MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips

Some Customer Retention Ideas
Checkout http://www.mklink.com/getstarted for more internet marketing tips

Why is Customer Retention So Vital?

Even if you believe (rightly or wrongly) to curtail your marketing spend when times are tough, it is essential that you market effectively and profitably to your customer base and keep your customer retention as high as possible. It’s all to common to see someone working furiously trying to to get business in the front door but only to lose them again via the back door!

Now, more than ever, it is essential to retain your profitable clients and ensure that they remain loyal. You’ve probably already heard the statistics bandied around that it’s about 5 times more expensive to acquire and sell to a new client than it is to sell to an existing one.

Not only that, but it has been suggested that increasing your customer retention by just 5% increases your overall profits from between 25% to 85%!!! This is usually because people spend a fortune acquiring business but usually once a customer is in place, then running costs are typically a lot lower.

Whilst first time buyers tend to be “tryers” – just testing you out, long term customers tend to be more satisfied with the relationship and consequently less prone to switching to competitors, less price sensitive and offer more word of mouth referrals for you.

They’re usually cheaper to service too as they already know your processes so need less “education”.

Additionally, increased customer satisfaction and retention increases your staff motivation and job satisfaction too. Not surprising really! Who’d want to work for a company that’s only got angry customers calling to complain or leave all the time? Consequently, this can lead to a virtuous circle because happy staff treat their customers better.

If you are in a business with little differentiation, staff service, communication and attitude towards customers is everything!

Some Reason Why People Might Leave You:

Bad Service.
(How can you improve this?)
Pricing Issues.
(How can you help your customer afford your services ?
e.g. Can you offer payment by installments or a slimmed down version of your service?)
Customer has Expired, Retired, Been Fired or Re-Hired.
(How often do yo update your records?)
Customer has Moved.
(Can you still service this or sell the client to someone else?)
Customer no longer has a need for the service.
(Have you listened to your customers needs recently?)
Customer Received a better offer from a competitor.
(How can you keep your customer loyal – see below!)
Of course, while there are many others reasons you can see clearly from this that good, regular communication is the key here!

How You Can Increase Customer Retention – The Wrong Way.
Some companies try and keep their clients by using contracts that are difficult to get out of. Anyone who knows me will know how much I hate this. In my line of work, other ‘tricks’ of the trade can include owning domain names that the customers use. (Sometimes the customer isn’t even aware that they don’t own their own domain name!)

Or Legacy Code. If you have a shopping cart or some kind of database website using code written by a specific programmer, it can be difficult to switch website supplier so watch out for this!

In a nutshell, no-one likes to be kept by a chain. It will breed resentment and will possibly cost you more than the value of the customer.

How You Can Increase Customer Retention — The Right Way.
Basically, it all comes down to good communication and great customer service! Simple really.
Here’s a few specific things you can do.

Email/Fax/Write/Ring – REGULARLY.
Contact your customers on a regular basis and ask them if they are happy and if there is anything they want help with. Make them aware of your product or service improvements and keep supplying tips and advice that will help them use your services. (This is what I devote a lot of time to and I can say with 100% confidence that it has catapulted my business forward.)

It is why I am writing this right now!!!

Be Personal & Keep Your Service Memorable.
Remember clients’ birthdays. Send Christmas cards. Have an account manager that knows your customers by name. Use decent CRM(Customer Relationship Manager) software to be aware of which customers buy certain products (seasonal items, high ticket etc) and market specifically to them at the right time.

How about this? Offer a personalised website address for them to view your proposal or tips or feedback. So, you are called ABC Trading Ltd and your client is called John Smith, then how more likely is it that they’d read an article at www.abctrading.com/JohnSmith ??

Have Fun.
Life is for living! Unless you work down a coal mine or with unexploded bombs, try and have a little fun and this will filter down to your customers. Happiness, like sadness is contagious.

