SpeedieConsulting

I am going to carrying out a series of case studies on pay per click advertising against various other forms of Internet Marketing. The first exercise will involve article marketing, which a service we offer to our clients with the main aim is being to drive them inbound links to their sites.

What we have found however, is that they have also driven substantial amounts of traffic in their own right. So we have analysed the data from a few of our clients with their permission and I want to share the results to see if you should be marketing online with articles.

If you are using PPC you may wish to consider switching some of that budget to article marketing as you will be surprised by the results.

Firstly, I would say that we use pay per click as part of our marketing strategy but in recent months we have found the quality both poor, and even worse, more expensive.

Client #1
We have a mortgage client who we provided a range of articles to during 2008*. On average each article generated 391 views and each article generated 33 click throughs to the client’s site. The cost of these clicks on a pay per click basis would be £66. (Average mortgage term cost with Google £2 per click) The article cost was £25.

Client #2
We have an insurance client who we provided a range of articles to during 2008*. On average each article generated 552 views and each article generated 92 click throughs to the client’s site. The cost of these clicks on a pay per click basis would be £230. (Average client term cost with Google would be £2.50 per click) The article cost was £25.

As you can see, the first client received 264% more value for money with their articles and the second client received a staggering 920% more value for money. They saved themselves £205. The figures used are from just a single article directory and what’s more, the stats are only provided up to the end of the year. The articles will continue to drive clicks as long as the site is live so the click volumes will now only ever increase.

Would you like to be receiving this kind of ROI on your spend. Why not talk to us about how we can help drive you traffic and boost your search engine rankings using Article Marketing.

* All statistics are taken from a single article directory. We currently submit to over 100 different sources.

Here is an idea for taking your support emails and turning them into content.  There are lots of  companies with huge (and I mean huge) amounts of potential unique content sat in their email which can be used to create a Support FAQ or knowledge base website that can be crawled by Google.  Using Wordpress and an import function you can build a FAQ website in a few hours. Here is a quick slideshare overview of the process that we operate for clients.

Do you see the benefits and want this for your business?  Talk to us now.

Carrying on from last week here are the next group of website issues we found…

8. Products not available
We found instances where instead of “Page Under Construction” we found “Product Not Available”. Again, if you don’t have the product, don’t build a page promoting it as available. Visitors will leave and then won’t come back.

9. Outdated Content
Content on sites are expected to be fresh and up to date. Some of the sites we visited had content relating to out of date products and services and also news sections that hadn’t been updated since 2003.

Old and stale content is not good for your prospective customer nor is it good for the Search Engines. They will penalise your site for having no updated content on your site.

10. No regulatory information / Old info (GISC Logos)
Make sure your website includes all the necessary disclaimers and regulatory information. Where you are appointing Representatives, make sure their sites are compliant. We found several instances of GISC Logos and no mention of the FSA or who appointed them as Representatives.

If you are no longer regulated nor do not wish to conduct business via the internet then you would be best advised to removed the site completely.

11. No interactive, fresh content
As point 9 said, having no new fresh content does not reflect well on your business. Allow the user to interact with your website. Provide articles, news content, chat facilities online. All these things will improve the first contact with your potential customer and will help with your Search Engine marketing efforts.

12. No corporate blogs
Blogging or Web Logs have been the big thing in the online world for the last two years, yet we still found very few insurers that have embraced this technology. It provides your business with a face or online persona that a visitor can relate to in some way. It is also a great way to add new content to your site, and is a great tool to promote your business within Search Engines.

IFAs, insurance brokers, and mortgage brokers can immediately boost their websites or blogs offering by using a new – and free – interactive toolkit. The range of finance and insurance calculators can help enhance the users’ online experience.

Launched today by Speedie Consultants Limited, the finance and insurance web content provider, this is its first calculator Wordpress based toolkit. The toolkit provides a range of savings, mortgage, budgeting and investment calculators. This gives financial advisors and brokers a range of useful interactive calculators, which they can add to their websites in order to engage and educate their customers.

Jason Hulott, Director, says: “We have always provided static content to a range of finance and insurance companies yet we felt that we could offer more functionality and make content a lot more engaging. Customers love using online tools and this toolkit means that even the smallest IFA or broker website can add a range of interactive calculators at no cost.”

