But a recent article from the team at Kiss Metrics caught my attention when it outlined 11 elements of a page that are often overlooked. It certainly made me look twice at the most popular pages on our own site to see if we are overlooking these particular elements ourselves. The good news for us is that we’re not, but for most website owners you could be killing your conversion by simply glossing over these elements.

I have outlined below the 5 elements that I believe are most important, however you can read the full article here.

1 – Clear, Differentiated Pricing Information
Have you ever checked out a product online and been unsure what the difference between the Silver and Gold plans were? Did Pro seem a little too much like Basic? The most effective methods can be boiled down to a simple philosophy – focus on the benefits, instead of features, and highlight the differences. The best pricing tables allow you to quickly ascertain the value you’ll personally get out of each option, and discern the differences between each.

2 – Customer Confidence
There are many ways to build this trust though, and almost all are fairly easy to implement. For instance, if you use an SSL certificate to secure your transactions (and you really, really should be if you’re processing credit card info), show it! Many consumers know to check for secure web pages when proceeding with a purchase, so they’ll be looking for that all-important padlock icon.

3 – Unconventional Social Proof
Incorporating social proof into your product pages is a way to complement and reinforce the positive influences on your visitors for a given product. It can take many forms, ranging from customer testimonials, to star ratings, to simply exposing the number of units of that particular product left in your inventory.

4 – A Clear Next Step
Too many product pages clutter up their pages with excessive calls to action. View customer photos, view pricing, view our knowledgebase, get customer support, talk to a representative, read reviews. Without good design, these calls to action all blend into a confusing mess, and make your user feel like they’ve just been blindfolded and spun around.

Typical methods for designing a good call to action include using high-contrast buttons, treatments or callouts that are unique to the overall design of the page, as well as giving the actionable elements plenty of breathing room to make them stand out.

5 – Wayfinding
How many steps lie between your product page, and your transaction confirmation page? If you don’t know, then it’s probably too many. A convoluted and laborious funnel is a sure-fire way to kill conversion.

If the customer is on the checkout page, then get them to their final purchase as quickly and efficiently as possible. Don’t make their purchasing effort seem like an arduous journey that can leave them second guessing their purchasing decision along the way.

Are your product pages missing some of these elements? If so, it might pay to give it a bit of an overhaul, especially if it means more potential sales.

Comments

So what do small local businesses going to do to need to compete:

Make sure your website is mobile friendly. In fact, if you don’t have a mobile website, IMHO you need to make having a mobile website your number 1 priority. You need to do it properly with a one URL implementation strategy. Mobile subdomains and mobile sub folders create more trouble down the road than the time you save at the beginning, so don’t go down that route. If you do you’ll be contacting me–or someone like me–to clean up the mess you inadvertently created because you wanted to save a little time in getting up-to-speed as fast as possible.

Your website has to be more than a 20 page brochure-ware website. You can’t show up to the Indy 500 in a stock, off the floor Toyota Camry and expect to compete or ever win. Be smart. “Find your spike” that makes you stand out from everyone else and embrace it:

Don’t strive to be a balanced, well rounded merchant; embrace your uniqueness and the customers who are looking for it. Studies have shown that people on dating sites who embrace their unique beauty and set themselves apart from what is considered traditionally attractive do much better at finding dates and long term partners.

Do a content audit on a regular basis. Create as much evergreen content as possible and update evergreen content as needed. Engage in predictive SEO spot and jump on trends. Write, add, build, and create new content on a regular basis. Don’t add content to meet a quota; add content because you have something of value to add to the conversation. If your website isn’t important enough for you to pay attention to it and help it nurture and grow, why do you think Google’s ranking algorithm will magically compute that you deserve to show up in a search engine result … for anything.

Engage in social media … regularly. Social media is a time consuming aspect of marketing. Unfortunately, small businesses can’t afford to ignore it anymore. You don’t need to spend all day on Twitter: look for tools that allow you to spend less time on social media sites and be more effective with the time you do spend.

