Tag Archives: small business

How To Write For Your Website To Make It Rain (Money)

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Write to RainWhether you’re launching a brand-new website or revamping an existing one, the writing on your website can be the difference between a website that rains (revenue) and one that doesn’t.

The most common mistake business owners make is the failure to answer one simple question for your audience.

Failing to answer this one question means your future customers will leave your website and move on to your competitor’s websites.


(Image credit Meme Generator & Copyright Little Wayne.)

What’s In It For Me?

This is the silent question every website visitor is asking when they land on your website.

If you don’t answer your visitor’s questions, relate to their situation, intrigue your visitor or provide value in some way, they will leave your website.

A common mistake…

Many businesses writing text for their websites focus on themselves and their business, instead of putting themselves in the shoes of their prospective customers.

You’ve been to these websites, they go on and on about their products, services and qualifications, but not in a way that meets you where you are or feels relevant to your situation.

Do You Feel My Pain?

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Prior to a visitor landing on your website, they’ll often be on Google, searching for a solution to a problem they’re having.

Generally their problem will be causing them discomfort, if not pain, otherwise they wouldn’t be trying to solve it.

When you’re writing the text for your website ask yourself:

  • What discomfort or pain do my customers have ?
  • What language do they use to describe their pain?
  • When and how does this problem show up for them?

Write your website text in the language your customers use, that reflects their pain or discomfort, describing a moment in their life.

On the topic of pain…let’s compare two approaches

Consider the product ibuprofen.

If you were writing the text for the website designed to sell more ibuprofen, you could discuss the features of the product: how it lasts a certain amount of time, and it comes in a bottle filled with 80 capsules is more affordable than aspirin etc.

All pretty boring stuff, right?

Or you could paint a picture….describe a beautiful sunny Sunday, and you’d love to go out for a run with your friends, but you can’t because your knees are hurting you again, and you’re just sick of this, and you’re gaining weight, and you’re feeling like a big lump, and your life quality has gone downhill.

Writing from your customer’s perspective can create a compelling emotional reaction.

Really get into the discomfort or the pain points that your future customers are suffering, try and paint a picture of a moment in time, in a day in the life of your customer.

Then from there describe the transformation they can experience once they utilize what you sell.

An example of a transformation:

Now I’ve taken ibuprofen, and now I am limber, I can go and play with my grandkids, (if I had grandkids) and I am training for my first triathlon and I feel more confident in my body and I have a better quality of life.

Wow. That is powerful stuff.

That’s the difference between crappy copywriting that alienates or bores people and copywriting that engages your audience.

Please like and share this article.

I also would love to hear your comments in the box below.

You can subscribe to my channel on YouTube for more online marketing tips, or visit my website for more information about how I help people get better results from their online marketing.

Online Sales Funnel Creation: Case Study & Review

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Client Overview:

Mieke Lily Van Orden is the creative force behind Flux & Stone, a line of handmade artisan jewellery designed to make women feel beautiful.

Based in Victoria, BC, Mieke built her business over the last 4 years by showcasing her work in person at various shows and markets around BC.

Objective:

Mieke was active online, but wasn’t making any sales from her website or online efforts.

She wanted to start making sales from the web, and wanted to work less than her customary 12 hour market days, without compromising her revenue.

Solution:

Mieke & worked together over the course of 3 months to develop an optimized online sales funnel.

First we looked at what was working about her business, and what wasn’t.

  1. What customers were most profitable, and what areas of her business were causing profit leaks.
  2. What her existing sales process was, and how we could recreate that process online.
  3. What we could do to easily & quickly increase repeat business.
  4. What her existing online marketing process was.
  5. What parts of her website weren’t working or were neglected and needed to be updated.
  6. What her schedule was like and her strengths and preferences for what she should be delegating.
  7. Where she got stuck executing on strategy.

