Email is far from dead. People think that just because there is so much spam mail nowadays that people hate email.
Some do. But everyone still checks his or her email. In fact I really think that because people hate spam mail so much, they’ll only give it out if they really want something. So if someone joins your email list, they want more useful content from you.
Sure your email subscribers might not grow to match your Twitter followers or Facebook. With Facebook EdgeRank choosing if your posts are being seen or not and the average life of a Tweet being fairly low, email is a great alternative to avoid the clutter of social media posts.
If you happen to think email is dead or not useful in your business then this post isn’t for you. But you should still be trying to generate leads from your website!
If you want to increase your email marketing, read that last link and use Mailchimp to start out. Mailchimp is another free Internet marketing tool aside from Google Analytics and Webmaster tools. Obviously using something for free to test the waters with is a great way to do it.
Why Mailchimp rocks!
Mailchimp is great because it almost all the capabilites of Awber (affiliate link) which is what I use. With Mailchimp you can:
Use pre made email templates
Customize and brand your own
Create web forms to capture email address
Track and analyze visitor impressions of web forms
Integrate your blog feed into a email newsletter
Send automated emails after a certain day people joined your list
Track and analyze how many people open your emails
Set up different email lists
Their online support is fairly decent as well. But I personally think a how to video is better if you have no experience with Mailchimp.
I recently picked up Optimize by Lee Odden. It’s a book about content marketing which is the biggest buzzword going around these days.
For good reason though.
People like Marcus Sheridan, John Morgan and Lee have been preaching content production for a while now.
Providing valuable content can increase your brand awareness. Content that aims to help and educate people rather than interrupting them.
That in essence is what meaningful marketing is all about. Help and provide value to people rather than interrupt them.
Not A Content Marketing Post
This isn’t going to be a post about content marketing however. Ok, maybe it is.
While I was reading Optimize, Lee mentioned the importance of having a content strategy. Something hit me right then.
“I don’t have a content strategy!”
I blog whenever an idea and the motivation comes to me. That’s not much of a content strategy. It’s driving a few people to this site and for some of you to subscribe to my updates. Thanks to those of you who have subscribed!
But I need to do a better job. For you and me both. My blog is based on educating you about the world of Internet marketing.
Thanks to Google Analytics and those who have responded to my email questionnaire (thanks to Mark Caunter and his wife who run http://www.amrevive.co.uk/ and Jeff Hilliard who runs http://www.kingswood-golf.co.uk/), I’ve realized that you might be fairly new to Internet marketing.
With that in mind, I thought that my content over the next month should cover the ten best free Internet marketing tools you need to be using.
So here we go!
Google Analytics
I never was an analytical guy. Back in my golf course days I could be seen staring out the window. Not a thought in my brain.
That all changed after I finished school. I started to think more about how I could improve each business I set foot into. The mice were turning the wheel upstairs.
Well this analytical mind I now own can hurt me. But when it comes to Internet marketing, it’s great!
Take my example of how I was able to determine what types of people are visiting this site. Google analytics is able to tell you what search terms people are using to land on your website.
This is important, would you agree? Of course it is!
There are few other very important reasons why you should have Google analytics running on your site. But for right now here’s a video showing you how to set it up.
If you’re reading this through my email newsletter, you’ll have to click through to this blog post on my site to view the video’s below. Click here to do that!
And in this video I will show you what areas you need to focus on when analyzing your websites traffic.
Not Provided keywords?!
In the above video I talked about the “not provided” keyword. Here’s a blog post where you can at least find out what page those people land on when they search whatever keyword it is.
Hopefully you enjoyed this post and found it useful. Google analytics can give you such valuable information about your online marketing efforts.
If you’re new here, be sure to sign up for my email newsletter below or in the top right hand corner of this screen. That way you’ll be able to receive the other nine parts in the series on the 10 best free internet marketing tools.
I was going to add another point to that post. Then I thought it would be better to create a new post altogether. It comes from a suggestion I made to a client which they gave me the go ahead on.
The amount of time required to this is very little. And the ROI potential could be huge. That’s because your competitors aren’t thinking about the other small keywords. You don’t have be a lemming and try to rank for the big keywords in your city.
Since taking over the online marketing for Victoria Transmission and Auto Care, I thought we could get more traffic to the site if we tried to rank for all our services.
Part of our mission is to build awareness around the fact that we’re not just a transmission shop. We offer lots of other auto care services in Victoria.
My goal is to spread the awareness of our other services with the website.
