You have a website for your business, but you’re still not seeing the promised customers streaming in the door. Sound familiar?

Don’t worry, you’re not alone…

The internet is now used by approximately everybody, (over 2 billion people anyway) giving businesses the opportunity to get their products and services in front local or global audiences of prospects who are actively looking for their products or service. But still, most businesses aren’t seeing the leads and sales.

Here’s why…

It’s well known in sales and marketing, that a prospect must view a sales message 5 to 7 times before they make the decision to buy.

And this is a problem because the internet is a place of infinite distraction.

Even if your site does a great job of grabbing a visitors meagre attention, they read the first page, and they love your product or service. Even if they think it is a perfect solution to their problem…

Ooooh, Facebook…

No wait, come back!

See, all it takes is one distraction – a phone call, an email alert, a text message… once they close the window, they are gone forever… they are never coming back to your site. Unless:

What’s the solution?

You need to give your reader excellent value as soon as they hit your website, and offer them a compelling reason to come back, and even better give you permission to contact them.

How to make your website Sticky

What do I mean by ‘sticky’?

A sticky website attracts visitors to return again and again. The best way to do this is by regularly creating interesting, useful information, that is helpful for your ideal prospects and adding it to your website.

Call it a blog, a journal, or simply a news section, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that it is relevant, useful and interesting. Bonus points for making it entertaining.

Two key points:

1. Keep it regular.
   • If your content is good, your visitors will want more. When they come back you need something new for them to read.
2. Keep it focused on your customers
   • Help them. Teach them. Keep giving until you feel like you’re giving away your secrets. The more you give the more valuable it’s likely to be for your readers.

Ask their permission to keep in touch

A nice polite invitation to come back to your website is the most effective way to make sure they do come back. (And remember you want them to come back and read your message 5 to 7 times.)

So when you have published a new post or made a new product, you can contact them directly and invite them to have a look.

But how do you do this after they have left your site? Plan their experience from the moment they load your website.

Get their permission to contact them as soon as possible.

First up, give them what they came for, and give them more than they expected. (of course this requires you know what your potential customers want).

Since you gave them some great information when they first visited, of course they want to come back and see what else you have.

Now’s the time to make them an offer they can’t refuse.

Offer them a bribe for their permission

Ok not a cash bribe (hmm, maybe), but give them even more high value content. Free regular updates, a video course of how to get what they want, or even regular discounts (I’m not a fan of this technique).

The point is, your bribe needs to be of as high perceived value as possible. You are paying them for their permission with valuable content. As well as getting their permission, you want the bribe to be so good that they can’t wait until the next time you offer them something else to read, watch or listen to.

To take you up on the offer, you then ask your visitor to enter their email address, or ‘like’ you Facebook page. Whatever works best for you to keep in close contact with them. Email gets you the best access to them, but a Facebook like might be easier to get.

The best bribes are information that adds value to any of your products or services that they are looking for on your website. Because information is relatively cheap for you to create, but can be massively valuable for your potential customer.

The money is in the list

Direct marketers have said for years, that the money is in the list. Which is true. Maybe.

If you have an email list of a few hundred people who have voluntarily given you their email address because they are interested in your products or services, you can from that point on advertise to them anytime you want or need to for effectively free. How does that compare to paying for ads in the newspaper?

The truth is, the money is in the relationship with the list.

If you have that same list of 500 people and you continually send them lame offers to buy from you, they are very quickly going to get annoyed and unsubscribe, or worse mark you as spam.

The trick is to keep giving your subscribers cool, interesting stuff. That could be more great content, insane deals, whatever. Just make sure they know you appreciate them.

conclusion

The goal of your website shouldn’t be to make a sale on the first visit, but to get your visitors to put heir hands up and show they are interested in what you can offer. From there you are building a relationship that solidifies you as a trusted expert and moves them to the point of becoming a paying customer.

