eSpire Marketing

One of my clients is about to make the switch from their current site and current web address to a completely updated website and a brand new URL as well. As their mentor in all things SEO and web marketing in general they are looking to me to get them ahead of the curve when the switch is finally made. There are a few things that anyone who is switching sites should consider, I will list them first and then go into greater detail later in this post.

Links- what do you do to get the links from your old site to your new one ( this is the most important part)

Search Trends- which URL is going to help you gain the most traffic through the search engines

.Com vs. .org?- believe it or not there is a difference and it helps a lot with credibility to your customers.

Okay let’s get back to the links. it is important to make sure that your new site retains as many of the links from the old site as possible. How do you know who is linking to your old site? Simple, just go to yahoo.com and enter this search query “linkdomain:www.oldsiteurl.com” from there you will have a full list of everyone who links to your old site. Contact each one of those people and ask them to link to your new site. You might not get all of the links back but the more you retain the better.

Okay now the search trends. It is important to get your next site off to the right start by establishing a strong URL. Using tools likes Google search trends you can determine which keyword is most important for you to use.
For instance, the client in question sells American Flags and I was curious as to whether we should use “America” in the url or “USA” I used Google’s search trends tool and determined that using USA was most favorable in their market. Not only will they show up easier for USA flags but they will for US flags as well. That is the difference in thousands of dollars in sales for them.
Lastly which should we use a .com website or a .org? While both types of URL’s carry the same wait for the search engines .org websites carry significantly more trust value than a .com. I chose a .org for this site for that exact reason.
All in all there are a lot of important factors when you are switching a site over to a new URL. These are some of the most important. I’m going to leave you with this last little gem. When planning on switching over url’s the earlier you can establish the domain the better. Search engines place a lot of weight on domains that have been around for the longest amount of time.

There are two separate business models for successful business growth online. If you are looking to drive sales through your twitter account Twitter can be great for that. If you are looking to just get your name more well known Twitter is still a great place for you to get started. This article is dedicated to teaching all of you how to get the Twitter sale conversion success that we all crave.

Everyone is on Twitter now, from Shaq, to your Congressional leaders, to big branded businesses. For those of us that aren’t quite that established in the public eye I’m here to tell you that Twitter is for you and I as well. Even with all of the big fish in the pond there is still plenty of room for the rest of us to help grow and establish a brand and a business through Twitter.

Now I better put a disclaimer in here. For those of you who are looking to maintain the conversion rates you normally see from your online sales avenues, you are not likely going to see those same types of numbers while selling through Twitter. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make money. Dell made over $1 Million last year on Twitter, but that is only $1 Million from their hundreds of millions of dollars in sales they did last year.

If you are looking to strictly drive sales through Twitter I suggest using the <a href=”http://twitter.com/delloutlet”>Dell Outlet</a> model for Twitter. While still staying in communication with the customers who choose to contact them via Twitter the main focus of their Twitter account is to post the latest and best deals that they have to offer on their website. Take a look at this screen shot from their Twitter page.

The tweet that are in the Yellow are the sales that Dell is currently running on their outlet site. The examples in the orange are examples of how Dell communicates with their customers via Twitter when they aren’t posting a sale. Notice how even when simply communicating with the customer their communication is still sales driven. Instead of having a normal twitter conversation you might typically see on Twitter they are straight to the point and always sales driven.

Now Dell has a superior advantage to almost everyone else who is trying to sell on Twitter, they are already a well established brand, all they have to do is tell people that they have a Twitter account and they have 450,000 followers. You can still have relatively similar success to Dell by using this model but you will also want to couple that with a bit more conversative involvement on Twitter in order to grow your Twitter follower base. Perhaps try setting up another Twitter account to build brand awareness and drive your traffic from that account to your sales based Twitter account in order to try and pin point those followers who want to buy instead of just have a conversation.

There are other sales avenues you can try through Twitter as well such as magpie and other sales avenues. I will get to those avenues in a later post perhaps. I wanted to show people the best way to drive sales directly through their company’s own Twitter accounts. Twitter is great for a lot of things and it can be used to increase your sales I suggest just giving it a try.

I recently was reading an article on TwitTip.com entitled Intangibility Of Twitter the article was about an internet marketing director that was using Twitter to try and grow the business. This person set up a Twitter account with the company’s name and then also set up a personal account that also displayed his company’s news and other information. The CEO of the company was questioning the amount of time being spent on the Twitter campaign vs. the amount of sales driven.
There was a decent amount of discussion in the comments under the article about how great of a sales tool Twitter is and ways to possibly improve sales. I would contend that there are two separate business models for success with Twitter.
If you are looking to drive sales with your Twitter account I would suggest taking the model that Dell Outlet uses. If you are looking to just grow brand awareness and general name recognition I would suggest simply getting involved in the conversation points on Twitter that your specified demographic is interested in.
I am going to be getting into the two separate Twitter Business Models for success in two separate segments because they really do need to be broken down a lot more than I could in this article. Stay tuned I should have them finished shortly. If you’re looking for immediate answers you can find me on Twitter @HarryWatson00.

When NOT to Send:

The middle of the work day: These emails are likely to get buried in the sea of emails that accumulate during a normal workday.

Middle of the Night: Consider how many emails you have in the morning. Emails will get lost among the other marketing emails that arrive late at night or very early in the morning.

Friday: 1 out of every 5 American workers takes a full or half day off on Fridays. Market research shows that most people use their work email for personal email intake. Therefore “out of office” auto-reply bounce rates are up. Not to mention added distractions of the upcoming weekend evade individuals from campaigns.

When to Send:

• Late afternoons and evenings are successful for many e-marketers. 3 to 7 PM is recommended.
• Midmornings are also statically sound. I call this the “Brunch Blast”, because a better term does not yet exist.
• Which day of the week; is a popular question, but alas there is not a solid answer. Much of email marketing is theory based on what you can bench mark.

(It’s Important to remember that all email practices are subject to change or evolution depending on circumstances, and considering recent polls and data.)

Things to Consider

“When is the recipient of this email most likely to respond?” Think of the average schedule of your target audience – soccer moms or business executives? Both have very different schedules.

If you are promoting a large sale, send 1-3 days before the sale starts. Too much time and your customers will forget the offer. If promoting a sale the day of, make sure the sales lasts for at least 3-5 days. Occasionally a “One Day Only Sale” can be effective when the promotion or offer is super sweet (40% off or BOGO)!

Segment your list! If you have recipients in different time zones, create separate categories and schedule them to send at the appropriate times.

“And that’s how the proverbial Email-Cookie Crumbles”