Want a Huge Boost in Website Conversions? Follow these 5 Easy Steps

Uh Oh…

Did you know that according to Small Business Administration (SBA) around 90% of small businesses fail within the first two years of their start up?

If you want to make it into the other 10% that go forward and succeed beyond their wildest dreams, you need to solve that problem you’ve been having. You know what I’m talking about don’t you? Your website conversions – or lack of conversions as I should say.

The Good and the Bad

The Good news is that you’ve invested a lot of time and effort into creating a website that you love and it’s getting lots of visitors. Congratulations!

The bad news is that those visitors aren’t staying and they’re not buying your product.

If you want your site to make you money, you need to convert your readers into customers.

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Thankfully, there is a ridiculously simple way of getting your readers to convert into paying customers. All you have to do is follow my easy five step process.

Ready…?

Step 1 – Know your target audience in depth

Some salespeople will tell you that they can sell beef steak to a vegetarian. They might be able to. You might be able to. But really, what’s the point? It wouldn’t be a quick sale and you would have wasted a lot of your valuable time trying to make one sale.

Or you could spend the same amount of time making five sales to people who actually wanted to buy steak.

Time is money. Don’t waste either on people that don’t want to buy your product.

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You need to know exactly who your audience is. Then you will know exactly what they’ll be looking for on your website and exactly what will make them buy your product.

Finding your ideal customer

Most businesses will have a good idea of who their target audience is in a broad sense. They’ll know things like:

• Age
• Gender
• Geographic location
• General interests

This is a great start. But if you really want to run a successful business, you’re going to have to delve a lot deeper into your customer’s psyche than that. You need to create a customer avatar.

Customer avatar

The customer avatar or customer persona, details all the details behind your customer that will bring them to life for you.

You need to think about everything about them. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do they have a family or are they single?
• Do they have a lot of disposable income?
• What do they like to do in their spare time?
• What would be their dream holiday?
• What do they do for a living?
• What do they want to do for a living?
• How would they describe themselves to others?

As you sit down and think about your customer persona, you’ll instantly learn more about their hopes and fears. This is the information you really need. Now you can show them exactly how you can help them.

And that’s what people pay for. Your help.

Now that you have your ideal customer persona (or more than one – that’s OK), you will have been able to adjust your website copy so that every word speaks directly to the needs of your customer.

Step 2  - Use tracking systems to find out where your customer loves to linger on your website

The truth is that when you’re designing your own website, a lot of the time you might think something looks great but your ideal client or customer doesn’t agree. Don’t be offended, it happens to the best of us!

You need to find out which parts of your site appeal to your readers and which parts they’re not so hot about. A fantastic way of doing this is to use heatmaps and user testing systems.

Heatmaps

Heatmaps or eye tracking systems as they’re also known, give you a crucial insight to where your readers linger on your page. They do this by tracking the users mouse movement. You can find out if the video that you embedded is getting the attention it deserves or if it needs to be moved somewhere else for example.

User testing systems

Market research is a must for anyone who wants to promote their business. Now though, there are a number of tools that businesses (large and small) can use to see if their website is being well received.

For example; User Testing is a tool that you could use to see if different aspects of your website work properly or are user friendly. To use this particular tool, all you have to do is:

1. Fill out the details of what you would like to be tested e.g. navigation bar, shopping cart etc.
2. Choose who you want to test your site. You can use your own existing customers or select a group from the UT user panel (there are literally thousands of people who participate and you can narrow down the groups according to your own specifications for your customer persona).
3. Get the results via a questionnaire, watch videos of users actually testing your sites to see exactly how they interacted with the site or even talk to the users themselves and ask follow up questions.

By testing your website and receiving feedback about where readers are looking, you can move on to step 3…

Step 3 – Place strategic opt-in boxes all over your page

You can use the information from the user testing stage to think about the best place to put your opt in boxes. Now the more detailed your testing was in step 2, the better results you will have with step 3. This is the really exciting stuff!

You can now think about which group of your customers spent more time looking at the top right corner of your page. What will that group be most interested in? Create a box for it and slide it over to the top right corner of your page. Do this with the rest of your opt-in boxes and… Voila!

You will have already improved your website conversion rate by a huge amount!

But we don’t stop there….

Step 4 – Test EVERYTHING

You probably know yourself how frustrating it is to be reading a great article on a website and then when you want to do something, the link or the button doesn’t work. Do you continue to use that website? I don’t think so!

