6 Steps for Internet  & eMarketing Success

A succesful eMarketing strategy must have:

• Compelling reason(s) for prospect to contact you
• Benefits for prospect
• Specific offers, reports
• Calls to action
• Lead capture ability
• Measuring & Tracking capability

1.    Maintain a great “Destination” Website

• Customer-Centric not Business-Centric – “Image style branding is out”
• People don’t want to be sold, they want to be helped and get information
• Internet = access, information, instant
• Web 2.0 = social networking, sharing of information, two-way communication
• A good domain name (Consider keyword terms vs. your name)
• Offer what the consumer wants
  For Real Estate Agents – examples might be:
  • Easy & accessible Search for listings (IDX)
  • Photos & virtual tours
  • Reports, local market data
  • Neighborhood, community, school information
  • Foreclosure, short sale, loan modification information
  • Buyer/Seller process & tips
  • Relocation info, guides
  • Testimonials
  • Your niche, target markets, specialties

2.    Effective Lead Generation & Lead Capture

• Calls to Action (CTA) that lead to capturing prospect info
• Real estate agent/team examples of CTAs:
  • IDX search – allow access to a point and then a sign-up form
  • Property Watch – email alerts – allows the consumer to receive the listing information they want when it becomes available
  • Free, compelling reports – consumer completes a contact form to receive the report or offer
  • Home Market Valuation

3. Offline Marketing Plan

• Energize Your Database  – Import or add your sphere of influence (SOI), past client database into a CRM solution(Outlook, Constant Contact, aWeber) and send them a  welcome email or letter with a strong Call to Action for your business, service or product
• Add contacts daily – set a goal to add a minimum of 5 new people to your database every week.
• Change Your Voice Mail message to include a CTA to visit your blog at www.yourblog.com
• Add compelling call to action on everything:
  • Business cards
  • Letterhead
  • Marketing Flyers
  • Email signature
  • Postcards
  • Print advertising

4. Online Marketing Plan

• • Build your FREE Profile on (recommended for real estate professionals):

-Realtor.com
-Trulia.com
-Zillow.com
-ActiveRain.com
-LinkedIn.com
-Facebook.com

And if you are into it…

-MySpace.com
-YouTube.com – for video tours and consumer videos
-Twitter.com – micro-blogging

• Paid Advertising on other websites

-Realtor.com
-Trulia Pro
-Zillow
-Local online magazine & newspapers
-Your niche market
-Strategic Linking

• Comment on blogs (you can add a link back to your website)

5. Optimizing your website and pages for search engines

• Title tags

• Keywords & Description

• Keyword research Tools

• Write quality content that matches your selected keywords

• Submit Your site to directories and search engines

• Consider adding a blog to maximize SEO

• Pay Per Click – Paid Advertising

• Google Ad Words

6.    Converting the Lead (From Click to Close)

• Connect
  • Immediate response (less than 20 mins) increases your chances of converting that lead – text and email alerts for leads
  • Initial email welcome letter

• Cultivate
  • Automated, drip email campaigns
  • CTAs in the email (Search properties now!
  • Phone calls = qualify, build rapport

• Close

• Use the visitor search profile information
• Refine searches – use property watch
• Close for appointments

• Build Referrals

• Client for life email campaigns – Ask for referral Call to action
• eNewsletters
• Holiday letters
• Market condition reports

Remember, it’s a process!  Set aside time each week to improve your overall website and emarketing solution for your business.  Find the balance bewteen working IN your business and ON Your Business!!

Related posts:

1. Why Blog?
2. Top 15 Tips for Blogging

It all starts with good content – interesting, compelling and relevant. Search Engines use semantic (what are you saying) and contextual analysis (who links to you and how they link) to figure themes and topics.

Here are Dave’s 10 Things (plus a Bonus Tip) to Know About Search Engine Optimization:

1. Importance of titles- is the title good enough to draw attention? Does it contain a keyword or concept about the post?

2. Keyword Density – think keywords when writing – use the keyword several times in the post and not “it” or other pronouns.  Don’t use click here – make the keyword text a link.

3. Smart image file names – Rename your images with relevant keywords for the particular post.

4. The alt and title attributes -Take the time to fill out the alt and title tags for your uploaded images and files – again with relevant keywords/concept.

5. More is definitely less – Reconsider the use of the Read More  in the post.  Change the link from “more” to the keyword heavy title for example.  Consider not using “Home” but the name of your Website in Navigation.

