Internet Marketing Blog

We provide business owners with the right tools to accurately call “BULL CRAP” on the sales guy who’s pitching you a new deal or explaining to you why the last ad you purchased from them didn’t work. Or, “If you only spend a little more…” or “Commit to a longer ad period” or “Pay for our exclusive and proprietary Internet super duper add-ons”, etc, etc, etc…

The purpose of any advertising campaign is to create new customers and opportunity. Unfortunately, there are so many ways to advertise that it’s impossible to try them all. Many advertising and marketing companies claim to offer the “ABSOLUTE BEST” or “MOST COST EFFECTIVE SOUTION”, yet fail to truly deliver results.

They really hate it when our clients pull up the exact number of calls that come in from a specific ad, the date and time they called, the prospect’s name and address, and where the call originated from. Traditional ad agencies are finally realizing that they can’t simply ‘wow’ a client with fancy designs, empty promises and poor assessments on the effectiveness of each ad. Call tracking allows customers to immediately track which ads work and which ads don’t by measuring cold hard facts. Testing and tracking ads is here to stay.

Our unique call tracking system requires No Software, No special equipment, No changes to current systems, No new phone numbers to buy, No contracts, No installation fees, No training, and No hassles. And it’s affordable too!

Averaging only $25.00/month to confirm success or failure on ads that can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars, why would you not invest in tracking insurance?

With big clients, big sales and the future of your company at stake, don’t throw your money into ads that aren’t producing high ROI. Tracking and measuring the results of each of your campaign ads can be the most profitable decision you ever make for your business.

**Local and Toll free numbers available for any campaign and can be delivered to you the very same day.

The purpose of any insurance policy is to protect you against loss. All of us have insurance on our cars, homes, boats, RV’s, lives and health. In business, we have it on our property, equipment, facilities, operations and grounds just in case someone falls or gets hurt.

THEN WHY NOT INSURE YOUR ADVERTISING?! Let’s face it, when you advertise, it’s a crap shoot on whether it will bring in any new clients. What happens if it doesn’t work right away? What if there was a way, for around $25.00, you could verify the actual return on all your advertisements? Yellow pages, news papers, billboards, radio, television, coupons, direct mail, website, flyers, brochures, etc…? You name it and it can be tracked. Call tracking can provide you with real-time stats on every call answered, dropped or missed, as well as tell you which ad or promotion the call originated from.

You are spending thousands of dollars on the ad; its reckless not to spend an additional $25.00 to measure whether that ad is working for you or not. Instead of waiting months, you can immediately see if your ad is working or not with Call Tracking. Make any necessary adjustments; change the copy, alter the presentation, or make any other changes that feel are necessary to make the ad campaign work for you, not against you.

CALL TRACKING FROM UTAH WEB SERVICES is the answer. We implement a unique phone number on each piece of advertising, connect the number to a web interface and then redirect that unique number to your switchboard. No software, no special equipment, no extra phone lines, no contracts, no hidden fees, and no training. Your employees simply answer the phone as they typically do, but now with Advertising Insurance, you know exactly where the call comes from, the prospect’s name, their telephone number, their address, and which advertising piece the call originated from. The conversation between your employees and prospects is recorded for quality control purposes. Detailed information is captured for you to use now or later. Now you can gauge if your advertising paid for itself or has failed you.

IMAGINE TOTAL CONTROL OF YOUR ADVERTISING ROI – You no longer have to question whether your advertisements work or not, now you can be sure. Negotiate better deals with hard stats to validate success or failure, drop the unsuccessful advertising and spend more on the advertisements where ROI is verified. Come up with an accurate cost per sale figure and manage your bottom line more effectively.

Google continues to focus and weigh their search results using personalized search and geographically targeted searches. Most Americans will spend 80% of whatever they earn within a 20 mile radius of their home. With that in mind, it is understandable why so many advertising mediums, including Google, are scrambling to provide an opportunity for advertisers to connect with buyers in his or her neighborhood.

