The Christmas rush is over. The returns are happening now, and you may already have plans or be chilling champagne for New Years night. But, what are your plans for starting the New Year right for your business?

Although a party is good and refreshing, your business is more important than a party held one night a year. While you know this, it is easy to think there is time to worry about it later. Now is the time of year to plan what your moves will be next week, next month, next quarter and next year. Once that is in place, enjoy that party without the worries.

You are a special breed of businessmen and businesswomen, called entrepreneurs. And even more important, you are a Stomper, which means we want you to have an extremely prosperous New Year!

While I am wishing you a prosperous New Year in 2012, I know you need the materials to increase your sales and income. Fortunately today’s post by Audrey Kerwood is about how you can keep your sales momentum rockıng after the holidays. These tips may seem small, but if you make them yours, you will start your year off with a bang!

Read the StomperTip and watch our exclusive video “Get To The Top Of Your Game: Ways To Achieve More With Less Effort” with Melanie Benson Strick  There’s no opt-in or anything.

Lee Collins
Managing Director
StomperNet, LLC

“Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.”

~ Hal Borland ~
American author and journalist

Keep Your Sales Momentum After the Holidays

By Audrey Kerwood

Just because the holidays are over does not mean your profit windfall has to be over too. It’ll involve some initiative (which we know you’ve got because you run a successful eCommerce store) and the normal amount of work you do for promoting sales and specials for your store. Think of it more as a continuation of your holiday promotions than a whole new set of work and ideas.

In this article I’ll lay out the things I do with my store and you can take the ideas and apply them to your products and markets.

You might think that it would be hard to persuade people to buy right after they’ve done so much holiday spending. But quite often people don’t get what they wanted as holiday gifts…or just not every single thing they wanted. Because they’ve been doing so much of it over the past few months, they are used to spending at this point… and now they have the chance to spend on themselves.

That’s where your “after holiday” profits come from. You’re offering discounted gifts for bargain hunters and for people to give to themselves.

Here are some things I do to keep the profits rolling in after the holidays:

Keep your holiday sales and promotions going.

Whatever sales you were running to get more out of the holidays will help you also get more out of the post-holiday season.  Keep the blanket storewide discount running – a coupon code anyone can use – but reframe it so it’s centered around the idea of “The Perfect Gift You Didn’t Get” or “Get What You Really Wanted This Christmas” or something to that effect.

As long as the discount is good you won’t need to do that much convincing to get people to feel entitled to buying themselves a gift. Get the word out about your post-holiday sales via newsletters.

Frame it around ‘The Gift You Really Wanted But Didn’t Get” or appeal to the bargain hunters with something like, “Huge After-Christmas Discounts”. One of the headlines I intend to use this year is “The Most Awesome Christmas Gift You Didn’t Get”. That particular newsletter is going to be focused on a single product, but it could work for multiple products, or even your entire store depending on how you want to frame your offer.

Talk to your vendors

Get on the phone with your vendors. Yes. Again. I know you did it just before the holidays to check stock; now it’s time to do it again.  Getting to know your vendors is a good investment in your business. You don’t have to be buddies with them, but it’s good to be on a first name basis and have them happy to answer when you call. Being able to strategize with your suppliers is a great way to get more out of both of your businesses.

Ask your vendors what products they still have a lot of stock on and promote these products as overstock sales.  You might be able to get a bigger discount on these products if your vendor is motivated to sell them. Let them know what you plan to do – show how you’re going to promote the products – so they can see how quickly you plan to move them. Remember – they’ll be interested in keeping their sales up too! If you can show them a way to do that, they’ll be open to helping you achieve those sales.

Don’t be afraid to propose ideas! A good vendor will take a vested interest in your store because they know the better you do, the better they do. The worse they can do is say no, so if you have an idea, put it out there. It may not be accepted “as is” but it will open a dialogue between you and your supplier and give you the chance to work together.

Use your store blogs to capture more interest.

Put up blog posts about your blanket, storewide post-holiday discounts. These can be very similar to your newsletters. Also post your single product promotions.

Be sure to put nice big pictures of the products you’re discounting and make the coupon code stand out so people don’t have to read the entire post or search your blog for it. The more you can put out there and the easier you make it for people to use, the more your post-holiday season will be a success.

Along those lines, use your social networks to get more people into the bargain craze or the “I’m buying it for me” mindset. I use sites like Twitter and Facebook to promote my holiday sales and so I’ll also be using them to promote my post-holiday sales.

Whatever avenues work for you during the holidays should be approached afterward as well.

Network, network, network!

When you talk with other business owners you’ll probably come away with a few ideas you didn’t have before. You get new perspectives! So a great thing to do in the New Year is to join a mastermind or attend local business meetups.

Just by listening to other business owners talk about what they do or how they handle certain things gives me ideas that I can apply to my stores. No one is an island and no one knows everything. So passing ideas back and forth with other business owners is one of the best ways to expand how you think about your store and sales process.

Just as you might be able to spot an issue or offer a new idea to someone else, they will be able to do the same for you. Having someone outside your business look at what you do can give you fresh perspective that can totally change your approach.

Whether it is a new tool that you find will help you get better rankings, a different line of thought around your Pay-Per-Click advertising, some constructive criticism about your site design, learning how others create and distribute coupons and sales, etc – joining a business owners group is another good investment in your business. I’m pushing this because the groups are out and ready to accept new members but a lot of eCommerce store owners think these groups are for Internet Marketers primarily focused on info marketing. Not only is this not true, it wouldn’t really matter if it was because…

You don’t have to work strictly with other eCommerce store owners! I mastermind with a group weekly where I am the only eCommerce person present. Sometimes some really cool advice or ideas come from people who are not enmeshed in the same things you are. They are not in the same box, let’s say, as you are so they can just throw ideas out there that aren’t constrained because they are not dealing with the same things you are on a daily basis. A broad range of views can help open up your way of thinking, which can lead to new ways of doing business.