Don’t get in a position where you are dependent on Google to survive. Diversify your income stream and pipeline for traffic, leads, and customers. While I’m a zero inbox type of person, and creating and sending out email messages fills me with overwhelming level of self loathing, the depths of which you will never understand, I firmly grasp that it’s a necessary evil to survive. It’s simply impossible to make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Just do it in a way that adds value for your customers and doesn’t clog up their inbox with useless drivel. By building a firm social media fan base, cultivating your customer engagement, and implementing a proactive outbound marketing channel strategy, you will be sending Google the social validation they are looking for, and you’ll be immune to Panda Updates, Penguin updates, or whatever naming structure Google finally gives its algorithm changes.

Comments

I pretty much run my entire business using cloud based web apps.

The following web based tools make up the backbone of my daily business operations.

• Dropbox – My file storage, quasi server and backup tool
• Google Apps – Collaboration, sharing and storage
• Central Desktop – Project management, collaboration, communication
• Evernote – Idea storage, to do, bookmarking, note taking
• Delicious – Bookmarking and RSS content
• Reeder – Consumption of RSS feeds
• GMail – Hosted email for my domain and team
• Infusionsoft – CRM, email marketing, shopping cart and affiliate management
• Zen Desk – customer service

About the only thing I don’t do online is bookkeeping. I still use QuickBooks on a local computer but my bookkeeper accesses it from her desk 1000 miles away.

Even mid sized businesses and those with proprietary applications are moving to the cloud and using integration services such as Dell’s Boomi to patch the holes and get everything to play nice.

My guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Rhonda Abrams, USAToday columnist and author of Bringing the Cloud Down to Earth – How to choose, launch, and get the most from cloud solutions for your business.

Marketing podcast with Rhonda Abrams (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)

Abrams’ book takes this often over jargonized topic and as she suggests, brings it down to earth. Even you’ve hired a consultant to help you move your business processes online this is a great way to get a quick education on the subject.

In this episode we cover just what it means to move your business applications online and how to do it, how not to do it, what to consider and things you may not have even thought of.

Web based applications offer small business so many opportunities to compete with even the largest of organizations by providing functionality that would have costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware and support just a few years ago for pennies or less.

Comments

The problem is, many folks think they need to have all the answers to write a great, original blog post but most of the time, quite the opposite is true. You don’t need to have the right answer. You need to find the right question.

The most relevant, interesting and timely blog posts often are created in response to relevant, interesting and timely questions. If you can find a great question, and answer it, you are likely on your way to a dynamite blog post! So how do find the right question?  Here are four  ideas:

Look to your peer groups.  There are so many great places on the web to find questions. My favorite place is a LinkedIn forum. Did you know there are 800,000 different groups on LinkedIn? There is bound to be one that fits your interests. Go there. Look in the community forums. Find an interesting question. Answer it. Voila! Blog post. Other possible sources are Quora, Focus and Yahoo chat groups.

Look in your comments. I would say 25% of my posts come form comments from my readers. If it is relevant to them, it wold probably be relevant to other readers too, right? Ironically, this post was inspired by a comment about writer’s block from my friend Jon Buscall.

Look in your key words. Many people post questions as their search terms. Go to Google Analytics for your website and see what questions people might be using to find your blog. Recently one of the search terms used to find this blog was “how do I start blogging?” I thought it was probably time to write about some blogging basics.

Google it. If you are really, really stuck, go to Google and type in “what do I write about?”  You’ll be amazed at what you find. People have planted lots of seeds of ideas and prompts for you out there.

How do you get unstuck? Where do you find the best questions to blog about?

Comments

For those overseeing the marketing plans, take a moment to look at your game plan to see if it involves Facebook. If it does not, you need to rethink your plans.