Google has spent millions of dollars getting to know who we are, what we like, what we shop for, what we search for, the sites we frequent, the blogs we gather information from, the news sites we stay up-to-date with, the celebrities we follow, our style, our personal health and pretty much anything else they can find out about us that we openly share and allow over the web without even knowing it.

As unnerving as this reality is, we tend to just continue doing what we’re doing and enjoying an online experience without any regard of what is happening behind the scenes. It is becoming more and more acceptable to allow Google to continue gathering whatever information they can on me, my family, my neighbors and my friends. After all, I can’t see them watching, I don’t get a notice that someone is following me around while I am surfing the web, I can’t see anyone else’s reflection in my flat panel monitor. Basically, out of site and certainly out of mind…so go ahead and gather whatever information you need.

Google continues to gather information so they can deliver exactly what I want, or what they think I want. If I am a nature lover and search for ‘dolphins’, my search history would lead Google to provide me with nature sites, fish sites and related environmental sites. However, if I am a football nut and search for dolphins, Google will probably provide me with football sites, the Miami Dolphins site and any top sports sites that match my query. This amazing process of a search engine knowing more about me than I would like will continue as their processes become more refined and transparent.

Call Tracking - Only a fool doesn’t track their ads!

Thomas Tusser once said, “A fool and his money are soon parted”. This has never been so apparent than in the advertising and marketing arena. There are hundreds of advertising choices from TV, Radio, Print, Online, Viral, Social, Coupons, Billboards and all of the other basics. Any business needs a steady stream of new customers to survive and continue staying in business.

Then why in the world would any smart businessman plow money into an advertising campaign that he cannot control or at least evaluate the return, if any? Just because the sales rep told you that the ad was a hit or provides you with some manufactured stats on the penetration of their advertising piece, doesn’t make the ad successful. Bottom line: if the ad made you money it was a success, and if you have no idea whether it did or didn’t make you any money, then it was a failure.

Welcome to UNIQUE CALL TRACKING. Simple and straightforward. Here’s how the program works:

1. Utah Web Services provides you with a unique phone number to put on your yellow page ad, magazine ad, direct mail coupon, radio, website or whatever piece of advertising you want to verify your return.
2. A potential client calls that unique number; the call is routed through a web server and then connects to your current phone number. It will come in just like any other call.
3. We track the caller, show you their address and name, time stamp the call, record the conversation for future use or management and show you exactly which advertisement the prospect called from.
4. No contracts. No software. No hassle. No change in business. No worries.
5. Once the ad expires, the number is cancelled and turned back into UWS.

Yes, it’s really that simple!!!

If you spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on an ad, who in their right mind would not spend an additional $20 to confirm whether the ad dollars were spent wisely or not? It defies logic as to why anyone would not place a unique tracking number on every marketing piece, every yellow page ad, every marketing brochure, every magazine ad, newspaper ad or virtually any other advertising piece that leaves the front door of their business.

With so much to gain and virtually nothing to lose, why aren’t you tracking?

ARE YOU TRACKING? TIME TO FIND REAL CLIENTS AND REAL PROFITS

If you are not tracking all of your advertising, then you’re wasting money! Do your local charity a favor and just write them a check instead of wasting your money. At least this way you’ll know that your money is actually doing some good.

IF WE CAN’T SAVE YOU MONEY - YOUR CALL TRACKING IS FREE!!!!

Reaching a large audience and attracting customers should be your primary goal when advertising. How effectively you advertise can determine how successful your business is. Here are the top 10 tips for an effective advertising campaign:

1. Target your primary audience. A good advertising campaign should be catered to your primary niche market. Oftentimes, businesses make the mistake of creating generic ads that do not grab attention or speak to their primary customer.
2. Highlight your advantages. A key in advertising is to accentuate the advantages your company has over your competitors. This gives you a strong competitive edge and allows your customers to see why your products, goods or services are better than the next guy’
3. Establish an identity. Almost everyone recognizes the symbolic golden arches that represent McDonald’s. There are plenty of products in the world that are easily recognized by symbols, logos or packaging. Image is very important when it comes to effective advertising and promoting your company. Smart advertisers know that building a consistent image equals higher sales. Read Three Brand Identity Myths That Will Bring Your Business Down.
4. Spend money to earn money. There are billions of ways to save money, but typically advertising is not the place where you should cut corners. Cutting corners will negatively affect sales, and in turn, negatively affect your bottom line. Successful advertising may cost more money than you had expected to spend, but the results are well worth it. Check out information on Call Tracking to learn valuable information on tracking results on all your advertising campaigns. Call tracking is an easy, inexpensive way to figure out which ad campaigns are bringing in the most leads and which ones aren’t.
5. Advertise in the right places. Remember, your favorite radio stations, magazines, or TV programs may not be the same as your audience. Research what your audience typically listens to, reads, and watches in order to determine which advertising media will best reach your targeted market.
6. Don’t allow your budget to lead your advertising campaign. If you budget $2,000 per month for advertising, you may have made it easy from a bookkeeping perspective, but have you accounted for seasonal highs and lows? Most businesses fail to take into account seasonal highs and lows, and their advertising efforts suffer because of it. If you’re spending too much money during hard, economic times, then you may be throwing your money away.
7. Branch out. Many business owners choose one media to advertise, based on the price and potential ROI, and then simply stop. Much like investing, you never want to put all your eggs in one basket. It’s a better idea to spread your advertising dollars around.
8. Don’t try to impress everyone. Realistically, no one product or service will appeal to everyone. A lot of business owners, including CEO’s, try to come up with too many ways to reach every single market. Typically, this is not a good idea and does not work. It usually spells disaster for small companies who cannot afford to spread themselves too thin. Try to find your niche market and be everything you can to that audience.
9. Test your ads. Test your ads on other people. Do they fully understand the message you’re trying to convey? If not, it may be a good idea to restructure your ad.
10. Monitor every single one of your ads. If you don’t have a way to ensure that your advertisements are bringing in new leads and creating new opportunity, then what good are they? You could potentially be throwing away thousands of dollars each year on ad campaigns that aren’t bringing in one single sale. Many businesses do not track their ads, let alone even know how to track them.

Call Tracking is an easy, affordable solution to track all of your campaign advertisements to determine if they are successful or if they need to be eliminated altogether. Find out if you’re saving your company money or wasting it all on ad campaigns that simply don’t work.

Duplicate content is a huge problem on the web. Search engines have a hard time determining relevancy with duplicate content, and consequently penalize sites for it. Google, Yahoo! and MSN announced that this new canonical url tag can be inserted directly into an HTML header, which tells search engines to treat multiple url’s within the same domain that have similar or duplicate content as one url. This exciting new tag prevents site owners from being dinged by search engines and experiencing lower rankings and traffic losses due to multiple url’s having the same content.

The Canonical URL Tag is useful for a variety of scenarios:

•    If your category url’s creates multiple versions of the same page.
For example: www.colors.com/yellow-color?color=yellow
•    If a session ID creates duplicate content.
For example: www.colors.com/yellow-color?SESSID=012
•    If your print-only url’s create several versions of the same page.
For example: www.colors.com/print/yellow-color

SEO professionals can help you determine whether you need this tag and where to apply it. Search engines will now be able to identify multiple url’s with duplicate content and decide what to include and exclude while indexing. When asked if this canonical tag was a hint or directive, Google said “It’s a hint we honor strongly. We’ll take your presence into account, in conjuncture with other signals, when calculating the most relevant page to display in search results.”

Google, Yahoo and MSN will also take into account slight differences if the content is not an exact duplication, for example: slight differences in the sort order of products. They also specified that even a redirect url can be tagged with the canonical tag. Also, they stressed that the canonical tag cannot point to an entirely different domain, that it must be on the same domain or subdomains. This breakthrough canonical tag is an exciting new tool in the web world because it helps deal with problems associated with duplicate content, and allows search engines to index sites more thoroughly.