What is the lifetime value of a customer for your business?

photo credit: l.e.o

With so much information, bombarding our senses, you and I are hard-wired to ignore anything that is predictable, or irrelevant… So we can free our brain to focus on things that are important to us at the moment.

A direct effect of this filtering, is we reduce the memories of our entire lives, to only the truely remarkable moments and highlights.

This excellent video highlights exactly how good we are at ignoring information our subconscious classifies as irrelevant… Even things that are seemingly impossible to miss.

How does this relate to us in business?

Everyday you are exposed to thousands of advertising messages, from posters, billboards, radio, TV ads, and a hundred other mediums. So how many do you remember from today?

Don’t be discarded

If you want to be noticed. If you want to grab attention – you MUST be remarkable. To escape being filtered and discarded, you have to stand out from the crowd.

‘Me too’ businesses don’t win because they become a commodity that’s too easy to ignore.

How to stand out and get attention

There are countless ways to stand above the sameness of the crowd… here are a few to try:

1. Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing

Write yourself a list of the standard practices in your industry. What would happen if you deliberately changed one or more of these standard practices? Can you change the business model entirely?

2. Have a strong (even controversial) opinion

Ever meet someone at a party (or anywhere else) and they agreed with everyone about everything they said. They never have their own opinion because they are scared of saying the wrong thing or offending somebody. Lets face it, people like this are just plain bland.

Heres the thing, you might not dislike them, but there are hardly interesting enough for you want to become best mates with. You can;t be mates with them because you never know who they are.

You don’t have to be liked by everyone. In fact… no matter what you do. someone l won’t like you or you business.

If you take a stand on an issue, some people will disagree and hate you, some will absolutely love you for it, and others won’t care much either way. But no-one will be able to ignore you.

3. Tie yourself to an event or person that is already getting attention

People are always talking about some current event or other, from a change in the seasons, to sporting events and topical news. Clever campaigns to relate your business to these existing conversations can let you share the spotlight.

One more thing…

We also notice people we have a relationship with. When you walk down a crowded street, you always recognize a friend or someone you know well. Enter Content marketing and Social Media. By forming a relationship with people before you sell to them, you gain their trust and attention.

What examples have you seen of businesses standing out from the crowd? Do you have any tips or tricks to stand out from the crowd? Share them in the comments.

Be cool… share this on Facebook, Twitter or with someone that will get some value from it. Everyone else is doing it.

Imagine traipsing cold dark empty streets in the depths of winter, luring sane people from the warmth of their lounge in front of the fire and trying to convince them to buy… something

It was my fault. I had deliberately put myself here. I had a theory. If I could sell stuff door to door, then I could sell anything. It was also a crash course to harden the hell up and stop worrying what people think.

I want to save you knocking from having to knock on hundreds of doors (and two or three pairs of shoes), Here are 5 tips I learnt from doors sales, that you can use to market your business on the web.

1. Grab attention in 7 secs

As a door salesman, the person answering the door is already planning how they close the door before you even say hello. You need to grab their attention in 7 seconds or less. You need to have the best one-liner you’ve ever come up with. No second chances. If it doesn’t break their pattern and make them listen to what you are saying.. they will slam the door in your face.. If you are lucky. If you’re not lucky, they’ll let you talk for five minutes before making an excuse to slam the door in your face.

On the web you’ve got the same problem. Your visitors are likely stumbling around the web like cyber-goldfish. You need a jaw-dropping headline that makes the reader stop and think, “wow, that’s exactly what I didn’t know I needed”.

2. Tell a story they can connect with

Telling a story keeps the person engaged and listening to what you are saying. If it is good enough to make them want to know what happens in the end, they’ll let you keep talking.

You need to pull them into the story. It’s really about them. Their problems, their hopes and dreams and their view of themselves.

A story works on the web as well. I know, this seems crazy and completely at odds with the idea of short attention spans and…. for goodness sake, don’t make them scroll. But if the story is good enough, they have to keep reading to find out what happens at the end. and how it all relates to them.

