Join our Easter Competition and Win
For the best internet marketing ideas submitted to us we will give away 5 places for ‘How to Turbo-Boost your Company using Internet Marketing’. A great Easter prize valued at $995 per place. Enter now to be one of our lucky winners.
To read more about ‘How to Turbo-Boost your Company using Internet Marketing’ click here.
To enter the competition…
Tell us about the best internet marketing story that you’ve come across or a successful internet marketing tactic that you have used.
Fill in the form below to reply to this post. You can post more than 1 story. There are some stories posted to give you an idea of what we’re looking for. Please limit your entries to 150 words. We are impatient readers!
The winners will be announced here at 3.00pm on Thursday 20 March. Please make sure that you include your name and email address in your entry.
Here are some ideas…
Google Adwords
An Achaeus client wanted to generate more leads. After tossing around the options (all offline ideas like advertisements, publicity, mailouts, etc) I suggested that they talk to Monte Huebsch about a GoogleAd. This company, Biolytix, had never done any internet marketing so that was a bit scary. But they ran with it. They now generate 55% of all leads from Google - an amazing result. And, January 2008 sales were up by 70% on January 2007 sales.
Gathering Testimonials
We all know hard it is to get testimonials. So, how smart is this? At each event Andrew and Daryl Grant set up a video camera at the back of the room. Attendees are asked to go back and record a testimonial (provided with a little guidance on the structure). The testimonials are real and raw - lighting not perfect, background noise, etc. And they are and look authentic. These are then posted onto websites, YouTube, blogs, links provided in emails, etc.
Customer Feedback
Achaeus used this internet technique. We wanted to know what questions/concerns businesses had about internet marketing. We set up an esurvey. We contacted our clients via an email, they completed the survey online and, best of all, the responses were automatically collated using a software tool. All in all, this took about 5 hours of our time and we had all the feedback we needed. The whole process, from designing the survey to getting responses, took just under 2 weeks. We could never do this with traditional survey tecniques.
Blog Creativity
Here is a blog entry that generated thousands of leads…
The Pope wears Prada
Who would have known that under Pope Benedict XVI’s sacred robes lurked a pair of red Prada shoes? From the Independent UK.
To match the holy crimson robes, may we suggest His Holiness wear this red Prada sarong or carry his things in this clear Prada tote.
Links were provided on each of the products mentioned.
Enter now…
We’d love to hear how you have used internet marketing to get more leads, build your brand, make more sales, etc. Post your entry here, by scrolling down and filling in the form below, to win a place on our Internet Marketing Workshop on 3rd and 4th April 2008 in Brisbane. Don’t forget to include your name and email so that we can let you know if you win.
Good luck!
I visited lots of sites in the search engines that were related to or posted about the same topics as my website. I got them to link to me using the keywords I wanted to rank for. Now I rank #1 in Google for certain terms and I get a lot of organic traffic and I don’t have to pay a cent. It was worth the time and effort as the quality of leads from the organic SERPs give me a greater ROI than Adwords.
One day a customer called me and told me he had a virus that made all his form entries on his website in Caps. Can you believe he had the caps lock on!! No joke!
A colleague specialises in building databases. What he does is collect email addresses from consumers across a whole range of sectors. He then segments the list and really drills down (using esurveys)until he understands exactly what the particular consumer is interested in buying. Then he looks for companies selling product and does a marketing joint venture. And he tells his list that he will be sending them information so that he keeps a good relationship going.
We’ve run a mechanics workshop for years, and whilst we’ve had a website up for the last couple, it was only recently we realised how much more we should be doing.
Being the only “techie” in the office, it was hard talking my parents (owners of the workshop), into getting a website in the firstplace. Initially I just wanted to have a website because our competitors had one and we looked unprofessional not having a website on our business cards.
I then was speaking to one the girls from my tupperware club (side business) and she telling me about how her partner who also has a mechanics workshop use “autoresponders” to tell people when their car needs servicing. They don’t even do any advertising in the newspaper anymore!
I’m actually retired from my running my wedding photography business but I thought I might share my experience in internet marketing.
I had a well established business and I even had a website since 1998! Not many of our competitors had a website. We used to advertise in the Bride’s Diary and exhibit at wedding expos. When we realised that we had such a good client list, we started getting lots of “word of mouth” advertising. We slowly dropped some of our advertising as we started to get more and more people in outside of our paid ads.
Then all of a sudden, we had weeks of no bookings, and then months!
It started to get a bit scary as the bills came in. Even more so the thought that we couldn’t afford paid advertising!
We then spoke to one of our peers about how their business was going, and they told us about how they were sending out emails weekly to their previous clients. And they said they were makingmore money from reprints 12 months after the wedding day. This was crazy to us! Then they said that they did a survey, and they sold them some new design wedding albums and mini albums for relatives as gifts. They didn’t even stock them, they just got their supplier to drop ship it.
So in essence, they had a system which would re-sell their previous clients on upgrades and extra products, and it was all automatic, they were earning up to $2k a week just from this extra service…
We then did something similar, but instead of selling them albums, we got our clients to work for us. We set up an automatic referral system. Basically after a wedding they would fill in a form with feedback about the wedding. If it was positive feedback they would then be directed to a form which had a list of fields for them to fill out any friends/family who are getting married and an email address. Their reward was to get negatives for free, and to get all left over proof images.
At least 2 out of the 5 people referred by a client were converted to a booking. This equated on average 8 bookings a week. double the number we did weekly in previous years. We ran our business for 2 years using this system and we didn’t do any paid advertising. Looking back on it now, we could’ve done a lot more, but the technology that exists now didn’t exist back then.
