Coaching For Success
Posts tagged Success Online
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.
How To Change Your Facebook Page Background?
Aug 20th
Today we are doing a quick stepwise guide on how to change your Facebook background. Now how to do this may seem obvious but if you want something more than the standard options or you have had an internet conultant or web solution developer do you a brand identity you may wish to use thison your Facebook pages instead.
The easiest way to change your Facebook background and add a theme to it is to install a third party plug-in for your browser. There are a large number of third party plug-ins available online for free.
Step 1: Find the plug-in
Go to the third party website, which in our example is ‘http://www.pagerage.com’. This particular plug-in works only on ‘Firefox’ and ‘Internet Explorer’. If you are using any other browser, then you must search for the correct plug-in corresponding to that browser. The homepage of pagerage.com is shown below and as you can see there are a number of themes being displayed. After choosing one you will need to click on ‘Install Plug-in’ to start the installation.
Step 2: Install the plug-in
The next page displayed has a button on it ‘Start Install’ click this and then your installation process will start.
After a time the following pop-up appears, click ‘Save File’ to download the application file on your local system.
After the download is finished, you need to double click on the application file (with .exe extension) to start the actual installation procedure.
The following pop-ups will appear, follow the prompted instructions step-by step and continue the installation process till it is finished as shown in the images below (note the images only show two screens of this process).
Step 3: Apply the theme
After the installation is complete, you will need to go back to ‘http://www.pagerage.com/’ and select your layout from any of the themes available, as shown below.
You can preview your layout and if you like it you can apply it by clicking on the ‘Select This Layout’ button as shown below.
The following pop-up confirms that your layout change is complete. After that you can login to your Facebook account to see the changes.
Hope you all find this stepwise post useful, remember if you need any help just post a comment and we will do our best.
The Internet Marketing Brand Process
Aug 19th
Brand Identities We All Know And Can Identify With A Product Or Service
A ‘brand name’ plays a vital role in the success of any business. It is the brand image that sets one business distinctly apart from other businesses. A brand gives recognition to the business. Brand visibility is thus an important part of business promotion. Brand visibility is much more important in the case of Internet business marketing. This article will focus on the need for online brand management for Internet business.
Objectives of good brand identity
The ultimate objective of a business is to establish a powerful image in the minds of customers. The objectives of brand building are one and the same. A brand is the image that comes into the mind of a customer when tyhe think about the business problem that you help to solve. This brand sets you apart from other businesses operating in same domain. A good brand on the internet can help your internet business credibility among the business community.
A good brand should connects with the emotions of the customers. A brand is the one thing that can help to create customer loyalty and generate a desire for your product in the minds of potential customers, just think Coca Cola – what do you see? how is your thirst level 
- get it, this is what you need your brand to do.
Process of online brand building
The whole process of building an online brand revolves around the requirements of your customers. So you should start by understanding your markets and identifying your ‘target audience’. This requires a bit of market research. You must specifically identify the demography and psychographic behaviour of your end customers. It is important to understand that you are providing solutions to the problems they are facing, so you must first understand their problem.
The Branding Process
Once you have a set target audience identified you must gather data and information about their requirements and preferences. If you know what the customers are looking for, then you can target promotional strategies accordingly to motivate them to purchase your services. The brand should also be communicated in such a way that it generates interest among customers and also potential customers.
After all strategies are in place, you must create the ‘brand logo’ and ‘tagline’ to communicate your message. You can showcase all your creativity here. A catchy tagline is needed to get the attention of the customers, think Nike ‘Just do it’.
Once a brand is in place, then you can go about promoting it through various online marketing techniques and advertisements.
How business benefits from a brand
A brand is an intangible asset that a business acquires over a period of time. A good brand shows the strength of a business in its domain over a period of time. So, a brand plays a very important role when new customers are in the process of forming an opinion about your business. It is the essence of brand that gets your potential customers to see you as the authoritative solution provider to their problem.
Online brand management is dependent upon the way you communicate your idea about your business. The key is that your brand should stand out as a unique identity. Apart from the customer aspects, a strong brand identity is an indication of authenticity, embracing the true company culture. Hence, a brand embraces everything you do as a business and everything you intend to do, so make sure you communicate your brand online effectively.
Facebook For Your Internet Business
Aug 12th
Today is a small help guide for those who want to use Facebook but have not yet started. Facebook is the fastest growing social networking site on internet. It has over 500 million active users. These users are from multiple geographies; have different backgrounds; and have different needs. This provides business operating worldwide, a chance to reach out to them.
Many businesses large and small are actively reaching and engaging customers through Facebook and the Facebook Platform. It is indeed useful for Internet Business Marketing. This post looks at the features within facebook which can add value to your internet business promotion.
Facebook Page For Your Internet Business
Facebook Information Tab
To start with you will need a facebook page to give your internet business an identity among millions of online business pages. A typical facebook page has features that allow you to showcase your business to the online communities. You should add all your content to your profile in the form of ‘status updates’, ‘video links’, ‘images’, ‘events’ and many more. This facebook page is the hub of all the activities you do to promote your business.
You can add fans on this page that will be able to see your updates as and when you post them. Whenever a visitor ‘comments’ on or ‘likes’ your activity, it becomes visible to the fans of that visitor. And hence a viral effect is created and the visibility of your page and your business increases exponentially. The increas in visibility helps to increase Search Engine rankings which is great for your Search Engine Optimisation effort.
