is natural for most people to be pulled by things that stimulate the senses, in the case of video marketing it is sight , sound, and mental perception. Video marketing can keep your customers informed and ensures potential customers see you in a better light.
Only you can make your internet business a marketing success, you need to add video marketing to your arsenal and get your company more visible to grab those clients. Are You Ready? Get set… GO and try it out!
Professional Web Development – What Is It?
Aug 27th
You’ve decided to take the plunge and get your company or business on the internet, so now what? Well, “now what” is getting a web site designed and developed, preferably by a professional web development company. But, we’re not talking about just any old web site here; we’re talking about a web site that looks and feels professional and that is designed and built to achieve your short and long term marketing and business goals.
Laying The Foundation
Professional web development, when conducted and executed correctly, is a process, not a one-off event. To that end, the first thing that needs to be done is to determine the goals and objectives, both short-term and long-term, of your business, whether that be in the area of e-commerce, online lead generation, etc. Knowing and understanding your business goals combined with a professional approach are the key ingredients needed to help establish a strategy to ensure online success.
Once a strategy has been established, the rest of the pieces of the web development puzzle (systems, applications, marketing, content and technologies) can be put together to reach the previously established goals. Having no goals makes the whole process much less professional (how do you know where you’re going if you’ve got no target to aim for?), and makes such things as feasibility, ROI (return on investment) and Cost-benefit analysis pretty much pointless.
It’s essential to know the goals of any internet business endeavour in order to be able to map out a web development plan from start to finish, from the online marketing means and methods to the applications essential to the project’s success.
Web Development Cycle
The primary goal of any web development project, however, is to get traffic to the site, since, without visitors, nothing else really matters. You can have the greatest, snazziest web site imaginable, but, without traffic, it may as well be a blank screen. Therefore, a major component of any web development project must be a marketing methodology, which is, sadly, ignored in the launching of many online ventures, but should be tightly intertwined with web development to ensure the success of your online business.
Begin With The End In Mind
The one who ultimately determines the success, or otherwise, of your investment in professional web development and, more importantly, your online business success, is the end user, or customer. So, knowing who your customer is and what their needs are is vital, which necessitates extensive research and analysis, so that your web site is set up to anticipate your customer’s needs and, crucially, to speak the language they understand, making them feel comfortable and maintaining their interest.
Establishing and maintaining relationships with your customers is essential to your long-term online success, and this can only be achieved by reaching the highest visibility possible and providing your customers with the most powerful and user-friendly site available in your particular niche or industry. Having content on your site that keeps visitors coming back for more has always been and continues to be one of the basic essentials of web site success.
Applications Specific To Your Business Needs
That having been said, while content is still king on the internet, the function of a business web site has evolved into more than just an information delivery platform to include web based services specific to their customer base. A good internet business web site should, as a bare minimum, provide services commonly used in that particular industry. But, in order to stand out from the crowd, a truly superior web site should go one step further and offer new and innovative services to make the site the most useful in that field.
Which applications are applicable to your site will depend on the type of business involved and the needs of your customers. The applications needed can vary widely, but their functionality should be driven by your customers’ expectations and should integrate seamlessly with the overall web development strategy established previously.
Content Is Still King
A web site with many high quality pages of relevant content is still looked on very favourably by search engines, so constantly updating a web site with quality, relevant content is vital to maintaining visibility with the search engines. However, the source of such content has changed from the company to the end user, with most web sites now providing the capability for their customers to not only add to, but, in many cases, dictate the direction of new content being added to a web site through the use of a content management system (CMS).
Expandability And Flexibility
As mentioned earlier, professional web development is an on-going process and not a static event, so any company providing such services should not only actively seek the input and contributions of the major stakeholders in the project, but allow enough flexibility in the web development plans and strategy to ensure that the system is expandable to permit ease of addition to and modification of the web site not only in the near term but in the long term.
Business needs and requirements are a constantly moving target, so any web presence established should be flexible enough to be altered, revised or modified as the needs of the business and customer change, whether this is performed by the web development, or in-house by members of staff of the business enterprise itself, an option which should be made available to your business.