As many marketing pros can tell other marketing pros or small business owners trying to encompass marketing into their plans, having both an optimized and engaging Facebook status can be quite profitable to their company. With Facebook being the king of social media, the site exposes businesses to countless individuals that can turn into customers before their eyes.

In order to properly utilize Facebook in your Internet marketing plans, keep several things in mind:
• Define the audience – Any potentially successful marketing campaign starts with knowing exactly who the audience is one will go after. Monitor Facebook on a regular basis to identify which pages those that may potentially buy and/or advertise from you like;
• Keywords are key – Just as you want to use strong keywords in any blogs or white papers that you post to your site, it is also important to utilize relevant keywords for your Facebook efforts. Search engines act kindly to relevant keywords, meaning your pages are more likely to get hits in the process. Remember, you want as much visibility as possible, so key in on those keywords;
• What works for one may not work for others – As any Internet marketing head can tell you, a successful marketing campaign for one business may not work for another and vice-versa. Some companies may be hesitant to employ a social media tool like Facebook for their Internet marketing efforts if they see it not working for similar companies. Until you fully try it out for your business and your business alone, you will not know;
• Become an authoritative figure – One of the ways Facebook can assist Internet marketers is placing them as an authoritative figure in their particular market on the site. Along with enhancing the company’s brand, you can be seen as a leader in your market, something that will stand out to potential customers;
• You can zero in on advertising – Using Facebook in your Internet marketing strategy allows you to target your advertising to specific groups of people. Rather than throwing some advertising out there and seeing what sticks, focused advertising allows you to save both time and money;
• Don’t be a stranger – One of the major gaffes any Internet marketer can do when using Facebook to promote their company is to come and go. If you just show up at times to solicit people in order to have them become “fans” of your site, you are not properly playing the game. When you come across posts from potential clients that are of interest, you can not only share the item on the site, but also engage with them. They may have a question, comment etc. that you can address. As noted earlier, the more authoritative you come across the more you increase your odds of being able to sell them on your business;
• Give them a reason to learn about you – Lastly, and quite frankly one of if not the most important items, leave a call to action. Whether it is polls, contests, deals and coupons, free subscriptions to newsletters, links to free white papers, make sure you give viewers a reason to come to your site. When you give them something of value at no cost extra cost, they are more apt to want to come back to your site.

Not all Internet marketing campaigns will successfully employ Facebook, but that does not mean yours should not be trying it if not already.
Face the facts, each and every way you successfully spread the word about your company and what it has to offer consumers leaves you faced with one more potential client.

Comments

While updating your Facebook page on Facebook itself is recommended, many businesses will still prefer to use a social media management tool for the sake of productivity and ease of use. So I wanted to share my pick of the top 6 tools that will help you to easily and quickly update your Facebook page.

1. HootSuite
This is one of the most popular tools among marketers. Hootsuite allows you to schedule and publish updates across multiple social networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ping.fm, WordPress, MySpace, and Foursquare.

HootSuite also allows you to add RSS feeds to your account to update your social networks when new posts are available from your own blog as well as others.

You can use HootSuite for free with up to five social profiles, or go with a Pro plan for $5.99 per month for unlimited social profiles, RSS feeds, and more.

2. Argyle Social
Allows you to schedule and publish updates across top social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can also have your latest blog post automatically delivered to those social networks using your RSS feed.

It’s a very comprehensive service therefore it’s not free. Prices start from $300 per month.

3. Sprout Social
Similar to all the others in regards to scheduling and publishing updates, however Sprout Social also includes influence and engagement monitoring on your social networks so you can see how influential you are.

This added feature comes at a cost – starting at $9 per month.

4. Buffer
Unlike other platforms where you have to schedule each update at a specific time, Buffer allows you to set up a specific scheduling pattern. When you add an update to your Buffer, it will be set out at the next available time slot.

You can use Buffer to update one Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn account for free with up to 10 updates scheduled at a time. If you want to update more accounts or send more scheduled updates at once then prices start at $10 per month.