Apart from that, you can post ‘polls’; add ‘contests’; create ‘quizzes’ and many other custom built applications to promote your business in more effective manner. Following image shows a business page on facebook.
Facebook Advertising Platform
Facebook Advertising
Facebook also provides you the platform to advertise your products. However, these ads are not free and facebook charges usually on the basis of ‘cost per action. This platform helps you to decide the target audience and the budget requirements. You can connect with more than 500 million potential customers. These advertisements range from simple text-based ads to high resolution images. Moreover, you can change your budget on daily basis. Hence this platform is easy and cost effective. The image below shows the interface of facebook advertising platform.
Sponsor Facebook Applications With Ads
Facebook has number of applications for ‘games’, ‘music’ and other ‘leisure’ activities which are accessed by different audiences. As a business, you can choose the applications which are mostly accessed by your target audience and place your advertisements on them as a sponsor. The sponsored application with ads is shown below.
Facebook Sponsor Ads
Integrating Facebook With Your Website
If your website is an important channel to you, Facebook Connect can help you amplify engagement. You can do this by adding Facebook ‘Share’ links to your website. This tool is known as ‘Facebook Connect’. This way you can get your webpage URL visible across the facebook users. The sharing enables you to share website content with friends, and publishing feed stories to generate traffic. Following image shows how Facebook connect works.
Interacting With Your Customers
Most important part of internet business marketing is the two way interaction with your customers. Facebook provides you the facility of opening up the discussion threads. You can initiate any topic related to your business. You can also ask for the feedback from your customers. Continuous engagement with your customers goes a long way in building long term relationship with your customers.
Integrating Facebook With Your Internet Business Website
As we have seen, facebook is an excellent platform to spread the buzz about your internet business products and service in the market. If it is integrated with other promotional tools then it is bound to produce excellent results in terms of helping to provide new customer leads for your internet business.
’6 Ways To Generate More Web Traffic’
Aug 3rd
Getting Your Web Traffic Up Is Not Easy
The number of visitors viewing your websites is termed as ‘Web Traffic’. Web traffic is important for your internet business as the more number of visitors your site gets means the more number of prospective customers and with that the probability of getting more sales for your products or services.
The key to gaining the maximum possible potential customers is to aim for ‘Targeted traffic’, which is the set of visitors who are more likely to be interested in purchasing your products and services. A lot of market research needs to be done to find out where to find your target audience and then what would potentially attract them to your business (This is a big topic and needs a post to itself). However once you have identified your target group, you can use various methods to attract them to your website, this post looks at some of those methods.
‘List Builders’ and ‘Traffic Exchanges’
There are online list building sites which can potentially help you to generate random leads. These websites also work mutually with other websites such that they e-mail their lists in return for receiving mail from other members on their site. This is a great way to build up your list and generate traffic. In order to get maximum benefits from such internet marketing services, you must keep mailing to the people in your lists on a regular basis. If you decide to take this approach try to look for companies to do this with that have complementary products and services to your own so that the list exchange is beneficial to both yourself and to them.
A ‘Traffic exchange’ is a process by which two or more websites mutually agree to exchange the lists of their visitors. This provides new leads to both sites without incurring any extra costs. The rules set by these websites are based on the number of credits earned by viewing a site. You will not get traffic to your site unless you earn credits either by surfing, buy credits, OR referring other users to their site.
‘Social Media and blogs’
Social media is a powerful tool for promotion. Various social networking sites like facebook or twitter provides you the exciting features for interaction in innovative ways. The features include building your own online profile, adding new friends, attract more like-minded people by sharing interests or comments or any type of discussion. This continuous interaction facilitates long term relationships with people which then makes it easier for yafter ou to advertise your products or services to these people through these sites.
Another easy way to both build trust and long-term relationships is through ‘blogging’. WordPress is a nice simple blog platform which is feature packed and has facility to add widgets, images or videos which can help you showcase your content in blogs. Blogs also help to improve your page ranks in search engines as they enhance your visibility. However, the basic rule for using blogs is for great, informative content to attract visitors so in essense try not to use it to pitch your products or service.
‘Article marketing’
The best way to establish your reputation as an ‘expert’ in your business niche is to showcase your talent through articles, publications and papers. If you are providing informative content by which there is value addition to the users, they will trust you for giving them information on the topic of their interest. This method can we utilised on your actual website by providing informative information there or by using external sites which provide for article submissions like- EzineArticles, MarketingCheckpoint, NewFreeArticles.com etc. They all provide you a resource box along with the article space. In the resource box you can mention your website link and hence promote it.
‘Forum Marketing’
Apart from blogs and social networks, there are many other forums where you can interact with other people and learn from them. These forums are great way of building long term relationships. You can build your reputation in forums by regularly posting informative and valuable content. Forums allow you to advertise yourself in an indirect way through use of ‘signatures’. So, you can put your web-site link in the signature that appears at the end of every post which is there for all to see. Some of the quality forums are – MarketingCheckpoint, Money Maker Group. Dream Team Money, OnlineMLM.com and Warrior Forum to name a few.
By utilising some of the above mentioned methods you can help yourself to generate more web traffic to your website which will help improve the chances of your internet business getting more customers.
