[note: this is a new chapter I will be adding to the resource section in my new free report, on Why Most Small Business Web Sites Stink."  Thus while the examples I use are not directly tied to home staging, the content is applicable to home staging as well as most any business or non profit agency for that matter.]

Auto Responders:

The key component required to transform your current static web site into a marketing tool, is your auto responder. The service I use and recommend is Aweber, www.BuildRelationships.aweber.com . It is by far the preferred service, and is used by most of the internet marketers I know.

While it’s possible to have a programmer develop an auto responder service on your own web site, using a professional service makes a lot more sense in the long run. First, it’s cheap. Rates will vary depending on how much traffic you generate, but as of my writing this, most small businesses will be able to start for well under $25 a month, even less if you take advantage of their annual payment plans.

There are a couple of things you should understand. Aweber uses what’s called a double opt in system. What this means is that when a person signs up to be on your mailing list, they are actually signing up on a form you create at BuildRelationships.aweber.com. Once Aweber gets their initial message, they send out a confirmation message to the email address registered. This asks your new subscriber to confirm that they want to be on your list. Your new list member must confirm, or they will not be included.

This accomplishes two things. First, it keeps people from putting in phony email addresses, just to get your free report. And more importantly, it serves to protect you against spam complaints when people register someone else’s legitimate email address instead of their own.

Aweber is a known entity in the internet marketing world, and it’s well known they use this double opt in system. Thus the folks who monitor and prosecute SPAM complaints are far less likely to raise any issues with you, even when someone forgets they signed up for your list and complains. This avoids problems you don’t need.

In addition to the double opt in feature, they automatically insert both an automatic “opt-out” link and your legal address at the bottom of each of your messages. This means you will always be compliant with the anti Spam laws, and your subscriber knows that they can stop your emails whenever they want. Best yet, if your subscriber decides they want to stop, all they have to do is click the link and it’s done automatically. You don’t need to be involved at all.

These peace of mind features make the monthly fee more than worthwhile by themselves.

But you get a lot more than peace of mind. Aweber offers a lot of features, more than I can cover here now. But lets lay out a few, for the sake of clarity.

First, you can have multiple lists, at no extra charge. You can have a list for those people who sign up on your web site. You can have another list for people who sign up because you add, an invitation to do so on you cash register receipt or invoice forms.

This may make sense as a way to conduct separate conversations with prospective customers who are first finding you online, as opposed to the conversation you want to have with people who are existing customers.

You may also want to use this capability to focus on different product lines. Say you are a restaurant that also does catering. You might have a sub list for the catering business in addition to a primary list that promotes your weekly or monthly specials.

This ability to run multiple lists is a great asset. It allows you to have multiple conversations going on, with multiple people at the same time. All on autopilot.

There is one more basic concept to get across regarding auto responders. There are two types of basic messages. The first is the follow-up message. These are written and stored in the system and are sent automatically once a person signs up for your list. The first one goes out immediately once they have confirmed that they want to be on the list. Then you can pre-schedule any number of additional lists as you wish. Depending on your particular needs, you may want to send a second message three days after they get the first one, and then maybe another in 3-5 days, and then weekly thereafter.

Some people set up mini courses on topics of interest to their customers. A Liquor store may for example create a series of posts on wines, or the characteristics of different beers they sell. A restaurant, may do recipes or cooking tips, etc. The key thing about follow-up messages is that they should be “Evergreen.” With any luck people will be signing up to your list every day from now till the end of time. You want messages that make sense no matter the time of year. So event though it may be Spring, when you are writing you messages, eventually it will be winter when someone joins your list. All of these follow-up messages are sent sequentially based on the number of days since the person signed up on your list. So on any given day you will have message 1 going out to newly signed up people, message 3 going out to people who signed up last week, and message 14 going out to people who maybe signed up four months ago.

The second type of message is the Broadcast. This is sent to all people no matter when they signed up. This type of message is ideal for sending out messages about this week’s specials, of attractions for the coming month, or holiday greetings. If you are a dentist and want to let your patients know to schedule their appointments prior to you upcoming two week vacation cruise, you send them a broadcast message six weeks in advance and then again periodically up until you send them a message on who to contact in case of an emergency.