But I didn’t want to just rank the main page for all of our services though. That would mean trying to rank well over 50 keywords for one page.
It’s not good practice to try and rank a webpage for more than five keywords per page.
Because of this the main page targets only transmission related keywords. So most of the traffic arriving to the website before I started working with them was all transmission based keywords.
And that’s where I knew we could get more people to the site.
Most, if not all of your competitors are only looking at ranking their main page instead of their inner pages. This is shortsighted. Just like they’re trying to only rank for a few big keywords.
This is what Meaningful Marketing isn’t about. Why? Because it’s not looking at other ways to get more prospects and clients. This example is following the competition.
Doing this won’t get you ahead.
Out caring the competition and Meaningful Marketing is the opposite. In this case, care more about those people that are searching for specific products or services you offer.
They’re people out there looking for you. They’re searching for the products and services you offer. They don’t know about you yet. But they will if you follow my advice in this post and the rest of my posts.
There is also a huge benefit of having people land on webpages that actually talk about what they searched for. I’ll explain this benefit in a bit.
Branching Out
Back to my Vic Trans example. I knew we wouldn’t be successful if we tried to keyword stuff the main page with 50+ keywords.
With over 16 services, I thought it would be best to create separate pages for each service. And target those services in our keywords.
So the oil change service page targets three keywords dealing with oil change and Victoria. Since creating these pages back on April 25th, more people are landing on the site with specific searches. It’s not transmission based searches anymore.
This is why it’s important to get specific with your keyword research. Even though Google said there wasn’t enough people searching for these specific auto care services, I still thought people were.
And they are. These pages have brought 45 new visitors to the site within the last 30 days. These pages aren’t ranking within the top 5 for each keyword either. Which is great news. Once I do some backlinking for those pages, they’ll rank higher and we’ll get more people to the site.
All it takes is a couple of these people to book online and get their bodies into the shop. From there the staff rely on their excellent service to retain that customer for life.
The amount of time spent on this is very little. Yet it doesn’t take much to earn lifetime clients from it.
Now to that benefit I mentioned earlier.
You’ll increase your conversion rates from website visitor to client if the searcher lands directly on a webpage that talks about that exact service they just searched. It annoys people when they land on your main page and have to navigate your site looking for the product or service they just searched.
If your site isn’t easy to navigate, people will leave quickly.
Makes it easy for them to find the information they’re looking for. But don’t forget this important step.
The Call To Action
We’ve also included online booking forms below each service description page. After all, what good is to to have people on your website and not ask for their business or contact details so you can market to them.
Once again, make it easy for them to call you or book online.
By creating separate pages for each service, having people land on those pages and placing online booking forms on those pages, we’ve made it easy for people to find and book the service they’re after.
I sound like a broken record but make it easy for people to do business with you!
Take a look at your website and search engine optimization efforts and ask yourself, are you making it really easy for people to:
Do business with you
Or leave your website and do business with the competition
Hopefully it’s #1 and you’re out caring the competition.
A couple of weeks ago I met with a potential client.
Originally he was looking for someone to help with marketing his Facebook page. However I like to make people aware of the other potential online marketing areas.
So naturally I shifted the conversation to SEO. I tossed a few ideas his way including this creative strategy. All of sudden he was starting to see the light.
He was wanting to drive more traffic to his site using Facebook. That’s tough to do unless you’re blogging for business and sharing it.
We then talked about some other ways we can get people to his site. And he brought up a great way to do that which I will talk about in a minute.
Being that his site has very new, it was going to be tough to outrank the competition. Are you in the same situation? Or maybe you haven’t invest much into SEO.
In either case, it’s ok.
Don’t Be A Lemming
You see, most businesses are trying to rank their website for only a couple of keywords. This is very shortsighted and the competition is tough doing so. Especially in small city like Victoria.
Think about your business and how many competitors you have. Chances are they’re all trying to rank for the same 2-4 keywords.
I don’t want you to follow the lemmings and chase after the same keywords. If you do, it will cost a lot and take a while.
They are alternatives though. And they’ll get targeted traffic to your site. I truly believe it’s about the quality of the visitor rather than the quantity.
Do you want targeted leads to visit your website? Of course you do! Read on and I’ll explain these alternative methods for attracting targeted prospects to your website.
Another alternative was what my potential client mentioned in our meeting.
He runs Studio Y Design here in Victoria. They sell high end modern contemporary furniture.
During our talk he mentioned that people call the furniture they stock many different things. I call it modern. My mother calls it contemporary. A few of his clients calls it futuristic.
