Create Demand By Learning How to Make Your Website Perform

This is the webinar of the year which we’ve put together for you.

In it, Rebecca explains how to find out if your website is performing using 3 simple free testing tools.  You should do these tests now and see if the results match your expectations.

  • How to run a website (design and functionality)
  • Top 3 website frustrations business owners have and how to solve them
  • Top tips to get your website generating leads
  • 3 Free tools to test your own website to see if it’s performing (or not)

 

Good copywriting for membership websites

This month we’re working on two clients both with membership businesses.  They need strong copywriting on both their home page and the landing / squeeze page where the pitch for members is made.

We got out and tried to find some good examples of membership sites where a really compelling landing page lays out the offer and the benefits.

It was surprisingly hard.

I had hoped that Copyblogger would be good – but despite moving much of their content behind an email registration wall, the old landing page is no longer there – maybe they’re so well known that the benefits are no longer needed.

We did find some….

Blogging Concentrated Prime

A subscription service for monthly coaching and education on all aspects of blogging for profit – this page really lays out the details of what a member gets and shows archive material which is also available to each new joiner.  The video welcome is a nice touch.

Blogging Concentrated Prime membership area

Blogging Concentrated Prime membership area

Tom Poland’s 8020 Center

A totally different approach is used by expert business coach, Tom Poland.  He uses a letter form to make a strong offer in the headline and a personal offer – with a guarantee.

Tom Poland's 8020 Center offer

Tom Poland’s 8020 Center offer copywriting

EConsultancy and Digital Marketer

Both offering education services to modern marketers, these sites have a near-identical page layout and copy style.  Interestingly, the DM list of advisory courses look like individual tiles, but they all go to a letter-style long copy landing page from the founder, Ryan Deiss.

Econsultancy landing page copywriting example

Econsultancy landing page copywriting example

Digital Marketer landing page copywriting example

Digital Marketer landing page copywriting example

 

Got any other examples?

Can Staff Destroy your Brand using Social Media

We had a great event with MyHR this morning to answer this question for business owners.

Clue – the answer is “yes”!

The longer answer is that it will probably only be a total destruction if you do not have clear policies in place or if your company has something to hide and is not clearly communicating to customers, staff, stakeholders and shareholders.

The slide decks by Rebecca Caroe and Jason Ennor are below.

Watch the video on the Creative Agency Secrets YouTube Channel.

Any questions – please get in touch.  We are happy to offer a free 20 minute phone chat to prospective clients.

Amplify Podcast logo

Amplify Podcast features Rebecca Caroe

The blogging concentrated team runs the Amplify podcast and invited me on as a guest last week.

Amplify Podcast logo

Amplify Podcast logo

We talk about bookmarking services – our favourite ways of saving and sharing web links and also tech companies in #Dunedin.

Listen to the Amplify Podcast episode (25 minutes).

Why appear on Podcasts?

I was curious about how the Blogging Concentrated team used podcasts and other podcasters as an active part of their marketing promotion strategy and tactics.

Dan Morris told me that by approaching podcasters and getting featured on their shows it helps them reach new audiences.

Like Creative Agency Secrets – there are a large potential audience who would like to use our marketing advice but cannot afford to pay or would prefer to implement the marketing themselves.  Offering a podcast with tips and advice is a great way to serve this part of your audience.

We have three offers for Creative Agency Secrets – everyone fits into one of these groups.

  • I want free marketing advice
  • I want to be trained or coached in how to do marketing
  • I want marketing to be done for me
CAS_apple

Creative Agency Secrets Apple icon

Our entire website is structured around pathways to guide the reader into one of these.  Click the apple and orange image on our home page and explore for yourself.

Why accountants teach clients how to switch firms

I came across a curious slide deck recently called “How to Switch Accountants” published by an accounting firm.  Now why would a firm choose to tell their clients how to move to another service provider?How to switch accountants

Thinking more deeply it was immediately clear – this firm was using sophisticated psychology in its marketing.  Let me explain

When you’re dating, how do you find good dates?

Think back to when you were actively seeking a life partner.  Remember all those conversations with friends when you groaned “All the good looking ones are already with a partner”?  or “I just get hit on by the ones I don’t like!”.  And of course, once you had found a partner, it seemed that the reverse was true!

Well the same applies to businesses who are courting new clients – those who seem to be desperate and will “go out” with any prospect only attract the ugly ones – yet those who exhibit the reverse characteristics seem to magnetically attract great new clients.

That was what this firm was doing.

