Internet Marketing

I want to talk about Crazy Egg.

Imagine a good headline creating curiosity like this one.

Find Out Where You Website Succeeds And Where It Fails To Engage Visitors And They Stop Paying Attention.

Your visitors are happy to carry on reading providing the headline fulfils the promise of the click that got them here.

Now imagine a boring photo without a caption explaining what it is. I’m going to leave some space for it.

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Still here?

Now how about some words that are really hard to read. This can happen because there isn’t enough contrast between the letters and the background or because it’s reverse print light letters on dark background rather than dark letters on a pale background) or because the letters are too small for your average reader.

As you can imagine that paragraph above is likely to cause problems. If you want to know what the last paragraph says, you can highlight it with your cursor but how many readers are going to do that.

Alternatively, you can read it below printed with proper contrast.

Now how about some words that are really hard to read. This can happen because there isn’t enough contrast between the letters and the background or because it’s reverse print (light letters on dark background rather than dark letters on a pale background) or because the letters are too small for your average reader.

Now imagine another boring photograph without a caption explaining it. Again space allowed for it.

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Given up yet?

None of these common mistakes are intentional but it’s often done in the name of “attractive design”.

The trouble is it kills the marketing effect of your website. Nobody is visiting to see if you have a pretty website, they are coming to see if you can solve their problem better or with better value than your competitors.

The answer is to use tracking software like Crazy Egg.

This lets you see what your visitors are doing and where they give up.

I’m going to be adding some screenshots to this page but, at the moment, I want to get some data into Crazy Egg.

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The full title of this report turned into a book by Rich Schefren is

Internet Business Manifesto: A Big Business Was Just A Small Business That Did The Right Things. A Wealthy Business Owner Was An Opportunity Seeker Who Became An Entrepreneur

In my review posted on Amazon.co.uk, I gave the book a rating of 3 Stars. I need to explain.

Here is my review.

How much? That’s ridiculous

It was hard rating this legendary report on Internet marketing at the 3 stars level but let me explain my rating.

1 Star for anyone trying to charge £396 for a printed version of this promotional report. It was available online for free for 10 or more years as a PDF. It’s not worth it at these prices.

5 Stars for the original impact the report had on Internet marketers in general and on me in particular.

Back in the mid 2000s, Internet marketing was often promoted as an easy way to make big money. Thinking back, this was strange when there seemed to be new, essential to know techniques coming out every few weeks. [continue reading…]

I thought this was a useful summary from Ryan Deiss’ DigitalMarketer.com and how it applies mainly for digital marketing.

The key date Is 25 May 2018.

It applies to anyone with personal data in the European Union including the UK before and after Brexit regardless of where the business is based.

Here is a long video presentation from an English law specialist, Suzanne Dibble. [continue reading…]

When Jeff Walker created and popularised the Product Launch Formula, he turned Internet marketing on its head.

Here is a video of Joe Polish interviewing Jeff. It’s over 80 minutes long.

It’s easy to get a bit too cynical about the product launch process if you’ve experienced it plenty of times in the Internet marketing “make money online” niche.

It can get very hyped up when there are hundreds or perhaps even thousands of affiliates promoting the product launch and everyone’s email inbox is being saturated with news of the launch.

The process of building up expectation and excitement before the product is released and then removed from the market isn’t too much different from the way films are promoted.

First there is the cinema launch, then its released on DVD and then makes its way to paid for cable and then free TV. Each time squeezing more money out of the market.

Even as company as wholesome as Disney release a DVD to a great fanfare and then withdraw it from the market, ready to go through a big launch again sometime in the future.

Jeff talks about the effect of the launch as the equivalent of a sideways sales letter. Instead of receiving the entire sales pitch in one go, you get it sliced into more palatable segments.

You also share valuable content to give people a chance to buy into the ideas. Perhaps to even get results in advance.

This is a great example of pre-selling a product or service and building up desire before it can be purchased.

The Product Launch Formula gains a lot from the ideas of influence and persuasion developed and popularised by Robert Cialdini.

The first page of Google is a good example of zero-sum competition.

There are only ten free listings and ten paid search listings.

If a page from one website gets on, a page from another website is forced off.

Much to my irritation, Google changed how they ranked websites in the search engine results last April (2012)

I suffered.

In fact, I suffered badly.

I swore at Google.

It’s only recently that I’ve realised that my ranking problems aren’t all their fault.

You see I did something silly.

I took away a lot of the main categories and posts from the blog side-bar and relied on my blog archives to keep pages indexed.

It didn’t work.

I lost page after page from the index because they were stranded. Isolated.