There is an excellent example of a woman in the US who sold a baseball on ebay for US$1125.00. And all she did was tell the whole story of how how her kids smashed a light with the baseball kicking off the day from hell. The story was so good because it was something every parent can relate to.

3. Benefits

Back on the doorstep, I needed to give some incredibly compelling reasons why the person to buy from me right then. The best reasons give quantify-able results Otherwise known as benefits.

Your story needs to be packed with benefits. – Using highly specific examples to highlight your benefits makes them more compelling.

4. Everyone else is doing it

Social proof…. I know what you are thinking. How can you use social proof when you are standing in the cold. Alone.

Here’s how it works…
“Do you know your neighbour? Ron, next door? – Yes
He decide to pick up two of these turtle scrubbers. One for himself and one for his son who has just bought his first turtle.

Give them ideas on how they can use your products or a reason to buy them (holidays, birthdays,).

On your website, this is a thousand times easier. Showcasing glowing testimonials on your website is a must. Text, images, audio all work, but video knocks it out of the park.

5. Make an irresistible offer

Selling door to door, you’ve got to get the sale before they close the door or you don’t get paid. Your website has a few more options than that. But even if your website is designed to provide customer support or just information, you need to get your visitor to take some action. You’ve done the hard work, now you need the pay off.

The first rule is to make them an irresistible offer. Either ‘order now and we’ll throw in this unbelievable bonus’, or sign up for this free report. The options are endless.

Assume the sale – They’ve just spent their time finding out more information about your products, and you’ve told them how great they are. Now you need to tell them what you want them to do next.

How many of these tips are you using on your website?

Be cool and share this on Facebook, Twitter or with someone that’ll get some value from it. Everyone else is doing it.

Thanks

As Parents ourselves, we are huge fans of the advice and support Plunket provides to Parents. Particularly in the early, ‘wholly crap we have a baby, now what’ days.

With that said, we’re proud to present what will be a hilarious night of fun and dancing at Drylands Restaurant with DJ Glenn Kirby of Marlborough Light Entertainment.

I recorded this after a business spammed one of my Facebook Pages wall with a blatant sales message. After a bit of investigation, I found they were posting the same message on the walls of a large number of other Pages walls.

I outline what they did, and what they should be doing instead.

If you find this helpful, jump over and like our Facebook page for more helpful tips like this.

In this short (3:46sec) video I show exactly:

• How to you how to tag your friends and pages
• I explain how it increases the visibility of you or your Page
• A sneaky way of tagging People as your Facebook Page (hint: your Page can’t tag people)

As always, I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments below.

I was met with beautifully creative layouts and the option of flipping through the pages online or downloading (which was quick). What does this mean for the publishing industry as we know it? A slow and tragically unremarkable death as the masses all jump on the iPad bandwagon and plug themselves in?

Actually I hope not.

While browsing magazines online can make the pastime more accessible, for me, nothing can really beat the experience of turning the printed page. A print geek, I’ll admit, I love the smell, the paper (sorry trees) and the break from a computer screen.

That said… here’s one online magazine I rather liked. (PDF download)

Image by Fontshop

Having a third party recommend your business is more credible in the eyes of the potential customers. Numerous studies have shown that recommendations from friends and even complete strangers have much higher levels of trust than advertising.

The problem with word of mouth marketing is that it is really hard to instigate, encourage or control. For someone to recommend your business, you need to be top of their mind when they happen to be having a conversation with someone who needs your products or services. Basically the right person needs to be in the right place at the right time, having the right conversation to make the referral.

Enter social media

Social media removes some of the barriers of word-of-mouth referrals and makes it easier for your customers to refer or recommend your services. In fact, it makes it so easy, often times, people don’t even realise they are doing it.

Staying Top of mind

Social media, be it Facebook, Twitter, a blog, or even email, allows you regular contact with the fans and customers of your business. That regular contact is critical to reminding your fans that you exist.

