SEO Intern: Improve Your Online Marketing Results!

I just got off the phone with a freind that I wrestled with at the University Of Nebraska, he currently has a roofing company where they install roofs in Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska & Texas. We are in the process of building a new site for him and should have it up within the month. I am extremely excited about getting the site up and to start generating them leads, as these leads can be very profitable. I've posted my thoughts about local business marketing before on my blog.

Anyway onto what this post is about...the conversation started out with him telling me how much he was spending each month and why he needs to lower his expensese. As many business owners can attest, they hate expenses. But not all expenses are bad, the problem is that most businesses don't know which ones are good and which ones are bad.

Wake up business owners and learn what your ROI is for every lead and/or sale. We went on to discuss that he has no idea how much it costs him to generate a sale, and therefore has no idea what his net profit is on each job they pick up.

The reason this is a problem is that every business owner will hit a point where they just don't want to spend over a certain amount per month for their expenses. But what if they have an expense that has a 100% ROI, why would you want to stop putting money into this? Let's just assume this expense doesn't require more work, just the fact of putting more money equals more profit. So why would you stop? Most business owners stop simply because they don't know their ROI. I sent him over an excel spreadsheet, for him to fill out for every lead he generates the cost & the return. This will help both of us know where we should be spending money.

Moving onto another story, I have another freind that sent me a website that he has just setup within the past month. Parts of the site aren't completed, and they just sent off $6,000 for a magazine ad that will go out nationwide in March 08. Once again I asked him how his site was converting and he had no clue. If the ad flops will it sink his business, before they even had a chance to begin?

Get to know your ROI and it will make the world of difference for you business!

P.S. As a side note, I setup a website for my fathers dairy farm a few months ago. He just sold his first cow for a $2,000 profit. So far this month my dads ROI was 589.66%, not bad for a dairy farmer!

I started working with Pets Best only 5 months ago, and already have started working myself out of a job. Here is the concept and why I am just not securing my employment status for too long...

As a business owner; and you'll learn in the book E-Myth the secret to success is about creating business systems where you are not a cog in the wheel. By stepping outside of the box and molding the systemyou become more effective and you open up your time as your system grows. Eventually you'll have more time as you've perfected the system and then you can go and create a new system, or as he refers to in the book "Franchise" your system. If you haven't read the book it is a must read.

On the other hand of the table if you're a business owner beware of the type of employee who secures his position by having thier hands tied into everything. You know that person that  the business simply wouldn't work without. They are the employees who are working and hold the key to box. This is not the type of system you want to build yourself around.

But, as an employee or in my case a consultant, this strategy doesn't secure yourself a job! As I am working to build a system for Pets Best, my results will stay with or without me. Let me explain this with an example. Lets say a business is currently doing 50 total sales a month and they decide to hire me and a top salesman. I will be working on increasing conversions on the company site, and the top salesman will be making sales on the phone and in person. Within 6 months we both have helped increase business sales to 100 by producing 25 more sales/month a piece. On our way to celebrate we are killed in a car crash (sorry such a sad ending)! Question who continues to provide results from beyond the grave?

So as you can see, once I start demanding that I receive a portion of the profits that I am generating in my sleep the CEO gets tired of paying me and realizes the fact that I have built a system that I could be replaced, and it won't effect sales or our conversion rate. So the next day I come to work and am canned.

Hopefully my story helped get across the point I wanted to make. Who would fire me anyway?

This should also be a lesson for business owners...learn to fire yourself by building a system that you can easily be replaced & beware of the employees who have the key to everything.

P.S. Don't worry about my job status, I am currently in the process of building my own business system, and can't wait until the day that it is complete!

Being Thanksgiving and all, I decided to post some of the things that I am most thankful for in my business. They are not in the order of importance:

1. Internet: I am greatful for the flexibility of the internet. As I sit here almost in the middle of the night I am still capable of getting work completed. My wife and I are getting ready to travel to Portland, Oregon tommorrow for thanksgiving and I am just wrapping up on a few projects. I also grew up on dairy farm as a kid, and over the years, noticed just how much my parents are tied to the farm. I can work anywhere in the world whenever I please. Heck I have even started to help my dad out by marketing his holstein embryo's better. He recently had a World Expo Champion, but just didn't market them very well outside of the show. Now anyone in the world can view his cows online and purchase their embyro's or semen. (totally a different world - I know)!
2. Outsourcing: The day that I truly understood outsourcing, I will never forget. I was working a full time job at DotComSecrets.com and really got tired of putting in 12 hour days (not to say that I don't today, just I can spend 12 hrs on my own projects). Spending 8 with him and 4 on my own wasn't fun, so I decided to take a leap and hire Mary Ann at AOV and have never looked back. After having someone working for me 40hrs/week, I just couldn't get enough so I have since hired Penny & Sanjeev. You can find out more about Agents of Value here. Sanjeev designs all my sites, which has been a huge asset for my team.
3. Affiliate Programs: I am not talking about any original affiliate program that you find online. I am talking about setting up agreements with site/business owners and taking a larger share of the pie. I have an agreement with AOV where I get a 10% discount for all my referrals I send their way. As of this day I have 2 agents completely free. Not bad, meaning they're putting in 80hrs/week for my sites.
4. Mentors: I have had many mentors throughout my life, starting with wrestling coaches Bob Christensen, to business mentors Judd Norman. Some of my later mentors that really helped me get started in this industry Russell Brunson & SEOmoz. Russell has probably made the biggest impact in my life with my year working with him side by side.
5. Family: Finally, I am most thankful for my wife and my family. The support they have given me over the last few years has been outstanding. My wife Lani has gone through alot, I have tried a lot of crazy ideas, and most didn't work at first. Thankfully, the tables have turned and things are very bright in the future. My family has alwasy been a great support system my entire life, and to this day still are.
6. Failure: Yup, this is one of the best things in life. You need to learn how to fail in life, before you ever suceed. In my wrestling career at the University of Nebraska I failed miserably (at least for my standards) my senior year, I sat in the stands to look at the 8 All-Americans 4 of which I had beaten that season. I will take that failure with me for the rest of my life. It still burns in me to succeed, I do not want to have that feeling again and I am a better person because of it.

So there you have it, these are just a few of the things I am thankful for this Thanksgiving holiday!

I should have mentioned this earlier, but since I rarely get around to posting more frequently, I just haven't. For the past 2 1/2 months I have been working with Pets Best Pet Insurance located here in Boise. When I have more time I will have to share some of my thoughts going into a larger corporation than I have previously worked with. But that is for another day, for now I want to share some of our recent findings:

I came across an interesting article at Marketing Sherpa not too long ago, too bad they've locked the article so I couldn't link to it even if I did find it.

Side Rant: Marketing Sherpa has some incredible weekly case studies, I highly recommend subscribing to their newsletter and keeping up with their findings. They only have the case studies open for the first 7 days and after they they close them to the public and you'll need to be a paying customer to gain access.

The article referred to getting people to focus on your product, and increasing your conversions in the process. Take for example an image of a lady holding a product, she is facing you and her eyes are looking straight at you. As viewers of the site we are stopped dead in our tracks as we look her directly in the eye, then as we come out of the small trance we move on through the site.

Now take another image where that same lady is still holding the product, but this time she has her eyes focused on the product rather than us the viewers. We still look at the lady, but our eyes are drawn to the product, and we spend that valuable short amount of time reminding ourselves why we are on the site in the first place.

We decided to test this theory out with one of our landing pages for Pets Best  by using Google's Website Optimizer and this is what we came up with for our 2 tests:

Version # 1
 

Version #2

Both these landing pages are only used for our PPC campaigns, and it only took a short while to find a definite winner. Our conversion goal was to get people to request a free quote and here are the results:

• Version #1 resulted in a 33% conversion rate
• Version #2 resulted in a 66% conversion rate
• Version #2 converted 84% more traffic than Version #1

As far as we can see there are two conclusions to this test that resulted in these astounding numbers.

1. The Jack Russell Terrier is focused on the form & somehow pshycologically convicing people to fill out the form. (Ohh the conversations going on in people's heads?)
2. People can relate better to Jack Russell Terriers. They are smaller dogs, not as hairy, house pets? What are your thoughts?

Almost a month ago I started a thread in Russell Brunson’s Conquer Your Niche forum:

Where Are The ‘REAL’ Business Owners?

This is a question that I have had for the last few months, and it has really started to bother me. I posted an ad in the forum, then I posted this thread, with little to no response. I have been marketing online now for over the last 2 years, in the beginning a lot of my time was spent trying to find out what was crap and what really worked. I wish I wouldn’t have wasted so much time trying to figure it all out, but here is my conclusion:

1. The people that are making it online and sharing are all selling something to those who wish they were making it.

2. The wishers see their example and start to copy them by reselling same info, simply repackaged.

3. They all hang out in the forums and feed off any new person who comes along. They don’t make any money other than within the forums.

WAKE UP PEOPLE!!! The knowledge you have is very powerful and could be used with ‘REAL’ off line businesses. The internet is still so young as a marketing medium, and thousands of businesses still haven’t learned how to use it for business. I have started to work with a few off line businesses and have seen some outstanding results? My only question is why haven’t other ‘Online’ marketers started to figure this out?