Online Marketing Services

We’re an Online Marketing Consulting Company. We help people and businesses build great websites and then make those websites work.

To make a website work these days takes quite a few tasks and those tasks are evolving all the time. With millions of websites online, competition is fierce and only the strong survive. And to be strong takes hard work.

Yes, the process of building a website and an online business is getting more complicated every day. Search Engines are getting more sophisticated and don’t rank websites without believing those sites are valuable. New tactics like Social Media and Video Marketing are important to implement.

Yes there’s lots to do to succeed. And the fact is, if your competition is doing it, you must do it too… and do it better.

And the tactics you must use to drive traffic to your website are getting more varied and time-intensive. That’s just the way things are.

So now, more than ever, you need a partner who understands the latest tactics and trends in Online Marketing. The old methods and tactics of just a few years ago no longer work.

We’re About Marketing

We specialize in the marketing aspects of building a website and concentrate on turning website visitors into customers — or as it’s called Conversion. To us Conversion is King. Getting people to your website is important. But unless you turn those hard-earned visitors into customers you are wasting time and money. In fact, I wrote a book about just that. Learn more about it here.

That’s not to say that content is not important. Creating content is still the life-blood of all online marketing. It’s just that some content is better than others. Content that converts visitors into customers is the best.

Content is still what drives people to your website, whether through Search Engine Optimization or through your off-site promotional activities on Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. But how you create that content is very important. Unless you create content that answers your prospect’s question of What’s In It For Them (WIIFT), then more than likely your content will fall on deaf ears. Unless that content convinces them of the benefits of clicking on your links, then you won’t be driving traffic to your website, and you won’t get them into your Sales Funnel.

Some web developers concentrate on the aesthetic, or design aspects of building websites. These graphic designers create pretty sites.

More technical developers concentrate on the coding. These programmers can tweak the “under the hood” aspects of a website and get your site to do cool tricks.

But to move people to buy your product or service it takes more than pretty sites and cool website tricks. It takes truly understanding your customers and what their problems are. After all, you only make money when you can solve someone’s problem. And unless you create credibility and trust first, these prospects won’t be choosing you to solve their problems.

Your content is the only thing that can do that.

The bottom line — you won’t turn site visitors into customers unless you can convince them that you can truly solve their problems — until you can move them through your Sales Cycle and get them to take action and buy your product or service.

Our Services

Our services run the gamut from basic website building, to the more critical aspects of building a successful online business. That means…

doing the initial Market Research to position your business correctly
helping you create effective content
building your website correctly so the Search Engines send you traffic

But what is probably most important is making sure you connect emotionally with your visitors. Unless you can connect with their underlying need they won’t decide to stay on your site. The last thing you want is for your hard-earned visitors to leave within the first few seconds of arriving. You must help them find what they are looking for or they will be gone.

Once your site is ready for visitors, then we can help you with your off-site promotions and your Social Media marketing as shown here on this page about your Sales Funnel.

So here’s how I can help…

Market/Keyword Research

Before you build a single page on your website, or even pick a domain name, you must find the Sweet Spot in your online business niche. Choosing the correct sweet spot can mean the difference between success and failure. Good Market Research will help you position your website so that it’s optimized for the right keywords and so there is not so much competition that you can never get traffic free from the Search Engines.

Finding that sweet spot is an art and a science. We use many tools to help me do this research. These tools can help us determine how many searches are being done for a particular keyword and just how many other websites are competing for that keyword. Without this Market Research you could be choosing a very high mountain to climb and you might never reach the top and get enough traffic to have a successful business. You might actually be painting yourself into a corner and might never succeed.

We never build a website without thorough Market/Keyword Research. Again, we don’t even pick a domain name until we KNOW your marketplace.

Website Building

Yes you still must have a website. It will be the hub of all your online marketing activities. Even with blogs and Social Media pages you still must have a place where you have complete control over your marketing message and presentation.

