FREE Online Advertising

Opportunity for WebSTAT Customers

Did you know that the number of Internet searches done by consumers looking for local services is on the rise? A Kelsey Group Report showed that in 2006 over 80% of all Internet users use search engines to find information about local businesses! If you consider the number of people in your community that have Internet access (almost all of them?) and over 80% of them are looking for local services online, the truth is that you can’t afford to not have an Internet presence.

Thanks to OnlineInLocal.com, a specialized online directory for local businesses, you can now create a dedicated webpage that will get listed in the local search results for the major search engines absolutely free! All you have to do is go to this site www.onlineinlocal.com/webstat/ and type in the promo code: WebStat. This is a $99 per year service that you will get free for being a valued customer.

Charlie, from Sunglasses Only, the manager of an American Fork, Utah sunglasses shop, filled out his profile and began to drive additional traffic to his website. He found it useful in a number of ways:

1) It’s an additional page that gets listed in the search engines, allowing for more people to find his site.

2) It gave him a link to his website from a site with a high page rank, increasing the SEO value on his current site.

3) It’s another way for people to get to know your business and it’s absolutely FREE!

See the Sunglasses Only profile page that Charlie built by clicking here: http://sunglassesonly.onlineinlocal.com/

Getting listed is very easy. Simply answer a few questions and your business profile is created automatically. And because it’s completely free, there is no risk. Even if you already have a website, listing with OnlineInLocal.com will improve your Web presence and help you move up in the search engine rankings, potentially sending more business your way.

Get listed today for free, and start driving local consumers to your business with online advertising. Click here: www.onlineinlocal.com/webstat/.

QUESTION: What do you do with leads once you have generated them?

This important question is overlooked by almost everyone. It is almost always the cause of failure in what would otherwise be powerful web marketing campaigns. But the obvious answer is easier said than done:

ANSWER: You respond to them immediately and often to qualify them into prospects.

Many organizations spend lots of money each month with MSN, Yahoo and especially Google to lure visitors to their website. These same companies invest significant amounts up front in building beautiful web sites to attract clicks. They even use analytical or testing tools like WebSTAT, WebTrends or Omniture to analyze how to turn these clicks to leads.

The issue comes when they let those leads sit in the sales managers’ inbox for 48 to 72 hours. This is still the average response time to leads.

Leads are most often manually routed and typed by hand into a customer database like InsideSales.com, RightNow Technologies or Salesforce.com before the correct sales representative gets back with them.

Our research shows that the average salesperson only tries 4 to 5 times to contact them within the first week or two. That means only one-half (55%) of a company’s expensive web leads will actually get contacted.

By the time they get contacted (if they get called back) a competitor has often reached them first and is well on their way to another customer, your customer.

Why? Because they called them back immediately, and followed up often enough to make contact.

Just how quickly do they follow up? Within minutes and seconds, not days and hours. And they keep making attempts, often at different times of day and different days of the week until they can begin the sales process.

Why spend thousands of dollars on generating clicks, well designed websites, and powerful analytics if you are going to let your leads sit for nearly 3 days and contact roughly half of your potential prospects? The thought is almost insulting, yet that is what happens most of the time.

There are solutions just coming out that trigger callback attempts within seconds of entering lead data in a web form. The technology prompts a sales rep to continue to make dozens or more attempts at different times of the day and different days of the week to boost contact rates above 85%. Also, these solutions can automatically market to leads and continue to generate prospects every 3-4 weeks for many years or more.

We at InsideSales.com call this ‘Lead Response Management’, responding immediately and touching a lead many more times. This assists in wringing every last bit of value out of your costly leads and tracking a true return from your lead sources.

This overlooked oasis of opportunity may just be the next key to search marketing. It lies hidden somewhere between Lead Generation and the Sales Process or right where the handoff commonly occurs between the Marketing Department and Sales. It’s the pain that everyone feels but no one is doing anything about, until now.

Kenneth D. Krogue is the Co-Founder of InsideSales.com, the first internet-based lead response management CRM database solution with built in dialer and voice messaging technologies. InsideSales.com is in the process of integration as a partner with WebSTAT in helping companies convert and qualify leads better.

Ken has nearly 20 years experience in building and management of teams and technologies for remote selling capabilities. He built the fastest growing department at Franklin Qwest (Now Franklin Covey) and was a co-founder of UCN, Inc. a leading hosted contact center solutions provider. Ken can be reached at 801-853-4090 and the solutions he discusses are now in production to try for yourself by going to www.insidesales.com.

Have you wondered, as I have, on how to get the traffic to your web site to turn to sales? Or, at least convince them to do what you want them to do? After all the monthly fees allocated to pay per click ad fees, and organic search word investments, wouldn’t it be nice to have the conversion rate at least click upwards by 1% more? One of the keys that I have discovered is that most web sites for small businesses is very heavily focused on what you want to say versus what the reader came to the web site searching for.

For example, here is an example of a marketing copy that misses the mark (names have been removed to protect the guilty):

“At XYZ, we understand that wealth management is as much an art as it is a science. On the one hand, we have a deep pool of talented experts who are among the nation’s top financial planners, portfolio managers, securities analysts, economists, attorneys, and accountants and who are leaders in their respective wealth managementdisciplines. XYZ also offers an impressive breadth of capabilities including . . . etc.”

Yawning yet? Notice the self-focused “At XYZ, we understand…” and the general ‘how great we are’ words used just in the opening few sentences. But words like these are used on web sites and direct mailers all the time. They don’t help communicate to the reader what you can do for them. How could this be better? Make it personal, simple and benefit orientated. I don’t have time to write all the details, but here is one example that you can judge for yourself:

“With so many companies wanting to help you manage your financial future, aren’t you confused? I know I was when I first started. I didn’t know who to ask, what to ask, and more importantly, I didn’t know where to start. Luckily, I had a neighbor who had made a lot of money, and he started me on the right path. Through a lot of trial and error (and boy, did I make some a lot of errors), and understanding what options were out there, I came to create a program that is absolutely the best in the industry. Hi – my name is Bill Anderson, President and Founder of XYZ, and my company’s entire goal is focused on helping you increase your wealth through knowledge and service. I hope you will read the rest of our web site to see how we fulfill this goal.”

I hope you can see the difference. Focus a little on how you write the words and you will make a huge difference on your web traffic results. Remember, it is not about what you want to say – it’s about what the web visitor needs to hear and learn about your product or service offering.

Much success, Benoy Tamang

President HookSell.com

(A strategic partner of NextStat)