It’s ESSENTIAL that you test everything on your site. Go through everything bit by bit, button by button and then when you’ve finished – do it all again. I cannot stress to you how important it is to have everything working on your site. You wouldn’t ask a customer to sit on a broken chair now would you?!

Step 5 – Visitor retargeting

If you get 3,000 visitors a day and only 30 of them convert, does that mean you should ignore those other 2970 visitors? That doesn’t even make sense!

Companies like Adroll and Retargeter try to convert those other 2970 visitors even after they’ve left your website.

When your visitors leave your site, retargeting tools will follow their activity around the web and place adverts in front of them for your products. That way you can keep your brand in front of your ideal customer’s eyes so that when they are ready to take that leap and make a purchase – you’ll be the first company they think of and they’ll come straight back to you!

Get Ready for the Action

If you follow these 5 steps you WILL see a huge difference in your website conversions. The most important factor to take aways from all of this is that you need to understand your customer and what they need from you. It all boils down to that one simple thing.

These five steps will help you do just that.

Back to You

I always appreciate it when you take the time out of your busy schedule to listen to my advice. and I always look forward to hearing what you have to say about it too!

Do you use any user tracking systems at the moment? Can you tell me and my other readers about the results? We’d love to hear about your success!

Comment below. I can’t wait to read about it!

Thank you so much for reading, I hope to see you back here again soon. Until then…

via:http://florentinaistrati.com/tips-to-increase-website-conversions/

Think you Know Facebook Custom Audience Targeting? This Secret Process will revolutionize your Campaign!

What would you do if you could put your very best advert in front of people who want to hear about it and want to buy your services?

Do you want to find out how to get more bang for your buck with your Facebook Ad campaigns?

It all starts here with this little known, yet highly effective method of using Facebook custom audience targeting. And it’s so easy, you can almost do it with your eyes closed!

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What is Facebook Custom Audience Targeting?

Facebook custom audience targeting is exactly what it sounds like. It uses certain customizations to narrow down your audience until you find your ideal customer. Now this is great news for small businesses and entrepreneurs like you and me because it means:

• We don’t waste our money advertising to people who aren’t interested
• We stand more chance of each advert converting into an actual sale

Our marketing money is being put to the best possible use and reaching as far as it possibly can. I don’t know about you but that’s great news for me because I don’t like to set fire to my money!

But how exactly can we be sure to this EVERY time?

I’ve been using a method that’s given me increasingly great results for my own Facebook Ad campaigns and now I’m going to share it with you. It’s actually really simple. All you have to do is remember the following questions…

Where does my ideal Customer Hang Out?

One of the major rules of marketing is to know your target audience and where they will be. That way you’ll be able to meet them head on and put your message right where they can see it.

One of the best ways to find new potential customers is to find out where your existing customers hang out. It stands to reason that your customers will have shared interests. You’re one of them – and there will definitely be more!

Now not many people know this but Facebook has a brilliant tool to let you know exactly what your customers shared interests are. It’s free and super simple to use too. It’s the search bar at the top of your Facebook screen!

Normally we use that search bar to find things that we like. But did you know that you can also use this to find out what your fans like? Take a look at the example below:

All I did here was type “Pages liked by people who liked Florentina Istrati” into the search bar.

As you can see, I got many interesting pages straight away that lots of my fans liked. If these pages are interesting to my existing fans and customers, then there will certainly be more people there who would be interested in what I do. People that don’t know about me yet. I’ve just found a ton of other potential clients without spending a single cent. And now, so have you – congratulations!

Now I’ve found them, how do I Reach out to them?

Now you know where to put your amazing Facebook Ads and doing it is so easy once you know how.

All you have to do is go along to your Facebook Ad manager. Here you’ll see all the usual fields that will help you to narrow down your target audience.

To use the information that you’ve just got from the first question, you need to use precise interests.

Enter the names of the pages that you found in this section here and you’ll be able to put your ad in front of thousands of potential customers who are already interested in your niche and what you have to offer.

Amazing how easy it is to use Facebook custom audience targeting once you know this simple little secret isn’t it? 

Recap

To open up your doors and put your brilliant Facebook Ad in front of thousands of targeted customers:

• Use the search bar to find out what pages people like who also like your page
• Use the precise interests section in the Ad Manager to place your Ad on those pages

So simple and yet most people don’t know about it. Well apart from you now!

