What’s The Best Way To Figure Out If Your Website Is Working For You Or Not?

The big trend now is a shift away from traditional PRINT media like magazines and newspapers to the internet. People like to search and find information online these days, especially for a product or a service.

Okay, let’s work it out… Leads will come from your web-site in a number of ways:

1) Someone calls your business. To find out how many calls you get a week from your website, you can:

1. Use a separate phone number and note how many calls to that line (using a PABX, or a tally sheet), or
2. You can pay for a special VOIP service that records the number of calls, or
3. Train your staff to ask that important question "How did you find about us?"

2) Someone fills in your ‘Contact Us’ form (this is better than listing your email address on your website). Then record how many form enquiries you get each month.

3) Someone takes some other online action, like makes an online purchase, or enters their details to download a catalogue, etc. However, if someone subscribes to your e-newsletter – typically that is not a warm lead (as you usually only have their first name and email address only at this stage).

NEXT. Okay, you’ve got some tracking in place now – but then you discover that you are not getting as many enquires as you should… so we need to take the next step and IDENTIFY what’s happening on your website.

I’ll reveal exactly how you do this in my next post… as they say… "Stay tuned…"

How The Lifetime Customer Value Principle Can Make You A Rich Business Person…

The most difficult and expensive sale we ever make to a customer is the first one. In that first, important, transaction we earn or lose the trust of the customer.

Think back about your own consumer experiences – have you ever been just a little concerned about your first purchase from a business? It might have been from that florist delivery service you’ve never used before, or that tradesperson you’ve hired, or even product related concerns, say about a new computer or air-conditioning unit.

For example:

Mary is a new customer. Mary spends $60 with you, but it costs you $20 to supply the product or service and $40 to acquire Mary as a customer. You might think that acquiring Mary was pointless, i.e. no profit was made. But if I was to tell you that Mary needs to repurchase or revisit every six weeks spending $60 each time, with a profit to you of $40, plus Mary begins refers other people to your business, essentially costing you zero in advertising costs… Well, I’m sure you can see the benefits here.

When you evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing, instead of focusing on that initial, single transaction, you should really focus on the Lifetime return for the investment made.

Lifetime Customer Value = average customer spend X number of times of repurchases in a year X the number of years a customer stays with your business (on average). PLUS Referrals!

Using our Mary example:

LTV = $60 X (52 weeks in a year / 6 weeks) X 5 years = $2,600

Would you spend that $40 to acquire Mary if she was worth $2,600 to your business PLUS referrals? I hope you said YES!

If you understand this significant marketing principle, you’ll see that you can now justify a much greater advertising/marketing investment when you look at your returns in this way, and this provides the engine for significant business growth.

Often your competitors are too cheap to make this important investment, and this can give you a competitive advantage.

Marketing Made Simple

Wouldn’t it be great to have dozens (or hundreds) of people with lots of money to spend (your ‘ideal’ customers or clients) contact your business every month or have thousands of people visit your retail store eager to buy? This is what good marketing is all about. But how do you start?

One of the most important lessons I learnt about marketing from my mentors is that marketing is simply maths and psychology.

What does that mean? Answer : Each marketing campaign needs to be analysed using questions that relate to the purpose, goals, actions and results expected. Perhaps some examples are in order…

Marketing psychology :

• What is the readership demographics of the newspaper I wish to advertise in?
• Will someone read my advertisement? Is the headline interesting enough?
• What’s the purpose of the advert? To sell from the page, or to create leads?
• Does the content (body copy) of the advert make sense? Will it be understood by a fifth-grader?
• Have I used ‘power’ words that have been tested and proven to improve response?
• Do I have a strong guarantee?
• Will the reader take action – call, request further information or visit my web site?
• Will the advert attract the ‘right’ type of prospect?

Marketing maths :

• What is the circulation of the newspaper?
• What is the cost of the advert?
• If the advert costs $600, how many leads and sales do I need to make to break-even?
• What is my conversion rate to a sale from leads generated from the advert?
• What is the lifetime value of these customers?

Every marketing campaign whether it’s print or internet advertising, direct mail, fax promotions, etc requires answers to these questions about maths and psychology.

Unfortunately most business people are busy and don’t take the time to use this method to correctly plan a particular marketing strategy. The outcome is either – spending money on something that got no response, OR, a marketing campaign that brought in good leads, good sales and good profit!

Creating Wealth by Adding Value!

Make me rich!

Everyone wants to be rich (or at least have a good disposable income). It’s human nature. Often this desire comes out of the ‘frustration’ of the daily grind (the rat race). Getting rich quickly is even more desirable, hence the search for the ‘holy grail’ of being able to create wealth the easy way, but in reality it involves some exchange of ‘value’ for money. This got me thinking – so I grabbed a few books from my personal ‘success’ library.

Here is how wealth is able to be created (in broad terms) by an individual or by a company :

• Creating / Inventing something (e.g. Apple iPod)
• Producing / Manufacturing something (e.g. Apple iPod)
• Improving something (e.g. Newer models)
• Providing a service (e.g. Settlement agent, Financial Planner, etc)
• Repairing / servicing something (e.g. Auto vehicle servicing)
• Selling (e.g. selling own manufactured product)
• Trading (buying and selling)
• Holding something (it becomes more valuable the longer you hold on to it).

Even ‘holding’ onto real estate is adding something .. time (which equates to more demand as the human population increases).

When we provide our knowledge and skills to something we are paid. For example, accounting, bookkeeping, hairdressing, auto servicing to name a few. We are paid in direct relationship too how many people can provide the same thing, the skill and expense required to attain those skills (e.g. medical degrees, etc), and the demand for those skills. How can you do ‘something’ that few other people can do (which is in demand)?

For example, someone that can touch their nose with their tongue might be neat, but how is that going to make them money? (Apart from appearing on television as a novelty).

The big money question is ‘How can I add more value, quicker and easier, and to more people?’

This is one strategy…

Use leverage

The definition of business and financial leverage is using less of your resources (time and money) to create a bigger end result (Return on Investment). Here are some of the ways you can use leverage to obtain a bigger result.

• Your Skills
• Your Knowledge
• Your Money
• Your Time

Some examples may include :

Your Skills

• Employing staff, delegating or outsourcing.
• Applying your skills to bigger projects for a bigger reward
• Creating information products (books, audio and video recordings)
• Creating business systems

Your Knowledge

• Creating information products (books, audio and video recordings)
• Creating business systems

Your Money

• Purchasing income-producing assets
• Utilising media to communicate your marketing message (e.g. advertising, direct mail, email, etc).
• Re-investing in the business (e.g. marketing systems, technology)

Your Time

• LABOUR : Employing staff, delegating or outsourcing.
• TRAINING : Training staff so they can perform their functions well.
• SYSTEMS : Introducing systems to ensure the job is done right the first time and consistently.
• TECHNOLOGY : Using technology (e.g. using video conferencing instead of travelling to a meeting).
• MARKETING : Developing lead generation systems to reduce time spent acquiring leads one-by-one.
• GROUP SELLING :Speaking and selling at seminars rather than speaking to prospects one-on-one.

Hopefully the strategies mentioned above have given you some ideas. You can also have a close look at your chosen business niche or investment area (residential real-estate, commercial real-estate, stocks, etc) and see how other successful business owners or investors have added ‘value’ or used leverage to create wealth. It’s not worth re-inventing the wheel. Find a way to copy what works and improve on it!