I get a bunch of people following my twitter account (@mikebayes)
This is how I decide if I am going to follow back:
The first thing I do is look at their profile to see what they tweet about and if they will be interesting to me. I look at the last 4 or 5 tweets. If they are all advertising for their stuff, I am not going to follow.
I also see the frequency of posts. If the post every 8 minutes, I am not going to follow.
And, I look at how many people they follow and how many followers they have. If they follow 1200 and have 30 followers, I skip it.
If I make it through this, I go to their web site. If its something interesting I am going to follow at that point.
I also ask myself why are they following me? This can get you added or not pretty fast.
How do you decide who to follow?
My not very important view on tweeting:
I try to be interesting and keep the self promoting tweets to a 20% of less ratio. Not easy. But I have found that if I really don’t have anything to say, I can retweet someone who does. BTW, I think you should re-tweet
often. At least 10% of the time. You don’t look nearly as self centered 😉
We spoke about our conversion meter system in the last blog, and I promised to write some more information about it. It’s simple, and if you apply these tactics to your product, your sales conversion rate will increase fast.
People and companies buy based on a lack of fear of doing so. Some people call it trust, but you can trust a service or product and still have substantial fear about buying it.
Let me give you an example. Assume I have an old car I don’t use much but keep it around as a backup car for the family, kids, and guests. One day it starts leaking all sorts of fluids. I may trust the company that I am asking to fix my old car that they can fix it, but my fear may be, will paying for the repair be worth the money, or should I just buy a new car. I am not going to hand over the keys unless my concern is addressed. The car isn’t worth all that much any way.
So it’s not about trust, it’s about getting rid of the fear.
A really smart auto repair company would not only convince me I could trust them (using testimonials, and certifications and all that) but they also would be prepared to “step into my shoes” and let me know that even after I spend the $1500.00 to fix the car, that I could still sell it (fixed) for $4500. If I don’t fix the car it’s only worth $1000. So it’s a net gain of $2000.00.
Now I am ready to get it fixed.
So step one in increasing your sales conversion is identifying what prospects fear when they buy from you. This can be tougher than it sounds. And if you are smart you will ask people who bought from you in the past to tell you what they feared, instead of just winging it.
When it comes to SEO (search engine optimization) services the fear is pretty easy to figure out. Clients fear that 1. It won’t work. 2. It will work but they won’t get many new sales to cover the expense. And 3. that they don’t have enough money in the budget to do the program.
So lots of SEO companies guarantee that the site will be on the first page of Google… what ever that means. (You always have to ask, “or what” with a guarantee. Is it all your money back? Is it they will do more work until it is? And if so what time period are they talking about? And then again, or what?”)
But that only helps with the smaller fear. If you want to eliminate, or greatly reduce all the fears you may need to do a performance based pay model, they pay you based on what actual sales come through the program), and a payment plan that fits the clients budget.
The interesting thing about doing all of that to address and get rid of fears is, you will usually make more revenue and profit when you go the extra mile. We charge more on performance based programs, and we charge more on payments plans. So over time, you end up with a higher margin.
Addressing a clients fears will bring up your closing percentage as much as 50%. It’s worth the thought process and time to figure it out. Feel free to email us if you need some help with coming up with these fears, or just want to run then by us.
The next big thing in your improving your closing percentage is talking and presenting the stuff your clients WANT! Selling what they need will kill your sales fast. I will write aboyt that in the next few blogs.
When you talk to business coaches or sales managers about increasing sales, you will generally see a formula like the one that follows
Leads
x Conversions
x Average Ticket
x Number of purchases by customer
Gross
x Margin
And that makes a great deal of sense. What is interesting is in almost every case the company wants to start by increasing the number of leads to get to a better margin. When in fact, the fastest way to increase your revenue is to
increase your conversion rate (closing percentage). Not only is it faster, it also costs a lot less money, and can be a one day fix.
Here is a good video by Brad Sugars on what ActionCoach calls the 5 ways. He does a great job of explaining how working with those 5 numbers can massively increase your revenues. In his example he talks about increasing leads and conversions 10%. In our experience many of our clients see a 50% to 100% closing percentage increase. ( From 25% to over 50% as an example).
I will be following this up with information about specific how you can have a higher closing and conversion percentage in blogs next week. We call it a conversion meter…. and it will tell you how much opportunity you have to improve!
As for more leads….. SEO in Denver works very well for that. See more about us on our main site.
Ok, I know this isn’t about SEO, or marketing, or increaseing your revenue. We just happen to feel that as a community, small business owners are with out question the least represented, least understood, and least listened to.
That’s why I actual read the white house blog from time to time. That link will take you to an interesting blog on small business health care. Did you know we pay on average, 18% more for health care than larger businesses.
And that’s with out factoring in the type of care small business plans provide.
We get asked about using pay per click by our search engine optimization clients pretty often. In most cases they are asking specifically about Google pay per click services.
Image via Wikipedia
We have been running ad words campaigns for 7 years for clients and our own services and have found them to be effective in generating new clients.
Like all advertising and marketing, you need a well thought out program. With Google’s ad words program you have choices on where to advertise (Geo location specific) who to advertise to (demographic choices) when to advertise (Day’s, times), Daily budget and what key words to focus on.
We suggest (as does Google) that you start with a very narrow group of keywords, and once you get enough history make changes and add more.
It’s very important that the ad you write match closely to the keywords you choose, and the landing page it is sent to needs to match as well. All of these factor into what you end up paying per click. It’s called a quality score, and you can read more about Google quality score here.
