If you’re going to promote your service and expand your customer base using the Net, potential clients have to be able to find you quickly and easily and be able to trust you.
But simply finding you is not enough...They have to find you in a confidence-boosting manner. An endorsement from a valued friend or colleague, or a top ranking position for a keyword search on a Search Engine, or a referral from a strategic partner are the types of “leads” that boost your credibility.
Contrast that with people who hear about your business via SPAM, FFA pages, exit pop-ups, and numerous other means. They have much less confidence in the quality of your service.
These visitors arrive with their collective guard up, wondering... “If this service is so great, would it really have to resort to such means to promote it?”
Once a visitor finds you, the content on your site must cement that confidence by providing high-value, benefit-focused info -- exactly what your prospective client is looking for, wants and needs.
Bottom line?...A visitor must find you in a credible fashion. And then you and your service must be perceived as being trust-worthy before she will be confident enough to contact or hire you.
In DAY 2, we will do the groundwork for building a site that is “easy-to-find” on the Net -- a Theme-Based Content Site that works with the Search Engines so that you can achieve a “Top Ten” position in their search results. (Most surfers don’t have the patience to research past that point. It’s a big Web out there, with lots of sites to explore!)
Your first action step is to discover the best “theme” that correlates with your service. Then narrow it down as tightly as possible so that you attract only the people who would be interested in your service and your secondary monetization offerings.
Suppose, for instance, you are a personal trainer. Offline, you could simply promote your service as “Kyle Brown, Personal Trainer” and use ads in the local newspaper, business cards and friends’ recommendations to create a buzz around your service.
Unfortunately, online, words like “exercise” for your site’s theme and “personal trainer” for your service are much too general to make any impact in the Search Engine world. There are thousands of different kinds of exercise and thousands of different trainers... Where do you fit in? If you are not able to be more specific, you might as well take a number and join the long line to nowhere.
These two keywords, however, would probably be sufficient if you were creating a site only for visitors who already know or have heard about you (i.e., your existing clients or people in your region who have seen your offline promotions).
But if you’re hoping to use an online presence to expand your client base in and beyond your immediate locale (and create a second income stream), the people who don’t know you have to find you first... and the majority will come to you via keyword searches at the Search Engines (SEs).
Realistically, a certain number of visitors to your site are not ever going to become clients. However, there’s no need to waste this traffic!2) Join affiliate programs of non-competing (but related to your service) merchants and recommend their products. PREsell effectively and earn a commission on every sale your merchants make as a result of your referrals. A satisfactory outcome for your visitor and for you!
3) Sign up for Google’s AdSense and make money when visitors click away from your site.
The key to attracting targeted visitors to your site is to take your general service theme and narrow it down to a tight niche, which is what SEs like. Using that focus, you can pinpoint theme-related keywords that will interest a particular group of visitors and pull them to your site. This interest qualifies these surfers as potential customers for your service (i.e., your target group).
Before I forget, there is a quick way to make a general keyword more specific. For example, you could use “personal trainer” + “the name of the city or communities you serve.” That way, if someone searches for...
“personal trainer” + “Chicago”
Does all this sound a little complicated? Don’t panic. Creating a Theme-Based Content Site is very do-able, no matter what level of Net experience you have. Let’s begin at ground level -- identifying your theme. You have three ways to approach this...
OPTION #1 -- Narrow the theme to reflect the true nature of your business. (To illustrate this, you will be an advertising consultant.)
i) Identify your main clientele (budget-minded small businesses)... and your main service (low cost, highly effective advertising solutions).
ii) Pinpoint the major solution your service provides or the problem it solves (provides clients with high-exposure for reasonable cost).
iii) Condense this information into a single sentence...
“Low cost advertising solutions for budget-minded small businesses!”
This type of exercise will be useful when you create your VPP (Valuable PREselling Proposition). A VPP is a short statement that highlights and makes you stand out from the crowd (in your area of expertise). We’ll examine this concept more closely later on in the course.
Another example to illustrate how to identify your service theme? Sure. This time you are a personal trainer but the steps remain the same... i) Identify your main clientele (pregnant women who want to remain fit throughout pregnancy) and your main service (individualized nutrition plan and a gentle stretching exercise program that is customized to how the woman is carrying the baby throughout her pregnancy).
ii) Pinpoint the major solution your service provides or the problem it solves (keeps women fit, flexible and well-rested through the third trimester of pregnancy).
iii) Condense this information into a single sentence... “Keeping pregnant woman fit and flexible through the third trimester of pregnancy!”See how this theme is much more focused than “fitness trainer?”