5. Dlvr.it
This free service allows you to add your blog feed to be updated on your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, StatusNet, and MySpace accounts. Essentially, every time you publish a new post, it will be added to the social accounts you specified.

6. Networked Blogs
Purely for blogging, Networked Blogs will automatically update your Facebook and Twitter accounts with your latest blog post. You will have to verify that you are the author of the blog by temporarily adding a widget to your blog or asking your Facebook friends to confirm that you are the author / owner.

BONUS tool…

7. Postcron
This is the tool I use for posts on the ineedhits Facebook page purely because of its simplicity. It’s certainly nothing fancy but I can easily schedule posts and it hasn’t once missed a post.

There is a free and multiple paid versions, I simply use the free version.

I hope you find these tools helpful in automating your Facebook page updates. If there are other tools you use for this that I haven’t included, feel free to share them below.

The surest way to healthy growth is through the attraction of the best and brightest talent weaving it’s way through college and into the workforce.

But, we all know that the Gen Y worker just doesn’t have the same values and work ethic as the Baby Boomers right? Well, guess what, that’s what our parents said about our generation and their parents said about the generation before.

Every generation is different, the key is to understand how and build your business in a way that meshes with their priorities. (I raised four of them, I have some ideas on this!)

For this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I spent some time with career expert and author of Getting from College to Career, Lindsey Pollak. Pollak spends more of her time coaching recent grads on the best ways to get ahead in their job search and career so I turned the tables on her and asked her to shed some light on ways for businesses to appeal to, attract and retain the best from the next generation.

The next generation of worker did not ever consider the notion that they would go to work for one company for life. They are looking for things that challenge, inspire and interest them, even if it means taking less money, or jumping around on the career path.

The next generation of worker is completely digital. But, that doesn’t mean they understand how to employ technology in business. They want to do work that matters, for companies that have a strong sense of story.

The next generation is social. But, that doesn’t mean they only get Facebook, that means they want to work with people they know and like and increasingly they want to work for small businesses that are doing something they think is worthwhile.

So, how do you attract this new worker? Have a story about where you’re going and tell it. Build a culture where creativity, collaboration and autonomy flourish.

And when they come to work for you, ask them what they think, ask them how they would do something different and most importantly listen.

Marketing podcast with Lindsey Pollak (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)

Comments

Marketers are beginning to think and act more like publishers and are producing, curating and repurposing content like never before. Really smart marketers are snapping up journalists as key members of their marketing teams.

But, if marketing content is to become the essential element that it must become in your business, you need to view its production from a strategic point of view.

You may indeed need more content, but you certainly need content that addresses every one of your base business objectives and you need to view the editorial calendar of sorts in this strategic light.

In other words, you need content for every aspect of the customer life-cycle and you need to stage that content in something I call the Marketing Hourglass^TM.

The hourglass acknowledges the fact that your job as a marketer is to get someone with a need to know, like and trust you and that you then need to plan to turn that know, like and trust into try, buy, repeat and refer – and that each of these stages must address a prospect’s evolving relationship with your organization.

In other words, you need to plan to walk with someone that comes to know about your business all the way down the path to where they become a fan and volunteer member of your sales team.

One of the best tools in the hourglass arsenal is content.

One of the best ways to employ content in a strategic manner is to match different kinds of content with the stages of the hourglass and customer life cycle.

So, your content hourglass might look something like this:

Know

The key element here is blog content created on a narrowly defined set of keyword phrases and topics. One of the best ways to become known is through organic search. This phase would also include advertising that draws awareness to other, more advanced forms of content such as eBooks and seminars.

In many businesses a referral introduction is the first exposure that someone gains to an organization. This calls for content that is geared towards this type of exposure and specifically acknowledges your referral process.

Like

An eNewsletter can be a tremendous content tool for nurturing during the like and trust building phases as it allows you to demonstrate expertise, knowledge, resources, and experience over time.