One of the best parts to PPC is you can “cover all your bases” on possible searched for your service or product. A good SEO campaign can get you well ranked for some keywords, but rarely will it give your site visibility on many of the secondary terms. That’s where PPC services come in. Or while you are in the process of search engine optimization.
Here is a simple principle that you must understand about Marketing. And you will understand the picture a little later.
Any tactic you use in your marketing that is worth doing, is worth doing abundantly. One of the first questions to ask when your goal is to drive new revenue, is this. “What do we do now that works?” Now, do more of that.
It’s that simple. Most businesses have at least one tactic they are using to market their product or service that is working.
If you are doing well with calls from the Internet, do more search engine optimization, add pay per click, develop a social media plan, build more content on your site, or do a major rebuild of your site.
If most of your business comes from referrals and word of mouth, start a formalized rewards program for the people who refer you the most, and make it a point to call one or two clients a day, or individuals you have a business relationship with , and give them a referral or good idea for their business.
Communication has a radar affect. When you begin to communicate to other businesses they will communicate back. For this to work the business most have already been on your radar screen, so to speak. In other words, they must know you. You can define the status of a business relationship by putting it into one of 4 groups.
1. They don’t know you
2. They know you
3. They trust you
4. They buy from you or promote you.
To build revenue fast you just want to move the business who are in group 2 and 3 to 4.
How do you get a business to trust you. It’s like radar, you need to trust them. Trust then enough to give a referral, or a suggestion for something that might help their company. You will receive back what you send out.
Make a list today of 25 business relationships, and spend an hour thinking what you could offer each. A referral? A suggestion for a networking opportunity, an introduction to someone, a co-op marketing plan, a mention on your web site? Do it with no strings attached, and do not make anything you are offering associated with what you sell. You will be amazed how quickly this simple tactic works in bringing you new clients and opportunities.
Y0u can hear more about the My One Call, llc sales coaching and consulting on our main site
One of the challenges we face in business is a clear description of what a business does.
We are a sales acceleration firm. As such, we do a lot of SEO in Denver, as it’s difficult to find a business who can not benefit from a strong SEO program.
That is why you will find so much information on SEO on this blog. Scroll down to find that most of these blogs are about search engine optimization and Internet Marketing.
But, we also offer sales coaching for business owners and senior managers. Sales coaching is not sales training. It is a process to accelerate your businesses sales through a proven system.
I coached two of Denver’s fastest growing companies (as named by the Denver Journal in 2010). And we still do the SEO work for both. But I can tell you that the SEO without the sales coaching would have been far less effective in what every business really wants. It’s not about higher rankings, it’s about more revenue.
If you want to see more on our sales coaching you can view it here.
We see so many web design, and to some extent, social media companies offering SEO (search engine optimization) services in Denver.
In most cases, they are just not going to be very good at it. I am sure there are exceptions, but SEO is a skill set that takes not only experience, but on going study and research.
Several of our clients moved to us after long periods of waiting for their web firm’s SEO to kick in. After reviewing the work they were doing, they would have had to wait forever. Some Web design firms seem to think that by completing the basic search engine friendly work on a site it will some how magically appear on the first page of Google. Most experts agree that around 25% of your SEO success is based on your on site SEO., leaving the vast majority of your rankings to the off site SEO. That’s the stuff most web design firms don’t know how to do.
If you are looking for a good SEO firm, ask them these questions.
Who developed the Google ranking algorithm (Page rank) And who is the patent assigned to?
Answer, Larry Page, co founder of Google. And Stanford university
Ask, how important is a pages PR rank in SEO these days?
Answer: Not very!
Ask them the value of Google web master tools for SEO?
Google web master is a free, and highly important tool for tracking how Google views your web site.
Ask them how they will research Key words to use, and how they will use the keywords to attract more visitors.
If they plan to just dump the keywords into your text, thats bad.
Ask them the difference between Dynamic URL’s and Static URL’s on a site, and which is better for SEO.
Answer: The important part is they can describe the difference, and communicate the use of each.
Ask them what they do to stay on top of Google and other Search Engine changes that could make a difference for your rankings.
You would like to hear how they track all of the changes they make with SEO clients, as well as all the off site SEO practices to establish the value of each, and that they subscribe to several national SEO sites and associations, as well as track changes through the Google blogs.
And ask them if Face book, Word Press, and Blogger.com are follow or no follow links.
Answer, Face book: no follow, Word Press is No Follow, Blogger.com Follow
If they can get through those questions, it’s time to do one more test. Ask them for three sites they have done the Denver SEO on that are currently ranked on the First page, and the keywords. And make sure these are recent!
It’s really the same thing. In our sales coaching, one of the main topics is how to sell more through business relationships.
Local SEO is just an extension of that principle. Your site needs to “build good relationships” with other local and national sites to attract attention.
In business you want to first, build great relationships with your current customers, and then build strategic relationships with other companies that can promote your service, and in turn you can promote theirs.
The bottom line on building better positive relationships in business is finding ways to support your customers and network in new and valuable ways.
Ask not what they can do for you, but ask what you can do for them.
A good step would be offering to write a letter of reference for their services, and allowing them to post it on their web site. Testimonials are an important part of building trust, and they should jump at the offer. It’s good for their site and company and if you add your business information to the testimonial include your web site, and that’s a plus for your SEO.
I truly believe that the way you advance your business is by helping others advance theirs. And just like with good local SEO, make sure you chose the companies you promote carefully, as you will be judged to an extent by their reputation.
What you want on your site is fresh and good content. Site owners that just swap information from other sites or Blogs don’t do much to bring up the bar (so to speak) for good content.
Fresh, original and new…. those are great marketing concepts, and very good for S.E.O. as well.
