Phantom CTO » marketing-optimization

Small Business Market Research: Break In This Niche!

vanessa — Sat, 16 May 2009 04:38:09 +0000

Last week, Michelle MacPhearson did an amazing steal this niche video that caught me totally off guard. Not because it was amazing content delivered for free but because I had run the same market research for the growing taller niche just weeks earlier for a Clickbank affiliate offer and never moved forward with that data.

This week, I was running some market research for a small business in the MMA (mixed martial arts) niche using the same strategies of finding profitable easy to dominate keywords that can rank quickly. This time, I recorded the information to make it easy to pass on to the business owner and on this blog.

Finding Keywords In Your Niche:

Market Research to Gauge Organic Marketing Competition

Treat Your Website Like The Business It Is: Just One Thing?

vanessa — Sat, 02 May 2009 14:58:05 +0000

Lee Odden’s just wrote a great post on SEO for PR firms. I wanted to address something related to his post that I hear on a small business level from entrepreneurs who want to know the magic key to unlocking more sales.

They’d ask:

If I could only do one thing to make my website better what should I do?

Followed up by ‘How fast before I see results?’

First off, there is no magic key to unlocking a website to getting a business more sales, customers or visibility. What there is, is the ability to make a small change that will lead to the biggest change in results.

So whats the 80/20 for improving a website to help the business goals?

The number one thing a website can do for a business is get in front of the right people –your ideal customers.

There was an amazing copywriter, who recently passed, Gary Halibert who asked if all things being equal and we were both in the restaurant business what one advantage would you want to help you succeed?
Some might say the best food, or in our case the best features on our website, others said a great dining atmosphere, for a website a jazzed up design. Instead, Gary said the only advantage he would want is a starving crowd.
Where is your business’ starving crowd? What keywords are they using on Google to fill their hunger?

That would be the one thing to do. Get in front of the hungry web searchers who are looking for your kind of business!

If you could have just one thing to help your business what would it be? It would be on the top of the results page for the keywords that my ideal customer is looking for and watch how much sales increase.

The one thing I would do is be a top result for my buyer’s keywords.

If I was on the first page of the search engines for a hungry keyword, I could get untold more sales than the small businesses listed on the third, fourth or even second pages because I have the buyer’s attention right away and most never look past the 4th listing.

So the one thing I would do is Market Research for Organic Search Results for the business’ market. Make your website’s goal to reflect the best keywords your market is looking for and be the first thing they see.

Keep in mind you want hungry qualified people who are not just your overall market but your real detailed description of your ideal individual in that market. If you’re a small locally owned business, chances are most of your market is within a certain mile radius of your office. Make sure that area is part of your profile’s critera. For example, if you’re a chiropractor, don’t be looking at coming up for your general market of back pain but instead back pain relief in your town would be much more like the hungry searchers who are in your real market.

9 Ways to Optimize your Business with Google Analytical Tools

vanessa — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:45:00 +0000

Measure what you Manage, How Small Businesses Get Results From Their website

Step 0: Get an account with Google Analytics

If your business has a web presence that you expect to turn into business results like new sales, new client introductions, customer service and building relationships you’ll never know how well you’re doing until you track and analyze the data.

There are plenty of web tracking tools to choose from but what I recommend and use with clients in Google Analytics, the free analytics software by Google.

Have a Website to Generate Revenue? Enable the eCommerce Analysis

If you want to drive visitors to a page for a purchase or newsletter signup you can track successful conversions using Goals and Funnels. Enable eCommerce reporting and the eCommerce Analysis report set. From your dashboard, go to edit settings. Then in the main website profile information, go to edit in the right upper corner this will take you to the Edit Profile Information. Here you’ll find the e-commerce section, select Yes and save changes.