The best part of this, is that you can pre-schedule broadcast messages. Thus if you want, you can send a Happy New Years message for exactly at midnight next year right now.
If you have a three month advertising plan, you can schedule all your broadcasts for the coming three months at one time, and then forget about it. The messages will be sent automatically, and your customers will get you messages and respond and it won’t cost you any more than the cost of your auto responder and the time to write the messages.

There are other more advanced features available once you have you system up and running. For example you can do split testing to see which of your ads get a better response, and there are ways to tie your blog posts into the process and even pod casts. But such services are beyond the scope of this report.

Again the service I recommend is www.BuildRelationships.aweber.com.

They offer a series of helpful tutorials which should be more than adequate to get you up and running in no time. I am also available to assist you. Contact me at enetwal@gmail.com.

Setting up a web page is only the beginning to online marketing. Now you need to get it seen by potential customers. This used to be challenging in many markets, but there has been a big change in what matters. Today, what matters is being seen on the Google Places Page, and you don't even need to have a web site to do that. (although you should.) The good news is that its free, and if you know what you are doing, you can maneuver yourself to the top listing in many markets. That's one of the skill sets I bring to the table. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

Technorati Tags: auto responder, Aweber, Internet marketing, marketing, web pages

I just completed my newest report, called “Most Business Web Pages StinK!” subtitled, Web Sites are like Trade Shows. Readers of this blog will soon realize this is a recompilation of five previous blog posts on the Trade Show theme. The current version is number 1.2, I am working on 1.3 which will be revisions after my wife gets done proof reading it, and a resources section at the end.

I intend to use this as an eye opener for hopefully thousands of Home Stagers and other small business people. In these tough economic times it only makes sense to better utilize all of our existing resources such as out web sites.

And since upgrading them is not difficult or expensive, it makes even more sense.

Let me know if you need my help.

Setting up a web page is only the beginning to online marketing. Now you need to get it seen by potential customers. This used to be challenging in many markets, but there has been a big change in what matters. Today, what matters is being seen on the Google Places Page, and you don't even need to have a web site to do that. (although you should.) The good news is that its free, and if you know what you are doing, you can maneuver yourself to the top listing in many markets. That's one of the skill sets I bring to the table. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

Technorati Tags: interactive web sites, Internet Fundamentals, Internet marketing, list building, opt in, web pages

A decade ago, small businesses flocked to the internet. It was going to transform the way business is done and they wanted to be part of it. And many are today quite disappointed and perhaps philosophical about how their web pages didn’t do diddly squat.

While there is no doubt the internet has changed how business is done today, for most businesses all that changed is they now have an internet Yellow Pages add in addition to there actual listing.

The only people that go to their web site are people who already know about their business, and are jsut checking for a phone number or the times we are open.

While that’s certainly not true of all businesses, it is true for a good many, how about you?

I’ve been preaching on three major topics here about why I think most business web sites stink.

* Most aren’t using their ability to list their business in multiple categories.
* Most have just a billboard, or an electronic brochure and not an interactive site
* Why most web sites are so bad, even when you paid good money for them.

In my prior posts on this blog, I have tried to use the trade show as a metaphor as to what the role of your web pages should be. I encourage you to look back at my past postings and read them.

In the last few days, I have been focusing on how most web sites I’ve reviewed lately have poor and often no keywords.

If you were able to afford it, and were in the wall paper business, you might buy a yellow pages ad under wall paper, and maybe under decorating or a number of other yellow page headings. Most businesses don’t as its very expensive to do so, even with multiple category discounts.

With your web pages, you don’t need to pay extra to be listed in multiple categories. You just need to do a systematic listing of all relevant keywords that your possible customers might use in an effort to find you.

This may take a little time and effort, but once done, it will pay tremendous rewards in additional traffic and potential new business.

You may have thought your web designer would have done this for you. But unfortunately most web designers are not marketers. They tend to be graphic artists or techno geeks. Great at creating web pages, but not necessarily at getting your web site to generate the business you had hoped it would.

