How To Increase Sales - Online Sales Techniques

Part 2 of 3

Your Website is Your Online Asset—Find Out Why

-It showcases your online activity, depicts who you are, what your company does and is your most precious online asset.

Last time when I talked with you, I talked about what every Small Business Owner must know before they begin to build an effective online presence that gets More Leads, Sales and Higher Profits.

We talked about the internet being the greatest media marketing opportunity in history and we also talked about the Road to A Sale and the differences of Search Marketing versus Traditional or Intrusive Marketing.

This is Search Marketing, meaning they’re coming online looking to buy and they’re somewhere along the journey or the road to a sale.

I talked the importance of answering every question, doubt, fear, concern they had  on your website.

And I also talked about when they came onto your web site, that “Fear Of Loss” weighed heavily on their mind and “Hope For Gain” had little substance and by building “Trust And Relationship” with your  buyer, eliminating fear of loss and creating hope for gain for your product or services that the shopper reached a tipping point where they became predisposed to buying from you and either ordered online or contacted you directly, or came into your shop with the intention to buy.

Your Online Presence

Today what I want to talk about is your website or your whole online presence,

• how to create an online presence that works.
• how to make Google work for you.
• Have a clear understanding of the purpose of what your website should do, what it should look like or;
• Help Baby Boomer Business Owners  who are struggling with this “internet thing.”
• Explain the digital marketing principles without all the “geek speak.”

Your Virtual Shop Front

To help it make sense, think of your website as your physical premises, you know if you’ve got a shop, factory with a showroom or whatever the type of business that you may have, in your mind, imagine your website as your virtual business, it’s the “physical” online place where you’ve got your business.

Or you might be a tradie and you’ve got a van on the road or whatever with sign writing on it, etc. just get that picture in your mind of what it is, your online website is an online replication of your physical business.

It’s Not a Brochure

It’s not a brochure. Some people think that it’s just a brochure, well it’s not, and I hope on that last video that I clearly demonstrated that you’re actually taking them on a “Road to A Sale” and a brochure typically doesn’t do that, certainly most of them aren’t unless they know or understand good copywriting or Emotional Direct Response Marketing, but that’s another story.

Let’s look at your website.

As I have just said, imagine your website as your online physical location.
Let’s say your business is a car dealership, what you need to do is create a virtual new car showroom, a virtual used car yard, a virtual spare parts and a virtual workshop, so if they came to your physical location, it would look just like what they saw online.

And that’s the same with a motel or accommodation business, their fears, their doubts, their concerns and questions they have must be addressed.

They want to know what’s the bed like, the bathroom, is it clean? what’s it like for road noise? will I get a good night’s sleep? all of those questions you need to answer on your website. I hope you’re starting to get an idea or a picture of what your website should look like.

Web Site Fundamentals

I’m not sure whether we can get it all covered in this one video now, but if you look at your website, there’s some fundamental things that you need to know.

The Fold Line

When people look at a website on a device, the visible portion of the web site on the screen is called above the fold line. So, this piece of visible “real estate” above the fold of your website is very important.

This is very valuable real estate and you really need to think very carefully about what you’re going to place in this space.

Contact Details and Google Map

The other thing is that your contact details need to be up there in the top right hand corner. That’s where the eye typically goes and it makes it really easy for them to contact you when they are ready, So, have your email address and contact details there.

If your business has a physical location where your buyers can buy from you, it’s important to place a Google Map beside and it’s an interactive Google Map.

That means that they can just click on the map and they can instantly get directions on how to get to your place of business, plus make sure the phone number and email address are clickable links, so that means if they’re on a smartphone or whatever, that they can turn around and just click on it and be instantly dialing you, very important.

Page Headings and Page Navigation

Across the rest of it here, across your header, make sure you’ve got good, keyword relevant headings that they can read them quickly.

The site needs to be easy to navigate and intuitive because they’re not coming to spend a lot of time on your side, in fact you’re only just one fish in a big pond of businesses that they’re searching amongst to satisfy their needs.