Machiavelli Meets Business Intel, GAnalytics Style

The End, The Means, GAnalytics Goals and Funnels

In GAnalytics the end is called a goal. It’s the action your visitor takes that you defined as important. It’s the end result you want to track to show progress towards your business goals. In GAnalytics the means is called a funnel. It’s the path you want your prospects to take in order to reach your defined goal.
For example, a small business looking to build a relationship with prospects through its email would define a goal as newsletter signup and the funnel as landing on a recent blog post then entering their information on the sign up box on the sidebar.

Falling Off the Bandwagon Never Felt So Good

Usually, if you’re not tracking you have no idea where your clients and prospects go other than the place you’d like them to go like an add to cart button. So without tracking all you know are your successful transactions. You know nothing about how many other people were there and just didn’t pull the trigger on going forward or worse started to then didn’t complete the transaction.

Tracking lets you know where your visitors fall off your bandwagon

When you have your ends and means defined you’ll now have the data needed to see where your visitors fall off the desired path you want them to take. This lets you know more than just an abandon rate but exactly where your customer was just before they left your site.

Tracking Lets Your Business Read Between the Lines

Get context of your visitors intent and expectations when coming to your website.
GAnalytics lets you learn how visitors came to your site by the referring url and if they searched for a phrase and went to your site, you’ll know what they were looking for in Google. You can also tell who is sending you visitors by looking at the referring URLs

Your homepage isn’t the one place visitors go to when they visit your domain.
Visitors come to your website from search engines that dig through all your web pages. GAnalytics will show you what pages they came to first, known as the landing page, the last page they were on before leaving your site, known as the bounce page, and which pages they viewed.

Who Yelled Fire? Bounce Rate and the Bum Rush Off Your Site

An interesting factor you’ll get to know is what pages on your website is most often the last page your visitor sees. This will tell you where you’re loosing their interest or attention or need to deliver more value.

From tracking you’ll be able to see which categories of products are most popular. There’s an 80/20 somewhere on your site, and you’ll want to maximize the 20% that’s bringing in you more business.

Get to Know Google Optimizer. Another Free Google tool

Does She Want the Black Dress or the Little Black Dress?

Sure you’re prospects are looking for what you’re offering on your website but did you know that you can test out different parts of your page to see which gets a better response out of your visitors. Maybe they were looking for a black dress and you show them the little black dress and a whole new association pops int their head bringing them closer to a sale.
You wouldn’t know any of that is possible unless you are doing split testing.
Without split testing your are your own worst enemy to reaching your prospects
I’m not talking about Christan Slater, or even Sybil. Split testing lets you try out different headlines, colors, offers, guarnutees to different groups of your visitors and tracks the results of those tests.

Conversion Testing Rules of Thumb

For every 100 conversions test 1 page element over 2 weeks. That’ll give you enough time to see results and make adjustments. Once you find a winner, replace the old variable and keep trying to beat your results. Split testing lets your business sharpen its personal best in conversion which means more sales, happier customers and more growth.

Never Spazz Out on the High of a Good Revenue Day

When your website is giving your a great revenue day. Don’t think you’re looking a gift horse in the mouth by not understanding why you’re performing so well. Analyze your website data and see where they are coming from what they were looking for and make sure its something you can repeat again!

The Holiday Season: a Retailer’s Shot in the Arm

Many retail businesses are cyclical. Sometimes earning as much in the last quarter of the year as the previous two combined. I’m going to say it again, tracking will tell show you the trends in visitors coming in, from where, and what they are looking for. Make the most of your peak season by opening all lanes for green on your website.

Aside from your internal tracking, Google can offer you an industry wide tracking from Google Insights.
An example of what Google Insights can show for an industry is a comparison between basketball, football and golf in the US over the last 12 months. What can you tell about people’s interest in these sports? What sport specific business wouldn’t benefit from knowing this?

Look at this chart directly below. This shows the results of the top geographic areas for the keyword football.

What regionally targeted business wouldn’t want to know where their most interested prospective visitors might be coming from during football season?? Take a look at the second graph for footballs most interested US areas and key searches.

This is a hopefully brief, but long blog post, overview of using Analytics on your website to help grow your business. If you feel I should cover more or have questions, please comment below!