Today I want to talk about one small step that can increase sales, gain you new customers and increase repeat business…all in one.
This applies to any type of business but let's use restaurants for this example as this method works so well for them.
Restaurants love to run specials to drum up business. Some also like giving away coupons just as much.
However, most restaurant's do not do this type of promotion the "right way". Let's break this down and take a look at two different types of restaurants:
Pizza shop "A" is running a back to school pizza special all month long. Pizza shop "A" has a billboard sign in front of his building that announces to the world "Visit our website and download coupons for Crazy deals!"
Pizza shop "A" has uploaded some coupons to his website and places a link to access them right on the homepage. "Click here to download your coupons". Customers can download and print the coupons, no questions asked.
Some customers will bring in the coupons and actually use them. The Pizza shop owner gained some business that he otherwise might not of had by offering a discount. The whole purpose of coupons, right?
This is great but Pizza shop "A" is leaving money on the table and passing up a perfect opportunity to build himself a valuable mailing list of customers.
Now lets imagine Pizza shop "B" follows the same steps as Pizza shop "A" but does one small thing different: He asks for a first name and email address before gaining access to the coupons on his website.
After filling out a small form on the website, the website visitor is then given access to a "hidden" page on the website where he/she can download and print the coupons.
By adding this one small step, Pizza shop "B" is building himself a list of people who are:
1. Interested in his food
2. Most likely local
3. Want the coupons enough that they are willing to give up their name and email address. These people are more likely to come in and use the coupons.
Now, Pizza shop "B" owner can take that list of customers and send them weekly emails announcing specials, events etc that in turn will encourage them to come into the restaurant more often.
With a list of proven buyers and customers of your restaurant, you can expect to send out an email notification about a special you are having this week to your entire customer list and notice the influx of business that very day.
As you can see, this simple method equals more business. While it may be common practice for some businesses already, it is surprising how many restaurants and businesses in general do not capture customer's contact details.
A customer list is an asset.
Capturing name and email addresses on your website is very simple. It involves adding an autoresponder and opt in form and can be installed in minutes.
Everytime I create a new website for a small business owner I get the same question asked about 9 out of 10 times: “Will I be able to update and add things to my site myself?”
In other words, they are asking how easy will it be for them make changes to the website themselves. They don't want to buy an expensive web editing program and spend hours learning that program just so they can occasionally update their menu, add specials, announce new events or whatever the case may be.
They also don't want to pay a large annual fee to a web design firm just to get “Free updates” to their website. Some web design companies charge upwards of $400 or more per year just to do basic updates to your website, as you need them.
As a small business owner, what can you do?
The answer is undoubtedly: Wordpress websites.
Whether you've heard of Wordpress or not, you may not know that Wordpress has become one of the most popular and effective ways to build a website nowadays. In fact, did you know that some of the largest companies and brands in the world are currently using Wordpress?
Here is a list of just a few:
Yahoo: www.ycorpblog.com
Rolling Stone magazine: www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily
CNN News: www.politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com
Southwest Airlines: www.blogsouthwest.com
Sony PlayStation: www.blog.us.playstation.com
Flickr: www.blog.flickr.net
The New York Times publishes over 50 WordPress powered website
What is Wordpress?
Wordpress came about back in 2003 and became popular when the blogging revolution started worldwide. Initially is was known as a blogging platform, but has evolved into a one of the most widely used Content Management Systems (CMS) that over 202 million websites worldwide are currently using to build and manage their websites.
What Can a Wordpress based website do for my business? Web Designers worldwide, including Maine Media Pros, recommend Wordpress based websites to the small businesses of the world for their website because of these reasons:
Once the website design is done, it is very easy for the owner of the website to log into the administration dashboard from anywhere in the world with an internet connection and update, change or add content to their website without any programming experience or expensive software.
Wordpress comes with several built in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) features so that people actually find your website in the search engines. Wordpress' ability to create SEO friendly permalinks, blogrolling and pinging are just to name a few.
There are thousands of add ons (plugins) that can be added to each Wordpress website to increase search engine visibility, build and manage company newsletters, track website performance and statistics, add flash animation, slideshows, background music, display interactive slideshows and portfolios of your work….you name it, it is possible. We can go on all day here.
Each Wordpress website also comes with a built in blog that you can write to and manage within the Wordpress administration dashboard.
I hope I've convinced you that Wordpress is the the best CMS to get your website designed and built upon.
Well after 3 long weeks we have finally "somewhat" finished a complete and total re-haul of www.mainemediapros.com.