He added that with the Wordpress Content Management System (CMS) becoming the standard for new website implementations “we decided to create a solution that easily integrates our tools with Wordpress at the push of a button”.

The tools are brand free so firms are able to badge them as their own and keep the customer in their own website.

“We understand that companies are busy and some do not have the technical skills to build these tools themselves so we have created a system of self contained tools that are simply uploaded to their Wordpress based site or blog and then easily added onto the website. They really are simple to implement” says Hulott.

“Our main objective is that you add the toolkit on line in the morning and have the calculators running on your website by the afternoon.”

To download your free Calculators please visit:

http://www.speedieconsulting.co.uk/wp-calculators/

Most companies will have web based facilities to promote their services or products, but there are other ways of earning a passive income from recommending and promoting other companies’ products and services. This can be done in any number of ways but online this kind of arrangement is called Affiliate Marketing.

Why should I get excited about Affiliate Marketing?

Let me share some recent statistics from e-consultancy. In 2006, Affiliate Marketing was worth £2.16 billion – an increase of nearly 60% on the previous year. In way of comparison, Search Engine marketing or PPC was worth £1.26 billion and Email marketing was worth £178 million on 2006.

So clearly Affiliate Marketing is a huge revenue stream for both affiliates and the merchants offering the programs. Affiliate Marketing, simply put, is the tool by which a merchant or product owner can use others to promote and sell their products for them.

In return the “others” or affiliates get paid a commission. You may have heard of this by another name such as: Reseller, Associate, or Partner Program. They are in essence the same thing.

Online, an affiliate program is a great tool for a business selling products as all the tracking is taken care of online and there is no paperwork. As an Affiliate you are basically referring people to the merchant and earning money when they buy something. No Stock, No Delivery, No refunds, No complaints!

How do I become an Affiliate?

To become an “Affiliate” – i.e. you want to sell other peoples products on your website – the best place to go is an affiliate network where lots of Merchants go to offer their products for sale.

Affiliate networks such as Tradedoubler (www.tradedoubler.co.uk) for example offer affiliate programs on behalf of Dell, Sony, Dixons, Figleaves, Direct Line and a huge range of other high street brands.

Just register as an affiliate (or publisher) then sign up to the programs relevant to your site. Then once you have been approved you can start adding affiliate links to your site in order to promote their products.

Here is a list of the Major UK networks

www.cj.com
www.tradedoubler.co.uk
www.omguk.com
www.affiliatewindow.com
www.affiliatefuture.co.uk
www.buy.at

Within these Networks you will have access to thousands of Merchants and hundreds of thousands of products.

In some cases adding some affiliate banners from some related “big brands” can earn you kudos with your visitors as there is a perceived association!

For the more specialised products and services, you may have to visit the sites you want to work with to see if they offer an affiliate program. Nightingale Conant, for example, have their own affiliate programmes, as does Amazon. To join these programmes simply visit their sites and sign up.

How do I promote Affiliate Programs without my site looking like a flea market?

Most of us work long hours and spend a considerable amount of money building our brands and our products, so I can understand the dilemma of how to best promote these programs without detracting anything away from your core business.

Here are a few ideas that I have used and recommend my clients use to add valuable content to their sites and also utilise Affiliate Programs.

1. Write Product Reviews.
An honest impartial review of another product or service is a great way to add content your site, and offers your visitors your opinion on a product. If you have a loyal fan base it is easy to refer them to your “recommended” products. Just make sure that you have tested or used it.

You may find you could get a free valuation copy to write a compelling review. Just add text links into the review that are your affiliate links. In this way they user can visit the site or product and if your review is helpful enough, they will buy.

This is a great way for those of us who don’t like to ask for a sale or don’t like selling.

2. Add a Resources section to your site.
It could be that you just build a directory of products and services and use your affiliate links to direct users.

3. Emails.
If you have a mailing list, you could send out an email about a given product or service or add advertisements into your normal email. Or if you have an autoresponder system, why not add Affiliate links into the course itself or a build a seperate email as a followup?

