5 reasons your business website needs a compelling offer.

by Claudia Hafner

A compelling offer is something that a visitor would find hard to resist signing up for. It might be a report, a worksheet, a subscription to a newsletter, access to videos, presentations, or other information. It is the initial component of call-to-action buttons and landing pages.

1. Do something with your website traffic. Chances are you are getting visitors to your website. Do you know who they are? Getting traffic is no easy task, especially qualified visitors. Once they leave your website you may never see them again. And as each day goes by more and more visitors have left and you still don't know who they are. You can't talk to them. Having a compelling offer gives you the opportunity to at least have a conversation with them.
2. Help solve your visitors' problems - why they've come to your website! Your visitors are looking for something they think you might have or they wouldn't have landed on your website. They have a problem they are trying to solve and they are looking for information, from YOU, on how to solve it. A special report or worksheet to download could be the very thing that can set them on the path to getting that information.
3. Differentiate your business and website from your competitors'. What do you have to offer that your competitors do not? Every business wants leads and how many leads your business gets is dependent on what you can offer them NOW. If they can download or subscribe to something of value, you have a lead.
4. Leads allow you to continue to communicate with them. A lead has given you their contact information which allows you to educate, nurture, establish credibility and trust, and show them you are the expert. Until a visitor gives you their contact information you do not have this opportunity.
5. A compelling offer increases your chances of turning this visitor into a lead. Leads can become customers and increase ROI. How well you have this process in place will determine potential for increased return on investment. More leads translate into more potential customers. Compelling offers help increase leads and thus the potential for increased customers and ROI.

Social media report: More time invested equals more leads.

by Gayle Davies 

Having lived in Hawaii for 15 years I couldn't help but notice that trends on the mainland take a couple of years before arriving on the shores of the Big Island. The beautiful land of fire and ice. That is why I found this survey so thought provoking. 

Now that I live on the mainland, for me it is a snapshot back in time. But it should also be reassuring to many small business owners everywhere currently struggling with this new marketing strategy must-have. Using Facebook to generate leads, LinkedIn to close deals. That is the direction you will be going in.

The majority of the survey respondents were members of the Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce. A tight-knit group of smart entrepreneurs running small businesses. Half had 5 or fewer employees and 17% had between 6-25 employees. Just like you!

Regarding their experience with Social Media, 51% of the business owners reported either: no experience, just getting started, or just a few months of social media interactions. Sound familiar?

• Those who saw the most benefits from social media were those who spent between 10 and 15 hours per week on all social media activities.
  
• And 65% of those who spent one hour or less per week did not see any results. 

The point I am making is that you may feel overwhelmed by what seems like your forced immersion into social media. Do you feel like you are behind the times or missing the social media boat? There is hope for you yet. You just have to realize that you may be operating in "Hawaiian time." Everything is just a little bit slower. But the benefits of social media will reach your shore sooner than you think.

Kinoshita Communications LLC, based on the Big Island of Hawaii, has released the results of their social media survey. Mahalo Laura for providing this timely survey.

You can find the report here: "West Hawaii Social Media Survey."

Generate leads before visitors get away

by Claudia Hafner

 

In today's online world someone is considered a lead if they have decided to take some sort of action on your website where they leave contact info.

So? Why should I care? 

You care, because this lead has given you their contact information! You now know they were interested enough in something you had to offer to give it to you. It is the contact information that 'converts' this visitor into a lead; it is tangible evidence of interest.

You have visitors coming to your site all day long, but if they never take an action you may never see them again. While a sale would be nice too, it may be too soon for them. And this is an important point, "they may not be ready to purchase yet." However, they may be ready to get more information if you offer it to them. This provides you an opportunity to help them through their purchasing cycle in a consitent and ongoing manner. 

Make the offer. 

What can you give a visitor in exchange for their contact information? Special information, in-depth information, how-to information, a worksheet to show them a process, on-going information? Whatever your business, product or service, there is something that would further a visitor's experience with you, your business, or your product...and ultimately be useful to the visitor.

Use this offer to convert your visitors into leads by creating a specialized landing page. Tell them why this information will benefit them, what they will receive, and then ask them to fill out some contact info and submit it. 

You now have a lead.

Start creating your specialized landing pages and convert visitors to leads with this downloadable worksheet.

Download our Landing Page Worksheet.

 

 

Inbound marketing with a Blog. How to write right.

by Cathey Tarleton

Every business needs a blog now, right? It's key to integrating inbound marketing with your overall marketing strategy, the next rung up the evolution ladder for good old-fashioned Word-of-Mouth. And, whether you're Fortune 500 or fortunate enough to have 500 bucks, if your blog is well-written, remarkable content, it will help your business get found and generate leads.

A few boot-camp basics of "writing right" will help you look more like the expert you already are. And, isn't that why you are blogging in the first place?

You can be a brilliant blogger, a miracle-working e-marketer and a sales superhero, but if you don't write better than a fifth grader, grammar-wise, your content is worth the paper it's printed on.  (That's a joke.)

What difference does it make? Any writer will tell you they use good grammar for ONE reason: to keep the reader reading. 

We do whatever it takes to make a reader/potential customer turn the page, click through, scroll down and read on. We don't want their eye to get caught on a dumb error and screech to a halt...

You know what I'm talking about: the misspelled word, the exclamation point overload, bad comma, missing periods and wrong quotation marks.

"Wait a minute," a flashback from English Class says, "Wait a minute. Isn't that supposed to be...?"

Let us help you be just as impressive and inspiring on the page as you are in person. Hafner Creative Communications presents a series of posts about some of the most common grammatical errors - and how to avoid them.

Look smart online. Sound like you know what you're talking about.  Write right.

Targeted landing pages help generate leads

by Claudia Hafner  

Tailor specific messages to specific calls-to-action

This is the first in a series of posts devoted to learning more about how specialized landing pages can help convert your visitors and generate leads.

A landing page is literally a page that visitors land on when they click to your site or log on to your homepage. Any page of your website is potentially a landing page. What we want to talk about here are specialized landing pages and calls-to-action.

Your customers are not one-size-fits-all and neither should a single web page try to sell (inform, educate, etc) everything to everyone. Your main website pages have general information that pertain to your broader base of visitors. Hopefully you have traffic coming from a variety of specialized or targeted sources and calls-to-action. Some of these sources might include:

• a link from an email
  
• a paid search ad
• a banner ad
  
• an offline print ad
  
• a direct mailer

Calls-to-action literally ask someone to take some action. They might include:

• Download worksheet
• Subscribe to my blog
• Request information
  
• Learn more
  

All these sources and calls-to-action require some type of specialized landing page.

Specialized, targeted landing pages increase your chances that your visitors from targeted sources will find what they are looking for because the specialized page is customized to talk to them. They may even click on something else you present them with. You want your visitors to stay interested in what you have to say, but you also want to talk about what they are intersted in. Specialized landing pages can really help in this process.

Start creating your specialized landing pages with this downloadable worksheet.

Download our Landing Page Worksheet.