A series of blog posts around a specific topic turned into an eBook or email series is another great content play that helps tell your story.

Trust

Once you’ve gained attention you must move towards that all-important next step. We will buy products we simply like, but we’ll rarely commit to organizations unless we trust them.

Your customer generated videos, case studies and stories make great content here. Your SEO efforts (others trusting and linking to your content) and Social Media participation comes into play in the trust phase.

Getting your customers involved in the content creation game is an essential element and one that many are happy to be involved in.

The ability to tell why your organization does what it does in stories that illustrate purpose in action is perhaps the key trust building content piece of the puzzle.

Try

Try is a phase that many people skip, but I think it’s the easiest way to move people to buy, particularly in highly competitive and highly priced situations.

Here the content needs to represent a sample of the end result. This is where eBooks, online and offline seminars and evaluation type processes in the form of content shine.

Many people miss this point but this is an audition and it’s where you need to deliver more than anyone could possibly consider doing for a free or low cost version of what you sell. This is one of the first places where you plant the seed for a referral as well as a sale.

By producing content in the try phase that clearly demonstrates how much better your paid product or service is than most, you can differentiate your business and create evangelists out of those that don’t ever buy.

How to content in the form of videos, workbooks, examples, cheat sheets and checklists – the kind of stuff your competitors are charging real money for – is the stuff that the try phase in built on.

Buy

Content that converts consists of proof. You must be able to show real results, customer stories and clearly cast your buyer into the future receiving the promised results.

Many people miss the idea of content during just after the buy phase because the thinking is that the person has already made a decision and the product or service will speak for itself.

The total customer experience is measured by the end result, not the build up to the sale. In order to deliver a remarkable customer experience you’ve got to continue to educate with content.

Creating content that acts as a new customer kit or orientation to your business or product is the first step.

Most businesses should also consider quick start guides, in-depth user manuals and customer support communities. You can easily build this kind of content with your customers using services such as Get Satisfaction or Zendesk.

Repeat

Don’t wait for your customer to call you when they need something, stay top of mind through content that educates at a higher lever.

Use email and print to start to share how others have gotten more advanced results with your products or services. Create customer events that have a content sharing component.

Create a results review process where you help your client measure the results they are actually getting by working with your firm and use this process to capture content in the form of success stories.

Refer

Start this phase by documenting your referral process. Create tools that make it easy for you to teach your rabid customers and strategic partners how to refer you.

Create eBooks, videos and teaching events and offer them to your strategic partners to cobrand and present to their clients.

Work with a team of best of class providers (the folks that can help your clients get everything they need) and create a team blog. Create and acquire content that makes it easy for you to introduce your partners and gives them plenty of incentive to do likewise.

You don’t have to do all of your content creation from scratch either – there are many ways to effectively use other people’s content as part of the overall picture.

Content creation is the hardest job of a marketer these days but when you plan your content with your hourglass in mind it may well be the highest payoff work your can do.

Comments

I mean, sure, they could both send out a mass mailing to their clients professing how great the other is, but would that really offer much value to the recipients?

One of the best ways to get a referral relationship moving is through content opportunities. It’s just such a logical way to extend what is already a proven marketing practice.

If you would like to build a killer local referral generator you should look no further than hosting a multi-author WordPress blog. (It doesn’t have to be WordPress, it’s just the best tool.)

Let’s say you’re an attorney that works with small business owners. In your work you’ve seen that small business owners need accounting advice, hiring advice, management advice, marketing advice, real estate advice, outsourcing advice, selling advice, leadership advice, and the list goes on and on.

Well, what if you built a team of best of class advice providers for many of the items listed above and you created and hosted a blog that featured contributions from each of these providers.

With any commitment at all your team could produce a local, keyword rich, content asset that would turn into a valuable resource for your clients and prospects and a logical referral generator for every member of the contributing team.