Here’s the thing… The contact doesn’t have to be anything heavy. It doesn’t have to be a sales call, a product offer or any form of ‘marketing message’. In fact, it is better if it isn’t (of course there is a place for promoting sales from time to time).

The point is purely to let them know you are still here. Doing your thing. Helping people.

Make it easy to share and promote your business

Before social media, contacting people was slow and expensive. But now, taking 10 minutes to post a photo or a tip on Facebook, and you’ve made contact with all of your fans who are interested enough to follow you.

The trick is posting something interesting that inspires your fans and followers to want to have their say. To share it with their friends.

It only takes 2 seconds to click the ‘like’ button or send a retweet on Twitter, or a minute to compose a comment. On Facebook, every interaction with your content spreads your idea and the visibility of your business further, to reach a larger audience. Effectively removing the barriers of referring your business.

How to make this work for your business

If you haven’t already, set up your presence on these platforms.

Think about what sort of content would be useful or interesting for your customers, and plan some cool content. Remember, content, can be short text tips, long articles, photos or video.

Get some fans. Spread the word with your staff, friend and customers, and give them all a reason to follow you on these services.

Get publishing. Be cool.

Speaking of being cool. If you found this article helpful, I’d appreciate it if you took a moment to write a comment below or share this article on Facebook.

Inside the video I explain how I answered a clients question using video, which meant rather than just explaining them the answer (it was slightly technical), I could show them exactly what they needed to do to fix their problem.

Using video to communicate with the client had three further benefits:

1. The client can refer to the video if they need reminded again
2. I can share the same video with anyone else with the same question
3. I just created some valuable content I can share via Social media

People LOVE video

Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine on the internet, and the lion’s share of the videos watched are How-to in nature.

Have a watch of the video and let me know what you think in the comments.

First, something to consider…

In our house, if you wander into the bathroom and poke your head behind the shower curtain. You will find quite a number of bottles crammed onto the tiny shelf. Including, not just one, but three separate bottles of shampoo. A white bottle with a blue lid for me, a tall architecturally designed cream bottle with a peach lid for my wife, and a transparent bottle of golden liquid for our kids.

Why the hell do we need three bottles of shampoo? They all do more or less exactly the same thing – clean hair.

We have them because shampoo companies know something. It’s the same thing that you already know.

You need to define your target market, and sell directly to them

Most small businesses, when asked who their target market is, have a version of the same answer.

“Anyone” or “Anyone with money”

The idea being that by targeting everybody, they have a larger potential market. Wrong! This strategy is leaving money on the table.

Back to shampoo… Do they sell less shampoo because one brand is targeted to only men? NO they sell more, a metric boatload more.

By targeting a specific, well defined market, it is easier to understand their problems and communicate how your product or service can solve it for them.

Everyone has hair that needs cleaning, but some have dry hair, oily hair, or an itchy scalp. Those are all specific problems that need solved.

Advertise specifically to your market

My shampoo says ‘for Men with sensitive scalps’. It’s a no brainer… That’s the stuff I need (or at least that I think I need).

By being specific you decommoditize your product or service. A product that fixes a specific issue is more valuable than a generic product.

But the market would be too small

Ok, here’s another example of a sneaky way to get around the problem with a small market. In the Internet marketing world, there is at least one dog training course that is marketed as train your Labrador, train your Great Dane, train your German shepherd and many other popular dog breeds.

It’s the same study course, the only way the course is differentiated is who it is marketed to (Labrador owners or German shepherd owners). Simple tactic but it works because all dog owners know their dog is the best dog breed, and training techniques tailored specifically to their breed is going to be better than general dog training.

Could you market the exact same product to two (or more) specific markets?

Action

Who can you help specifically? Write a list of specific groups of people who you could tailor your product or service to fix their specific problem.

Can you add something to you product or service to make it cater to a specific group?

How-to reports and Tips work great:

• ‘How to teach your child about bike safety’
• or ‘7 critical accounting systems for a new service business’

Try something to reach a niche market.

— Rinse and repeat —

photo credit: Cormac Heron

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