So while all his competitors are trying to rank for “Victoria BC furniture store”, he could try and rank for “Victoria Modern or contemporary furniture store”.
All you have to do is listen to people during conversations while in your store. Find out what they call certain products or services you sell. They might describe it differently. Jot down all the responses and rank your webpages for those terms.
Another idea I had was to create pages based on the brands of furniture he carries. I asked him how many people come into his store know about the brands they carry. He said quite a few.
The chances are good those very same people are searching Google (or Bing) for that brand name and the city they live in. Why not create pages that target those brands so these people can find you?!
Doing so will allow you to attract targeted prospects to your website.
To summarize what I’ve talked about:
Don’t follow the lemmings
Think of the other ways people might search what you have to offer
Listen to what your customers are calling your products or services
List all of the brands you carry
Create pages or blog posts that target points 2, 3 & 4
On Thursday I’m going to showcase an example from one of my clients and how we were able to generate more targeted traffic to their website. It was really easy to do. So be sure to watch out for that post.
This has caused the media outlets and fans everywhere to talk about Cuban, the Mavericks and the possibility of Brittney playing in the NBA.
It’s brilliant really. You see, Cuban most likely isn’t going to draft her. But he’s taken a very small news story and blown it up.
It’s great for Brittney, Mark, the Dallas Mavericks, the NBA and the WNBA where she’ll end up playing professionally.
What Mark Cuban did here was jack the news. He took a small story and made it HUGE! Because of that he’s created a bunch of free media impressions for his team and himself.
This is known a newsjacking.
Newsjacking
I’ve talked a bit about newsjacking on my Facebook page.
Why? Because it’s an awesome way to get some free PR. Especially on a local level where slow news days are common.
It’s the art of spinning a news story in a unique way. So much so that media outlets have to talk about your angle of the story because it’s unique.
Why and How it Works
Here’s why it works. Reporters from all over are always looking for a different angle. After all what reporter wants to pitch the same angle of a story? And who wants to listen to the same story over and over.
So reporters will begin to search for that different angle. My suggestion is to start cuddle up and build relationships with reporters in your city. When a story hits and your ready to jack the news, you can contact your reporters and pitch your angle with ease since you’ve built a relationship with them.
Kind of like this post your reading. If I was quicker to the party, I might have been able to jack the news away from Cuban with my angle. Who knows I still might.
By Saying He’d Draft a Female Player Mark Cuban Is A Publicity Genuis – Click to Tweet
Since you and I are not Mark Cuban, we don’t have full access to the media. This is why a blog post comes into play. Reporterts will head to Twitter or Google to see if anyone has a different angle on a story.
You need to blog about it and spread the word via your social platforms.
Examples
It can be hard trying to figure out ways to newsjack. You need to be fast and creative. My suggestion is to learn from other examples.
Here’s two examples of newsjacking to help you.
Since I’m a big sports fan, I’ll use another story from the NBA.
A few months back the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat were set to face off. It was a marquee game and nationally televised on TNT.
As you can tell this created a news story that hit just about every major sports and news outlet. So this lawyer created massive waves because he was smart. Of course the suit wasn’t going to go through.
McGuinness is probably all over the media in Miami. He started out small I’m sure. Over the years I bet he has made solid connections with reporters to help him break the story above.
Here’s another example from Wynn Resorts spokeswomen Jennifer Dunne.
Back in 2010 Hilton Hotel Heiress Paris Hilton was arrested on drug charges. Dunne saw this as great opportunity to newsjack.
Imagine Wynn Hotels banning the Hilton Hotel Heiress. The nerve!
More importantly what an angle and news story for media outlets to pick up.
Wynn’s free media impressions went trough the rough. And they took a story with only a tiny hook (the Hilton Hotel Heiress) and turned into something big.
To prove that it was done for the PR, the ban as lifted a year later. So they had no real intention of banning her for life but merely to create some impressions.
I love it!
Practice
Since I read Newsjacking a few months back I’ve been praciticing. Whenever I read a news story I try and see what business could jack the news.
More often than not the ideas are not that ground breaking. But they’re effective because of the timing. You have to be quick and get your angle out there.
My suggestion is to do the same. Scan any news story and think about how you could create a unique angle.
It should be noted that your angle has to have some sort of meaning. Or else no reporters will care to write about it.
Or worse you could be like Kenneth Cole and really outrage people after this tweet.
I’ll be blogging about other opportunities on newsjacking so be sure to follow me along and subscribe to my email updates.
What Do You Think?
What do you think about newsjacking and how could your business benefit from it?
