WDTalk

Revised Oct 13, 2011

As a rule of thumb – broad markets invite fierce competiton. Search queries that return in the tens of millions of results are going to be hard to rank on page one of any search engine. Why is that important even if you actually are selling to a broad market?

Online buyers are spending billions of dollars annually – and if not with you, certainly with your competition. The good news is that broad markets can be broken down into niches, with each niche targeted to draw buyers to your site. The key here is to do keyword research to determine the exact niche prospects are (currently) searching for, then optimize your site (using those keyword phrases) to increase your conversions.

Tweaking your site – to take advantage of current trends can be as simple as adding a URL and title description to exactly match the extended keyword phrases that are ranking highest (today).

As an example, I just this morning did keyword research  – on fitness equipment, which is a fairly broad market. Apparently, fitness equipment is searched for 82,000 times per month on Google. Drilling down, I saw that the extended keyword phrase of home fitness equipment drew 4,400 queries. If my site targeted fitness equipment, I could create a page with the URL of www.(yourdomain).com/home_fitness_equipment/  and include “home fitness equipment” in its title tag. Time and time again, I’ve seen this SEO strategy help sites with low (or ZERO) PageRank and minimal backlinks outrank sites with high PR and thousands of backlinks.

If you’re running a WordPress site – beware. The default for creating URLs looks something like ?p=1237. Sure your site may be indexed, but how many buyers are searching for 1237? By simply changing the default to Month/Name, the URL could look like /2010/08/home-fitness-equipment. If you’re searching for a custom title tag plug-in for WordPress, read the comments first and check it’s compatibility with the current WordPress version.

Increasing traffic is key – but great content and compelling calls-to-action take the reigns once your site is found. To optimize your conversions, you need all three ingredients.

Image certainly impacts other’s perception - of your business. When you offer solutions, do your prospects actively listen?

Your company’s style of communication - can influence how prospects view your products and services, and can enhance or adversely lend to any long term partnership (alliance) possibilities.

Sales Diplomacy - When your sales department is challenged, overwhelmed or put on the spot, are they thoughtful and diplomatic in their interactions? Do they respond in a professional manner, even when clearly outside their comfort zone? How well they communicate directly relates to their close ratios. Closing  percentages need to be measured against your Return On Investment (ROI).

Professional image impacts sales - How prospects read your company impacts their perception of your credibility, and ability to deliver solutions. Your sales department needs to know when and how to use diplomacy, when and how to be tactful … and they need to understand the concept of credibility.

Your image as a company – to be perceived as professional, should be addressed in your business plan, measured and tweaked frequently.

Always provide value - The psychology of selling transcends to the psychology of writing online content for revenue producing websites. Essentially, every prospect is searching for what’s important to them and their organization.

Whereas in person, you can tailor - your pitch to their personality traits, like number crunchers or socialites – online it’s impossible to know who has found your site. The common denominator is always VALUE to the end user.

Tell them what’s in it for them - Reaching across a broad spectrum of personality types means touching as many of their senses as possible; sound, taste, touch, sight and smell (or the perception of those). Rarely does selling on price alone work.

Ok, so we can’t taste a dedicated server or smell shared hosting - but wording can sway a prospect’s motivation. Conor Treacy gave a great example in a thread on Hosting Discussion – instead of, “we sell lawn mowers,” use “buy a mower that will make your neighbour @#*^ themselves with envy.” Be descriptive without going over the top, addressing the basics of how, who, why and what. Show how your solution has helped other businesses or organizations just like theirs. Tell them what’s in it for them.

Marketing is critically important - to jump-start any new business. Broad access to cutting edge technology has made it increasingly possible for start-ups to compete with established brick and mortar establishments.

Understanding your market - What niche do your competitors own? Would you fare better competing for that niche or creating your own? What will make you remember-able in your prospects eyes? What value could you add to entice them to go with your firm or organization?

