Support Local Memphis
Business
Toad Tips - Guerilla Web Marketing
101
by Bob Nunn
Whether you're a small business doing your own web site
or a mega corporation with a big online budget, one thing
that you must do is get your site address into the hands
of your target audience. While that was a bit easier a
few years ago before there were a zillion web sites, it
always has been a bit of a challenge. Some people just
pay a service and hope for the best, or think because
they paid 1/2 a million dollars for their web site that
all that will be taken care of. Others simply submit
their site to Yahoo and a couple of other search
engines.
What is really important is that you get the proper
search words and descriptions in your pages using
metatags.
Tip: Search Lycos, Hotbot or any of the non-human
indexed sites, take the top entries, view their source
code and use the tags that apply to your site. Don't
forget to add any commonly misspelled versions of your
keywords.
Tip - Don't Be A Fish!
This is a common sucker spam message and they are looking
for you!
Your customers can't find you! We
GUARANTEE you a TOP TEN listing on all the major search
engines...
Send your check to...
Tip - Getting The Most With The
Least...
In my experience, most of the traffic on the Internet
comes from about 10 different search engines. On
http://headgap.com/addurls/
I have listed 12 of the top search engines and linked
each directly to its add url page. Number one should be
Yahoo, which should always be listed by hand.
Yahoo is a human indexed site. You have to submit by
hand. They offer listings for pay. For $199.99 you get
your site listed in a week or so and better placement
(usually).
Tip - The Sleeper Tip! The Open Directory
Project
The sleeper tip is DMOZ. (http://www.dmoz.org)
"The Open Directory Project's goal is to produce
the most comprehensive directory of the web, by relying
on a vast army of volunteer editors."
Tip - LookSmart is now advertising itself as the
quality web directory. I really don't know if it is any
better than any other, but I do know that good placement
in this engine will do wonders for your site. If you go
to my Add Url page http://headgap.com/addurl/
you will notice I have added a link and given it more
prominence. They have added Express Listing and for $199
you get placement within 48 hours by one of their
professional editors. They have a basic submit $79. Why
would you want to spend money when so many are for free?
looksmart feeds the search engines of MSN, excite,
alta-vista, and CNN.com.
To prioritize things: spend
time and money getting your Yahoo listing, they still are
the top traffic director. Spend time getting listed in
DMOZ.org, they feed a multitude of search engines. Spend
time and money getting listed with looksmart.
Tip- Web Logs - What the heck is a web log? It is
a list of links someone like you or me has collected,
published on the web and may contain personal comments
about the web sites listed. Some of these sites get good
traffic. The best ones are oriented by subject. Most will
let you add your url and may even offer a link to do so.
On others you will simply have to write the author and
ask them to add your site. Do a few searches and usually
you can find several that are oriented toward your site
subject and make the effort to get listed. A good example
of a Memphis oriented web log is http://portalmemphis.com.
Tip - Guest Books, Newsgroups and Conferences -
Another way to get traffic to your site is by signing
guestbooks, posting in appropriate newsgroups and other
web conferences. The trick is to have everyone in your
group add tag lines to their signatures that advertise
your site.
Tip - Fun Stuff and other Cool Things - Ever seen
the Cave of Magic, Magic 8 Ball, Mad Cow Test, or Madam
Zelda? When Howard Stern showed the Magic Card Trick on
his program, my site traffic went through the roof! I
will grant you the traffic might not have fit my exact
customer demographic profile and the site Howard showed
wasn't even mine, but I got visitors! Evidently, I came
up first in the search engines when people were looking
for the card trick. Try out my fun page at: http://headgap.com/fortune.spml
Tip - E-Newsletter- If your site doesn't have a
place to sign up for an E-Newsletter, then get yourself a
listserver and get one set up. I run a free one called
Macjordomo and there are freeware, shareware and
commercial ones available.
Tip - Coupon Sites and Affiliate Programs - Sleeper
Tip - Top Traffic Builder!
I am not sure who invented the affiliate program but
Amazon surely put it on the map. Pretty soon, they had
thousands of folks advertising product for them. You can
place Amazon products on your web site and make
commissions. There are many companies who will set up and
manage an affiliate program for you.
Now you are starting to get traffic to your site, the
next things are how do I keep them on my site, get them
to spend more money, and how do I get them to help send
more traffic to my site.
Keeping them on your site! Guerilla
Web Marketing 101A
1. Give them something of interest to do.
Information is what the net is all about. Pick content
that complements what you are doing and make it easy to
read and navigate. Something as simple as providing a
list of complementary site links will keep people on your
site and coming back. Become a resource (build really
good META tags on this material and get it listed). Don't
forget the fun things either. http://headgap.com/fortune.spml
2. Give them a way to send what they find to their
friends.
One of the best things that is becoming prevalent on the
net is the ability to send the information from a site to
a friend. This could be anything from sending the URL and
a short message, to sending the article they are
currently viewing. You are doing this, aren't
you?
3. Get visitor emails immediately
Give them a way to send your newsletter to their friends,
not only on your site but in the newsletter as well. You
must have a sign up spot prominently displayed on your
web site.