6. Use savvy permalinks -  Each blog post has it’s own unique URL – choose the most powerful words to describe the content of your post.  Wordpress has plugins to customize your URL.

7. Use HTML too, not just CSS – Search engines like HTML – All blog platforms have easy HTML editors (header tags <h1> <h2> for example).

8. Minimize exit links – scrutinize who and how many links are in your blogroll.  The more outgoing links you have increases possibility of visitors leaving your site.

9. Use internal links to cross-promote content – Use Related/Similar Posts at the end of your post (Use Wordpress plugin); Title of the blog post is the link.

10. Encourage easy commenting – Don’t require login or registering in order to post comments.

11. Bonus Tip:  Use Keyword Research Tools to see what combination of words and word phrases people use and how often people search for certain keywords.

Related posts:

1. Blogworld Expo Las Vegas – Search Engine Optimization for Blogging
2. How & Where to Find Blogs
3. Top 15 Tips for Blogging

Blogworld Expo 2007 – Avinash Kaushik whose web analytics blog – Occam’s Razor presented a great session on Understanding Your Numbers and Using Analytics.

Key points:

•    Use Google Analytics or similar tool

•    Six Tips for Measurement

1. Raw Author Contribution – Check out Website Grader for your blog/website marketing effectiveness. Use plugins to assist you in analyzing your content and post stats.

2. Audience growth – both onsite  (measure visitors and unique visitors) and offsite (feedreaders; use feedburner.com for stats).  Avinash defined a key stat he tracks as “unique blog readers” – unique visitors + average daily feed subscriptions (which you can get from Feedburner).  Look for trends.

3. Conversation rate  – track stats on comments.  Find and use plugins to assist with this task. Conversation Rate = # number of visitor comments / number of posts.

4. Citations.  Your authority rank on Technorati.com measures the number of unique links to your blog in the last 6 months.  Unique blogs that cite you.

5. Cost.  Track your expenditures in technology (hosting, other services); your time spent; and opportunity costs (if you weren’t spending time blogging what would you do and does that equate to dollars earned/lost?)

6. Benefits.  Know your comparative value.  Are your creating an asset?  What is the direct value – products, services sold?  Is there any non-traditional value to consider as a benefit?

I loved this comment…….SET SOME GOALS – THEY MOTIVATE!

Measure:
•    Feed Subscribers
•    Conversation Rate
•    Unique Blog Visitors

Related posts:

1. Blogworld Expo Las Vegas – Search Engine Optimization for Blogging
2. Anatomy of a Blog
3. Blogworld Expo Las Vegas – Best Tips and Strategies (Nov 2007)

Update from Blogworld Expo, November 7, 2–7 – SEO for Blogging session.  Panelists: Vanessa Fox, Stephan Spencer, Andy Beal and  Aaron Wall.

The four panelists presented a wealth of information and useful tips on the key topic of Blog SEO .  Vanessa posted each speaker’s powerpoint presentations on her blog – Blogworld Expo:  SEO for Blogging Slides.  Check out this video of highlights from the session from WebProNews:

Some highlights and takeaways for me…

* Research what your audience is searching for – use keyword tools like Google Adwords, Overture Keyword Tracker Tool or Wordtracker – and write your posts using those relevant keywords

* Check out Google Trends to gain insights into search patterns and trends

* Blog Post Titles and Title Tags are key for SEO.  Write short, attractive, enticing, descriptive and use keywords for your niche, buisness, market.

* Google Webmaster Central is an excellent resource center for all things Google as it relates to your website or blog functionality, traffic, analytics, questions and more

* If you have a Wordpress blog, consider using the SEO Title Tags plugin to optimize your blog posts

* Contributed content – guest posts, writing contests, blog carnivals, other writers

* Monitor your statistics/analytics; watch trends, traffic spikes; make adjustments in posting schedule and topics based on what you learn

* Stay on your topic(s)

* Use Google Alerts to have information come to you on the subjects you are interested in – get new post ideas

* Save your post as a draft and refine it before publishing

* Actively solicit feedback; reply to comments

* Write for others – syndicate your content

* Don’t be afraid of controversy

* Don’t monetize your blog too early

Related posts:

1. Blogworld Expo Las Vegas – Best Tips and Strategies (Nov 2007)
2. Ten Things Your Need to Know about Search Engines and Findability from Dave Taylor at Blogworld 2008
3. Blogworld Expo – Using Analytics to Measure Your Blog’s Performance