Bonus Tip:

When you’re looking for new clients, look at the groups your existing fans like as well as pages...

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Back to You

I love hearing what my fellow small biz owners and solopreneurs are doing. shared knowledge is empowering for us all and sometimes, those little surprise nuggets of knowledge can be mind blowing. Not to mention incredible for our business!

Have you tried Facebook Ads before and had poor results? What was the problem do you think? Tell me all about it in the comments below. A problem shared is a problem halved!

Thank you so much for reading this post. I hope this little known tip gives you the big results that it’s given me!

via:http://florentinaistrati.com/facebook-custom-audience-targeting/

Facebook Ad Disapproved? It’s Time To Find Out The Surprising Reasons Why Your Ad Was Rejected (This one will surprise you!)

Have you spent hours on your Facebook ad, only to have it rejected?

Does it make you feel as though you’d like to run into a wall?

Well don’t worry! There are reasons that Facebook ads are rejected and I’m going to tell you about them in this article. So then you can stop looking at that wall and find out how to get your ad accepted. 

First of all…

The 20% Rule Last year, Facebook updated a rule for news feed ads and sponsored posts. As with most things that are changed on the internet, it had marketers in uproar. Welcome (or not as the case was) the 20% rule.

The 20% rule says that in any ad or sponsored post that shows in the newsfeed, there can’t be anymore than 20% of the ad space taken up with text. Straight forward enough yes? Noooo… There’s more.

Text that is part of a logo or already on a product does NOT count towards the 20% because it is a natural part of the image.

Text that DOES count towards the 20% is any text that has been overlayed on top of the
image. Confused? I was at first, but it’s really quite simple once you understand it.

How to Comply

One of the easiest ways to make sure your ad complies with the 20% text rule is to make sure there is hardly any text on the ad at all.

But doesn’t that make advertising harder? Well yes it does a bit. But here’s the thing… good advertising isn’t supposed to be easy. Too many people these days rely on words to tell their story in an ad when the images should actually do all the heavy living. If you have a good visual concept, you don’t need a lot of text.

Once you have fiddled around with your ad so that it’s just right – Facebook have supplied a toolthat helps you to see if your ad is more or less likely to be accepted.

The tool allows you to lay a grid over your ad. You can then use this grid to find out the approximate percentage of text on your ad. For example – if four boxes are taken up with text, you have approximately 16% text.

This is a major plus to try to avoid your Facebook ads being rejected. But it doesn’t guarantee approval. There are some other aspects to take into account. This might surprise you…

Check your Outgoing Link

Maybe it’s because a lot of the people who create adverts on Facebook aren’t marketers. Maybe it’s because they’re using Facebook ads as a secondary marketing tool and not paying full attention.
But there are some extremely common mistakes that online business owners are making. And it’s getting their Facebook ads rejected.

Problem #1 You’ve made a promise that you can’t deliver

False advertising is a big deal. Facebook doesn’t want to be involved with anyone who is falsely making claims that they can’t back up. So if you promise to give people a winning lottery ticket in ten minutes, then you need to do that. If not – don’t expect your Facebook ad to be approved. But that will probably be the least of your worries if you have been promising people a winning lottery ticket!

Problem #2 Your ad offer and your landing page offer don’t match up

If you offer people a free book on marketing on your Facebook ad but then the link you send them to is for a landing page for a 20% discount on a health training course – your Facebook ad WILL be rejected.

To make sure you don’t get your Facebook ads rejected you need to:

that you’re not using too much text in your ad

Let the image speak for itself. Choose something powerful that people will understand in an instant.

Make sure you’re not promising things you can’t manage

Before you make any promises, make sure you can deliver on them...

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Facebook doesn’t like it and neither will your clients. You want a reputation for being reliable and keeping promises, not breaking them.

Make sure your ad and your landing page send the same message 
Every ad needs to have one clear message or idea that people will want to find out more about. The landing page needs to explain that idea and entice your audience to take action. But it is THE SAME message and idea that needs to run on both. Otherwise it just gets confusing. And confusion doesn’t sell anything. 

See it in Action

So now you can see an example of a Facebook ad that sticks to all the marketing rules and all the Facebook rules… it’s one of Mine!