So that’s it. Those are my main sales tricks for after the holidays. You have an oft-overlooked opportunity to sustain your holiday sales momentum and these are the basic steps I take to get the most out of my own products post-holiday. Do them all and I bet you continue profiting – even after the holiday rush has ended.

Video

Get To The Top Of Your Game: Ways To Achieve More With Less Effort:
By Melanie Benson Strick (FOH)

FLV / MOV / M4V

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Secret Sauce Checklist

Tips to keep your sales growing after the rush

• Use promotions like “The Gift You Really Wanted But Didn’t Get” or appeal to the bargain hunters
• If you sell physical products see what your vendors will discount to offer sales to customers
• Use your blog to promote your sales and increase consumer interest
• And now that your busy season is over, get out and network with other business owners

Stomper Buzz

Next Week’s Focus: Start the New Year Right

Stompernet Blog

Christmas is just a few days away now. But are you ready for the New Year? Are you ready for new income opportunities?

With a few modifications you can take one information product and turn it into multiple products that can reach a variety of people. For people who would rather listen in the car, tailor the products just for them. For visual people, you can have videos to learn from as they watch. Then rather than sell just one product, you are able to sell multiple products based on one.

But what about the customers that you already have?

We all know that it is much cheaper and easier to get your current customers to keep buying from you than trying to get new customers. One simple trick is to create products that are similar to what they already have.

Also, you might be surprised at how much a free gift can help keep your customers coming back for more. People just love free stuff. Just remember this free gift should be useful or give them a reason to happily remember you. But it doesn’t need to be expensive.

Follow up with them as well. Even things as simple as a welcome call or a how to use our product or service video can be the type of thing that keeps your consumers spending time and money with you.

These are all parts of this week’s theme:  Income Continutity. For you this means you get to hear the wisdom and advice of StomperNet that can keep income flowing into your business.

So stop focusing on one-time sales and you will have an income stream that grows as time goes by.

Talk soon and enjoy the resources below!

Ryan Taylor
Director of Operations
StomperNet, LLC

IMPORTANT:  Some of the resources shown are only available to members. With our all-new tiered benefit levels you can join us today for as little as $49.00and get instant access to the world’s largest SEO and Online Business community plus all the tools and resources you need (including upcoming free webinar replays) to enhance your existing business or start, build and grow a thriving Internet-based business!

To celebrate our 5th Anniversary,we’re doing something extra special for you…

Public Webinar Office Hours
TUESDAY December 20, 2011 ~ 2 pm Eastern

“Make Lifetime Affiliate Earnings… Gangster Style” with Dan Hollings

• Nothing will be sold on this webinar (it’s 100% free)
• You’ll receive a $10 Gift Certificate for attending.
• You’ll learn how to make money like Al Capone.

Dan says, “I’m going to resurrect the “good ol’ days” of affiliate marketing right before your eyes. I’m going to show you how (for a limited time) you can lock in a LIFETIME affiliate fee, on LIFETIME referrals, where every day your referred customers will be offered STUFF THEY NEED at deep, deep discounts – and you’ll get paid each and every time.”

Register Now

Special Announcements

Stompernet Blog

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just flip a switch and traffic would just start pouring onto your website? Imagine how many more sales you could make!

While there may not be a switch you can flip, there are ways to increase your traffic flow, which should increase your income as well. With a little planning and a bit of reflection on your consumers (a knowledge of their wants and desires) you can start building your traffic in a way that gets visitors to not only visit, but to come back often.

Building website traffic is about using strategic planning that creates not only one time visitors but long term visitors. One time visitors may or may not buy, but the more often those visitors come back to your website and become part of your regular traffic, the more likely they are to buy. Even if they don’t buy, with more visits, the more likely they are to recommend your business and website to people who need what you offer.

This week the topic is Traffic so you can learn what it takes to bring traffic in and get them to keep coming back. We have lined up great resources that you are sure to be able to work into your business website.

Talk soon and enjoy the resources below!

Ryan Taylor
Director of Operations
StomperNet, LLC

IMPORTANT:  Some of the resources shown are only available to members. With our all-new tiered benefit levels you can join us today for as little as $49.00and get instant access to the world’s largest SEO and Online Business community plus all the tools and resources you need (including upcoming free webinar replays) to enhance your existing business or start, build and grow a thriving Internet-based business!

To celebrate our 5th Anniversary,we’re doing something extra special for you…

Curriculum Resources

• Incubator:  Traffic – The Big Picture (Day 19)
• Incubator:   Traffic – How To Get It (Day 20)
• 3 Quick Affiliate Traffic Tips:  Erik Stafford

Forum Posts

• Improving Traffic on Blogs
• Methods to Build Traffic Quickly

Faculty Office Hours

THURSDAY December 15th, 2011 at 2:00pm Eastern

Q & A with Lee Collins
StomperNet Members:  Register Here!

Special Announcements

“StomperNet Open Forum” Fridays at 11EDT

We know everyone has questions about their business or different stumbling blocks. Well we invite you to bring them to the table during our Open Forum. With the combined training and experience of our Coaches you will get the direction you need to get you back on your road to success!

The next StomperNet Open Forum Call with our Professional Coaches happens next Friday at 11am EDT and we hope to see you there! These calls are intended to be live Q&A sessions and playback will not be available.

Stompernet Blog

Wednesday’s StomperTip included the article I wrote about monetizing your site, and today we have an article by Scott Martin. His view is a little bit different than mine, but the advantage of having different authors is that we have different points of view.

Scott came from the retail field, so he knows what it is like working with customers in a brick-and-mortar business as well as online.

These subtle differences can be used to improve each type of business, and just a few modifications can help your business grow into one that can create income from customers that you might have otherwise lost.

Isn’t it better to get money from customers later than have them walk away from your business without spending a dime?