A listserver is a mailing list program that lets your
customer subscribe and unsubscribe automatically. Make
sure you manage your lists. While your list is small it
is okay to keep them in one file, but you really should
attempt to split out the types of customers. If you take
the time to segregate people who have purchased and
people who have simply signed up on your site, then you
can target your newsletters. That is one of the benefits
of all this information and technology. Make sure you
spend time planning and identifying potential groups and
how you will address each group. When your list gets
large, it really makes it easier on you to have them
split. You can then spread out demand on your server and
bandwidth by allowing your newsletters to trickle out
over a few days. This in turn will allow you to spread
out the demand on email responses, customer service,
order processing etc. Why kill yourself and create a bad
experience for a customer when you can just as easily put
out smaller chunks. Just remember to cross check your
lists for duplicates.
4. Don't be too slick.
Aren't you sick to death of all the polish and gloss and
color coordination? Doesn't it make you psychotic when
you get to a site that has so many dancing banners and
graphics you can't figure out what to do? Why does Yahoo
keep their site so simple and why are they the number one
portal/search engine? Have your mother navigate your site
and keep your mouth shut long enough to watch and
learn.
5. Be nice to AOL users, Mac users, people with really
old machines, and all the other worthless people on the
earth.
They probably make up the majority of your customer base.
Techie types tend to look down on the uninitiated. Make
sure you or your techies aren't guilty of this. AOL in
particular is a force to reckon with. It seems that the
majority of people spending money on the net are AOL
users (I don't like it but haven't figured out a way to
change it). I personally optimize my web layouts for
800x600. Most pro sites do also. I also go back and view
the page in 640x480 and make sure people on older 14"
monitors can not only navigate, but also that they can
read the information. I use Mac equipment but also am
keenly aware that most people don't. The Macs make text
and graphics smaller and lighter than they appear on
PC's. The point is, take time to view your site on
multiple machines and monitor sizes. Also, remember
people over 40 may have vision difficulties (and a lot
don't want to admit it!). Even with vision correction,
VERY small text is difficult to read, and any color
against black is a nightmare. While it looks cool, it
isn't the best combination for extensive reading. Don't
make your graphics and text too small. Let's face it. How
long will you stay on a site you can't see or read, or on
a web site that you have to scroll two screens over to
read? A good way to be consistent and help insure your
site is viewable by the most people is to use style
sheets optimized for your site traffic by browser.
6. Be nice to modem users.
Broadband is coming and will be great and big high
quality graphics will really look cool, but who wants to
wait 10 minutes for your page to load when they are using
a modem. Again, you have to be realistic. Only a small
percentage of folks are connected broadband. If you view
any of your pages and you can't hold your breath in the
time it takes to load on a 28.8 modem connection, you
have messed up. 30-50k is tops for a web page and all its
graphics. Learn how to optimize your graphics or get
someone who knows how. Make your pages as small as
possible, but do keep in mind the customer has to make a
buying decision from your graphics. Give them the option
to see a larger view whenever possible. Many of us are
beginning to make two sites, one for broadband users and
one for dial up users, and this is becoming more
prevalent on the net everyday. You don't want to neglect
broadband and you can easily offer 3D product view,
animations and movies as an option with a simple file
size in k warning.
7. Be human!
That may sound strange, but most people despise being
categorized or identified by an order number. While that
is how you should be organizing your marketing data, you
want to always think of ways to personalize and humanize
your content. Get yourselves a spokesperson or make one
up. Wendy's Dave is a good example, as well as Colonel
Sanders. Spruce up your "About Us" page. Do you have
pictures of your facilities and employees? Use them to
give your site a more "comfortable" feel. People like to
deal with people. Your site should also have contact
information (including address and phone number) in easy
to find locations and clearly marked. Don't you feel more
confident when you buy something if you know where the
guy lives?
8. USE A SPELLCHECKER.
Get someone to proofread as well. I frequently abbreviate
and use improper grammar so I have someone with better
skills proofread my stuff after I've run it through the
spellchecker. Selling allows you to do things like using
Title in descriptions or ALL CAPS for special emphasis.
Most of that type of thing is okay, just don't get crazy
with it. However, some people on this earth know how to
spell and they look down on folks who don't. You want
them focusing on what you say, not the errors. Make the
extra effort to get it right and make it easy to
read.
MORE STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW!
Your site is outdated!
I don't care if you changed it yesterday, I am on it
today and I have already seen that. Many servers out
there have the ability to allow you to randomly rotate
page parts like backgrounds, headers and footers,
graphics, etc. Let your visitors see a whole new site
each time they stop by to visit. I am not telling you to
change your entire navigation. In fact, that is something
that should remain fairly static, only changing to add
new features. I have been observing our sales numbers
each day and sales always go up when we change our front
page.
Important stuff up top
Make sure the important information on your page fits
on a 640x480 screen without scrolling down. People don't
scroll down. If the Iraqi's would have hidden on the
bottom of our web pages we would have lost the war.
Whatever you put on the bottom of the page should be
highlighted at the top of the page to encourage folks to
scroll down. Or use the anchor command and let them jump
to it. Always put your best items or information at the
top of the page (works for print too!).