You can see that the text isn’t overpowering the image. And if you click on it – go on you can click on it – you will see that my landing page and is a continuation of thought from the ad. and I can most definitely deliver on my promise! ( Btw, feel free to apply for a free session)

Back to You

I always appreciate having your attention for a few minutes and I hope this article shed some light on a tricky subject for you. In fact I’d love to hear what you think…

Have you had problems with your Facebook ads?

Why don’t you try the tips in this article and see if it makes a difference. I’d love to hear about your results in the comments below.

Or maybe you have your own checklist for creating ads that you’d like to share?

Until next time,

via:http://florentinaistrati.com/facebook-ads-rejected/

Want To do MORE with LESS? Find Out 5 Ways To Market Your Small Business Without Breaking That Bank

Having a solid online marketing strategy does not have to mean that you need to spend a fortune. I often hear people hesitate when it comes to building an one for their businesses because they think it is too costly.

This could not be more false! YOU can have a strong online presence even if you are not Steve Jobs or Coca Cola.

Do you want to know how? Then keep reading…

Today I am going to share with you my top 5 favourite tips for a balanced online marketing strategy. If you implement at least ONE of these 5 elements, I am sure your company’s online presence will see an IMPROVEMENT pretty fast.

Let’s see what these tips are:

1. Content marketing

Your online marketing strategy cannot survive without content marketing. Besides being CRUCIAL for things such as SEO and Page Rank, it can also help you establish your business (or yourself) as the expert of your niche.

And let me tell you this… there is no better feeling in the WHOLE WORLD than seeing people coming to you for advice.  I know you want to help as many people as possible with your business, so trust me when I tell you this online marketing strategy is the best thing you can do for them… and for yourself.

2. Build your own list of followers

   
   

This is perhaps one of the most important online marketing strategy tip that I am going to share with you today. I am not kidding. Having your own, personal list of followers is damn important; all your prospects are in that list.

BUT be careful how you treat your list. You want to develop a close relationship with them… and that takes time. Befriending your audience will NEVER happen overnight; it goes a looong way, and the slightest mistake can cost you valuable sales.And if your prospects are there, it is but a matter of time until they become clients, isn’t it?

List building can be a big factor in the success of your business and it surely is a strong online marketing strategy… in the hands of those who know how to handle the job.

3. Social media

Warning! Everyone tells you it is CHEAP, EASY and FUN. After all, what can go wrong with sharing a funny pic on your official Facebook page, right?

Right… The danger of social media is that is can become super expensive and you can lose a LOT of time if you have no idea what you are doing. The worst part is that you will lose both time AND money in vain, because your actions will not bring you any results.

But let me tell you a trick I learned during my experience with social media… If you have a strategy behind your posts, if you know WHAT you want to achieve with social media, then you will NEVER have to spend a fortune on it. I mean, you will probably not have to spend a dime!

And this, my dear reader, is what makes social media such a powerful online marketing strategy tool.

4. Share killer info through webinars

Oh, how I love ‘em webinars…! There is SUCH great power behind a webinar, and it works both sides: whether you are the organiser or an attendee, all webinars will teach you something valuable about your business.

Imagine the amount of value you can offer to your audience for free in a 30 min. webinar.

Even more, imagine how they will look at you at the end of your webinar: YOU will be an expert in their eyes…

Try to envisage yourself organising a webinar each week.

I know you can do it!

Now think about the amount of amazing information you can pass on – and this information will be shared by attendees to their friends and peers.

In a very short period of time your list CAN grow unimaginably! And all this thanks to this little online marketing strategy.

5. Attitude Check

Let me rectify my error earlier: building a list of followers is not the most important factor for your online marketing strategy.

Your ATTITUDE is (and it’s also the cheapest thing to start with!).

What is your mindset about your business? What do you REALLY want to offer your audience?

If you want to become the leader of your niche, then you need to focus more on giving.

Be known as someone who shares great information – someone who does it for free.

Be known as someone who shares great information - someone who does it for free.

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I’m not saying you should tell them everything you know, but do tell them things which they don’t know; show them your potential.

Having the right attitude towards your business will definitely make the difference between success and failure.

Every online marketing strategy should begin and end with your attitude towards your actions as a business owner.

Voila…! These are my 5 tips for a killer online marketing strategy which will NOT dry your pockets out.

You now know how to use knowledge you possess and share it in a way that impacts people’s lives.