Setting up a web page is only the beginning to online marketing. Now you need to get it seen by potential customers. This used to be challenging in many markets, but there has been a big change in what matters. Today, what matters is being seen on the Google Places Page, and you don't even need to have a web site to do that. (although you should.) The good news is that its free, and if you know what you are doing, you can maneuver yourself to the top listing in many markets. That's one of the skill sets I bring to the table. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

Technorati Tags: Internet marketing, Keywords, marketing, Meta Tags, web pages

So far, I haven’t found a single home staging web site with good keywords in the meta tags of their web site.

This is a big mistake, as these meta tags are what almost everybody other than Google uses to find web sites to display.  And while Google may have the largest chunk of web search, they certainly don’t have it all. And with the older demographic that is most likely to use the services of home stagers they may even have a lesser share of the pie. That’s cause most older folk are likely to use the search tool that comes with their computer. My wife for example has Yahoo on hers. While she may say she is going to “Google” something, she actually uses Yahoo.  Yahoo uses meta tags. So does MSN, ASK and virtually everybody but Google.

I have created a base list of some ten dozen key words people often use to search for home stagers in their market. I add or subtract a few depending on the scope of service of the individual home stager, and then incorporate geographical elements to come up with a comprehensive set of what I call, “geographical long tail keywords.”  These are the phrases people actually use to search for you.

Every business should have these in the hidden meta tags that the search engine “bots” see, but no one else does. Unfortunately most web site developers are techies, and not marketers, and they often don’t have a clue as to what they should put in there.

For an industry like Home Stagers, where I have already done the Keyword research, I charge $75 for a compiled list of keywords. I have a few simple questions that Home Stagers need to answer, and then I can generally get their completed keyword lists done in 24 hours or less, depending on what’s on my plate that day.

Until the end of January, I am offering a $40 discount as part of my Recession Fighter effort, (Yours and Mine) So if you would like more people to find your web site, drop me an email, and I will give your web page a look see. If it needs the work, and so far they all have, I will let you know and submit my list of Q’s.

But hurry, I will raise the price to $75 effective February 1st.

email me at enetwal@gmail.com with any questions.

Setting up a web page is only the beginning to online marketing. Now you need to get it seen by potential customers. This used to be challenging in many markets, but there has been a big change in what matters. Today, what matters is being seen on the Google Places Page, and you don't even need to have a web site to do that. (although you should.) The good news is that its free, and if you know what you are doing, you can maneuver yourself to the top listing in many markets. That's one of the skill sets I bring to the table. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

Technorati Tags: geographical long tail keywords, homestaging, Keywords, long tail keywords, Meta Tags

If you read my home staging survey analysis, or listened in on the tele-seminar I conducted last year on how to make web pages better, you will know that I think most Home Stagers are not setting up their web sites properly.

I am not a web page designer. So I am not interested in revamping them, but I do have two suggestions that apply to most home stagers, in fact they apply to most small business web pages period.

Today, I am making a special recession fighting offer to help you resolve the easiest of the two. But first let me explain why this problem exists, even on web sites you may have paid someone thousands to develop.

Most web designers are great at the techie end of the game. They may even be good at graphics and have a sense of design. But while they may be good at those things, few of them understand marketing. I suspect if you’ve been in the home staging game a while, you know people who may be great at home staging but not so great at marketing. (Maybe you are one of them.)

In the hidden code that’s behind each of your web site pages, there is code that the search engines see, that no one else does. In the past two weeks, I have randomly checked about a dozen home stagers web sites and found that almost all of them had opportunities for improvement, – but not all.

Another reason many techies don’t pay attention to this is that Google no longer looks at some of this code when they rank web pages. However most search engines still do, including Yahoo and all the other major players. Since you have no control over the search engines your prospective customers use, it’s a real mistake to ignore this very sizable source of business.

So for the month of January I will, on a time available basis, examine your home staging web page free of charge. All you need do is send me an eMail with a link to your web site. I will check to see whether or not your web site would benefit from a “tweak.”

If it does, I will let you know and send you a very brief questionnaire to fill in. If you decide to proceed, I will prepare the appropriate code for just $35 rather than the $75 minimum I normally charge. You save $40 and get more traffic to your web page for years to come. If any one of them uses your services, you’re sitting pretty.