Read on and you will see how you can get better conversions from your visitors both online and offline. 

Lee Collins
Managing Director
StomperNet, LLC

“The absolute fundamental aim is to make money out of satisfying customers.”
~ Sir John Egan ~
British industrialist

Nurturing Clients and Customers to Increase Profits

I used to work in a local store selling outdoor equipment and clothing. It was 21 years ago, well before email, the Internet, and digital marketing. There were three types of customers.

1. Customers coming to buy a specific item.
2. People ‘just looking.’
3. Shoplifters.

Thankfully, shoplifters were rare even though I once saw a large woman take three pairs of pants and stuff them under her expansive skirt. The store had a specific policy for dealing with shoplifters, and the managers trained us how to handle the cash register when making sale, but there was no policy for the ‘just looking’ visitors.

“Hello,” I would say. “Can I help you find something?”

“No thank you,” was the reply. “I’m just looking.”

End of conversation.

If the owner had really understood marketing, he would have trained us to get the potential customer’s name and address to add them to the database. If I had been the marketing manager, I would have purchased some outdoor books for 50 cents from a publisher looking to shift remaindered titles; I would have given a book away in return for data. I could have built a great list of about 3,000 people in three months. Convert just three per cent into lifelong customers who spend $200 a year and that’s picking money up off the floor.

You’re not going to get shoplifters visiting your site, but you’re going to get plenty of visitors who are ‘just looking.’ How can you convert the ‘just looking’ visitor to a customer who pulls a credit card out of their pocket?  I’ll show you how.

1. You MUST make an effort to collect an opt-in email and name from visitors.
2. Give the visitor five ways to opt-in: an autoresponder series; an eBook; instant access to a video; something else free (like a round of golf); a contest.
3. Salient information in an easy and proven way to harvest data.
4. Make it clear you will not share the data, since opting out is always an option.
5. Nurture the leads over time, and convert them to paying customers.

You would be surprised at how much data visitors will supply if you ask.

Andrew Wood, president and founder of Legendary Marketing, helps golf courses generate more business. Weddings are a massive opportunity for golf clubs and resorts. To harvest wedding leads, Andrew offers his clients a free 20-page wedding planner; to get the planner, the bride-to-be has to complete a form with 20 questions. This tactic generates a lot of highly qualified leads.

Will Swayne runs a successful lead generation company in Brisbane, Australia. His home page offers an autoresponder series, Seven Steps to Doubling Your Website Leads. Timely information can work extremely well, too. A friend is a social media specialist, and his website offers a free download about the latest Facebook trends and techniques; needless to say, he’s built a significant list.

Test, Then Test Some More

Using even the most basic tracking tools, you can see what type of opt-in rates you’re getting. If you’re NOT getting people to opt-in, change the offers. If you’ve got several ways to harvest data, see which method works the best and make sure it’s front and center.

Even Aweber, a popular autoresponder service, offers basic but effective A v. B testing. If you’re in the restaurant information business, test the following downloads.

• Generate instant 15 per cent revenue gain by getting your wait staff to upsell. Get FREE proven techniques here.
• How to create improved Sunday to Wednesday business using Facebook. Provide FREE proven techniques here.

Sometimes I’ll sign up for an autoresponder series and the series is disappointing. Before you offer a ‘Seven Part Series’ or something similar, make sure the content is riveting. For example, Will Swayne’s series is excellent and includes copy, videos, and podcasts.

You’ve Got the Data…Now What?

As you build your database, you need to keep people on the list and get them to buy. Again, content is king. I signed up for information from Bob Bly, the famous and accomplished copywriter. Every week, I get an email offering great stories about accomplished copywriters and/or free copywriting advice. Bly is trying to sell me something, usually an eBook. Will Swayne also nurtures his leads confidently, as does Andrew Wood. Bly, Wood, and Swayne follow the same strategy:

• Provide a useful nugget of information.
• Tie this information to the product or service you’re trying to sell.

Expand your media beyond the written word to include video and podcasts; both are relatively simple to produce. If you can hire professionals to create the content, you’ll get even better results.

So imagine if the ‘just looking’ visitors to the outdoor store received six postcards in six weeks after the initial visit. I’m confident the results would have been significantly better than simply letting the potential customer walk out the door.

by Scott Martin

Scott is a direct response copywriter with repeat clients around the world. Reach him at scott@scottmartinwriting.com or through his website www.scottmartinwriting.com.

STOMPER Speed Boost

To celebrate our 5th Anniversary,
we’re doing something extra special for you…

Secret Sauce Checklist

How to Nurture Clients and Customers:

• Collect names and emails
• Give them several reasons to give their name and email
• Test to see what works best
• Nurture them so they will turn into buyers

Stomper Buzz

Next Week’s Focus: Traffic

Stompernet Blog

By Michelle Chance-Sangthong

Greetings, Stompers! Let’s talk ‘pre-SEO’ strategies today, shall we? For many of you website owners, redesigning a website simply means putting a “new brand” on an existing site. You know, changing the colors, updating style and in the end, it looks new, but you really haven’t “changed” the site; you’ve simply improved its look.

In this article, we are not focusing on a site re-brand, we are going to re-visit specific “challenges” I’ve encountered on clients’ websites, and I will teach you a variety of ways you can avoid treacherous pitfalls in creating an SEO plan for an expired domain name or an existing website makeover.

When you’re beginning with a brand new site and brand new domain name, there is really nowhere to go but up. When you are redesigning a website, you could make some choices that may actually cause you to lose ranking if you don’t know that to look out for.

There are 3 simple goals when creating an SEO plan for existing websites or domain names:

- Preserve Site PR and Backlinks

- Protect Individual Page Rankings

- Increase Targeted Traffic

The “Used” Domain Name …

Recently, I had a client come to me very excited about finally acquiring the domain name that matched their corporate name exactly, AFTER they had already built a new website – on a new platform – with this “new to them” domain name.

