Dan Morris – Page 37 – Audience Industries

Getting Testimonials

Testimonials and reviews are worth their weight in gold if you can get them. The hard part is getting them. Customers always say they’d be willing to, but how often do they actually do it?

And almost more importantly, are they leaving them in the spots that matter? It used to be nice to hang the written kind on the wall of your business, but that doesn’t really help the people who’ve never been there. What you really need are reviews on Yelp, Google Places, Merchant Circle and your website or Facebook Fan Page. But directing people to do that is hard, unless all they have to do is click a link in an e-mail.

So here are some tips on collecting reviews and testimonials. Continue reading “Getting Testimonials”

Cross Reference Everything

I got a great e-mail from a client in the financial industry today. It had nothing to do with finances but is a tremendous example of what you should be doing in your marketing efforts.

What made me so excited is that he put this “awesomeness” in his “signature” so that it automatically appears in every e-mail he sends out.

So, we’ve been doing a weekly podcast, regular upon demand YouTube videos, blog posts, articles and he does a guest spot on the radio. All great activities to enforce that he is the expert in his local niche. Continue reading “Cross Reference Everything”

Ebook Strategy at Blogging Concentrated

orange-yellow-red-skyline One of the topics I’d like to cover is the Ebook –> Optin –> Email –> Sale process.

Many of my blogging clients get parts of this wrong and then wonder why they aren’t making sales. But the fix isn’t that hard.

Here’s what we’re going to talk about then. . .

The bribe: Our goal is to bribe our audience to give us their email with something. Some people do it with a newsletter, others with an ebook. With an ebook, however, there are some special steps you’ll want to take to help make the book go viral AND to help build community.

The optin: Let’s talk about the form in where it should be on site, what it should look like and how to test it.

The emails: Holy Moly emails are hard, aren’t they? Most people write them to be interesting. What we really want to do is to write them to get the click. Get them to want to read your words BUT make sure the words on your site. The only point of email should be to get them to click.

Finally the sale. . . we’ll talk a bunch about that. To get a sale you have to overcome objections. . . that’s it. For instance for Hershey to sell you a candybar at the check-out, they have to overcome objections like price, safety, the fact that it’s not melted, and inconvenience. We have to do the same thing on our pages. Let’s chat about it.

If you’re not yet coming to Blogging Concentrated, join us!

Hyphenated Domain Names

I got a few tweets the last couple weeks about hyphenated domain names. I wasn’t sure why at first but then remembered I’d made a couple YouTube videos on the subject.

Well, the conversation ended up being colossal with many people on Twitter chiming in at which time I thought I’d write an entire blog post on the subject and give good quality examples.

The question is “Do hyphens affect your search results?” And the answer is. . . well, not clear. How can you really test that? It’s not possible.

What I did do was explain with examples, why I don’t think it adversely affects your search ranking. And why in some cases, it’s a real good idea.

Read my blog post on the subject now.

So instead of my notes from that conversation, I’d like you to check out my blog post on the subject and see what you think.

Do hyphens matter or not? And why does this subject matter to you anyway?

Supporting Keywords

One of my clients asked what articles she needed to be writing. So I sent her a list of keywords I need her to write articles about. The funny thing is, none of them were directly related to people hiring her.

None of them were keywords like “why you should hire me”.

I’m sure that stumped her, though she didn’t say as much. You see Google’s entire goal is to return search results that are relevant to a searcher’s query. They use the three basic criteria to evaluate every page on the internet and from that they decide on which page to show the result. Continue reading “Supporting Keywords”

Blogging Concentrated Denver gets book happy

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So the question I have at every conference is “where are we going to hold it?” When you limit something to 40 people, you really do have a LOT of options. Certainly a Grand Ballroom isn’t required, but the back room of Jimmy Noel’s Garage isn’t appropriate either.

The Nashville Blogging Concentrated workshop was in a bed-and-breakfast. Can you believe there exists a B&B that holds 40 people? It was great. I loved the small facility atmosphere. With only 40 people you really are a tiny group at a hotel.

I’m excited to say Jennie found us a most beautiful location in Denver. I don’t live there so I’m just seeing pics and the map. It looks easy to find, close to an interstate, free parking and then the place itself is fantastic. Take a look at the pics of our location. . . the Smoky Hill Library! Yep, a library. But this one’s no ordinary library.

They’ve got wi-fi, a great room with a projector and a coffee shop on premises. I love the idea that we can be in one room for the day and really just learn from each other. There’s no recording because everyone should feel free to talk about their own site, challenges, successes and more.

Anyway, I’m really excited about it. Can’t wait to see everyone.

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Setting Up the Backend

One of the hard parts about marketing and subsequently building a database of your customers is the back-end.

Even trying to market a single product can be difficult to do effectively, if you don’t have the back end in place. Once you’ve done the work necessary to acquire new customers, there’s no sense is spending the same money attracting them again. When you get their contact information, you have a “back end”.

The propensity of a person to buy something from you is highest if they remember you, trust you and appreciate the information you’re presenting. Having just bought a product from you, or having just eaten in your restaurant you already know you’ve jumped that hurdle. Continue reading

Getting Email Addresses

Getting email addresses is a pretty important part of any business strategy. I mean, if you spent all that time reaching out to the customer in the first place – do you really want to do it again?

So at our MeetUp this week, we spent the time talking about great ways to get email addresses. Here’s some ideas for you – but if you have ideas of your own – don’t be shy. Please pass them on to the rest of us. Continue reading “Getting Email Addresses”

Finding Your Audience

So what do you do if you have a good idea, but no one knows they need it? I got a chance to think through that this week.

I met with a guy whose product is not currently searched by anyone. He performs a valuable service for construction companies that has saved them a great deal of time and money – however, he can’t prove it.

Because he was only the consultant to his clients, he didn’t have access to their actual numbers – so he’s got no proof statements.

Not only that, but his services don’t have a recognized name and most people don’t know they can save money that way. Continue reading “Finding Your Audience”