Then we created her online marketing plan which would show her exactly how to:

  1. Get in front of her target customers online.
  2. Increase repeat business from her current customers.
  3. Steadily build her email list of fans, customers and prospective customers.
  4. Leverage the time she was spending at markets to contribute to her online efforts.
  5. Schedule in various online marketing deliverables, in a way that worked for her based on daily, weekly and monthly tasks.

Lastly, we developed the online assets she needed to execute after we stopped working together:

  1. A new website showcasing her best selling items, where she could easily add new products from her phone.
  2. An email marketing campaign and list building strategy.
  3. A content calendar for her social media, including blog post topics
  4. A social media strategy and automated scheduling system.

Outcome:

I think Mieke and I both thought we’d be working solely on her online marketing, but what happened was I deployed my experience in creating business systems and optimizing operations to create a work day for Mieke that would work to optimize sales as well as her time.

Based on her routine what was already working for her and what she didn’t like we devised a program schedule and a system to help her stay on top of regular social media posts blogging and adding new inventory to her website.

We set her up with an easy to follow system of to-do’s each week and month and set her up with administrative support in the areas where she needed to delegate.

We also set up a comprehensive post sales follow-up system for her wholesale customers which were by far her most profitable area.

What The Client Says About Working With Me:

“To start with the woman just got me organized in a way that I hadn’t been before, and helped me schedule my life in a way that I hadn’t before.  What I thought I wanted from her, I actually got a whole different thing. Which was learning how to organize my life in a professional manner which will benefit me for years to come.

Would I recommend? Yes, Totally! I think that the things she taught me are so invaluable. I didn’t even use my google calendar before I met this woman. I’d wake up every day I’d wake up and think to myself, what are all the things I need to get done today and I would try and organize them all in my brain and all the time I was like forgetting somebody or forgetting something or not getting something done, and things were always taking longer and more energy than needed them to.

And these simple steps that this woman has shown me how to put everything into place and now I just wake up and I look at this calendar and I look at the schedule we’ve written out.

And I think that that is the most beautiful part of working with this woman is that she holds you accountable until the point that she actually sees you change.”

Check out Mieke’s new website at www.fluxandstone.com

If you would like to explore working with me to optimize your operations market and marketing for increased pleasure and profit please contact me at www.laurelannestark.com

Otherwise please join me in congratulating Mieke on presenting her beautiful work online in a way that she can be proud of.

5 Proven Ways To Increase Blog Post Engagement

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blog post engagement

1. Evaluate your blog post’s headline.

Is it catchy enough?

If you’re struggling with catchy headlines or coming up with something that rolls off the tongue or piques your viewers’ interest, go to BuzzFeed.com and check out some of the headlines there for inspiration.

Is it Catchy Enough?

(above- Buzzfeed.com encourages readers to spend hours on their site, clicking headings that pique our curiosity)

You want to pique reader interest so ensure your headlines play on our curiosity.

Pay a lot of attention to your headlines. About 50% of the effort you’re putting into your post, you should be putting into your headlines.

2. Pay attention to your formatting.

Make sure that your posts are easy to scan, not necessarily read.

  1. Use short sentences.
  2. Use lots of white space
  3. Summarize key points in bold headings
  4. Bold key points
  5. Italicize sparingly
  6. Use bullets and numbering
  7. Provide at least 3 links to resources you mention in the post

Pay attention to your formatting

(this post from LinkedIn has all the right ingredients to encourage me to keep reading)

3. Use images and multimedia.

Historically, posts that are shared the most are the ones that have up to 15 images.

So at least use one image. If you can include a video as well, absolutely go for it.

People want to see photos and they want to see videos more than they want to read a big wall of text.

The most successful posts used images to show someone exactly how to do what they’re describing in the post, not just what to do.

Tips on using images:

  1. Take pictures using your smartphone or screenshots
  2. Pay for stock images
  3. Use free images found on the internet – search Creative Commons licence on Flikr.com for example.