We've added a lot of new features, here are just a few:
Web Hosting for as low as $4.95 /mo
Personal Web Design for as low as $195
Business Web Design for as low as $595
Direct Mail to 13,000 residential homes for as low as $100 per mailing.
Custom logo, tshirt, ecover and web graphic design for as low as $25!
You can now do domain name searches using the domain name lookup tool on our website HERE and register for a new hosting package HERE.
Our message is simple:
We are not a huge company raking in millions of dollars per year…yet.
Internet Business oriented service companies in Maine such as web designers and web hosting companies are extremely over priced up here in our neck of the woods. Why? Maybe because business owners are willing to pay that or is it that they just dont know they can save loads of money just by doing some shipping around?
We may not be as big as some of these local companies…yet, but we offer the same level of support and expertise without overpricing our services.
We are Wordpress fanatics and most of our sites are either custom wordpress themes or a modification of a pre designed premium theme. To prove our love for wordpress, our own website is built on wordpress. In fact its a modified Studiopress theme.
I urge you to just take a few minutes to head over to our new website and just have a look around. If you dont see anything you like then thats OK. I do however, suggest you join our email club: "Internet Marketing Solutions for the Small Business Owner". Free Internet Marketing tips delivered to your inbox weekly!
The Owner of Atlantic Limousine of Maine wanted to increase his visibility on the internet in a unique way. without breaking the bank. He had recently just canceled his monthly $1,500 advertising contract with the Yellow Pages as he realized it just isn't effective anymore like the old days.
He had already made an agreement to get his website designed with another company before we met with him, but there were still areas to hit to grow his presence online.
The perfect solution was internet commercials aka internet video.
About a week later we arrived at his warehouse and began shooting his amazing cars with his marketing director Charles acting as the spokesperson for all 4 videos. We were there for about 2 hrs shooting footage before we brought it back to the lab for editing.
About 4 days later we had a finished product for the boys at Atlantic Limousine. We uploaded all 4 videos to 14 video hosting sites like youtube, revver, metacafe and more to increase exposure 14 fold.
We supercharged the videos with some heavy SEO and only 6 HOURS after being online were completely dominating the front page of these video hosting sites for just about every phrase a potential customer would type in when looking for a limousine service in Maine.
Within time these videos will be indexed in the google search results which will explode views and potentially bring Atlantic Limousine a lot of business.
Not many businesses's understand the power of video marketing yet. So this gives you a HUGE advantage over your competitors right now.
Fastersportbike.com is a magazine/news/product review site that earns it's revenue through affiliate ads.
This is basically a wordpress site with a slightly modified Revolution Theme. This website was built to look just like the homepage of a magazine site. Upon entering the site you are greeted with a chance to enter a contest to win some Free rising gear.
Upon entering the contest the visitor is required to enter their first name and email address to continue. Over time this creates a very valuable customer list for the owner that he can market to.
This is achieved by installing an opt in form on the homepage where the visitor enters their name and email address. All that data is collected and stored into an auto responder system for later use.
Packages Used in This Website: Ready to go Website
MaineHalloweenStore.com is an affiliate website that earns it's owner commissions on every sale made through it's parent webstore: SpiritHalloween.com.
When we created this website we wanted it to look identical to the Spririt Halloween website without violating any copyrights. So we captured the front page of www.SpiritHalloween.com and replicated a website that looks almost identical to that, while tweaking a few small things like the logo and some links in the sidebars.
When a visitor clicks on ANY of the images on the homepage of www.MaineHalloweenStore.com they are automatically redirected to www.SpiritHalloween.com. The transition from the first site to the other is pretty much seamless. It is very difficult to tell you are on another website after clicking through.
Get this: Whenever a visitor clicks on anything on the homepage of www.MaineHalloweenStore.com and is redirected to www.SpiritHalloween.com, that click is automatically tracked. Anything that visitor buys from www.SpiritHalloween.com in the next 30 days will earn the owner of www.MaineHalloweenStore.com a 15% commission. We accomplished this by incorporating some affiliate tracking with one of the largest affiliate networks on the web.
Another thing we added to this website as a way for the owner to earn more revenue are paid advertising spots for local businesses. Take a look at the banners at top of the page and the 4 running along both sides of the page. Those are sold for $200 a pop to local businesses as chance to be in front of 100% of www.MaineHalloweenStore.com's visitors.
Packages Used in This Website:
Custom Designed Website
Peter,
Fastersportbike.com is a magazine/news/product review site that earns it's revenue through affiliate ads.
MaineHalloweenStore.com is an affiliate website that earns it's owner commissions on every sale made through it's parent webstore: SpiritHalloween.com.