As you write content for a landing page, a micro site, a blog, a press release or a sales letter, always keep in mind that your main goal is to appeal to your customers and sell your product or service. To fully maximize selling sales copy, use these tips and techniques to get your customers to take action.

1. Your headline says it all – If your audience is not awestruck by your headline, then most likely they will not read anything else you have to say. Use descriptive words and phrases to make your headline compelling and creative.
2. Speak directly to your audience – Customers like to feel as if your writing is speaking directly to them. Use words like “you” and “your” as often as you can. Try to avoid this kind of wording: “One could assume that if one did the work necessary…” This not only sounds incredibly superior, but it disassociates the customer from your copy.
3. Don’t assume that your audience knows what you’re talking about - Always make it crystal clear about what you’re selling and all the benefits associated with your product or service. Make all action steps extremely obvious to get your customers to do what you want them to do.
4. Don’t use superfluous, incommodious words - Simply put: try not to use too many difficult words throughout your copy that most people are not familiar with. Again, this creates distance between your customer and your copy. If your customer has to look up every other word while reading your content, then your content does not flow well. Simplify it a little.
5. Write shorter paragraphs - Research has shown that longer paragraphs lose people’s interest. Keep things clear and concise. Short paragraphs, bullet points and lists can easily break up long paragraphs.
6. Create a good conclusion – Remember to effectively sum up your content in a well-written conclusion. Don’t end your content on a whim or it may leave your audience wondering what happened. Reiterate your main points about your product or service and explain to them again why it superior and why they should buy it.

Consumers have mixed results when judging the credibility of a website. What influences their opinions of why they trust one site opposed to another? And why will they buy the same product from one site, but not another one that is very similar? Ongoing consumer studies, such as the Stanford Web Credibility Research http://credibility.stanford.edu are striving to answer such questions. Although consumer opinions on web credibility will always differ, implementing these few simple tips and techniques into your sales copy may influence your reader to take the action you want them to.

Branding is extremely important to a business, yet it is so often left in the dust. When you hear the term “branding” you think of logos and slogans. While these are part of a company’s “brand” they do not define the brand. Think of every major brand and then think of what they would be like if they were a real person. Nike “Just do it”, what do you think of? Speed, youth and confidence? That’s exactly what it’s designed to make you think of. The logo is designed to make you more confident in yourself when you purchase that brand. That’s what branding is all about; it’s the embodiment of who and what a company is and most importantly, why it matters.

A good brand:
-Motivates customers
-Creates customer loyalty
-Envokes an emotional response from your customers
-Makes your credible
-Is clear and concise

How do I accomplish this?

1. Having a perspective
Like a person companies have perspectives and views on certain issues. A fast food company isn’t all about healthy food, they are all about convenience, cost and taste. This vastly differs from a company like Wild Oats that charges premiums for its organic products. To them health is worth a little extra time and money and usually their customers agree.

2. Who are you, what do you do (why does it matter!?!)
Many companies fail to define themselves and fly by the seat of their pants. Creating focus for a company will not only help your brand but it will help your employees identify with the company and understand why their work is important.

More importantly than who you are and what you do is why does it matter. This is also known as a USP or a unique selling proposition. Why should customers buy from you and not your competitors, what is that’s different or special about you? If there is nothing that differentiates you from your competitors than you are unlikely to have huge success,

3. Presentation
So much of branding is about perception and appearance. If you are a high end services company you need expensive offices and professional sounding receptionists. If you are a skateboard company it’s more about style and acting casual, a big office doesn’t suit you in this case. Keep presentation in your mind at all times, this is how your customers will perceive you.

4. Be consistent
The thing that makes a brand work is that it’s consistent; it doesn’t change. When you go to McDonalds’ you know that you’re going to get the same Big Mac no matter where you are or when you buy. A coke is always going to taste like you expect and theres no surprises. Sure in reality there are failures and burgers aren’t always delicious. But this is why consistency is so important. You must make every attempt to deliver on your promises every single time. Failing to do what you claim will damage your brand very quickly. If your company focuses on service and you have an unhelpful customer service department say goodbye to your business.