Pay Attention To Complaints And Compliments.
If someone is happy with your service ask for a testimonial and add it to your website. If they’re not happy, then run through exactly why they’re not happy and try and elevate them to the point where they are happy! Either way, you need to ask.

Offer Loyalty Rewards.
If you have an online shop, offer regular bonuses to loyal customers.

Offer rewards for “long service”. If someone has been a customer for a long time, then even a randomly received box of chocolates to say that they’ve been with you for xxx months or years can be a real shot in the arm for their perception of your business.

Say Thank You!
If someone has bought from you (or even better – referred someone else) then simply thanking them for their business is often overlooked by many busy business owners.

By the way, if they have referred another business, ALWAYS reward them, no matter how insignificant the sale may be to you.

Use Mystery Shoppers.
OK – so YOU know how important great customer service is. But how often do your staff ask the right questions or handle complaints when you’re NOT around! You can simply test it by getting a mate to call up and ask ‘scenario’ type questions.

(Remember to REWARD staff if they do an exceptional job – this is your lifeline to the outside world.)

Give People MORE than they Expect.
The bunch of roses in the boot of your new car is the kind of thing that you half expect. A coupon for your wife to spend the day at a health spa isn’t. So Aim BIGGER.

Remember, 5% increase in customer loyalty means an extra 25% to 85% in profit
- so go the extra mile because it easily pays for itself.

Upsell & Cross Sell
When you have a PERSONALISED relationship with your customers, you can upsell your other products and services and even offer other peoples’ products and services as a way of leveraging the relationship. So if, you sell cars, why not HELP your customers, by getting them a great discount at the local tyre and exhaust place. DON’T just send loads of adverts, they’ll resent it.

Survey Your Customers.
Show your customers that you care what they think by not only surveying them as quickly and efficiently as possible but also let them know AFTERWARDS what other people think and what you are going to do with THEIR tips and suggestions. Taking up a customers time with a survey only to be not appreciated afterwards will have the opposite effect!

A trick here is to use your employees to get the your customer feedback. They have the relationship with your clients (and if they don’t they should) They can speak to your customer by name and should know their history. Leverage that relationship and train your employees to always ask for feedback. Make it policy.

Handle Complaints IMMEDIATELY
This needs no further explanation. No excuses, just do it.

The upshot of what I am saying is that when times are tough, you have to communicate more than ever with your customers.

Look at it this way, if someone was chatting up and flirting with your wife/husband/partner and you weren’t constantly being attentive and trying to keep them happy then you already know what happens next! This is exactly what happens with your customers!

Other businesses are ‘chatting them up’ all the time by offering inducements and promises and so now more than ever you need to keep them loyal.

If you would like more help about how to use the web to increase customer retention, please
visit http://www.mklink.com/getstarted today or call 01454 852414.

’till next time,

Mike Knight. MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips

Some Tips For Making Contact Forms Easier
Checkout http://www.mklink.com/getstarted/ for more internet marketing tips

I accept that it is easier for me to experiment with contact forms than most people simply because of my experience. A lot of people I speak to simply say “I know a bit of HTML but don’t know how to do forms” or something similar.

This is a shame really because inevitably, it means that it gets done instead by someone who might not be the person who sees the leads coming in. Consequently, the contact forms very often are quirky and don’t offer a particularly good user experience.

So let me make a couple of suggestions.

First Suggestion : There now exist lots of scripts and solutions that make it easier than ever to make contact forms and you can have all the buttons and drop-downs and data-checking that you ever want.

You won’t need to know any code as they’re “drag n drop” and are a breeze to use.

I personally still write my own but that’s simply more from habit than anything else. My suggestion would be to simply type in the phrases “Contact Form” into Google and see which companies are offering the quickest, cheapest and easiest solutions.

Ironically, Google itself can help you here. If you checkout the spreadsheet component of Google Docs at http://docs.google.com you will see that you can make a simple(or complicated) form within minutes and the results are neatly tabulated making for easy review.

Simply Click “New” then “Form” and you’re away. You can display the results online or have them emailed to you. Talking of email, you can of course include a form made like this within an email and Google will do it all for you.