I checked out the Page Rank and backlinks and quickly discovered that the thousands of backlinks had anchor text that was completely unrelated to my client’s services. And they were not reusing the pages that had the lion share of the “link love”. So, while the domain had “age” and “Page Rank”, it had NO REPUTATION even remotely related to my client’s services.

In other words, the domain was good for branding, but was not going to give them the instant SEO boost they had hoped for in their own market. This meant we actually had to do MORE link building to overcome the domain’s “old reputation” as we established a new one for them.

The Point: Get the history on a website before you buy an old domain name if you plan on using it for a “money site”. Knowing the full history of a domain name or website can help you leverage the page rank and reputation for faster success.

The Baseline …

One of the most important things you can do BEFORE starting any SEO plan is to have a baseline for the analytics. Know what’s ranking and how much traffic is being driven to the website. Think about it like this: you’d never start a diet without establishing what you were measuring. Some folks measure in weight, others in inches, and others in how certain clothes fit.

In short, you have got to know where you started to successfully measure your progress. In fact, I no longer start SEO activities right out of the gate if the website does not have Google Analytics, Google Webmaster code, and Google AdWords properly setup, installed, verified AND containing a reasonable quantity of data available.

In this scenario everything seemed right. Both Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools were verified, the site was receiving traffic and we created “starting” reports based on organic (non-paid) keywords and visitors.

The client “did their own” Google AdWords campaign and did not want us involved, so we ran our reports with non-paid results, to be sure we weren’t giving ourselves credit for the AdWords / Pay Per Click visitors. A few months passed and we were getting only mediocre organic SEO results. A conversation with my client helped me to discover that he in fact had been continuing to purchase AdWords, although the Google Analytics showed that all of our visitors were coming from NON-PAID traffic.

Note: Inside Google Analytics you can choose between total, paid, or non-paid traffic.

After receiving the clients’ permission, I investigated the Google AdWords account and discovered that his AdWords and Analytics were properly connected; however, there was one setting that was preventing Analytics from properly reporting AdWords (paid) traffic. The client had UNCHECKED Auto Tagging, which means that none of the traffic that was sent from AdWords was labeled as PAID traffic! This led us to discover that our Baseline reports were inaccurate AND that our subsequent reports were inaccurate, as well.

To re-establish the baseline traffic we used the traffic reports in Google AdWords, and we painstakingly went month by month and adjusted our prior reports to get the most accurate baseline and ongoing reporting we could. It turned out that much of the initial traffic on the site was Pay Per Click and not organic search traffic at all.

After re-evaluating the data, the work we had done for the client had generated a 700% lift in ORGANIC (non-paid) traffic to his website. We believe that he could not see the difference in his business because as he got “busier,” he was letting his AdWord spend decrease.

The Point : Make sure you have all your ducks in a row; you can’t accurately improve if you’re not measuring!

The Platform Shift …

In the past the actual redesign may have been as simple as changing the site colors and slapping on a new logo, but we have seen the advent of many new, SEO friendly platforms where the redesign is really a full reformat of the website, including category structures and page names: think Magento, Joomla, WordPress, Drupal and others.

In this last scenario, our client is moving from a web-based drag-and-drop editor to WordPress, and to make it more exciting, the client was doing pretty well in the SERPS (search engine results page). With the platform change the page names would have to change though. In this instance we had an opportunity to give their site better page names.

And because of this online editor many of their pages were named with simply numbers like http://www.sample.com/567456.html instead of a domain name with words like http://www.sample.com/great-keyword-for-a-page-name.html.

What is important to track? The Current Page Name, Title Tag, Meta Description and Keywords of the current pages AND the FUTURE page name that it will be on the NEW platform. Why does that matter? Because you’ll need to establish a 301 Redirect for EVERY SINGLE ONE of your pages on the OLD site to correspond with their replacement on the NEW site.

For instance, the old page may be http://www.sample.com/services.html, but with WordPress it may become http://www.sample.com/services/. (Stomper side tip : In WordPress there is a specific plug-in you can use to easily manage the redirects called Redirection from Urban Giraffe found here: http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/ .)

Once the redesign is complete (on a development server) and you’re certain that all the pages have been re-created and the appropriate redirects have been completed, it’s time to go live long and prosper!

Regardless of the platform, you need to create an inventory of the pages on the website so that you don’t lose your “ranking” results. You can use an online tool like XML-Sitemaps.com to generate a crawl of all the pages on the website, and then download a text file that you can open with Excel or other spreadsheet program to establish the tracking check list for the pages.

Throughout the years I’ve had the privilege of managing my own websites, and I’ve also earned the trust from my clients to work with them through their SEO planning and redesign. So remember: when you are creating your SEO plan for a new design on an old domain name, or when it’s time to upgrade to a great new platform, these simple steps should help you avoid a few of the pitfalls that can really hamper SEO success.

Going through the necessary ‘pre-SEO’ motions ahead of time can really save you a noticeable amount of time, money, and stress when you’re ready to really modify your campaign. Stomping the search engines is an involved process, but with a little practice, you’ll be an SEO wizard!

Michelle Chance-Sangthong has proven her ability to transform lackluster websites into dynamic profit-generators. Through her company, Red Hawk Strategies , Michelle is now offering consultations, workshops, and seminars that will help you increase your company’s marketing efficiency by making your website a beacon for your target audience. Contact her at michellechancesangthong@gmail.com .

SEO for Service Professionals:

by Darrin Mish

FLV / MOV

Stompernet Blog

While I enjoy working on web design, learning how others implement web design is an essential part of my continuing education. No matter how much you know about any niche, there are always new things to learn. Plus, it’s always good to keep your mind refreshed on the essential basics.