5. Don’t be afraid to change
This one sounds a little contradictory but it is ok to change certain elements of your brand to keep up with the market. If your brand focuses on being old fashioned taking on new logos and fancy designs isn’t a great idea. But in many cases brands need to be developed over time to become the Nikes and Pepsi’s of the world so don’t restrict yourself if it means improvement.

http://www.slideshare.net/perfectpixels/creating-a-brand-persona
http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?type=RESOURCES&itemId=1073790776

These days its very easy for small businesses to get a site up and running. A business owner can have his son, cousin, brother, co-worker, etc. design a site in Front Page and get it up on the web.

The difficult part seems to come when their site has been online for a while and they don’t get any hits or they get hits but don’t get any sales. Website Marketing is a fine art and there are dozens of things you can do. I will outline what I feel are 5 of the most important ways to make your website more marketable.

1) Content - It’s great to have a site that looks good with flash, animation, images etc. but good content is the keyto getting the right potential customers to your site and getting them to take action.

a. Search engines like content - When a search is submitted, the search engine scours the web to find sites with content most relevant to that search. So the more relevant content you have on your site the better but you want to keep in balance so that it is also interesting and valuable to your visitors.

b. Visitors like good content - When writing your content you want to make sure you are not only using terms that search engines will be looking for but you want to make it interesting to the reader. Ask yourself the following: Why would people come to this site? What am I offering that is unique and attractive to a potential buyer? Why would they choose my product or service over a competitor?

2) Clean code - Sites that are coded well are not only faster loading but more easily ready by search engines. Ideally make sure your site is coded using CSS (cascading style sheets) and W3C compliant (World Wide Web Consortium).

Once your site is up and running, here are some tools to run to make sure your code is clean:

Markup Validator Service

http://validator.w3.org/

NetMechanic

http://www.netmechanic.com/products/HTML_Toolbox_FreeSample.shtml

Dr. Watson

http://watson.addy.com/

3) URL Structure - Search engines can scan through your site urls and find keywords relevant to the search. Therefore if you are selling Nike shoes, it much better to name your page nike-shoes.html rather than something like page21.htm. This also applies to folder names so you should use something like shoes/nike-shoes.html rather than /store/page21.htm.

4) Link Submissions - We’ve all seen sites that promote submitting your site to 100,000 search engines. This may have worked back in the 90’s but it can actually cause more harm than good. What you want to do is submit your site only to directories with related content. When submitting to search engines, it is best to submit to only the really important ones such as:

a. Google

http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

b. Yahoo (account needed)

https://login.yahoo.com/config/login?.src=srch&.done=http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request

c. Open Directory

http://www.dmoz.org/

5. Get Feedback - Marketing research can be a very simple but invaluable thing to have on your web site. Simply put up a feedback form to collect data from your visitors. Listen to what they have to say and adjust your site accordingly. When you receive glowing feedback on a product or service you have delivered, post that to a testimonials page. This will instill trust in others who are considering buying from you!

In summary, create a site that has clean code, fast loading and provides quality content that your visitors are looking for. Keep in mind the url structure to make the pages easy to find and only submit your site to the most quality directories and search engines. Quality is more important than quantity here. Finally get feedback from your visitors and heed that feedback to continually improve on your site.

GOOD LUCK IN YOUR ONLINE MARKETING EFFORTS!!

Your Personality Type can affect your purchasing decisions:
Did you know that your personality type can actually influence your buying decisions?  Effective copywriting can influence a non-believer to believe, persuade someone to do something, or it can do the exact opposite and repel a potential customer.  So why will your copywriting persuade some people to buy what you’re selling on a website and other’s to click right out of it?  Widespread knowledge within the sales and marketing world indicate that most people decide to purchase something at an emotional level.  If your copywriting does not appeal to them on a personal, emotional level, then chances are they won’t buy what it is you’re selling.  Each human is incredibly distinctive and the key is to try to cater your writing to appeal to 4 distinct personality types.