4. Build a FREE Report.
This is another great way to promote affiliate products that more and more of us are doing. Write a ten page report on your topic or subject and give it away to anyone who wants it. Don’t even ask for an email address. Let visitors download it – if it is a useful guide they could pass it around the web and suddenly your little Guide is all over the place full of your Affiliate Links! It takes on a life of its own and couldn’t be stopped even if you wanted it to!

5. Post Classified Ads promoting Affiliate products.
Visit Gumtree.com, craigslist.org, and others to setup free classified ads promoting these programmes. This way it doesn’t even have to touch your site.

6. Use your Email or Forum Signature.
Why not vary your email or forum signature and have some affiliate links embedded into it?

7. Build a Mini Site.
You could even build a separate site just with affiliate program links. Lots of companies do this with “name”recommends.com or something like this and this site has a list of recommended Affiliate products, even reviews in some cases.

The trick is to create your own adverts, in your voice and this will set you apart from everyone else and drive you more sales.

As you can hopefully see, adding Affiliate products to your income arsenal is a great way to develop a substantial passive income without detracting from your core business. You can even use Affiliate product sales as research for new products. If lots of your clients are buying a product that you could build your own version of and distribute yourself, then your affiliate sales have paid you to carry out the research to see if the product would sell.

Give Affiliate marketing a try now!

One of the key things touted online is the benefits of building a mailing list for your business. While it is easy to say, these days with so many companies asking for email addresses, people are no longer as willing just to give you their email address for nothing, they want to trade it. Give them something worthwhile and they will happily give you it. Just ask for it and you will be very unlikely you get it.

So now we know we are going to have to give them something of value, how can we do this without:

1. spending a lot of money
2. spending a lot of time

One of the best ways we know to build a mailing list is to provide free reports or online courses that can be delivered electronically. Setting up a system to manage and control this will mean that your mailing list will build itself without the need for management. Do the work once and the system will take care of the rest.

One system you can use to manage such an activity is an autoresponder system.

Simply put an autoresponder that will reply to a message that it receives or will send out a message at a predetermined time. An autoresponder is normally an email address that has a set of rules behind it to respond with an html or text message.

Using an autoresponder means you can:

• Automatically send out a PDF / DOC file to a request
• Add people automatically to a mailing list
• Drop users straight into a sequenced list of emails so they can receive information for you at a predetermined time. This allows you to make contact with a user every couple of days and can automate your marketing for you.
• The system also manages unsubscribes and takes care of all your list management issues for you.

Or all of the above, at the same time!

Our recommendation is to provide a multi part course for two reasons

1. It looks more valuable to the user
2. It gives you a chance to have multiple touch points with a user before they become a client. (There are schools of thought out there that say online, it will take 7 or 8 contacts to turn a user into a client. Why not automate as many of these as possible?)

But what do I write about?

Most of the time, users visit your site to get information, so give it to them. Write a 5 or 7 day course about one of your product offerings. Or if you can, segment your mailing lists by creating a course for each of your main products. This way your mailing lists will be much more responsive.

We tend to use a formula shown below to create a course

Day 1 What is it and why is it important
Day 2 Product Options / Types
Day 3 Things to look out for
Day 4 Cost Saving Tips
Day 5 Wrap it all up summary

This should give you a framework to work on. We create messages that are no more than 500 words long so it makes the information easy to digest and readable. We also like to try and give the reader an action step in each day so they can get a quote, pick up the phone and ask questions, visit a website, that kind of thing.

Automating your list building in this way is a great tool to improve your response times and allows you to develop a relationship with a potential client without the need to “be there” in the initial stages. You are pre-selling yourself to the client and also educating them at the same time. In our experience, the enquiries we get off the back of our courses are twice as likely to become clients.

What’s more, those that don’t become clients can still be monetised by offering additional services or referring them to online solutions to earn income, such as affiliate programmes.

Don’t have the time but see the benefits for your business?

We can prepare and deliver course for you. We have three options.

1. You can buy one of our pre-written courses on one of your topic areas and you deliver it yourself.
2. You can have us write a totally bespoke course based on your requirements
3. You can buy our full management and creation package – we write the course and deliver it using our autoresponder system. This removes any headaches and saves you time.