Professional web development is an essential part of any serious online business endeavour, and, as such, should be regarded as a major investment in both time and money. It’s an ever-evolving, on-going process that, if done correctly, can mean the difference between success and failure for your online enterprise, so making the right decisions in this area is vital to your future success. Hopefully, armed with the information presented here, you’ll be in a position to select the right company to take your business to the levels of success you desire.
Good luck and Happy Web Developing!
Copywriting For Internet Business Promotion
Aug 26th
Good Copywriting Skills are Essential to Your Internet Marketing Efforts
Internet business marketing is one of the most popular promotional tool for businesses online. Almost every business, be it a small company or a large organisation, has a website through which it attempts to send across its message to millions of online prospective customers.
The message content is your business’ way of spread good PR, authority in your Niche and value to customers, it is therefore very crucial to write good promotional content for your Internet business website to be successful. The art of writing content to promote a business is known as ‘Copywriting’. This post looks at some techniques to help you to write good copy to incorporated in your website.
The art of copywriting
Writing good Internet marketing copy for your website requires a lot of effort. It is a learning process which develops over time, unless you were born gifted (you lucky few). Writing if done frequently can be greatly increase your fluency and style especially if you write on lots of diversified topics.
Before you write any piece of promotional content, always think from the perspective of your intended audience. The content must be simple enough for your audience to understand and also must be a value addition to their knowledge.
When you think about your written content from a technical perspective, the content should follow keyword enrichment techniques of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). You should not pitch to your customers; instead you should try to make the tone informational. Your customers must feel empowered by the information you provide to them.
Presenting the content
To ensure that your content’s message is conveyed to your audience in the manner you intended, you have to present the content in an effective manner. You can use word formatting to generate different effects. When you want to emphasize certain text in your copy, you can use the formatting codes for italics, bolding and underlining to give the text a lift effect.
You can also use colour formatting for differentiating some portion of the content from the rest. The most important part is this process is the tone of the content do not try to push your product or services on your customers but to ensure the message gets across you can have a simple link from a keyword to that product or service. This way the text is natural, non promotional and informative whilst still linking to your product or service through a keyword naturally embedded in your copy, which is great for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as well.
Linguistic rules
Good Copywriting Communicates A Message Clearly
Basic grammar rules should be followed however do not be afraid to break a few rules as long as your copy still makes sense. Things to get right – well you should always spell properly. Make sure you always get the facts for your article/ post correct, it will not hurt you to educate yourself a little bit on any subject whether you think you know it or not. This addition education will shine through when you write your articles/posts it will also help reinforce personal knowledge as well as help you convey more authority throughout the article.
Please do not try ‘wing it’ you may end up looking like a complete amateur and prospective customers will not come back to your Internet business website once they see this, so do not make this mistake – people do notice.
Finding a good copywriter
Following the tips give above can dramatically improve your writing style however, it is a gradual process and it takes time, which many busy business owners can simply not afford. So, outsourcing your copywriting tasks is sometimes a good option.
Copywriters can be found through various Internet marketing service providers or from freelancers. A good copywriter is an expert in writing content for many different business areas. You should choose the serviceprovider or individual who is the most suitable to your business needs.
It is important to interact with your copywriter so that they can write as per your objectives. Most importantly when hiring one ensure you give them a test first, ask them to do a sample piece of writing for you on one of your topics with a given keyword.
When the sample comes back if it does not speak to you i.e. reach you by getting a reaction, then this copywriter will not reach your clients either so move on a test another. Other good things about an unpaid sample but written specifically for you are:
a, Eliminates the charltons who have a piece there to give you which they did not write.
b, Allows you to check the written content, process, thinking, mindset, spelling and grammar.
c, Gives you the opportunity to see if they are prompt and enthusiastic about your work – this is very valuable as if they do not want to do your work it will be lacklustre, you will have to keeping chasing them for copy and worst of all it will always be late.
All of your Internet business marketing efforts rest on the strength of your sales copy. Your words can help bring you success or dismal failure so it is imperative to use the correct words in the right manner in your content.
It is your decision entirely whether to write your own Internet business copy or outsource your copywriting to an Internet marketing service or to a freelancer. In either case the tips in this post hold true which ever you decide.