The article below is a great refresher of what is current. But even though the basics are somewhat dynamic, they modify as technology and people change. Yet the core elements of sales pages remain constant.

You always want to follow the best placement rules and good copy. Images have been a part of it for years, but now in the visual era, videos have become commonplace.

You want to reach potential buyers where they are and all of these features need to be added to your web design. If you want to turn visitors into buyers, the design needs to tell what actions to take, quickly and easily. All pages should be designed around the customer, not you.

Adam Stonehocker has more information to help your product page look great!

Lee Collins
Managing Director
StomperNet, LLC

“It is easy to fail when designing an interactive experience. Designers fail when they do not know the audience, integrate the threads of content and context, welcome the public properly, or make clear what the experience is and what the audience’s role in it will be.”

~ Edwin Schlossberg ~
Founder of ESI Design

4 Steps to the Perfect Product Page

By Adam Stonehocker, for Claim the Web

Your customer has navigated into a product page and is thinking about buying. What can you do to make sure that the customer purchases from you? Good content and information will make a big difference in conversion rates, but it’s important to focus on the right information. What information is found on a good product page?  Let’s walk through a few steps on how to create great selling product pages!

Step 1 – Keep it “Above the Fold”

Try to keep your content all in one easy-to-view page. The less scrolling that your customers have to do to investigate features and characteristics about your product, the better. Keep that “Buy Now” button in their view and always above the fold.

Many ecommerce sites now use a tab feature so that customers don’t get lost when scrolling down a page to find reviews, videos, color options and so on. This a great way to allow customers to keep their eyes on the product and the “Buy Now” button.

Step 2 – K.I.S.S. (Keep it Super Simple)

With product pages, less is more. Don’t clutter your page with paragraph after paragraph of descriptions, features and benefits of the product. Otherwise, you’re boring your customer! Keep the product description short and concise, organize your main selling points with bullet points, and make sure to label and organize common information like weight, dimensions, material (if applicable) and other common data related to your item needs to be organized and easy to see, not hidden in the text of a long paragraph.

Step 3 – Share with Social Media

Let your customers share your products on social networks! A simple tool like “add this” will greatly enhance your customer’s ability to show off their latest purchase. (Not to mention drive more traffic to your site.) If your current ecommerce software allows you to integrate social media into your product pages, make sure you turn the feature on, and that you link everything up to all your social media accounts.

Step 4 – Good Images and Video

Images and video are crucial to selling your products. Remember that customers cannot pick up your product, feel it in their hands, and hold it in front of them. Give them the next best thing: images and video. It’s great to have a static image of your item, but you also need additional images to show different angles of the product or to show the item in action with a lifestyle photo. Any video that can show the product in action or illustrate all the features and details of the product is essential.

If you have the right amount of content, you’ll keep your customer thinking, “Buy now!” And when you show the customer amazing pictures and video, you will see your conversion rates and sales increase.

Now that you’ve got great product pages, your customers are more inclined to purchase from you, rather than go check out the competition. Start to implement these 4 simple steps, and you’ll see your conversion rates increase and receive far less phone calls with people confused about the product that you’re offering.

STOMPER Speed Boost

To celebrate our 5th Anniversary,

we’re doing something extra special for you…

Secret Sauce Checklist

4 Web Design Tips to Convert Visitors to Buyers

• Remember to keep it “above the fold”
• KISS Keep it Super Simple
• Let them share it with Social Media
• Always use good images and video

Stomper Buzz

Next Week’s Focus: Setting Up Systems & Automating Them

Faculty Office Hours Next Week:

WEDNESDAY November 16, 2011 ~ 2 pm Eastern

“Strategic Thinking – Clarifying Your Thoughts” with Judy Whalen

Strategic Thinking helps you to explore options, get clarity and make good decisions.

Having trouble figuring out the next steps?  Not sure which way to go or what decision to make?  Join Judy as she shows you how strategic thinking can give you clarity, direction and confidence to pursue that direction. StomperNet Members Register Now

Upcoming StomperNet Public Webinars:

THURSDAY November 17, 2011 ~ 7 pm Eastern

“Setting Up Systems & Automating Them” with Dr. Lisa Lang

In this webinar, Dr Lisa will share the automated process they use to automatically generate leads.  She will share all the details of what they do, what technology they use and all the specifics.  Bring your questions about how you might get started with an automated system!

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by Mike Stewart

I never understood why, when the Internet first appeared on my radar, that when people look things up online…it was called “traffic.”

It’s not that I was exactly new to the marketing game. I owned and operated a successful recording studio from 1979 – 1999, producing advertising for radio and television for video producers and ad agencies in Atlanta. I worked for all kinds of clients. I created national, regional and local advertising for viewers and listeners of radio and TV.

When I first experienced the Internet, it – at first – seemed similar to radio and television. It was new broadcast medium, like radio was in 20’s and TV was in the 50’s. Except that the Internet is the most powerful broadcast medium ever created… and to make money you needed find viewers and listeners, or readers. The second step was to convert them to buyers. This was and still is a tough thing to do, with static, “text and images” only sites.

Yet I knew audio and video-driven websites were the next level coming “someday soon.” And that someday is today. It’s arrived! Thanks to faster computers and high speed internet connections reaching saturation in most homes of the world.

But no matter what kind of site they land on, when people are traveling around the Internet, it’s still called traffic. (Which I always found weirdly de-humanizing.)

Ok, we can call it traffic, but we’re still talking about human beings with eyes and ears. In the traditional broadcast industry, we knew that if you can prove you have an audience of viewers and listeners, you can make money by advertising to them. But that was reserved to the advertiser who had the budgets for production and airtime purchases, not the small business owner. Not anymore! The ability to use audio and video to build an audience is available to anyone willing to learn the steps.

Like you, right?

All the proven strategies of radio and television can help you build viewers and listeners to websites and video articles today area huge opportunity. Traffic, viewers, and listeners – it’s all the same thing: human beings who can find you online, decide to learn more about you and eventually convert to a customer. So here are my steps to use video articles to get traffic!