Please visit http://www.speedieconsulting.co.uk/autoresponder-courses/ for more options

We reviewed a large number of Insurance, Mortgage and IFA websites and discovered 17 issues that were pretty consistent across the board.

Over the next three weeks we will be sharing these issues with you…

These issues are not only damaging the companies’ brand and reputation, but they are causing potential income to be lost.

While we have not named and shamed individual companies, we do feel that this is a good opportunity for all Brokers and IFAs to revisit their websites and update them to make changes that will reduce the number of issues. The reduction in these issues will improve both the revenue potential of the website and the number of visitors using their website.

Issues Found Summary – we will be providing details on each issue further down

Week 1

1. No way of capturing email addresses
2. Splash screens
3. No online quote system
4. No product information
5. Frames
6. Broken links
7. Page under construction

Week 2

8. Products not available
9. Outdated content
10. No regulatory information / Old info (GISC Logos)
11. No interactive, fresh content
12. No corporate blogs

Week 3

13. Text built as Images not used as simple text
14. Quote systems go to third party. No explanation of where the customer is going. Loss of brand control and confusing to customers
15. Page titles are all the same across the site. Normally “Welcome to (company name)”
16. Not using title and page tags correctly – if at all.
17. Navigation issues. No text based navigation

1. No way of capturing email addresses
One of major things we saw a huge amount of was the failure of the website to try and capture contact details from site visitors. This could have been simply done by asking for an email address in return for a free Guide or newsletter.

This then gives the Broker the opportunity to send that visitor sales and more product information.

Capturing this data is doubly important where brokers are advertising and paying for visitors to their websites.

2. Splash screens
Splash screens are not a benefit to a user experience. In fact in most cases they are a hindrance. It means that the user will have to click again to visit the site. While this may not seem a lot, visitors are lazy and will close down a site rather than click “skip intro”.

From a Search Engine Marketing standpoint, a splash screen does not add value to your site and does not allow search engines to best categorise and rank the website. Remove these splash screens and direct visitors to a homepage with substance.

3. No online quote system
Lots of sites we visited provided the impression that they could quote online yet when we arrived, we were presented with forms to complete and the message that a broker would call us. While we understand this, it would be better not to mislead the visitor. To most users, the words “online quote system” means the ability to search the marketplace or a panel of insurers to get an immediate quote.

If there is no online quote system, explain the fact that you offer a bespoke service. Promote that fact that by the visitor completing the form, you will do all the work for them and present them with best option for their circumstances.

Being honest with the user will attract more business. This is because if they know what to expect from your site, they are more likely to continue through the process.

4. No product information
Another recurring theme was the lack of product specific information. Who is on your panel of Car Insurers? Do you offer a discount? What is your no claims discount policy? These are all questions a visitor to your site may have and who would expect this information to be available to them.

Not having this information could lose your brokerage business, as the visitor will find it somewhere else.

5. Frames
Sites using frames were all the rage in 2002, when the frame system allowed for easy use of navigation systems. However, times have moved on and there are much better ways to create navigation systems. Frames also confused Search Engines who tried to visit sites to find out what they were about.

One broken frame link and your site may not feature in any Search Engine listing. As Search Engines command nearly 80% of all web traffic it is a good idea to ensure your site can be read and ranked by Google, MSN and Yahoo!

6. Broken Links
Again, a simple broken link will damage your ability to sell finance or insurance products. We found one site whose online system “Apply” buttons were not working at all. We checked this over five days. Imagine the potential loss of business.

Also from a Search Engine point of view, a broken link causes problems. It really is a simple case of making sure your Web Team or web designer check your links regularly to ensure they are working correctly.

7. Page under construction
Having page links that go to pages that say “Page Under Construction” is a big turn off to a visitor. Don’t add links to a page until it is ready to go live.

Working with lots of online insurance companies, we are always amazed at the lack of content on their websites, yet insurance companies sell some of the most complicated financial products online, so why are they not educating the customer as best as they can so that they can make an informed decision. This can only be done by adding content.

Maybe it is because they don’t have idea for what to write about. Here are 10 ideas for insurance content for insurance broker websites and these are in no order of importance…

1. Frequently Asked Questions – By now you should have a huge range of questions and answer that you would have provided to customers over the years, either via email, by letter, or over the phone. Collect the more common ones and publish a webpage with this content on. If you have enough you can add a FAQ page per product.