Now the fly in the ointment is that I cannot make the actual change for you. I will compile the code and email it to you, but you will need to post it to the site yourself, and/or have your Web site person do so. This shouldn’t cost you anything, as it’s a very simple process to upload it, but it does require having access to your web site host and your passwords.

The tweak I am proposing won’t change anything about the way your page looks, but it will ensure that more people find <strong>your page </strong>when they are looking for a home staging professional in your market.

I am willing to do this for other small businesses as well, if I have time. Drop me and email and I will do my best to include you.

This offer expires no later than the end of January, but I may pull it earlier. It costs you nothing for the free look see on my part, so drop me an email today.

Email to enetwal@gmail.com and put “Free Tweak Peek” in the subject line.

Setting up a web page is only the beginning to online marketing. Now you need to get it seen by potential customers. This used to be challenging in many markets, but there has been a big change in what matters. Today, what matters is being seen on the Google Places Page, and you don't even need to have a web site to do that. (although you should.) The good news is that its free, and if you know what you are doing, you can maneuver yourself to the top listing in many markets. That's one of the skill sets I bring to the table. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home Staging Web pages, Meta Tag Fix, Meta Tag Review, Meta Tag Tweak, Meta Tags

This posting was originally written earlier this week and posted on my MicroBusinessSpecialist Blog, but genesis of this entire effort grew out of my work with Home Stagers last summer. At that time I discovered that most Home Stagers web pages were very pretty but also often pretty ineffective.  This is the first of a five part series.

I had trouble sleeping last night.

My head was working on a speech, I will give to my Toastmaster Group Thursday morning. I’ve decide to talk about why I think most small business’s web pages stink.

I’ve been toying with the content of this speech for a couple of weeks now. I know why I think they stink, but have been having trouble coming up with a hook and a word picture I can use to convey my message.

The added difficulty is that I need to compress my comments into a 5-7 minute time frame.

Unfortunately, I just couldn’t find the right formula, and so I did a lot of tossing and turning despite my best efforts to just forget it and sleep.

Eventually, I did, and lo and behold as I woke in the morning, in those luxurious moments before I actually woke, the winning concept occurred to me.

It’s hard on my beauty to sleep this way, but I do come up with much of my speeches at night.

—

A web page is very much like a trade show.

But unlike a trade show, where most businesses would have a sales person up front to greet and engage passersby, most web pages use a deaf mute to do the same task.

This week I will work on this concept. Today let’s look at the crowd at the trade show and compare them to web browsers who may chance on your web sites.

Imagine a typical home improvement show or similar trade show. Think of the crowd. They are like web browsers. There are a lot of different reasons someone might be at a trade show. For some it is simply an outing, a form of entertainment or exercise. Some are there to get ideas, or maybe looking for comparison products, or alternative suppliers. Some want information on prices, or learn about features or other options they may want to consider. A few may even have come to the show to actually buy something. This last group is probably a minority.

So too, with web browsers. If you are a business on or off line, most of the people who walk past your booth or browse by your web page are not actively looking to buy.

If you are to meet the needs of those people actively looking to buy, you need to give them the information they need and and the means to actually do so.

If your web page does this, you may have met the needs of the active buyer, but what about the others, those not quite ready to make a purchase?

Has your web site met their needs to the point that they will come back to you when they are ready to buy?

When you think of the crowd at the trade show, they tend to be moving in some sort of circle, streaming through the displays, browsing as they go. Often overloaded in stimuli as each exhibitor tries to attract their attention. If they are like me, they pass most booths with scarcely a glance, unless something grabs them and then holds their attention.

Same to with a web site. I don’t know what the actual number is, but many people suggest you have but 2-3 seconds to catch the crowds attention with your web site. And even then, you have an uphill battle to keep them at the site. That’s why I like the web sites the folks at David Goes Online produce for small businesses. As part of their deal, they are offering a free video, that gives their site some stickiness.

But that is getting into the next discussion which is on the booth exhibitors set up. In future blog posts I will also discuss the ethical bribes they offer to convert traffic into leads and then the follow-up they do, once they have the lead. And most importantly I will discuss why they don’t hire the handicapped. Why they don’t use deaf and dumb sales people to meet and greet their visitors, and why I think most business web pages do.