And pages that aren’t in the index can’t be ranked on page 1 where they get traffic.

And as the blog shrank in the eyes of Google, it lost authority.

This pushed down rankings for pages that were indexed.

Depressing my traffic even further.

I was stupid.

I was so busy blaming Google that I never considered my own culpability.

Because I thought it was “Google’s fault”, I didn’t look for another problem.

I therefore didn’t think about any kind of solution.

I waited for Google to realise that their Penguin algorithm change was rubbish.

They didn’t.

Then I smartened up.

I started questioning what was happening.

I looked for pages that used to get traffic.

I discovered that the problem wasn’t that there were hidden away on page 10, not seen and unloved.

They weren’t in the bloody Index.

I feel like an idiot.

But at least I have something to work on that I can control.

I can stop pages being isolated.

I can get them back in the index.

I can hope they get ranked.

At least I’ll have given them a sporting chance.

And if they don’t rank, I can then look at how I can change to play by the new rules.

Profit Hacks is the latest course promoted by Rich Schefren and Strategic Profits and contains the ideas of the Australian entrepreneur, Pete Williams.

I’d love to say that my Profit Hacks review is independent but I’m an affiliate. I’m in this for the money so if you buy after clicking through from my links, I’ll earn a commission.

Details of Profit Hacks – affiliate link

In fact I’m such a good affiliate for Rich Schefren that I’ve been given free access to Profit Hacks to take a look around.

I’ve earn my success by writing reviews that are as honest as I can make them, that highlight the good and the bad in the product being reviewed and that make it clear that the product isn’t right for everybody.

Let’s begin.

The Profit Hacks Review [continue reading…]

If you’ve been a member of Rich Schefren’s Founders Club, you’ll know how good his audio dispatches are each week.

Rich is probably the most thoughtful of the Internet marketing gurus and one of the three that I give most attention to (the others are Ryan Deiss and Glenn Livingston if you wondered).

Each week he sends out a short, thought-provoking mp3 recording with a pdf transcript if you prefer to read.

These are the short briefings he prepares for his private coaching clients before he starts the Q&A sessions and he thought it would be a good idea to share them with Founders Club members. [continue reading…]

My friend Sonja Jefferson is writing a book on Valuable Content Marketing with her colleague, Sharon Tanton.

See the book on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

Sonja asked me

“What is your top tip for companies to consider when creating content for their customers?”

I checked whether she wanted content for customers or prospective customers and thought about it for a couple of days.

This is what I came up with…

“Valuable content to attract potential customers needs to be a triple punch that leaves the prospect wanting “more, more, more”. It needs to be keyword driven to attract, curiosity based to encourage email opt-ins and relevant, practical and interesting to build the relationship.”

I’m pretty pleased with that and wanted to create my own note so that I can refer back to it.

Hopefully it will appear in Sonja and Sharon’s book on Valuable Content Marketing because it always feels good to have your ego stroked.

You can find out more about the book on Sonja’s Valuable Content blog.

I must admit that I am fascinated by my Google Analytics statistics – numbers and marketing combined – wow.

But is your target market connecting with you as well as it could?

Wikipedia lists the top English speaking countries although the numbers don’t make it clear for how many are likely to be using English to search the Internet.

Interesting though:

1. USA – 251 m – 215 m as the first language
2. India – 125 m – less than 1 m as the first language
3. Philippines – 90 m – 3 m
4. Nigeria  – 79 m – 4 m
5. UK – 60 m – 58 m
6. Germany – 46 m – less than 1 m
7. Canada – 25 m – 18 m
8. France – 23 m
9. Pakistan – 18 m
10. Australia – 17 m – 15 m
11. Italy – 17 m
12. The Netherlands – 14 m
13. South Africa – 14m – 4 m
14. Spain – 12 m
15. Turkey – 12 m

That might help to put your website traffic numbers into more perspective.

It also helps you to decide you your website needs to be offering translations into other popular languages.

The five most popular most popular languages are:

Mandarin

Spanish

English

Hindi-Urdu

Arabic

What’s this got to do with differentiation?

You could have an advantage by presenting your business in the language which best suits your possible customers’ preferences. It reduces one of the hurdles to buying and shows that you are focused on their needs and value their convenience.

The top ten countries who read my Differentiate Your Business blog are:

1. The UK
2. The USA
3. India
4. Australia
5. Canada
6. Malaysia
7. Singapore
8. Philippines
9. Germany
10. South Africa

That makes a lot of sense when the domain name, differentiateyourbusiness.co.uk helps UK based Internet searches and unfortunately hinders other parts of the world. That’s fine for me because I only provide my coaching in the UK.