Stephen D. Gross

Lots of Capital but not a lot of Technical

This is a good place to be, you have money to fund the creation of your ecommerce site but also a bit dangerous since you don’t have the technical knowledge to understand when people aren’t telling you the truth.

The truth is that there are quite a few companies out there that can help you create a very robust, SEO friendly, and highly scalable ecommerce site including Volusion, MondeVertInc, ShopVisible, Zoovy, Datafeedr, PopShops, and of course Google Checkout and Amazon Stores, etc.

Each of these companies have experience in building the ecommerce store, helping you understand the implications of the technology and in general handling most of the business from the technical side…but for a price.

The kicker here is that each of these companies specializes in helping you run your business but seldom do they actually make sure you know how to run it without them. They are in business to gain recurring revenue from your interaction with them and not in the business to show you how to code the system, or create great features without someone paying for them.

With that said if you are an existing business and have an existing brick and mortar world that you are already managing then these are the folks for you because they take a majority of the work off your hands.

Keep in mind they help design, build and deploy your new ecommerce presence but they do NOT run it for you. That is up to you and your staff…you do have staff to run your ecommerce business don’t you? You might want to think about that, there are hundreds of ecommerce sites languishing in despair for lack of someone within the company that is charged with the sites’s success and understands how to run an online business.

So in the Capital but no Technical world your main problems will be:

1) Understand what you are asking for and find vendor that does it

2) If you don’t have the ecommerce or technology background hire someone to manage the process designs, development and deployment of the site for you or you WILL get bitten, this is simple reality.

3) Be sure whomever is designing then look and feel of the site KNOWS what that means. You well wishing marketing and art departments need to understand usability, interface design, and any number of other aspects of this business to be useful. If they don’t HIRE someone that does and have them do the designing.

4) Throughly understand the features of the system you are buying and keep asking for training till you do. Most of the features of these high end ecommerce systems aren’t used by most customers. You need to be engaged in the your own business and understand how the platform can make you money.

5) Remember, and this applies to all ecommerce websites, traffic to your site doesn’t not mean sales (conversions), yes you need to drive traffic to your site but that means qualified traffic and traffic that is there to buy not to look. Remember the retail model, window shoppers don’t buy and buyers seldom window shop.

So in the next entry we’ll cover the middle ground, We’ve got the Technical but funds are tight, this is an exciting area but requires you know how the plumbing of your new ecommerce site really works!

Dan Horn & Noh Limits is a member and contributor to StephenDGross.com and BrookstoneMarketingGroup.com

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The world of ecommerce is exciting, painful and sometimes down right foolish, but we all want the independence that running our own store “could” bring.

Being independent of “the man” and being able to work from anywhere in the world is quite an appealing prospect but most of us have no idea how to do it or the innumerable problems in our path.

One of the primary things to think about when opening an ecommerce store is how much time you have to actually spend working on the store operations.

Keep in mind all the things you would do if you owned a brick and mortar storefront apply to the ecommerce site.

Even though you don’t have to deal with a lease and hard furnishing you still have all the equivalent issues with the ecommerce site lease equals hosting, hard furnishing equal pay per click and SEO marketing costs.

Over the course of this series I’ll be helping you understand not only the various ways to create a successful ecommerce store but also how to do it to fit into your lifestyle.

Lots of Capital but not a lot of Technical

As an example if you have time and financing you could certainly build the site from scratch, rent a warehouse, buy and store products and ship them from your warehouse. You certainly can buy these website development from any number of companies at any price range and they will happily hand you a fully operational ecommerce site that is fully customizable, at a fee, and you are in business…if you know how to run an ecommerce business.

We’ve got the Technical but funds are tight

In the middle of the spectrum if you only have time but not much capital to run the business you might want to consider using one of a number of ecommerce shopping carts, find a few drop shippers to do your fulfillment and use your sweat equity to design, develop, and deliver the ecommerce site to the web using organic SEO techniques and some of a number of shopping cart systems.

No Money and No Technical no problem

At the far end of the spectrum a recent trend has come about that is called an affiliate ecommerce site which is all about putting together a website that you drive traffic to and then as people buy products they are sent to the company website that actually sells the products and do the transaction there. This process alleviates a number of the onerous tasks associated with running an ecommerce store because you don’t have to deal with inventory, credit card processing, customer service and returns since they company one the other ends deals with that and give you a commission on each sale.

