Luke was interviewed as the termite inspections expert and had the opportunity to very professionally demonstrate his expertise during a 5 minute+ segment.
It’s All About Leveraging This Opportunity
Part of Luke’s challenge now is to leverage this segment as much as he possibly can.
He needs to use the segment to establish and/or confirm his expertise to his target market.
Here’s the Top 3 ways he can do this:
Insert the video onto his own sites
Get others to embed the video, comment on it
Mention the story in his next communication with his market
Leverage, leverage, leverage.
Making the most of what you have is smart marketing.
What can you do to leverage the benefit of what you have?
Below is my top 5 list on what you should be doing with your web site today to make it more successful tomorrow.
1. Install Google Analytics – gives brilliant data on your web site visitors.
You can only make the right future decisions based on past data, and that past data is great as a benchmark – Google Analytics is free and very easy to install.
For most web sites it would take 15 minutes.
2. Update your web site with fresh information.
Stale web sites are boring for everyone. Update it with useful and interesting information as much as possible.
3. Figure out what would be the absolute best term to get found for in Google.
It’s where a company guarantees your web site either # 1 in Google or to be on the first page of Google.
Sadly, it’s just all smoke and mirrors.
You see, generally what they’re really offering – and they’ll happily confuse you with lots of technical terms and jargon – is to simply buy Google AdWords (these are the ads on the top and side of Google’s results).
Google AdWords
So, yes.
Whilst they can get you to the top of Google’s 1st page, you can also do it yourself in about 15 minutes.
You’ve just saved yourself the management fee of someone else doing this for you.
Then there’s the companies that guarantee to get you # 1 in the search results in Google.
This is a trickier one.
We do a ton of search engine optimisation work but can’t really guarantee the # 1 position for search terms due to to the fact that where you appear in the Google depends, to an extent, on:
how much search engine optimisation work your competitors do, and
how Google changes how it ranks sites.
So whilst a good operator will get you a high ranking, there can never really be any guarantees.
Seems as though the link to the Free Report was broken. Once I got over the shock of having made a mistake (took me a while) I found the file and sent it through to him, then I fixed up the broken link.
It’s a report I wrote back in 2004 on what I saw as the keys to a successful site.
Bearing in mind the report is almost 6 years old, everything is still pretty much spot on – which means I’m a prophet, as well as being smart and very, very attractive. And funny. Don’t forget funny.
The only real change I’d make is to recommend Google Analytics for your web site statistics program and to say that large file sizes don’t matter so much in this day and age of fast connections.
So if you’re wondering what makes a successful web site, my Free Report (no registration required) could give you a few ideas.
Jill had a song a few years back called “I Kissed A Girl”.
Katy Perry, an American singer, had 2008 success with her tune also called “I Kissed A Girl”.
Just the title was the same.
Jill’s song is so much better.
“F**King Little Slut”
I just read an article where Jill is quoted as saying this about Katy:
“F..k you Katy Perry, you f..king stupid, maybe ‘not good for the gays’, title-thieving, haven’t-heard-much-else-so-not-quite-sure-if-you’re-talented, f..king little slut.”
Ha!
And I thought us Aussies were straight forward and direct!
Jill Has Done A Couple Of Things
I’d suspect that Jill has done a couple of things here:
Done the interview with her tongue firmly in her cheek
Seen this strategy as an excellent way to gather some publicity for herself
Nice work. It’s Marketing 101 – Grab attention.
(I’d be pretty confident on # 1 and not at all confident on # 2.)
But Jill’s Done More – And It’s Even More Brilliant
I like your style Jill. You could well be Australian. (And yes, I do know Rupert took you up to his room – he used to be an Aussie, so you’re in good company.)
A client (Elizabeth) asked for some examples of sites we’ve done the other day.
I made up a quick list and sent it through with a bit of a disclaimer:
“Whilst these are all fine looking designs, please understand that the success or not of a site is rarely about the design.
It’s about all the other aspects from the marketing of the site, the interactivity, the content, the search engine rankings, the copy, the conversion testing, etc, etc.”
Below is an example of a new site we’re just finishing off (below it is the existing site for this client – we didn’t do that one).
The new Aruba Surf web site
The old Aruba Surf web site
It Is Kind Of About The Design
What I said to Elizabeth isn’t exactly true.
The design is critically important in that the site has to look good AND provide the right information at the right time to the potential customer.
As you can see, the new site has a ton of features the old site doesn’t:
colourful and different design – catches attention
tariffs are at the top (not quite finished – the resort manager is filling that bit in today) – critical information to generate a lead or sale
the “Free Quote” button encourages lead generation
the “Book Now” button is right there on the home page – a simple call to action
big, bold and bright phone number to encourage phone contact (different people like to book in different ways)
Twitter account – means for a quick and easy update of what’s happening and the ability to develop conversations with interested people
blog on the home page – great way to keep the site up to date and can be used for special offers, etc as required
video (under the Twitter account) – a great way to demonstrate the product
photo gallery – just keep demonstrating that product
Whilst all of the above will contribute to the success of the site, nothing happens until the visitor looking for a budget Broadbeach resort finds the site.
And that’s why what I said to Elizabeth is true.
A successful web site incorprates:
a nice design,
a functional design to get your key information across,
I’m often asked the best way to market a web site.
The answer is that there are a range of strategies that need to be implemented and the strategies to use vary from web site to web site.
You really need to understand the web site, the client and what they’re trying to achieve to provide the best marketing ideas.
You need a real sense of the brand and the objectives otherwise you simply can’t provide great advice.
2 Reasons I Say This
And I say all that stuff for 1 of 2 reasons (you can pick):
I’m a highly paid Internet expert who has to justify his fees
It’s true
Despite your pick (I know how you think)) it’s because it’s true.
We break down web marketing into 5 main strategies.
These strategies often overlap, but if you implement each one (and I’ll expand on each strategy in a later post) then you’ll have a well marketed web site.