OPTION #2 -- Narrow the theme to effectively target a particular segment of your market.
We’re back to the advertising example. Even if your advertising consulting business does provide a wide range of services to a wide range of customers, you’ll still need to narrow your theme if you intend to attain success within the framework of the Net. Remember, Search Engines like tightly focused sites and show their pleasure by giving these types of sites higher positions/ranking on the search results pages.
Service: Advertising Consultant
General Theme: Advertising
Of course, there is such a thing as tightening your service's theme too much...
Too Much Focus: Small business budget advertising consultants for left-handed Norwegians
OK, OK, I’m kidding. But you see what I mean? You have to be careful not to restrict your market too much, or your niche becomes too small. You won’t have the numbers to create or increase income.
This is exactly why your theme has to be niched (to quote Goldilocks)...Just Right!
Don’t feel you have to narrow your general theme down to one specific niche at this point. Pick a few possible niches and let the keyword research you’ll perform in DAY 3 help you to finalize your decision.
OPTION # 3 -- Narrow your theme to take advantage of the profitable keyword opportunities you discover (as highlighted by keyword SUPPLY-DEMANDPROFITABILITY research that you will perform in DAY 3).
Basically, this means narrowing your theme and building your site according to the interest displayed on the Net. Of course, this can be accomplished only if your service is somewhat “flexible” and can be smoothly “tied into” these keyword opportunities.
You will choose keywords for your theme that...• Lead to a natural cross-sell of your service.
• Show great opportunity for PROFITABILITY -- plenty of DEMAND (# of searches performed by surfers) with relatively little SUPPLY (few results returned by the SEs for those same keywords).
• Permit a smooth referral to a merchant partner for commissionable sales.Of course, you have to balance niche-tightening with common sense and your own personal experience.
If you are a personal trainer, you can’t suddenly switch over to being a gymnastic coach just because there is a lot of interest or DEMAND for that service.
And here’s an example where personal experience comes into play...
As an advertising consultant, your keyword research indicates that there is a bigger online interest in budget-related consulting. However, it’s been your experience that big businesses are much more likely to hire you as an advertising consultant and, in general, tend to spend 10 times as much on your services as medium-sized businesses do. So you decide to stick with your current direction.
Bottom line? As a service seller, your criteria for establishing the theme of your service site depends on three factors. The “best” theme must...1) Be highly profitable -- there is a strong DEMAND. This means that lots of people are willing to pay for your service. They will be actively searching for a site like yours, which is why your theme must be as narrow as possible. If it’s too general, your visitors won’t find you in the crowd.
Of course, there’s always the chance that your service’s theme can’t be tightened down, or for practical business reasons you just don’t want to narrow it any further. That’s fine -- only you know what’s best for your business.
2) Display plenty of opportunities for niche-related keyword targeting -these keywords provide you with different angles by which you can approach your theme. You want to find the angle with the highest DEMAND and the lowest supply. This will make it easy to attract targeted traffic (i.e., interested potential clients) to your site because competition is limited.
3) Excite you -- passion is key to your online longevity. It’s difficult to stay committed to something you don’t like.
A Theme-Based Content Site is definitely the way to go -- especially if you’re operating on a shoestring budget and are interested in attracting free qualified traffic from the Search Engines.
This type of site is ideal for generating traffic, contacts, and contracts whether you provide a local or global service. It will help PREsell and convert your visitors – no matter how close or far away they are!
Site Build It! is the service business best positioned to help you establish your service business on the Web. Get results!http://results.sitesell.com/
Time for a quick recap. In order to position your service on the Net, you need to narrow your theme. You can accomplish this by...• reflecting on the true nature of your business
Or...
• effectively targeting a particular segment of your market
Or...
• zone in according to demand on the Net (the best option for working with the Search Engines).
If you followed the first two guidelines, you probably have narrowed your theme choices down to a handful of possibilities. At this point, you need to know how profitable each one is before you can make your final selection for your theme. If you chose the third guideline, you are anxiously waiting to narrow your theme according to demand... to actually start your theme-identification process! Regardless of which option you chose, your next step is... keyword research. And that’s where we’re going next! ...
Before proceeding to DAY 3, please complete your DAY 2 Goal-of-the-DAY, and take note of your Ongoing Goal...
Ongoing Goal... Revisit this only if you want to build an entirely new and different Theme-Based Content Site.
Now that you have identified some potential themes for your service-selling site, let’s find out where the PROFITABILITY lies in DAY 3...