HOT TIP on images:

See the eyeball heatmap image below. For any of you unfamiliar with a eyeball heat map, it tracks the amount of time people spend looking at various parts of a webpage. The longest times are red, followed by orange, yellow and then green.

According to KISS metrics, having an image of either a baby or a lady looking at the text you want someone to focus on, will encourage them to do so.

Hot tips on images

4. Longer blog posts are actually better

Recent studies show that posts over a thousand words are getting shared more and more often because they provide more value.

Instead of just skimming the surface of your topic, dive a little deeper. Provide a little bit more information and details to your audience and you will get rewarded.

5. Ask for what you want.

The very last thing a lot of folks forget to do is ask for interaction.

Ask for people to share your post with their network. Ask for comments and you will receive!

That’s your One Minute Tip. If you found this valuable, please consider sharing with your network. And if you don’t ever want to miss a tip, subscribe to my YouTube channel for weekly tips in your inbox. Thanks so much for watching.


Video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l9RXALzJyY

Control Your Email Habits Before They Control You

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blogsAs a small business owner, few things are more important than good productivity and effective time management. Unfortunately, these aren’t always easy to achieve; especially when there’s Facebook to check, blogs to read, and a steady stream of emails to reply to.

Unlike Facebook and blogs though, email is something that no small business owner can or should avoid in the working day. The problems come when too much time is spent reading and rereading them while taking no action.

As we use MailChimp for our email marketing campaigns, we’re able to monitor our subscribers’ email habits. A few of the trends we’ve noticed from looking at this information is rather shocking; some people are actually opening our emails on up to 21 separate occasions.

Clearly this is a huge waste of time, and has prompted us to share a few tips on how to control your email habits before they control you.

Self-control with a self-timer

Assigning yourself a set amount of time for each task every day is a great way to ensure you don’t spend too long on just one and neglect the others. You can even set aside times for getting your fix of the non-work websites that are usually a constant temptation and distraction.

One of the most popular time management systems is the Pomodoro Technique, a method of assigning yourself medium length blocks of dedicated work time, usually around twenty five minutes long, interspersed with short breaks of five or ten minutes.

Giving yourself twenty five minutes of concentrated email time, perhaps two or three times a day if need be, will help to focus your mind on the task at hand, while giving yourself a guilt-free five or ten minute window to check Facebook or browse some blogs to refresh your mind in between.

Accountability looks good on paper

If you find yourself quickly checking your email and taking no action constantly throughout the day, it might shock you to learn just how many times you do this, even if the accumulative time spent doing so isn’t that much.

Every time you turn your mind to your email, no matter how briefly, you’re taking it away from all the other important tasks that need your attention too.

It’s natural to tell yourself you don’t do this too often while underestimating the real figure, but having a pen and paper with you and keeping a record of how many times you idly check your email throughout the day will help you see just how often you do so, which will in turn give you the visual evidence you might need to control this habit.

This technique isn’t restricted to just your email habits, either. Keeping track of how many times you unconsciously open a social media page or look at blogs you don’t actually read can help you cut down on that habit too.

Another type of game theory

One irrefutable fact of life is that people are more likely to work on tasks if they enjoy them. Another fact of life is that nobody enjoys wading through a backlog of emails. The obvious solution here then is to somehow make email a fun endeavor, and eliminate the boredom that constantly drives people back to browsing social media and non-work related blogs. If only there were a way.

Welcome to the Email Game.

Easily found on Google, the Email Game is a web application that turns the task of clearing your inbox into something enjoyable, which of course helps motivate you to get through them quickly, eliminating the bottleneck that is your inbox and freeing you up to get on with the next thing on your to-do list.

Take control of your email habits today

Spending time on email every day is unavoidable for small business owners, but nurturing good habits can ensure that time is spent well rather than wasted. Every minute saved on not idly checking your inbox can be spent on something more productive.

It can even be reassigned and become time reserved for browsing social media, reading blogs, or any other leisure activity that can help relax your mind and maintain your concentration on the important tasks of the day.