(Before I begin, I should quickly define a phrase you’ll hear me use a lot: Long Tail Keyword. A long tail keyword is a very targeted phrase that someone may look for online. It really narrows down the search to you, the more words you add to it. For instance, “lawyers” is not a long-tail keyword but “Atlanta DUI lawyer” is!)

1.List long tail keywords.

List all the long tail keywords you know could bring you a targeted viewer or listener. Long tail keywords can have high conversion rates if your businesses can solve the problems experienced by those visitors who are typing in those keywords. If people are searching Google for “lawyer”, that is way too wide and hard to optimize articles for that phrase. “DUI lawyer” is better, but “Atlanta DUI lawyer” is a long tail keyword that you could possibly get high rankings in Google for web pages, articles and video articles.

2. Write a title with long tail keywords.

Write an article with a title that includes those long tail keywords in the title. Using our example, something like “Atlanta DUI Lawyer –10 Ways to Avoid Jail in Georgia With A Skilled Atlanta DUI Lawyer” could rank you high when people search that long tail keyword phrase.

Make the content real, true, and compelling. If being an attorney was your business, an article with this information created with facts and passion could draw someone to visit your website for more information and possibly become a customer in the future. (They obviously have that problem if they were searching that phrase in the first place.)

3. Record as an audio.

Read your article aloud while recording the audio as an mp3 on your computer. There are many free programs available online that will allow you to do this. Combined with a USB microphone from an office supply store (or purchased online) you can easily use free software to record the information and save as an mp3 audio file.

4. Match with slides.

Once edited to a “perfect performance,” you can create slides of text to synchronize to the audio in Windows Movie Maker which comes standard on PCs or IMovie which is included on the MAC. Slides of text can be created in PowerPoint and saved out as JPEG stills that can be imported into the video-editing program and changed based on the timing of your reading. Just make bullet points from key points in your article and have the URL of your website at the bottom of the slide so that when someone finds the video, it is always visible how to find you online. The software will allow you to save the video as an AVI video file or a WMV video file which both can be uploaded to social video sites. We will talk about those in more detail later.

5.  Use software.

Another way to make a video article is use the software Camstudio 2.0, a free download from http://camstudio.org/, (PC only). Camstudio is a “screen capture video software” which simply means using a microphone, you speak and capture what is on your computer screen in real time. With practice, you can sync up PowerPoint slides to your speaking voice and instantly make video articles in just one take! Camstudio will save what you created as an AVI video file.

6.  Use a camcorder

Using a simple camcorder or netcam such as the Flip Digital USB netcam, you could look into the lens of the camera and recite your article in chunks for what is called a talking head video. With practice, you record the sections looking into the lens of the camera as close the camera’s microphone in a quiet room and you can get acceptable results recording the information.

Importing the video clips in to Windows Movie Maker or IMovie from your camcorder or netcam, you can then chain the clips into your article. The advantage here is you can overlay bullet points of text and have your website URL in the lower third of the video to build views and listeners to your websites, but more importantly, people are meeting and seeing you.

They are building a connection and relationship with you. They get familiar with you, and can begin to know, like and trust you. Now they are more likely to convert to a customer ready business with you. I know this to be true because in my own business as I have heard these real comments.

“ I met you on your website.” “I have been watching you for some time now, and I know you are someone who can serve my needs…I am ready to do business with you!” There is no way that would happen unless I had video online where people could virtually meet me.

7.  Hire a reader.

You also always could hire someone read and record your article. If that is your only option because you are not comfortable recording the audio yourself, you can easily find resources online for “voice talents.” But to keep the costs down, you can learn to do it yourself.

8. Upload to YouTube.

Take your video file and upload it to the social video sites like You Tube. You need to go to these sites and open up free accounts so that you can submit content to them. But once you do, you can get ranked high in search engines for long tail keyword phrases. It is worth reviewing uploading services such as TubeMogul or Traffic Geyser which are both services that will upload your videos to multiple video sites in one upload session. They save you time and gets you replicated all over the internet multiplying your chances of being found.

9.  Backlink!

Here is the magic and good news about video articles. Most video social sites allow you to create a link back to your website. It is important to include your URL of your website in the lower third of the video itself, but many sites like You Tube will allow you to have a clickable link back to the site you want viewers to visit.

What a huge FREE opportunity! You need to do both URLs, the one viewable in the video and the other that sites let you create the back link to your site from them.

Once they’re at your site, they can and will optin to your email lists… and more importantly become a paying customer for your products and services.

Video SEO

by Wilson Mattos

FLV

Stompernet Blog

My first year in college we had a dramatic professor who was the talk on campus. He was known for the fact that if you went up to him and asked him a question, he would give a completely unrelated answer.

It seemed like every day someone had a story about some question they asked him and the answer they received. The incredulous would be dared to go up to him and ask a question. It seemed he had a dual personality because as a professor his classes were animated, interesting, and filled with content.

In addition to our professor’s apparent dual personality between classroom time and free time, he also had a pet goose that followed him around campus!

Although the goose was not allowed in the buildings, he was allowed to wander around campus grounds. It was a short walk from the dormitories to the educational buildings. If the professor was around, the goose would follow him and be perfectly well-behaved. If the goose got loose however, watch out!

We learned quickly to look both ways and make the trip to the educational buildings as quick as possible, to avoid getting our ankles, or worse, bit! Unfortunately, the goose decided to take a swim in the lake and was frozen there during the first cold freeze of the winter. It was spring before we could bury him!

A year later we learned the truth behind the apparent dual personality. One day in class, our professor stood up and announced: “You know why I spent the whole entire last year allowing myself to be the butt of all your jokes? (Pause for effect.) To make your boring lives interesting and give you something to talk about!”

