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Last week I did an hour long presentation for Allegra Dioguardi’s new home staging curriculum. Staging Training by Design
In it I covered three different major topics. The first section dealt with some basic decisions most people make before they have enough information to do well. That includes picking their url, web host and decision as to whether to have a blog or web site.
The second topic covered includes a discussion of how to make your web site more search engine friendly and also how to generate back links need to raise your standing in the search engines.
The third section, dealt with how to get more of the people that find your web site to do something.
These are topics I’ve dealt with before, here and in my two eBooks. My challenge was to condense all the information into a single 60 minute presentation. Turns out I ran about 2 minutes long.
But if I say so myself, I did a pretty good job of covering all the major points you should be aware of when setting up your internet marketing campaign for your business.
Now while I would advocate that most people should learn how to manage and run their own web sites, the reality is that most will not. Therefore I discussed these topics so that people would know what they wanted to accomplish, so that they would be better equipped to tell their computer people what they wanted, and why.
Thus while the conversation was directed to home stagers specifically, the comments apply to almost any locally based business wishing to attract more customers by internet marketing.
In support of the audio, I have created a resource page of links and resources. It is pretty rudimentary at the moment, but I will be developing it as time goes on.
One of my clients for the WART Analysis mentioned that she has benefited from my past advice as well. She sent me this testimonial about how she took my advice and is top ranked not once but three times by virtue of her Squidoo lens. It’s one thing to appear on the first page of the search engine, but when you are there three times, it really improves your credibility with prospects, don’t you think?
Here’s her comment,
—
Hello Earl,
I just wanted to say I enjoy reading your articles and find many of them extremely useful with powerful tools. I took action with your article on Squidoo and opened an account. I am now ranked on the first page of Google and listed not just once but 3 times. I’m now starting to receive business through the internet because customers are finding me easily thanks to your help and advice.
Thanks so much for taking the time to publish these articles with free advice and tools, you’re the best!
Getting your web site to be top ranked on Google and the other search engines is a complicated task. Particularly, if you are one of many homestagers within a given market area.
A little known tool to most home stagers is a web portal called Squidoo. It’s similar in many ways to sites like Facebook, and Myspace in that it allows people to create a web presence easily, but unlike the aforementioned it unabashedly permits commercialization.
That means you can put up sites that advertise your business. The easiest way to do so is to reuse much of the content you have on you web page now, and/or items you have just taken down, or not yet put up on your main web site.
Squidoo calls its pages, lens. There are a group of modules that you can create and edit in minutes once you get the hang of their system.
The most critical point when setting up your first lens is what you call it. Pay attention now. Call your lens, “Home Staging in ______” Fill the blank with your top geographical reference point in your market.
If you do, you will often find that your Squidoo lens will get higher ranking than your own web page, even if you have optimized your meta tags geographically as I do for my Market Maker Clients. That’s because Squidoo itself has a high PR or page rank in the eyes of Google.
Now what you want to do is include links in your Squidoo Lens to your web site’s home page and to additional pages within your web sites. This helps raise your web sites ranking in Google’s eyes as well. It sees Squidoo as an “authority” site and gives more credence to links coming from it.
When I say you want links from your Squidoo lens to additional pages in your web site, I am suggesting that if you have a separate page on your web site for Realtors (and I think you should), then somewhere in your Squidoo lens you have a section about Realtors in your home town, and link not to the front page of your web site, but rather to the page about Realtors on your web site.
Do this with other pages as well. Google likes these links to internal pages. There is a lot more to internet marketing than having a web site. And that is one of the reasons the Market Maker Program includes a monthly seminar on internet marketing.
While Squidoo is easy to use, like everything, there is a learning curve. And once you master the basic mechanics you also need to learn the strategies to make it work for your particular needs. There are a number of eBooks about Squidoo out there. I publish one called Squidoo Basics. It is a general introduction to Squidoo and not specifically directed to home staging, but worth the $17 to get a handle on the Basics.
There are other formats beyond Squidoo, like Hub Pages, but Squidoo is probably the best place to start building a broader internet presence. To get started all you need do is open an account at www.Squidoo.com
In due course, you will not only get your web site on the top of the Google Rankings in your home town, you will also have a Squidoo page there as well. When prospects see you listed not once, but twice, in the top of the local listings, they will begin to understand that you are the person to go to locally for home staging services. And that’s where I intend my Market Maker members to be. On top of their local markets.
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We all like things that are free and pretty and/or delicious.
And if it’s something that is also related to what our web visitors
are looking for and the product or service we wish to offer, it’s
very much all the better.
In recent articles we’ve been looking at what it takes to get
people to find your web site. There are a whole host of tricks
tweaks and tactics collectively called Search Engine Optimization
that can help build traffic to your web site.
But once they are there, what are you going to do to get them to
pay attention to you?
You are going to give them a sucker, a popsicle, an ice cream cone
just like you did your kids. Only in the adult world we are going
to give them something of value, related to our mutual interests.
Presumably they came to your web site because they were at least
somewhat interested in Home staging.