Online Marketing today is about driving your prospects from your various off-site “touchpoints” and getting them to your website and into your Sales Funnel. Setting your hub website up correctly so that it will attract Search Engines AND have the content required to move your visitors through your Sales Cycle, is at the heart 0f what I do for my clients.

Sales Cycle Analysis

This is something that few Online Marketing Consultants actually do for their customers. Without truly understanding your business’ Sales Cycle you can create a site that never turns your visitors into customers. It may look great, or even have lots of wonderful content, but it never turns your visitor’s into customers — it never actually makes money.

Together we will analyze your business niche until we have a complete understanding of your ideal customer and your niche’s Problem/Solution Profile. We use a Sales Cycle Worksheet that you will fill out, with my help, until we both know what must happen throughout your Sales Cycle to move your prospect to act and become your customer.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Marketing (SEO) has changed. It used to be the just getting a few on-page optimization factors right and going out and getting some other websites to link to your site was enough for good Search Engine Ranking.

But today, with Google getting so much more sophisticated, you have to provide absolute quality in your website content and with your off-page “backlinks”. In short, you have to work harder to get the Search Engines to rank you highly.

But the Search Engines are still looking for two things — relevance and authority. They are looking for relevance to a keyword phrase and overall authority in your niche.

Keyword relevance involves building website pages around specific keywords and making sure the keywords are used in the right places.

Authority is only gained when Google sees you as a “player” in your niche — as a site that other sites speak highly of and talk about. Google still looks for links from other websites for that. But those links must be real and from other sites that have authority as well. Quality is more important than quantity. Spamming link building tactics not longer work.

It all means that to get that relevance and authority you must work a bit harder than you did just a few years ago. Here’s some more specifics about my Search Engine Optimization services.

Social Media Optimization

Social Media is about more than just creating a Facebook page. It’s also knowing how to interact and network with your “friends” on all of your Social Media touchpoints including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the many other places where you might meet a potential customer. Social Media Marketing is not for every business. For some it offers no benefit at all and is a waste of time. Determining whether it can work for you is one way we can help you save time and money before jumping into expensive and time-consuming Social Media tactics.

Content Creation

Content is still critical. But today, content means not only the writing on your website, but videos and imagery that reinforces your brand and creates the credibility that gets people to trust you. It takes more than just words to move your visitors these days. They are used to videos and animations and audio podcasts that deliver something they need… something that informs, entertains, or educates.

Just talking about yourself doesn’t work. You must create content the clearly offers something of value to your prospects — that shows you understand their problems and can deliver “what’s-in-it-for-them.” And that means you must understand your prospect’s underlying needs and can give them good reasons to solve their problems. You must move them through the Sales Cycle. In other words, your content must convert visitors into customers.

To learn more about what I mean you can read my book on that very subject here.

Site Tracking

The marketing axiom that “you can’t manage what you don’t measure” is so true. And the beauty of Online Marketing is it’s one of the most track-able of all types of marketing. Click here to learn more about tracking tactics.

And once you setup your tracking on your website, and on all your touchpoints, you can begin to understand exactly what is going on in your Online Marketing. You can learn how people get to your website, what they do when they get there, and whether they respond to your Call To Action or not. Then you can optimize what is working best and abandon the tactics that don’t work.

But until you have your tracking setup correctly you are just guessing as to what is working — and what is not. That’s a waste of time and money.

And once you have your tracking in place you can track, test, and tweak until you have your marketing working like a finely tuned machine. Then watch your Conversion Rate soar.

Ongoing Site Development

It’s no longer a “build it and they will come” internet. To compete and stay on top of the Search Engines, and in the minds of your customers, you must keep moving forward. New pages must continually be added to your website, and new prospects must be met “where they are now” in the Search Engines, Social Media, and wherever else your customers spend their time.

Yes, with more and more people becoming comfortable online and participating on the many, many websites out there, you must be able to reach out to them