Whoa. He had a plan. He had a purpose. He had a goal. We all fell into his trap. Now the joke was on us. Were we mad? No. We were amazed at the man that could let a joke go on for one whole year!

Now to the point. Are your customers talking about you? We may not remember all of our professors, but we remember the ones that had the greatest impact on us.

Are you making an impact on your customers? What are your customers saying about your site? How can you make sure your customers will remember your site?

Step 1: Enter into the conversation.

Download Times

If your site takes too long to download, you won’t even get a chance to talk to your customers. Ever click on a search result that was taking forever to open? What did you do? You click stop or the back button and pick another site.

Make sure your site download time is minimal to enter the conversation with your customers. Under five seconds is great. Eight seconds is OK. But 10 seconds or more, is no longer acceptable. Having a faster download time might even help your SEO efforts! See the video interview of Matt Cutts at: http://tinyurl.com/yzxx7yh.

One easy to use tool to determine your download time is: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/ analyze.

It provides a great summary of exactly what files are causing your site to download slowly. Sometimes you can find files that you did not delete 100% from the code, or links that are pointing to graphics that no longer exist.

Step 2: Meet them at their level

Browser Compatibility

Ever talk with a child? What do you do? You get down and look at them on their level. You meet them where they are. Browser compatibility is you getting on the level with your customers. Don’t make a Web site that is only compatible with Netscape!

One great tool to check compatibility is: http://browsershots.org.

Step 3: Consistency is key

Page Layout

Don’t have a dual personality website! Be consistent with your site so your customers will always know what to expect.

A conventional layout is much more likely to make sites profitable than an unconventional layout. According to Jakob Nielsen, “Web users spend 69% of their time viewing the left half of the page and 30% viewing the right half.”

Using a conventional layout with a left side navigation will make your site not only more usable, but help increase time spent on site and, subsequently, the conversion rate of a site. Test it out with tools such as Google website optimizer or StomperStorm and take time to do a quick A/B test to improve your conversion rate.

Step 4: Have some substance

Content

Ever met someone you thought was just amazing? The most amazing people out there have a wide variety of interests, backgrounds and experiences. They have traveled to another country. They have done something that we don’t dare to do ourselves!

They are the conversation starters at social gatherings. Your site should be the conversation starter! Your site should have amazing content that inspires your visitors to want to read more.

Within the content area of your site, make sure you always put your best stuff first. Although saving the best for last might be the rule in some cases, in usability it is important to make a good impression first!

Some Content Tips:

• Start your content with the best information first.
• Make content easy to scan.
• Use consistent colors and fonts.
• Use a consistent page layout or template.
• Make sure your links work.
• Content should be recent and relevant.

Start your content with the best information first.

When publishing articles on a blog or information site, you can have an article such as: “Top 10 Ways to…” and make number one the best one. Ecommerce sites should have their best product photos and pictures at the top, and on their homepage. Information marketers should have their best testimonials or best guarantees at the top of the sales page.

Make content easy to scan.

Break up your content into different headings. Put the headings in bold. Make it easy for your customers to find the information or product they are looking for easily. Leave the long paragraphs for print books!

Internet users are accustomed to finding the information they are looking for quickly. If you can’t provide a solution for their problem NOW, they will move on to the next site.

Use consistent colors and fonts and use a consistent page layout or template.

Don’t make your customers guess if they are still on the same site! Although your site layout should be consistent, changing out the graphics and maybe even the colors on a site wide basis could increase time on site or conversion rates. Test it out!

Even Google changes its logo on their home page once in a while. What happens when they do? Front page news. Everyone talks about it. When you make a major design change on your site, your customers should notice and talk about it. It should be something different from the norm.

Make sure your links work.

Check your links and also make sure you have a custom 404 page. On your 404 page have a form for your customers to fill out to report the broken link as well as links to the major categories or sections, and a clear path for them to take to get back to where they were.

Content should be recent and relevant.

Everyone likes new and recent. Be the site that updates content continually. Be the site that is a source of constant, fresh, relevant, newsworthy stories. Usability is about providing the right content to your users.

Providing recent and relevant content will increase the time spent on site dramatically. This is especially true for blogs and news sites. Also include multi-media in your content. Have a wide variety of photos, videos and audio to break up your content and attract the user.

Step 5: Be approachable

Contact Info

What do you think about the guy with his arms crossed and a grumpy frown on his face at dinner parties? Is he the one you are going to approach?

Be approachable. Have contact information on your site so your customers can contact you if needed, or even if they just want to make sure that there is someone on the other end of the phone if there is a problem with the order they are about to place.

Your site cannot pass the site usability test without contact info. Some contact info to include is your phone, email, address, and fax. If you don’t want to be that accessible, at the very least have a form on your site that customers can fill out. But please make sure that form actually gets delivered to an email address someone is going to check!

Set it up so they will receive an automatic email telling them the form was submitted successfully and that someone will be contacting them shortly.

Take Action

You can have the website that everybody talks about. Give them something they can remember. Give them good content, great design, fast loading pages. Just don’t be like the goose, and stay frozen in the lake until spring comes!

Summary

There are many things you can do to make your site user friendly. To recap:

Step One: Enter into the conversation: Check your download times and clean up your code.

Step Two: Meet them at their level: Make sure your site is compatible in different browsers.

Step Three: Consistency is Key: Be consistent in your site design and layout.

Step Four: Have some Substance: Update your site with fresh and relevant content on a regular basis.

Step Five: Be Approachable: Provide multiple ways for your customers to contact you.

by Nicole Munoz

Nicole Munoz is a full-time internet marketer and SEO expert. She offers SEO consulting and SEO services at www.stompermom.com and www.startrankingnow.com. She’s also a moderator for Stompernet.com. To read her recent article “Lessons in Usability from Apple.com, Dell.com, and BestBuy.com!,” be sure to check out her site: www.stompermom.com/usability.