You want to be able to give them something they can use related to
home staging. Something for free. Something they can take with
them, right here and now. With no fuss or muss. With no obligation.
If you do and no one else does, you will be ahead of the game. What
you want to give them is a free report of some sort that they can
download. A Gift.
To get it they will need to give you their email address so you can
send it to them. That way you will know who they are, and how to
get a hold of them again.
That will allow you to send them another gift in a few days. And
another.
And if you keep it up, they will end up calling you when they are
finally ready to make up their mind and hire a home stager.
If you have a pretty thing to dangle on your web site, and no one
else does, you are going to get their attention and eventually
their business.
It might not be nice to bribe your kids to get their attention but
it works. It works with prospective customers as well.
Market Maker is coming and coming soon. Market Maker takes the
ideas of Search Engine Optimization and what we call ethical bribes
and much more and wraps it into a unique marketing plan
specifically designed for Home Stagers. It’s a marketing plan on
auto pilot that pays for itself. Membership in the plan is limited
and you should be sure to sign up for advance notice as not
everyone will be allowed to join.
Listen to this Audio Post on Why People Aren’t calling you to stage their homes.
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Last week, internet marketing expert Frank Kern launched a new product that sold for $2,000 each. In less than 24 hours he sold 2,000 units. That’s $4,000,000 in one day. Not too shabby.
Who would have thought you could sell such an expensive product to so many people so fast in today’s economy? How did he do it? Well, that is actually the information Frank was selling. How to sell goods and services on the internet.
Part of Frank’s success stems from his willingness to share a good deal of valuable information with his prospects before he launches his product, and I am going to share one of the key tidbits he offered with you today.
Frank would say there are just three reasons people aren’t buying your home staging services today.
They Don’t Want It
No Money
Don’t Trust or Believe you
They Don’t Want It.
Some never will want your services. And while others just need to be educated a little, it’s a mistake according to Frank to be spending too much time on people who don’t want your services. Instead look for ways to market to people who do.
No Money
Frank makes a more important point here. While no money may mean no money, it usually means that they don’t want it badly enough. If people are telling you they don’t have the money, you haven’t yet found a way to increase their desire. You may need to focus more of your marketing efforts on what’s in it for them.
For your home owner, it may be a higher sales price, or a quicker sales, but it also may be just getting help doing everything that needs to be done to get ready for the big move.
Make sure you are clear on the real motivations of those you have already worked with, and then share these with those you hope to work with.
Don’t Trust/Believe You.
Your prospect needs to not only believe that your services will benefit them, they need to trust that you are someone they can work with. Someone they like.
While credentials may help, social proof is far more effective. A list of past homes staged, testimonials from happy customers are powerful tools to help bridge the trust gap. These should be part of your standard presentation.
But in addition, you should find ways to reach out to your prospects and share. Provide them with good useful information, and keep in touch over time.
Little gifts in the form of useful information on how to prepare for a move, provided via luncheon talks to a local church group or social group not only give you visibility and credibility, it offers value.
Little gestures along this line, activate a sense of reciprocity, in which the recipient begins to feel a bit of an obligation to return the favor. This can lead to you at least getting a chance to bid a project.
I recommend that home stagers web sites offer a free gift that viewers can download, and then follow up with over time with a series of additional tips. This helps build that reciprocity response, and more importantly helps build a sense of friendship. And we tend to trust our friends.
[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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When videos started to grow popular on the Internet in
the past couple of years, the Internet Marketing
landscape started to change.
Affiliate Marketing was not exempted, either.
The most classic mistake people tend to make in
affiliate marketing is not capturing the opt-in leads
first before sending their visitors to the merchant’s
website.
So what smart marketers often do is that they would
have their own Squeeze Page for the visitors to opt
into their list, before sending them to the website
they are an affiliate for.
This is so the affiliate marketer can build his own
opt-in list and do his follow-ups later.
A few but exceptionally smarter marketers, on the other
hand, take this to the next level.
=====> THEY IMPLEMENT VIDEO MARKETING, TOO.
You probably notice most top Internet Marketing experts
are now using videos on their Squeeze Pages. And
smarter affiliates are also doing the same for their
own, for one obvious reason:
=====> VIDEOS CAN SKYROCKET YOUR TRAFFIC AND SALES
CONVERSIONS!
Unfortunately, the problem with video marketing is that
to begin with, you have to know how to make your own
videos.
And even if you could do your own videos, what if you
learn that the affiliate program doesn’t convert well
for you after all?
Sign up for your free Silver membership access now and
don’t delay – because I know you could very well have
your own string of affiliate video businesses up and
running by tonight, with or without any technical
experience on your part!
Warm Regards,
Earl Netwal
P.S. If you want to find out how you can maximize your
traffic and sales conversions, I really urge you to
check out the One Time Offer too right after signing
up:
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October 12, 2009 
6 Comments 
Brett McEllhiney
Andre Arnett
Lonnie Minton
Doug Champigny
Joel Osborne