Of course, this could just be the start of your formal partnership team as you could easily turn this into group sponsored workshops and online seminars as well. Are you starting to see the power behind being the one that formalizes the network?

I hope it goes without saying that the content must be educational and valuable. This effort will offer little if it’s just an ad for all parties. Give great advice openly, use local keywords and phrases and create a consistent flow of new content and this tool will allow you to dominate local search results.

Creating a multi-author WordPress blog isn’t any more difficult that creating a single author blog, but there are a few considerations when it comes to promoting, managing and securing your platform that can be handled with the addition of the following plugins.

Promoting your contributors

WP Biographia – This is great plugin because it adds all kinds of extra fields like social links to the user profile screen and creates a bio for each author. This way when your authors post content their bio automatically shows at the end of each of their posts and features links to their social profiles making it easy for people to connect.

WordPress does not by default allow users to upload photos so add the User Photo plugin too and then Biographia will add your contributor’s photo.

Managing the content flow

User Role Editor – WordPress defines what set roles like subscribe or contributor can do (See a list) but sometimes you may want to edit these a bit. For example an author can’t by default upload images. If you have a trusted group of authors creating content and you want them to add images to their posts, which is usually a good thing, then use the editor to grant that permission.

Editorial Calendar – This tool simply creates a monthly calendar and allows you to drag drafts to dates for automatic publishing. This is a great way to take lots of content and spread it out for consistent publishing. For managing bigger groups and creating deadlines you might also look at DivvyHQ

Keeping things secure

Adminimize – This is a pretty cool tool as it lets you strip away everything you want from the admin dashboard. You might want to hide a bunch of stuff you as the admin don’t really use, but you certainly want to take away most of what your contributors see as well. Some things are naturally hidden based on WordPress default roles, but you can really make a clean posting screen for your contributors by taking away everything you know they don’t need access to.

Every business knows they need to produce great content. By facilitating the creation of this content in a way that can benefit your clients, prospects and referral partners, you can create a platform that will start to attract more of all of the above.

Comments

For example:

• You can read their website and tell instantly if it was professionally written or written in-house. You can see the range of services they offer and the promises and guarantees they make in their marketing. In some cases, you can see what they charge too.
• You can check their social media footprint and see if they are using it to broadcast or connect. You can tell a huge amount about the culture of a business by looking at what they think is appropriate to share on social networks.

Over the past 17 years, I have worked with thousands of business owners. Generally, I have found that they have a tendency to under rate the service offered by their competitors.

Here are 2 of the main reasons this happens:

1. The ‘Reality distortion field’

They work so hard on their own businesses and care so passionately about their own clients or customers, that they can’t imagine their competitors being equally committed. This is, of course, a fallacy. The vast majority of business owners work their butts off and try extremely hard to keep their clients or customers happy.

2. Biased reporting

When business owners speak to the former client of a competitor, they often get a very inaccurate picture of their competitor’s business. For example, clients who were fired by their competitors, because they were consistent late payers or simply impossible to work with, will seldom admit it. They will usually say they left because the service was poor. Other times, biased reporting occurs when people tell the business owner what they think the business owner wants to hear. Equally, if the business owner asks a supplier how the competition are doing, the supplier will often give negative feedback, which adds to this reality distortion.

Lots of average – Lots of opportunity

Whilst your competitors will indeed be working hard and caring passionately, the massive majority will be making little real progress. This is why we see so many average businesses out there. Very, very few small business owners do the right things, correctly, when it comes to business development. They are experts at what they do, but dabble with things like marketing and business development.

Here’s why this should matter to you: The moment you decide to take the marketing and development of your business seriously, everything changes.  By getting the expert help you need, so you become one of the tiny minority who does the right things, correctly, you can start running the type of business you have always wanted. You can start earning the income and living the lifestyle that motivated you to start a business in the first place.

The bottom line: There’s a huge amount of potential out there, for those who decide to take the development of their businesses seriously.

Comments