Over the years, there have been many behavioral scientists and psychologists that have categorized personality types.  The Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator (MBTI) was developed by Carl Jung to identify 16 unique personality differences.  Another physician, named Hippocrates, observed 4 distinct personality types: Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Choleric and Melancholic.  In more recent years they were labeled: Driver, Expressive, Analytical and Amiable.  These distinctions in personality can determine what kind of content speaks to you the most and what influences you to buy.

Driver types:  All about Results
“My way or the highway!” These people are impatient, practical, in control, assertive and concerned with the bottom line.  Driver types do not care about all the fluff; they just want to know what the product or service can do for them, how long it will take to get to them and how much it will cost.  Everything else is irrelevant.  Not overly emotional people.

Many Driver types are:
•    CEO’s
•    Managers
•    Sales Representatives
•    Businesspeople
•    Bankers

Analytical types: Detail-Oriented
These types don’t care too much about the results.  They are mostly interested in all the details about your product or service.  They are organized, deliberate and systematic. They thrive off even the tiniest detail about your product. What is the exact size?  Where was it made? What are all the features? What guarantees are offered?  What makes it work? The more details and statistics you can include in your content, the better.  They prefer solid information opposed to emotional stories.  Provide plenty of truthful details to back it up.

Many Analytical types are:
•    Mathematicians
•    Computer Programmers
•    Developers
•    Scientists
•    Doctors

Expressive types: care about Perceptions
Expressive types care a lot about approval and status.  These are the people that buy things just for the status of ownership, or to impress others.  They are very impulsive, undisciplined and self-centered and are very concerned with how others perceive them.  Tell these types of people how your product or service will make them look good, or how it will boost their status in the world.

Many Expressive types are:
•    Musicians
•    Teachers
•    Artists
•    Graphic Designers
•    Comedians
•    Actors
•    Directors

Amiable types:  involved with Feelings
These are the people that are emotional, humanistic and care deeply about their relationships with others.  The question they want answered the most is “why?” Try to cater your writing style around why your product or service will help others or why it will strengthen your relationship with them.  These people need constant reassurance.  Use a lot of testimonials, case studies and stories to highlight your product.

Many Amiable types are:
•    Social Workers
•    Human Resource
•    Entrepreneurs

How to Structure your copywriting to appeal to these Personality Types:
Your market will primarily consist of 1 predominant category, depending on the type of industry you’re appealing to and what product or service you’re selling.  Carefully structuring your content to appeal to that 1 type can persuade them to buy.  Yet if you try to cram 4 distinct writing styles into one marketing page, you may repel everyone involved.  If you know that there will be 2 major personality groups viewing your content, then it would be best to incorporate these unique styles into 2 different pieces of content.  Creating a couple of marketing pages can easily appeal to different personalities.  For example, you can focus one marketing page to appeal to the analytical types by including lots of details and statistics, and create a separate marketing page about the same product that appeals to the expressive type by including comments on how the product would make them look better or improve their status.

Focusing your copywriting efforts to appeal to all 4 distinct personality types by creating separate marketing pages can improve your chances of selling the same product to various personality types.  Remember that not everyone who reads your content will respond to your words the same way.  Different people respond to different things.  Conversions are important to any website.  By appealing to different personalities, you can greatly improve your conversion rate and attract a wide array of customers.

Last week Google officially launched Knol. The story behind Knol is explained here:

“Knol is a free service from Google that allows you to communicate, collaborate, and share your knowledge with the world. We believe that Knol increases the availability of information, encourages freedom of expression, and makes possible new connections between authors and readers.”

I’ve written some Knols in the past few days and found a strong online reputation benefit inherent in this service. Think about how social networks have changed how we do business online. Social media and social networks have had an undeniable impact on online business. These social networks have changed the way almost everyone communicates online, and this can have a serious bottom line impact on your business. It’s not overly pessimistic to say that negative online reputation spread through social media networks can destroy your business. The ownership of social communications channels and the entire balance of power have shifted. Suddenly, your company is not in complete control of your online message anymore.
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