Setting up a web page is only the beginning to online marketing. Now you need to get it seen by potential customers. This used to be challenging in many markets, but there has been a big change in what matters. Today, what matters is being seen on the Google Places Page, and you don't even need to have a web site to do that. (although you should.) The good news is that its free, and if you know what you are doing, you can maneuver yourself to the top listing in many markets. That's one of the skill sets I bring to the table. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

Technorati Tags: Internet marketing, web design, web pages

I have reduced the prices on the executive summary of my home staging survey results as well as the full report.  This survey done in June and July of 2008 provided significant insights into the practical business issues facing independent home stagers as they conducted their business.

For some insights into the finding visit my Squidoo page on the subject  (you may purchase the reports for the Squidoo page is you wish.)  The link is http://www.squidoo.com/House-staging

I have also begun a series of articles comparing web sites to trade shows on my http://MicroBusinessSpecialist.com blog.  Some of the background thinking for the series came out of the realization that most home stagers had very pretty but largely ineffective web sites.

It turns out that this is a problem not restricted to home stagers.  I commented about it in my survey results, and on a special teleseminar I conducted for home stagers last year.

Since then, I have decided to move more dramatically into the role of internet marketing consultant for micro businesses.  It is just too easy and too inexpensive to transform an existing web site into a far more productive one, to allow so many businesses to continue to miss the boat.

Setting up a web page is only the beginning to online marketing. Now you need to get it seen by potential customers. This used to be challenging in many markets, but there has been a big change in what matters. Today, what matters is being seen on the Google Places Page, and you don't even need to have a web site to do that. (although you should.) The good news is that its free, and if you know what you are doing, you can maneuver yourself to the top listing in many markets. That's one of the skill sets I bring to the table. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

I have advocated for some time that off line businesses use internet marketing Give Away events to market non internet reports. Last night the New Year Giveaway opened, and already today I have had five people download a report I wrote on First Day Cover Collecting. While I have sold first day covers on line for almost twelve years, I would not normally think of internet marketers as first day cover people.

And yet, at least a few are. I suspect I will attract quite a few more in the coming week as more and more people learn about the New Year Giveaway

The past holiday period between Thanksgiving and the New Year have been full of such Giveaway events. I have participated in many and have downloaded a lot of useful material and gained a lot of new subscribers to my lists. The point I want to get across here is that you don’t need to only offer internet marketing products to these lists, as my First Day cover collecting ebook proves.

So What does this have to do with Home Stagers?  It’s an opportunity to public awareness of Home Staging in general, establish yourself as an expert, and build links to your web site. If you like you can even make some money in the process.

What’s required? Not much more than a 5-10 page eBook on the benefits of Home staging.  A nice cover graphic would be nice, and then a web hosting site to host it and an autoresponder system to follow-up with those who do download the eBook.

This last feature would be most useful to any of the networks or schools out there that have members in diverse locations.

Since many of the giveways (not all) are free to put up a product, once you have it created, you can list and relist it many times.  The odds of someone in your town downloading it, may be slim, but you can advertise to your local people that you are an author and even allow them to download their own free copy from you web site in exchange for their name and email address.

What’s more, you can do this without making any changes to your current web site.

If you need help with any of this, feel free to give me a call at my home office after 9AM CST, most days.

I can help you set up an Aweber account, and help you with the mechanics of getting your eBook written for you, images selected, and a hosting site to publish your eBook.

Of the prior ideas, the most important is the idea of putting this eBook on your web page.  If done right it will make a significant difference in your ability to get people who visit you web page to do something.

It will lead to your getting far more calls from prospective customers than you are now.

And the best part is that it need not be expensive or time consuming.

Setting up a web page is only the beginning to online marketing. Now you need to get it seen by potential customers. This used to be challenging in many markets, but there has been a big change in what matters. Today, what matters is being seen on the Google Places Page, and you don't even need to have a web site to do that. (although you should.) The good news is that its free, and if you know what you are doing, you can maneuver yourself to the top listing in many markets. That's one of the skill sets I bring to the table. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

Technorati Tags: Aweber, GiveAways, list building, optin