In my next article I’ll be taking each of the three methods, and all the variants and discussing the pros and cons of each. Over the next few weeks we will look into what can be done and how much time, effort, and expense if involved in each method and how you can be successful running an ecommerce business yourself.

Next up we’ll cover the process where you or your business has money to invest in the ecommerce business but not the technical chops so you hire a company to do your ecommerce site: Lots of Capital but not a lot of Technical next!

Spending the same amount of money, and yes more time, on data mining and analysis might just benefit your revenue and profits in a far greater and more sustainable way.  How would you like to actually decrease your traffic and, at the same time, double or triple your online business?  Making more out of less is always a strong part of any good business plan.

Dan Horn & Noh Limits is a member and contributor to StephenDGross.com and BrookstoneMarketingGroup.com

Time after time we listen to conversation concerning traffic generation and traffic conversion when using Google Adwords and Google Analytics.  These days financial dreams are planted in the chase of the all-mighty click through ratio (CTR), conversion ratio and goal funnel success.

In addition to the obvious benefit of using these Google tools for directly growing your revenue is the tremendous benefit of data mining.  Data mining, used correctly, can grow your business faster and more profitably than any online marketing strategy.  That’s right!

The professional Internet Marketer should know the value of this well known but seemingly elusive method for reverse engineering your online marketing campaigns.

So what are the benefits of data mining?

We’ve experienced overall conversion rate increases of 100’s of percentage points.   Bounce rates, specification page exits, and navigation detours tremendously decreased.  Customer loyalty and re-visits have been increased up to four-fold.  Other side benefits include the ability to incorporate better customer services practices and inventory control.

What is the result of this sometimes painstaking and often tedious work?

Spending $10-20,000.00 on marketing online expense will certainly bring additional traffic.  However, you may end up pouring more water into a large bucket with many holes.  The increases in traffic might snare additional revenue but can you afford the expense drain and lower profitability?

Spending the same amount of money, and yes more time, on data mining and analysis might just benefit your revenue and profits in a far greater and more sustainable way.  How would you like to actually decrease your traffic and, at the same time, double or triple your online business?  Making more out of less is always a strong part of any good business plan.

Once you have honed your website into a fine tuned engine and have verifiable results then and only then might be time to ramp up your online marketing budget.  Use the lessons learned from data mining to create better metrics and a more sound online business.

Check out Brookstone Marketing Group for additional assistance.

Please feel free to leave a comment with your views on Google Adwords and Analytics.

We had the opportunity, this past week, to interview several severely frustrated potential small business clients who were looking for a quick website disaster relief strategy.  The degree of frustration inherent in today’s small business owners seems to be rising at epic proportions during the last 3-6 months.

What is the cause of their frustrations?  Website failure to produce.

More and more we are confronted by small business owners who look to us for website or web presence disaster relief.  Although we are always happy and willing to assist them, the ability for us to do so has become drastically hampered by the impressions and failures left by the previous internet website design and/or marketing company.

Case in point is Kelli (not her real name).  Kelli spent over an hour hammering us with “what-if” and “how-come” questions regarding her Internet strategy.  She claimed to have spent thousands and thousands of dollars over the past 2 years for web design and online marketing.  Unfortunately, as she said, her small business has had little if any return on the investment.

After listening for over an hour, and with Kelli still on the phone, we decided to run a quick real time analysis on her website and ask a few questions about her strategy.  YIKES, not good!!

As is normally the case these days, Kelli had a low-cost individual website designer develop a website for her business.  In addition, nobody considered pre-design criteria like keyword analysis, content analysis, value proposition, competitive analysis, and goals and objectives.  To make matters worse, she has employed two separate website design firms and has attempted at least 3 different online marketing strategies.

Fortunately, Kelli’s website and past marketing efforts have created a strong enough base to allow for some fairly quick and financially painless changes or modification to get things turned around.  Unfortunately, sooner than later, she will be forced to discard most of the past work in order to make room for the much needed long term changes.  These changes will be required to allow her to reach her long term goals and objectives.

So how do you stop this from happening to you, again.  Make sure you only work with a website or web presence company that fully understands the need for pre-design and marketing (not advertising) analysis.  This analysis must include the design of the online destination (website) as well as intended marketing efforts.  Failure to do so could translate into a disaster relief effort, or worse yet, a business failure.