You know how to use your time wisely and what you need to do to see the change you want in your business.

Now I pass this to you:

Did the right attitude help you grow your business in a healthy way? What was your attitude in approaching your business and your clients?

What other tools are you using for your online marketing strategy? Do they work? If so, feel free to share them with us in the Comments section. I am sure the community would like to hear them too!

via:http://florentinaistrati.com/digital-marketing-strategy-template/

Why You’ll Never Get More Leads From Your Website If You Don’t Know These Three Tips

How can you make money if you don’t have any customers? You can’t. It’s impossible!

Everybody talks a lot about lead conversion and for good reason. Turning your audience into paying customers is what’s going to put food on the table for you and your family. But there’s a step before that stage. That’s what this post is all about. And I’m being completely serious here when I say that you WILL NOT get more leads if you don’t pay attention to these 3 points. Ignore them at your own risk!

Start at the Beginning

When you look at your website, look at it through the eyes of your reader. See what they see and be objective. Just because you spent weeks on your site, it doesn’t mean that it is appealing.

If you’re going to become a great online marketer, you have to be critical of your own work.

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Web Design

No doubt you will have heard that content is king. It is. Especially if you want to rise through the ranks of Google. But guess what? Design is king too.

If your website is unprofessional or even just unattractive, the chances of somebody sticking around long enough to read your content are slim to say the least.

You need to make sure your website is designed in a way that connects with your audience and makes it as easy as possible for them to make the choices you need them to make – i.e. purchase your product.

When it comes to your call to action messages, you know the messages that tell people to “sign up here” or “buy this now”, you shouldn’t make any assumptions. Don’t assume that people will see them. Use tools such as OptinSkin.com to really make your call to actions stand out and get more leads.

Opt-in box

Your opt-in box is one of the most effective ways for you to get more leads. This is effectively your invite to the world to see if they want to come to your show. If they sign up, they’re interested in what you say. That means that they’re already half way there to buying something from you. So your opt-in box is a crucial part of your sales process.

In order to create that killer opt-in form that will grow your email list faster than Jack’s magic beanstalk, you need to focus on three things:

1. The design – Make sure your call to action stands out. Use contrasting colours to really make a high visual impact.
2. The message – Keep your message short and sweet. Focus heavily on the benefits that people will get from signing up with you. Will they be the first to receive new offers? Will they get access to a secret club? Will they get a butler to help them on the weekends? You need to have something that makes it worthwhile for your readers to give you their address. Whatever it is, you need to make sure they know EXACTLY what it is. In one sentence.
3. The length of the form – Think about what you really need from people. Their name and email address. That’s it. If you want to find out how old they are, where they’re from and what they’ve had for breakfast, leave that for a different day. Most people will sign up with you on the spur of the moment. They’re not likely to do that if your opt-in box takes an hour to read and another hour to fill out

If you want some guidance on creating the perfect opt-in box or sign up form, take a peek at HybridConnect.com They’ve got great easy to follow instructions that will help you to create forms that your customers will love. Don’t be afraid to play around with things. Remember to split test your boxes too to find out which works best for your conversion rates.

Manage leads

This last tip is less to do with generating leads and more about how to make the most of them.

If you want to make sure your hard earned leads aren’t lost, you’ll need to manage them efficiently. This can mean making appointments, scheduling follow-up emails and a hundred other tasks that you might need to take care of.

Thankfully you can automate the majority of this to save you time and effort without dedicating any less time to each and every one of your fans. There are a number of tools out there to help you with this but one of my favourites is Vcita.com. You can take care of everything from one place.

Take Away Points

If you want to get more leads, you’ll need to:

Focus on your design – If you want people to do something, make sure they can see what you’re asking them to do.

Make your message short and sweet – People never plan to sign up to things. Keep things short and sweet so that your readers can sign up and move on.

Now….Back to You

Sometimes the smallest tweaks can give the biggest results.

Have you ever made any changes to your website that have made a huge difference to the amount of lead you’ve gotten?

I’d love to hear about them in the comments below!

As always, thanks for reading. I hope these little nuggets of information have helped you in some way. 

By the way, if you liked this article, then you’ll love my “Elevate your Website” package. You’ll find out how to build on the skills we talked about here and really turn your website into a money spinner.

Until next time, keep on growing! 

via:http://florentinaistrati.com/get-more-leads/