More Tricks! Sleeper Tip:
So many places offer free pages now. Try
http://home.netscape.com/sitecentral/index.html?cp=situsrrec
http://freehomepages.com/
http://hometown.aol.com/hmtwnpromo/build/index.htm
Set up an ad for your web site using the free pages. Use
plenty of your best content and graphics. Include links
to your enewsletters, coupons, or whatever other traffic
builders you have on your site. A site index page might
make a good starting point for a page like this.
Remember, this is an ad; make it short and sweet. Include
your best META Tags and include keywords in your page
title. The sequence of keywords, and descriptions of your
alternate pages should vary from your main site. Make
sure the page stands on its own and has some significant
content all its own if you can. Then go list this page
with all the search engines (http://headgap.com/addurl/).
By varying the elements of the page, it is less likely
the human search engine editors will reject the
submission as a duplication. I have an example at:
http://telefinder.freehomepages.com/
Looking for a domain name?
http://www.nameboy.com
allows you to submit a word or two and get back a list of
what is available and what is taken in different
combinations. For registering domain names I prefer
http://dotster.com. They
only charge $15 a year and they seem to be a bit more on
the ball. While there are cheaper sites these guys let
you maintain your domains online and don't spam the crap
out of you.
I also mentioned registering and pointing multiple domain
names to the same site. Put yourself in the public's
place and think of how people will be searching for you.
For example: ParingKnives.com may be your company name,
but people may search for you by searching for knives,
kitchen knives etc. Why not consider registering
KitchenKnives.com or FreeKitchenKnives.com and pointing
them all to your ParingKnives.com site? That gives you
more opportunities for folks to find you, and it is
likely you will come up more often in the search engines
since your domain name contains some of the keyword
elements.
Did you know that your ISP can point multiple domain
names to one IP address? They may want to charge you;
check first. For example, ihomedecor.com is also
ihomedecor.org and it could have easily been any other
domain name pointed at the same place. This means there
are more ways for folks to find you if you list the
additional addresses with the search engines!
Use ALT Tags for Graphics!
An example image link:
<IMG SRC="grafx/portalmem2.jpg" ALT="PortalMemphis.com
- Memphis Best Web Sites" WIDTH=480 HEIGHT=70 BORDER=0
ALIGN=bottom>
Notice the ALT tag includes my domain name and a keyword
or two that I want the robots to pick up to give me
higher rankings in the search engines. ALT tags on
graphics are simply polite in net etiquette. Believe it
or not, some folks still run their browsers with the
graphics turned off and these little pocket things that
people are carrying don't see graphics either. Use the
ALT tag to your advantage. This is a must on images at
the top of all your pages, but should be continued
throughout your site.
Add More Content!
http://headgap.com/webcontent.spml
is my weblog page for great content links. Some new and
exciting links:
http://www.spinwave.com/ - image crusher helps you
optimize your graphics for free!
http://dynamicdrive.com/ - dancing web cursors and a lot
more! TOO COOL!
http://www.flamingtext.com/ - add flaming logo's! This
one actually builds logo's using the text and graphics of
your choice while you wait and you simply download the
results.
http://www.xdrive.com/ - 25 meg of free storage space
that you can share.
Fun Stuff
I added a few more fun links to my fun page. Try it at
http://headgap.com/fortune.spml
and get your online FBI records
(http://thecenter2000.com/access_public_records.htm) or
get an online sketch
(http://passthison.com/sketch/?exit=no) of amazing
accuracy.
Just the Facts!
Remember Why Your Customers Are Online
77% browsing
64% entertainment
53% education
51% work
19% shopping
Does your website offer something for each of these
customers?
How often are people buying online?
Never: 10%
Less than once a month: 45%
Once a month: 28%
Once a week: 4%
Check out http://www.marketingtips.com/profileo.html
for this and other useful information. In fact http://www.marketingtips.com/tipsltr.html
is a pretty nice site overall and I check it on occasion
to see if I missed anything on my web sites.
Sleeper Tip:
What has this got to do with web sites? Well, I have a
concept for you. Give away your product and cover the
costs and margin in the shipping and handling. A good
example would be a Free Set of 3, Solingen Steel Paring
Knives. All the customer pays is the $9.95 shipping and
handling. You stick the knives in an envelope and mail
them to the customer. You make 40% margin. Better yet,
require a coupon to do that and get the coupon sites to
advertise your coupon number. So you get traffic from the
free stuff sites and the coupon sites.
Sometimes I guess you take advantage of what
opportunities are before you. Figure out a promotion that
works for you and advertise it. I have updated my weblog
of Free Stuff and Coupon Sites at: http://headgap.com/coupons.spml.
Keep em coming back!
One story I heard growing up was how this old country
grocer would measure out your flour. He would perfectly
balance the scale with your goods and then he would add
just enough extra just to tip the scale to your
benefit.
We add free items to every order and don't list it on the
invoice or on our web site. While it isn't anything much
I don't know anyone who doesn't appreciate something
unexpected that didn't cost them anything.
Bob Nunn - Operator Headgap
Systems, Inc.
E-mail: headgap@headgap.com
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