They can just flick through web sites just like we used to do with the Yellow Pages, they just quickly flick through and you’ve got to be able to quickly catch their attention and get them to click onto your website and stay on your website, so make your headings and content above the fold is attention-grabbing.

“WIIFM?”

The other thing with your website content is WIIFM or “What’s in It for Me,” WIIFM.

They’re not interested about you and how wonderful you are, they’re interested in What’s In It For Them,

• can you solve my problem, my concern?
• have you got the answers for me?
• and I want it quickly?
• what’s your backup service like?

First Impressions Count

Now, in typical salesmanship or typical face-to-face selling, you have on average about five to seven seconds for them to engage with you or like you and they’re either onside with you or they’re offside with you in that first five to seven seconds. —First Impressions count!

Your website is not much different; in fact, some people say the time span is even less, but for this example, let’s say that we got five to seven seconds to get their attention. So when they come onto your homepage, very quickly the content must talk to them and tell them that you’ve got the solution to their problem.

In summary, you’ve only got five to seven seconds to capture their attention with “what’s in it for me?” solutions, it’s very important for you to understand the information that you are providing addresses their needs very quickly and it needs to be above this fold line.

How to Lure the Reader to Scroll Down

Now, the interesting thing is with this fold line is you need to have information whether it’s images or text or whatever and let’s say that’s text and you’ve got an image here.

What you need to do is have it in a way that it partially sits above the fold line and partially below the fold line so they know there’s more information on that page that they need to scroll down to see what is there.

Google Wants Good Relevant Content

Google loves good content and the thing about this and understandably so is that your content that’s in your headlines and on your homepage must immediately address what they’re looking for, or at least give them an outline and a promise that you have what they are looking for. Plus, the rest of your website needs to have good content on it as well and deliver the answers for them.

A Blog Page

Another thing is that you should have a blog on your website and what a blog means is it’s just a fancy internet terminology to say you’re writing articles and posting them on your website.

And ideally you should be posting a 400-600 word article once a week, some topic that would be informative, interesting and relevant to them about your industry.

Your buyer is looking for answers to questions they have and this makes its simple to write content, you write content that answers their questions about your type of service or product.

Once you are trained and understand the principles of writing content its become very easy to do.

Typically, your blog or your industry news will go down the side here and again extend below the fold line and that should be just headlines on the articles, so it’s just a one-liner headline, attention grabbing headlines so that they give them something to click on to.

Opt-In Box

And also what you should have on your site is an opt-in box where you’re collecting their name and email address. Now, I can’t go into all of the ins and outs of this, so I can only basically give you headlines with this because this is a topic that I can cover in a another video, today, I just wanted to give you a basic overview of some things that are real fundamentals to your online success.

Social Media Links

Now, the other thing is on your social media site, your social media site buttons, they should sit down the site or they can sit up the top and there’s typically about YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, other ones that are basic ones, so there’s about five or six that you need to be on.

Why Social Media?

Why do you need to be on them?
Because Google wants good relevant content and a good user experience for their customers. So, it’s important for you to understand to work with the system and if you’re in a competitive field like accommodation and stuff, these are must-do’s.

And don’t forget what I said in the first video, this is the greatest media marketing opportunity in history, this whole internet online presence, digital marketing et cetera, et cetera.

This is massive as I said to your earlier, 100% increase in a motel, 150% increase in a potato cake manufacturer, dominating nationally the marketplace. So don’t underestimate the power of what this stuff can do and when I start talking about the things you need to do, don’t feel overwhelmed or burdened with it.

The reality is, this is where the money is and you’ve got to ask yourself what would 100% increase do for your business, because the results typically are outstanding for those that do it right and even if you bring it down, what would a 50% or 25% or even a 10% increase do to your business, so don’t look at this as to how much work it takes to do. Look at how big an opportunity it is.