Attracting great new clients by showing such confidence by telling their existing clients how to leave.  The clients CAN check out other providers, but the firm is so sure that they won’t like what is on offer elsewhere, that they either won’t try leaving or will come back fast.

The slide deck also includes a comprehensive list of questions to ask your new accountant under headings like

  • Determining they are who they say they are
  • Meeting your needs now and in the future
  • Valuing your business – will they stick with you
  • Staying current

Hats off to Alliott Accountants for having the confidence to publish this marketing tool How To Successfully Switch Accountants.

What can your firm do?

You may not feel ready to publish a similar document.  But here are 3 things you can do now to check your own firm’s perception by prospective clients:

  1. Get a friend to ‘mystery shop’ your firm – ring up and see what happens when they say they’re looking to switch accountants.  Better still, call at 5.05 pm on a Friday.
  2. Review all the marketing literature you have and see whether it accurately portrays your firm’s services, people, skills and areas of expertise
  3. Do a client survey to see what (un-prompted) actual clients say they think your firm is good at.  And does it match 2 above?  Also do this to people who stop using your firm so you find out why they switched.

Need accountancy marketing help?

Creative Agency Secrets are experts in accountancy firm marketing.  We can tutor you and teach you what to do if you want to do the marketing yourself.  Or we can do the firm’s marketing for you.

Learn more and join our free Accountants Marketing Newsletter

How do you know that your business website is performing?

Business websites are no longer a ‘set-and-forget’ business asset. Any website which you haven’t touched for months or years is depreciating faster than melting ice cream in summer. It is not helping your business.

The race to perform on Google was thought to be an un-winnable chase for small businesses who don’t have huge marketing promotion budgets.

That is no longer true.

All businesses run on Key Performance Indicators and so today I am going to run through a few important measurements that you can use to see if your website is performing well.

Going Web Mobile

The first one – and the most important is mobility. Google has announced that it will be including mobile-friendliness as part of its algorithm from 21st April.
Test your website here 

If your website fails the test – get in touch with your developers and build a mobile friendly website.

Machine readers for key words

The second one is a quick test to see how a “machine” reads the words on your website. We all know Google, Bing and Yahoo are search engines. What we forget is that engines aren’t human. When machines read web pages they find different emphases than we humans do.

Here’s a test you can do – take the words from your website home page and paste them into the Open Calais Viewer  Click ‘submit’ and then they tell you which words and phrases a machine thinks are important in what you’ve written. If those words are not the most important key words for your website – re-write them until they align.

Clever humans have written another machine reader which also shows sentiment analysis – what subtle messages are communicated using the tone of voice and context of your home page texts. Take the same words and paste them into Alchemi API Language . The keywords tab on the left is colour coded to show positive (green), negative (red) and neutral (grey) sentiment. The size of the squares shows the perceived importance of each phrase.

Expert copywriting for the web combines both human and machine reading – it’s very worthwhile getting these right.  Creative Agency Secrets are copywriting experts.

If you can write clearly about what you do, show off pictures and short articles and work with social media, email marketing and old-fashioned direct mail then your business can stand out.

Get local

Did you know that Google, as the premier search engine, is getting increasingly local? You do not have to compete with a huge national firm who does the same thing as you. It’s easy now just to set your search horizon to the local geography that you serve.

Let me prove it to you. Open up a search engine (Google, Yahoo Search or Bing) and search for “Your business name” and “Your suburb”. Do you show up? Probably yes.

Now change the search to “Your business type/profession” and “Your suburb”. Same answers? Or not?

Narrowing the search terms you show up for allows local businesses to shine as beacons to the local prospective customers they want to work with. And for New Zealand business owners, this is a godsend. Google’s Webmaster Tools are free supports that allow you to register your physical location with them so you can include a Google Map with a red pin at your location. Then customers can easily find your premises and load directions into their mobile phone maps for driving directions.

The hard part of web marketing

There was always going to be a “BUT” in this article…. well here it is.

You cannot get the search results you want with a static website that hasn’t been updated or changed for months.

This means that business owners need to learn how to rub and maintain their websites, just like driving a car – this means acquiring a knowledge of how to present your business to its best advantage, how to show off your skills, how to find the right audience and encourage them to come to your website – not just once but over and over.

In short, you need to learn how to Drive Your Website.

We are running training during May 2015 in 5 cities in NZ to teach you how to do this.  Blogging Concentrated NZ starts on May 1st in Auckland and ends in Christchurch on May 9th.