Lou Bowman
I’ve got a couple of stories that might be of interest to folks.
Here’s the first one.
I’ve built up around 90 articles on the premier online article directory, http://www.ezinearticles.com all optimised for particular (Long tail) keywords in a specific lowish competition / high traffic niche. Many of the articles rank in top 10 of Google and MSN, several in top 3 positions.
I didn’t write a single article, outsourced all of them, and never paid more than $5.50 US for each (They are good quality - not junk).
They generate about 3,000 to 6,000 uniques per month and drive traffic through a click tracker (that also monitors conversions) to a website that sells an online product in the niche. I negotiated a deal with the owner that I get $12 per sale (compared to the measly $4 affiliate payout!).
It’s no earth shaker income wise but consistently cranks out around 30 sales/mth on total autopoilot, and all I’ve done for the last 6 months is send an invoice each month (Phew! What a hassle! )
Soon will be directing that traffic to a site of my own I’ll set up in that niche so I can monetise it more effectively.
Peter
Story # 2.
Our website http://www.bluecardonline.com.au provides e-learning based Blue Card induction training (Mandatory in QLD for anyone entering a construction site).
We have used Adwords (plus Yahoo and MSN PPC) for well over a year to successfully drive traffic to this site which generates around $30K/mth revenue, and this is essentially the majority source for traffic to the site.
Thanks Gail
Peter
4U.TV owns the large LCD screens on the Brisbane CityCats. We use the screens to inform and entertain over 6 million passengers per year with Flash animated program content. We recently re-designed the entire look and feel and launched a completely new playlist to the screens via the Internet connections we have on each CityCat. We also ran a message on the news ticker bar suggesting that passengers should send us an email to tell us what they think about the new service, and that one lucky person will win a $100 Myer Voucher for thier trouble. In the last three weeks I have received over 140 messages telling us how wonderful we are but also have recieved a heap of fantastic new ideas. We now have additional proof that people look at the screens, that advertising campaigns are working, and that passengers love the product. This makes for fantastic marketing for our potential advertising clients and also our new network clients and all for the minimal outlay of $100. We anticipate the $100 we spent will assist in securing $240,000 in new contracts in the next 12 months. It’s the best campaign ever!!!
Internet Marketing Story :
As you know having good links to your site inproves your page rank. A Brisbane removalist lists all the self storage locations in South East Queensland in a special file on his web site All the companies link back to his site He gets 113 good sites linking to him and the storage companies have a good souce of leads as the two businesses are complementary not competitors Everybody wins. He is first on google for local moving
In 1992 we were living in Mt Eliza, a trendy beachside village in Melbourne, when a friend from Queenaland dropped in to stay for a few days. I was working from a bungalo at the back of the house and he noticed I didn’t have a web site (or an email for that matter). A few hours later he had put my business online and I have to say I was a bit skeptical. The following morning after breakfast I turned on my computer and to my surprise there was an email waiting for me. It was from a consultant in Brazil who said he had been trying to track me down for two years after hearing about my Franchise E-Factor Model and he was inviting to bring me to Brazil. I thought it was a joke and went inside chuckling to tell my friend and my wife, Ann. Three months later Ann and I were flying first class to Brazil! It was my first trip out of Australia. When we arrived back (it was a blast of a trip) I told my story at a franchise industry breakfast in Melbourne. I remember the MC of the breakfast saying “Well there you go, it looks like this Internet thing actually works.” I’ve since sold nearly 20,000 copies of my book, Profitable Partnerships, which is sold exclusively through our website and 55% of our sales are international.
I have the product, I have the plan and the 10 pieces of content. All I need now is the final piece of the puzzle, how do I execute the ecommerce side of my marketing plan.
Ecommerce is perfect for this product, as cold calling does not bring the desired results, and the people coming onto the site would prequalify themselves.
The global market is ripe for the product - I just have to get it to them.
Talk about a boost to sales!
Hi,
We are a ladies retail footwear company who converted our website to e-commerce in 2006. We were slightly hesitant in doing so, as were not sure whether shoes would sell without the customer trying them on! We splashed our website everywhere possible, from all in-store marketing to print advertising. We set up a links page and made contact with third party alliances to swap links. We market our company through Expo’s, National wedding magazines, local TV, glossy magazines, our VIP memberships, and yet have been astounded at the response from our online service. Our internet sales have increased 270% this financial year!!! Our shoes have been sent all over Australia, as well as USA, Sweden, NZ and South Africa! Talk about an eye opener! We are now looking at GoogleAds to increase our traffic further.
There are no end to marvelous stories of ingenuity around attracting business opportunities through clever internet marketing strategies. One story I recently came across was where a particular consultant created a web page highly optimised around the fact that he WAS NOT Australia’s leading web developer.
No problems with false promises here. The beauty of this campaign was that in having created such a landing page he could say a whole lot of things about what he was not but as the search engines don’t distinguish between what you say you are and what you say your aren’t their analysis of the page lead him to being ranked #1 when searching on “Australia’s Leading Web developer”. This of course attracted a lot of click thru’s to his site.
So where was the value in it for him? Quite simply, he was in the business of search engine optimisation. Not only had he proven his skills but he had also attracted a market who, though they were looking for web developers, finding a web designer and SEO expert was very much of interest to them.
The concept of leveraging off related products and services is not new but is one quite often overlooked by many businesses.
In view of the fact that I also am a professional web design and internet marketing consultant living in the same city as this person, I won’t bother giving out his name. I do however applaud his ingenuity. It is a different slant on VIRAL Marketing as espoused by Seth Goddin in his book “The Purple Cow”