Do you have a disaster story?  Leave a comment.

Interview and content provided by Brookstone Marketing Group

Now that the first decade of this century is over, small businesses are waking up to find themselves in a quandary trying to decide on traditional marketing versus online marketing and the means to finance either one.

Traditional Media Advertising and Marketing is often times out of the financial reach for most small business owners.  Even if they have the resources, small business owners get caught up in the need to justify and ensure a return on the investment of their time and hard earned dollars.  Traditional Media firms normally require an up front payment plus a long-term commitment before launching any campaign.  In addition, the charge for creative work is passed on as an addition expense to the media buying small business owner.

Internet or Online Marketing, more often than not, follows the same routine as Traditional Media firms in terms of financing the campaign and charging for creative.  The difference is that Online Marketing is typically far less expensive, much faster to launch, and easier to track and justify.  However, many online pay-per-click campaigns are launched by inexperienced marketing agents, and thus cost, and at times exhaust, their clients available budgets before a payback can be achieved.

Enter Social and Content Marketing.  These forms of Online Marketing can be seem elusive and untrackable for the small business owner.  Many times, the small business owners lack of understanding of the philosophy behind authority, trust, and communication keeps them from participating and committing financial resources towards this form of marketing.

Small business owners are looking for a low cost of entry solution for marketing for 2010.  The Internet can and will offer a pay-as-you-go alternative to the old fashion no-risk traditional media firm financial model.

Small Business owners seem poised and ready to commit the necessary dollars to get their business growing again.  However, they will only do so if the marketing channel is proven and offers a high opportunity for success and/or has some assurances built-in for controlling and tracking the marketing expenditures.

Brookstone Marketing Group has now released a marketing campaign that fits such a requirement, PayGo Marketing.  For more information concerning PayGo Online Marketing release click here.

What is your struggle with online marketing?  Leave a comment.

PayGo Online Marketing is a campaign offered by Brookstone Marketing Group.

Most small business owners need to remind themselves about what caused them to start or take-over a small business to begin with.  In addition, they often forget how they were able to get a new business off the ground.

Many times the answers to these questions can be found in the Marketing acronym AIDA.  So what the heck is AIDA?

1. Attention – what you do to get the customers attention.

2. Interest – what is done to get the customer interested.

3. Desire – what you do to get the customer to desire your product or service.

4. Action – What causes the customer to take the desired action, i.e. buy something.

There are plenty of examples of each one of these very important steps.  Getting the customers Attention may be a simple matter of a coupon offer, advertising that you have a limited supply of something, a visual advertising display, or maybe an attractive person in an advertisement.

The Interest step takes a little more thought. This is where you give the customer a reason to read or view farther.  Tell them what you can do for them or maybe how they might benefit from doing business with you.

Creating Desire can be a little challenging.  Be sure to stay on message during this step.  Most small businesses have a habit of either skipping this step all togetheror  placing very minimal emphasis on its value.  Some great techniques for Desire are:

- Offering a Bonus or Incentive to buy today

- Using testimonials from happy customers

- Show how your product or service will immediately solve their problem

- Demonstrate how doing business with you is the best decision

- Again using the powers of scarcity

This step can also serve as a tool to separate you from the competition.  Don’t hesitate to combine several of these techniques to prompt the customer to buy from you today and not look further at a competitor.

Action is the ultimate step in getting the customers business.  However, it’s perhaps the easiest step in AIDA marketing.  Make sure you tell and guide them to what the next step is and exactly how to complete the action.  You can offer or restate a bonus offer to buy today.  Create a strong Call to Action.  In eCommerce, make sure you show a prominent Buy Now button.  Above all try to prompt them into the desired action without confusing them about your original message and offer that was created during the first three steps of AIDA.

In summary, it may take some time and well thought out strategies to perfect your AIDA marketing.  We recommend split or multi-variant testing with more than one AIDA process.  The result will be a noticeable increase in your conversion or closing ratio.

How is your AIDA?  Leave a comment.

So what is all the magic about the number 37?

Very simply stated, the number 37, in our opinion, is the root of success for almost all sales and marketing.  Every web designer, content writer, and marketing guru should know and understand the power of this number!