It’s a mind shift that you need to have, you need to be looking at “how much money can this make?”

Your Major Marketing Spend

And for me, I would virtually not spend any money anywhere else on advertising and if I did, it would be very minimal and it would be all used to drive traffic to my online presence because the exciting part about your digital presence or your online presence is it’s 24/7.

If you set it up properly, you’ve got a salesperson that works for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year and the results can be outstanding, I see it happen over and over and over and over and over.

Mistakes Most Web Designers Make

With your website, there’s some basic things you need to understand on colour schemes and everything else. Don’t use fancy fonts. The biggest challenge you’re going to have with designers is they want to and especially in the photography industry, they want to have all this fancy font styles and everything else, people can’t read it. It’s too hard to read.

And don’t forget, you got five to seven seconds at best for them to get their attention and they want to know what’s in it for them, WIIFM, what’s in it for me?

And if you’re not answering that question quickly or you make it hard to read, click, they’re gone, just like it is with fishing, if you go fishing and you’ve trying to catch timid fish you really have to have everything setup properly, or you ain’t going to catch the fish and your online presence is the same.

Online Transformation

Your whole online presence, I can’t begin to describe just how much this can transform your business, if you become a master of it or team up with some digital marketing strategist that really understands this stuff.

I see it time and time again where business owners will go to a techie company, the techie companies are technical people, they don’t understand marketing and design people, most of them don’t understand marketing, and they’ll just want to do this magic design but it actually doesn’t take the shopper anywhere, in other words it’s not taking the shopper along the “Road To A Sale.”

What you’ve got is this fancy online brochure that’s not actually selling for you.

Digital Marketing Strategist

You need to partner yourself with a digital marketing strategist or agency, people that have clearly got rungs on the board, that know how to do this stuff and convert your customer from a shopper surfing the net to a buyer predisposed to buying from you.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s us or who it is, the important part is to have a mindset change and come to understand your Online Presence is an Asset, not just an advertising spend.

Invest in Your Online Assets

Don’t make it the smallest amount of money that you invest in your marketing. I continually see this happen and it really burdens me when I see it. And a classic example recently, I saw a guy, a car dealer spend around $18,000 in TV advertising over a 30-day period and it had little to no results and even if it did, the typical results on intrusive marketing is a 1% to 3% conversion.

Whereas the internet, once you build this stuff and get yourself on the front page of Google, it is there 24/7 and so it doesn’t matter whether your customer comes online at 9 o’clock at night or 1:00 a.m. in the morning or a Saturday or a Sunday or 10:30 at night, your online business is sitting there and if you’ve mastered what I said in the first video about the road to a sale and understand the psychology of your customer.

Your Competitors are Asleep

Doing it correctly will give you spectacular results, 100% to 150% increase or whatever and this can happen all the time because your competition in general is asleep.

There’s very few industries out there that have really nailed it and I could just about guarantee you your competitors are asleep and If you embrace this wholeheartedly, you will dominate your niche in the market.

And it’s coming back to what I said earlier about this being the greatest media marketing opportunity in history and the results are massive for the minimal outlay needed.

and if added up all your offline advertising spend that you’re doing and reallocated 50% or 60% of it, even though I would go for the lot, and put it into your online presence and do a really good job with a digital marketing strategist, you will be amazed at your results.

Anyway, I trust that you’ve enjoyed this video and what I’ve touched on. The next video, what I want to talk about is how you actually drive the traffic to your online presence. This is such a big in-depth topic to try and cover, but I wanted to show you the basics and give you an outline of how to achieve online success.

Basically the whole purpose of all of these videos is to give you an overview so that you’ve got a foundation that you can work on to really go out there into the marketplace and find yourself a good company to work with and transform your online presence.

So, I trust that you’ve enjoyed today and if you have enjoyed this video, post a comment or if you’ve got any questions, post a comment or a question down below and share it with your friends because I’m sure that there’s others out there that are having major challenges with their online presence as well. Bye for now.