Constantly refine your strategy - Once you’ve settled on your initial marketing strategy, tracking and measuring its success is essential. You can’t grow your business on a marginally successful strategy. Marketing strategies need to be refined, to eliminate what doesn’t work from what shows promise.

New businesses are created every day – that could use your products or service - Every new business has to procure products and services somewhere, and if not from you, certainly from your competitor. If you’re not reaching out to every newly registered business in your local community, you’re missing out on a huge sector of the market. And it’s so easy to find them. Every new business in the U.S. has to register with their respective Secretary of State. These registrations are farmed by local chambers of commerce and directory services. I’ve seen lists that sell for as low as fourteen cents per contact. In many cases, one new client from that list could pay for an entire campaign.

Once you’ve established your niche - tweak your approach and close techniques, identify what works and repeat that over and over and over and over. Persistence is key.

Is your in-house IT department prepared – for brown outs, black outs, personnel shortages, ISP issues, internal and external sabotage, equipment failures, new regulations (email retention) and a whole host of other issues?

Recently, an Internet forum with – thousands of members was hacked, and in the process the criminals deleted their backups, stole email and credit card information, then disseminated it across the Internet. Could this happen to your in-house network? Hackers are constantly on the prowl looking for openings to exploit internal networks as well. Is yours protected?

How would you as an owner know if your IT department was prepared? Do you have disaster recovery and business continuity plans in place? Are they routinely reviewed and updated? Do you strategize with your IT personnel, or do they basically run the show? If they said you needed to be PCI DSS compliant, would you know what they were talking about?

Managing IT for multiple departments requires some give and take - Is your IT department empowered to make smart decisions? Not all IT geeks are business savvy, so my question to you would be, “Do your departments talk to each other?” HR certainly has unique requirements, as do Sales, Customer Support and Admin. Do they operate in a vacuum or together as a cohesive unit? An appropriate amount of give and take between departments increases awareness of your business’s core focus and mission.

I read a lot – of articles everyday. Some strike home harder than others. I read something this afternoon that took me back to the ’80′s and my fist formal sales training in Chicago. It reminded me that you can’t be everywhere at the same time, but you do have to be on your prospects mind, in some manner, when they’re ready to buy. How that happens is what separates average sales reps from sales champions.

Prospects more often buy – from a sales rep or company they know, like and trust. Even though it seems that everyone buys on price alone, many successful reps and businesses sell on value, offering business class solutions that fill a void, resolve issues or provide a growth opportunity.

I’ve heard that sales is simply a numbers game – spread the word, maximize appointments, make the appropriate number of proposals, then statistically expect a resulting number of closed deals. If only it were that easy. There is a psychology to sales. Certainly, getting yourself out there is important. Keeping yourself out there is so much more important. By that, I mean when the time comes for that prospect to pull the trigger, will you be in their sights? If they’ve opt’d in to your monthly email broadcast or have a scratch pad with your picture and contact info on it sitting on their desk, would that help put you on their short list? Being in the right place at the right time should not be an accident. It should be a strategic component in your overall plan to augment your sales efforts.

Drive business with social networking

Social networks are essentially online communities. Their success has translated into business opportunites, and have rapidly become a vital ingredient in diverse marketing strategies. So what are some of the reasons businesses have taken this plunge?

Increased Customer Loyalty: Loyalty and sales increase tenfold (as churn nose dives) if you consistently share quality knowledge base information in a format your clients can relate to. It allows for dynamic colaboration with prospects and clients beyond the scope of your corporate website.

Additional Revenue Streams: Social networking sites can be monetized in a variety of fashions, e.g., micropayments or partnerships, but social networks tend to be more content focused, diverting drift from the distraction of ads.

Branding Opportunities: Design your network to be customer-facing and customer-centric, thus expanding opportunities to promote your goods and services.

Enhance Customer Support: Are you looking to raise the bar from satisfied customers to ‘Raving Fans’ – clients who will advocate your products and services in the industry? Social networks are a great support resource. Raving fans invite their friends, share their stories and promote your business for you. Peer-to-peer recommendations on social media platforms are worth their weight in gold.