Ok, so what the heck is the magic in 37?  Did it originate from some super-duper magic show in Las Vegas?  HA!  Not really.

It really should be shown as 3-7.  These two numbers are somewhat separate in terms of how they perform their magic.  You probably use these numbers everyday without knowing it.

Had enough?  Give up yet?

The first explanation concerns the use of getting the buyers attention and making them sticky.  In other words, getting them to return to your website.  So here are the forms of magic:

You have no more than 3 seconds to gain the customer’s attention on your website, page, content, offering, and/or pricing.  Additionally, you have no more than 7 seconds to verify their decision to commit their attention and gain their trust. That’s right, you only have a maximum of 10 seconds to gain their attention and prove they made the right decision to commit their time.

Secondly, during these economic times and under non-emergency conditions, its takes an average of 3 visits to your website, etc. to get the customer to believe in your offering.  It may take as many as 7 visits for the customer to take the action you want them to take.

The “Marketing 37″ concept has been applied, in many different forms, throughout marketing history.  No the magic is not in pasting this number throughout your website (duh).  The real magic is using and applying these two “Marketing 37″ concepts to drastically increase your conversion ratio.  Understanding the need to grab the customers attention, get them coming back, and having them apply the actions you desire is really what the magic is all about.

What is your conversion ratios?  Leave a comment.

Visit Brookstone Marketing Group for more information

I’m sure most online marketers have their own opinions, some even based on research, concerning the top ways to get ranked in the organic, free search, listings (SEO).  We have listed below what we have used to successfully promote and obtain the coveted top listing on the 1st page of search engine results.  These listings should not be considered to be in rank of priority or a task list in terms of importance.  These steps should be implemented in combination for a quality compounding affect.

1. Title Tag: relevant to the targeted keyword search term.

2. Header Tags: Relevant to the page title.

3. Meta Tags: Keyword relevance and organic listing content.

4. Alt/Anchor Text and Links: Must be relevant to linked Page and content.

5. Content: Relevant to keyword density, page title, and the reader.

6. Backlinks: Relevant to Linking Quality and Quantity

7. Pages: Relevant to category navigation, landing pages, and internal linking.

8. Site Map: Relevant to Search Engine Navigation.

9. Online Media Channeling: Relevant to Links and Popularity.

10. Joint Ventures: Relevant to Links, Content, Community, and Authority.

What is your SEO strategy?  Leave a comment.

Visit Brookstone Marketing Group for more information.

Do you know the top SEO technique?

Backlinks are commonly ranked in the top 5 in terms of most important steps for ranking your website or webpage on the front page of search engine results.  So what are the top three backlink criteria for using this critical factor for getting moved up on the SEO ladder?

1. Keyword Relevancy – Make sure the links back to your page are relevant to the page content.  Anchor text,      Title & Meta Tags, and Content all play a valuable role and should be addressed before creating the link.  Keywords are often compared by the search engines to establish relevancy within the link and search engine result page.

2. High Value Links: Establish your links with pages with a high Page Rank value.  PageRank results from a “ballot” among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it (”incoming links“). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page. (Click here for more Page Rank information)

3. Avoid NoFollow – Avoid backlinks with Nofollow in the HTML  attributes.  In a nutshell, nofollows are intended to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring. (Click here for more Nofollow information)

Make sure you or your SEO professional understands and implements a strong Backlink practice when getting your website or webpage ranked in the search engines.  Remember quality of backlinks often trumps quantity when getting ranked high in search engine results.

Having trouble with backlinks?  Leave a comment.

Provided by Brookstone Marketing Group

What makes it so powerful?

Aside from the obvious need for online copywriting and years of Internet marketing expertise, the real power in social marketing comes from the ability to combine and compound many online marketing channels.  Even greater is the ability to cross pollinate or further compound many accounts within each of Twitter, Facebook and other marketing channels to reach thousands if not millions of users within a single campaign.

The ability to have two-way communications is tremendous.  Being able to listen to your customers and discuss your business offers and needs at the same time is unmatched by any other media channel.

The coup de gras is the add-on capability to acquire, collect and nurture new and existing customers.  Keeping customers is almost as hard as getting new ones with today’s real-time search environment.  Many up to date business practices include a dedicated email marketing staff to talk, listen, relay, and offer advice to and with their customers 24/7.

Provided by Brookstone Marketing Group