Site Speedup with James Shaw & Eric Shannon

FLV / ZIP of MOV

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If you want to make a Resolution that will help build your business and improve your promotional campaigns, repeat after me: “Whenever, I write a press release, I will ALWAYS include hyperlinks.”

To Stompers, this is probably a no-brainer…

But Business Wire, one of the major press release distribution services, says only about 13 percent of the press releases it distributes have hyperlinks. People either forget to include them or are unaware of the three most important reasons to use them:

• They improve your search engine optimization.
• They drive traffic to your website.
• They amplify your message.

Used correctly, links can also push consumers to take the action you want them to take, whether it’s buying a product or calling for a reservation. Here are 16 ideas for linking from your press releases. You can use anchor text hyperlinks anywhere within the release, but be sure you have one or two in the first two paragraphs:

1. A sales page

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t promote from within releases because you’ll offend journalists. Truth is, we write online press releases primarily for consumers, not for journalists. These press releases seldom prompt journalists to cover our story. For that, we must deliver a customized pitch, not a one-size-fits all press release.

2. A video

Announcing a new product? Link to a video that demonstrates how to use it. Promoting an upcoming event? Include video clips and highlights from last year’s event.

3. Testimonials

Don’t just link to written testimonials with photos. How about an entire page of video testimonials which are much more effective?

4. A blog post

If the press release is about a controversial topic you’ve already addressed at your blog, provide the link where readers can join in the conversation.

5. Another press release.

Link to a press release either at your website or on one of the press release distribution sites so readers can learn more about a sub-topic.

6. A podcast.

People have different learning styles, and a link to a related podcast will help auditory learners. They might even be inclined to subscribe to the RSS feed.

7. Your online press room.

A press room isn’t only for journalists. It’s for consumers and anyone else who wants to learn more about you. It can include video, audio, your bio, photos, background information and other content.

8. Your social media profiles.

Let readers know where they can follow you on Facebook and Twitter. Link to your YouTube channel, or photos on Flickr. Be sure to mention why they should follow you.

9. An opt-in box.

Build your list by leading people to a landing page where they can opt in for a special report, eBook, list of tips, a video, or other helpful material.

10. A book you’re selling on Amazon.com.

Why pass up a chance to use your press release to sell?

11. FAQs.

FAQs give readers a great opportunity to learn more about a product, service, cause or issue and help you keep the press release within a reasonable length, about 500 words.

12. Photos and graphics

These can be photos at your website, or on Flickr or other photo-sharing sites. Make it easy for journalists and bloggers to access your photos. Graphics can include pie charts, bar charts, graphs and maps.

13. A page where readers can submit a question.

A great way to generate leads!

14. Customer reviews

These reviews don’t necessarily have to be at your website. You can link to reviews on sites like Yelp or Amazon.com.

15. An online catalog

If the press release is about only one product, link to your catalog so customers can see what else is available.

16. A link to your website

Include a link, not a hyperlink, to your website, preferably high in the release.
I’ve given you lots of ideas here, but don’t go overboard. A good rule of thumb is one hyperlink for every 100 to 150 words.

If you’re linking to pages at your website, be sure the page you are linking back to is optimized for your keywords. If the anchor text is “weatherproof patio furniture,” make sure it’s linked to a page containing “weatherproof patio furniture” in the title tag and within the text on the page.

Use this list the next time you write a press release, and choose the type of hyperlinks wisely!

By Joan Stewart

Publicity expert Joan Stewart, aka The Publicity Hound, shares publicity tips at Twitter.com/PublicityHound and answers publicity questions at Facebook.com/publicitytips. Her tips and commentary have appeared in more than 60 books on marketing, publicity, social media and small business. She publishes “The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week” Ezine at http://www.PublicityHound.net. Subscribe and receive the handy cheat sheet, “89 Reasons to Send a Press Release.”

Press Releases – Another Piece Of The SEO Puzzle

FLV / MOV / MP4

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At the same time, they shy away from it as the costs involved could represent a big expenditure on their businesses. PPC traffic costs for known keywords are not cheap any more and so most people tend to lose money on it.

Is there a way to eliminate monetary risks as much as possible with PPC traffic?

There are three key ways to accomplish this. If you stick to these core principles you will be able to create campaign after campaign, expanding your wealth accordingly.

1. Use desperate keywords

Do not pick generic information keywords. Keywords like “free information on (keyword)” , “No cost (keyword)”, do not guarantee a purchase but a gathering information search activity.

Instead, go for words like “comparison”, “buy”, “review”, etc. Also, use model numbers, book names and name of authors to get the best results.

These are the usual keywords people type in when they are ready or close to the purchasing cycle so you should concentrate on them for a better return on your PPC investment.

2. Testing and tracking for best results

Once you know where your money is being spent on advertising, you will be able to make changes that will greatly contribute to better returns of your money. Which clicks turned into sales and which ads get the most clicks and sales are only some of the methods used to gain control of your PPC campaigns.

If you do not have enough information on it, you will be running your PPC advertising department blind. You will also be paying for clicks which do not produce any sales.

Interested people that click into converted sales is what PPC is all about. And that is where the money is.

3. Spy on your successful competitors

This is the best way to cover yourself against high costs and risks on your online advertising.

How often are they running their ads? What message are they using on their ads? Are they promoting other affiliate products?

These are some of the factors to look for when spying on your competitors. They are already spending their money so get some advanced knowledge by spying on them on a proper way.

Once you have those three points covered, you should be able to get ahead on the PPC business game and you will seriously minimize the costs and risks of online advertising.

Do not forget to duplicate your efforts on additional campaigns once you have a winner. That is the right way of doing PPC advertising.

From The StomperNet Staff

“A Walk Through an AdWords Account & How to Interpret What You’re Looking at”

by Joel McDonald

FLV / MOV

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