Last month I covered the basics of building your social media marketing. The next step in building your foundation is to build a solid central focal point for the rest of your marketing activities to flow to, your website.
Website
Primary Functions of Your Website
- Target: Be found by search engines
- Take: Captures a lead, converts them into a sale
- Teach: Informs and educates
Target
Do you know YOUR target market?
If you don’t you should stop reading. If you do, then you need to focus on your target market and nobody else. Once you know them and understand them then you can get them to your web site by targeting them.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the art of making sure the search engines can find your website. The best ways to accomplish SEO are through the basic structure of your site or how you define your URL’s. The second aspect is using keywords the are relevant to your target market.
Take
Take the contact information of your visitors. Take it by giving! Sounds a little counter intuitive doesn’t it. When you give or offer something to your visitors for free they will usually accept in exchange for an email address if and only if they perceive that what you are offering “gives” them value. Meaning they can take it and do something with it that will make them money, give them happiness or relieve a pain point.
The more you give, the more the visitors are willing to let you take. You can’t just take their information but when you give them an incentive or a free gift or valuable information then you will be successful in obtaining an opt in.
People are very protective of their online information. Be respectful of that and make sure you are only asking for information when you give information first.
Train
Marketing is really just training. Teaching your visitors about your products and the benefits they get by using your products. You illustrate that thru success stories, testimonials and borrowed credibility. When you start to think about your visitors as trainees rather than leads your entire marketing campaign will change and become more successful.
People love stories that they can relate to. If the visitor has experienced a similar problem and you can convey that you understand that problem and more importantly how to solve it then you easily overcome any objections that visitor may have.
Testimonials are powerful because they show that other people have used your product or services and have benefited from the results.
Borrowed credibility is simply promoting the fact that other big names have supported you, used your products or services and had success. If you get 1 or 2 easily recognizable names on your list it can make a significant impact on your credibility and increase the trust factor that people have to do business with a start up company.
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In the meantime, please check out the Blue Pen Success Program at www.bluepensuccess.com. Blue Pen Success is an Entrepreneur training program based on the tried and true My Own Business Inc. (MOBI) training. MOBI allows certified graduates to teach the course. I decided to “teach it by creating an online video series of the courses for free.