2. Product Information – Don’t just hope that the customer will understand your product because he has found your website. They are looking for information – Give it to them. Glossaries and product guide are great content and these can be split over several pages

3. Editorial Section – Do you add your own voice to your website? Add an editorial section or article section.

4. Question and Answer Sessions – Why not run a Q&A session either with a product specialist in your industry, a related industry that would be useful to your clients – Why not run a Q&A with a local accountant or a mortgage broker. You can use this as a basis for a webpage or if you record it, audio or video, you can publish this on your site and promote it. Or do both and get twice or thrice the content for one bit of effort.

5. Product provider information – Who do you work with, what are they about and why do you work with them. Build a page per partner.

6. Detailed Biography of you and your staff – Add a page for each staff member, get personal. Remember people like people so adding a page per staff member will give a prospective client a good feel about what you are all about.

7. Blog – Could you add a blog to your site? And have more tips and comments on the issues on the industry or on topics that relate to your clients.

8. Video – We touched on this before but some products or application processes could be better explained by hosting a video. This can be done with simple screen capture software. You could offer a whole range of helpful videos which you can add to your website.

9. Forum – The daddy of user generated content. Add a managed forum on your website which you patrol and engage with your customer and clients.

10. News Section – You can add a section on your company news, new staff, new partnerships, or about your work in the local community. In addition add in some industry news from other trusted news sources or rewrite news stories with your own comments or slant.

As you can see there are some very simple steps here to add a raft of great content to any insurance website.

Autoresponders are one of the most misunderstood and misused applications online. Simply put an autoresponder will reply to a message that is receives or will send out a message at a predetermined time. An autoresponder is normally an email address that has a set of rules behind it to respond with a html or text message.

While the definition is simple, the application and use of an autoresponder can be used in many different ways, the normal one being that when you go on holiday, you set an autoresponder to send a note to people who email you to say you are on holiday. Now while that is useful in itself, this is where 99% of people stop thinking about them.

Now consider that you could use autoresponders to:

• Deal with Advertising enquiries
• Deal with first level customer support
• Handle product information requests
• Deliver electronic products
• Deliver multi part courses
• Distribute an online newsletter

These are just some of the possibilities of using an autoresponder. Now to give it some kind of perspective, think about how much time that would save you as a small business owner, or how much money that would save you if you paid a member of staff to handle these enquiries.

I’d imagine that now you’d be interested in learning more about Autoresponders.

There are two types of autoresponder products available: Web Based and PC based.

Web based applications are simply that, you subscribe to an online service, use their interface to build and manage your responder campaigns and then activate them. Once done they then run 24 hours a day. So any time anyone sends a note to an autoresponder email address, the system kicks into life and replies on your behalf. Any time of day or night. So your visitors or clients can get access to the information they need when they want it and more importanty without your involvement.

The main advantage of a Web based version is the ability to send out sequential emails. This means that a user could subscribe to a 5 part course, the system would then automatically send out part 1 immediately and then schedule and send out the other parts on a predetermined basis. All this without you getting involved.

How powerful is that.

The second form of autoresponder application is PC based and as it says it is run from your local computer. This means it works in the same way as the web based version but, and here is the difference, it can only work when your PC is running. This is fine if you want to maintain a “working hours only” policy but if you want to run a 24/7 business then short of leaving your PC running on all night, this really won’t work for you.

One way you can take advantage of autoresponders for free is to use the rule settings of your Microsoft Outlook. There are autoresponder rules in here so that if you get a message with a particular subject line or email address then Outlook will run it via it’s rules for that address and reply as necessary. This even allows you to add in file attachments and the like.

Check out our Autoresponder course options. We can write and prepare multi part courses that will educate your customer base and monetise them. We provide 5 or 7 days courses with followup suggestions. We also provide clients with a guide on using affiliate programmes to generate a passive second income stream using some of the top household finance and insurance brand names. These courses also double up as a list building exercise so not only can you be earning passive revenues but you can also be building a mailing list to promote your major products and services.