Improve The Way Your Website Appears On Google

We’re often asked by clients when we begin working with them to increase their Google presence. So what’s the easiest way to do this?

Simply put – you need to help Google to help you.

Follow the steps below to increase the size of your “Online Real Estate”.

Map/Contact Details (The Red Boxes)

The easiest thing to do add to your “property portfolio” is create a Google+ Page for your business. Go to http://www.google.co.nz/business/ and register your business.  Chances are, Google has already added your site to their index and simply wants you to verify the information before it displays it as it does in the red boxes.

After locating your business (and verifying if need be) you’ll be greeted with your Business Google+ Dashboard. It’s here you can add phone numbers, office hours, address and map location.

Google_Meta_Descriptions

Sitelinks (The Yellow Box)

Most sites don’t have what is known as “Sitelinks” when you search for their business. These are drawn from Google’s index of your website and are based on what Google thinks are the most important pages on your site.  Sometimes you and Google disagree on this!

Getting The Sitelinks

Enabling Google to index your site and enable Sitelinks is simple – submit an effective Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools and ensuring your robots.txt file isn’t blocking the pages you want as Sitelinks.

These steps assume you’ve already verified your site on Google Webmaster Tools (click here if you haven’t)

  1. Generate a sitemap.xml file (using either a sitemap plugin or a generator such as http://www.web-site-map.com/).
  2. Upload your sitemap to your site’s root folder (the URL will most likely be www.yourcompanyname.com/sitemap.xml).
  3. On your Webmaster Tools home page, select your site.
  4. In the left sidebar, click Crawl and then Sitemaps.
  5. Click the Add/Test Sitemap button in the top right.
  6. Complete your sitemap.xml URL into the text box that appears.
  7. Click Submit Sitemap.

Checking Your Robots.Txt File

  1. Still in Webmaster tools, under Crawl, click robots.txt Tester.
  2. At the bottom of the page, enter the URLs you want to be sitelinks and ensure Googlebot is “Allowed” to index them.

Choose Which Pages Are Linked

Although most of your site hierarchy is decided in the Sitemap (Google “page priority levels” if you’re not sure), how Google deals with multiple pages with the same Priority Level is purely random.

Therefore to make sure the ones you want to appear appear you have to “demote” certain pages from appearing. On the left menu under “Search Appearance” you’ll find “Sitelinks”. On this page you’ll be able to enter in the URLs of the pages you don’t want to be used as Sitelinks on your Google search results.

*Don’t forget to shorten the metadata description on the pages that are Sitelinks – most SEO guides suggest 160 characters or fewer – however for best results we try to use 90 (that way Google won’t shorten your description, cutting out important information).

Of course, if you’ve got any questions about setting these up or other best practices do please leave us a comment or Contact Us – we’re always happy to help!

Google Analytics Keyword “Not Provided” Workaround

Anonymous website browsing means it’s harder to track key word searches. This article will show you how to find what keywords visitors search to find your site and the removes impact of the “Not Provided” keyword results in Google Analytics. This workaround will import results from Google Webmaster Tools to Google Analytics.

Inside your Google Analytics you can see which search terms prospects are using to find your website.  Acquisition -> Keywords -> Organic.

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However with the rise of anonymous browsing, this means that Google Analytics can no longer track keyword searches as easily and so an increasing number of searches are now being displayed as “(Not provided)”.

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This situation is getting worse month by month as we track the analytics for our website and those of our clients.

A Workaround For Keyword Searches

Although not a perfect replacement, Creative Agency Secrets has found a work-around which can give you a good indication of what search words and phrases your website is showing up for and which are drawing visitors.

It involves Google Webmaster Tools.  You have to set this up for your website. Read more

Free training: What can we do to improve our Search Rankings?

The Blogging Concentrated team are coming to New Zealand in May from 1st to 9th 2015.  Creative Agency Secrets are their hosts and we are running one-day training events in Auckland, Wellington, Nelson and Christchurch for you to learn about how to make your business website effective as a marketing and sales tool.

Ahead of the visit, we organised 3 free training sessions for you to gauge the quality of training and to get you excited and signed up for the NZ events.

The first was yesterday – and here’s the recording for you to listen and share SEO Improving your Search Rankings.

SEO improving search rankings

Join us for the event in your city:

Each link page shows you the curriculum, the venue, the times and the amazing food you’ll be eating (only joking about the food – but it is amazing).

Join us for the next free advance taster event on April 13th on The Business Mindset of Blogging.  Sign up by clicking the “YES” I will watch button.