Second Suggestion : Offer the questions in Bite-Sized Chunks. Naturally, this only really applies to a questionnaire on a website rather than an email but you get what I mean.

I have personally noticed a marked increase in my own conversion rate when I use multiple pages to ask all the questions I need answered, rather than having them all on one page.

T here’s a couple of reasons for this (I believe). Firstly, when someone sees half a dozen questions instead of (say) thirty all in one go, they’re a lot less daunted.

Secondly, when someone has completed half a dozen questions, they’ve made a commitment. It’s a lot easier to get someone to finish something they’ve already started than to get them to start something in the first place!

So, my suggestion is that as a general rule, get the very basic contact information first so that if you do experience user-abandonment, you can contact them later if you want to – either with an autoresponder or simply calling them up on the phone.

Anyway, it is essential that you do have the ability to change and tweak your contact form because this is the very point at which people interact with your website and represents a huge opportunity to increase your sales and leads by optimising it for conversion.

Loads of times I see a great website that looks a though it has cost a fortune yet which has lost the ball at the last minute by using an inappropriate form. Waste!

If you’d like some more help in this or any other area, checkout my quick-consultancy service.

It’s a very inexpensive way to see how to rapidly boost your leads and sales.

Checkout http://www.mklink.com/getstarted today or call 01454 852414

’till Next Time,

Mike Knight.
Internet Marketing Advice & Training
for Businesses since 1998.

Show Your Face!
Checkout http://www.mklink.com/training/ for more internet marketing tips

Increasing Your Conversion Rate with Personal “Stuff”

Ok – I admit it. I’m not exactly God’s gift and I don’t suppose I’ll win any awards for my looks any time soon. But I DO have a picture of me on my website, near the call to action. And no, it’s not supposed to scare people off!

Why do I do this?
Because people buy from people. Studies have shown that having an image on your website of the person or people that the visitor is likely to deal with can help with increasing the conversion rate.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t get loads of women calling me and asking me out on a date but it has increased my conversion rate and so it’s staying put – just like the ‘annoying’ hover ad.

I’m also playing around with Youtube as well although I have to admit it’s more of a challenge to make me look anything human

What OTHER people do.
Back in the old days before I knew better, I simply had a generic looking website with library pictures and the usual “guff” about my business.

And yes, it looked great and professional – certainly much better than the current site.

But it didn’t work.
Because my business isn’t generic. And neither is yours. And neither are your customers.

Your business is made of people and it’s the people that MAKE the business.

When people visit your website, do they see who they’ll be dealing with or do they have to imagine what you’re like?

All things being equal, who would you rather buy from…
Someone you “know” or someone you don’t know?

Now I could always be wrong of course. If you really don’t want pictures of yourself or your staff on your website or it’s really not appropriate for whatever reason then that’s entirely up to you.

And it may be that in some cases it doesn’t actually benefit your conversion rate, although I think you should still test it and make sure.

But like I said, people buy from people. This is why I’m writing this email to you from me.

It’s not generic. I haven’t used silly language and tried to make it sound like I had a team of copywriters working on it. I have staff and could easily outsource this to them. But I want this email to come from ME to YOU – simple as that.

And yes, I make mistakes and typos and all sorts of mistakes and I probably could make it look more professional.

But then I’d never get around to it and you’d never get these tips.

So, what am I trying to say?
Make your website speak to people directly and not basically try and be a technical manual written for people in the third person. Show people who you are and who they’re dealing with and let them know that your business is run by people.

I’m pretty confident that there will be a backlash soon against companies with telephone switchboards and “press 1 for this” or “press 7 for that”.

Imagine this. Ringing up your bank or insurance company or broadband provider or whatever and knowing you’d speak directly to a person and not only that, you’d know their name and what they look like BEFORE you spoke to them.

Wouldn’t YOU prefer that rather than getting automated or generic garbage service?

So that’s what I’m suggesting you do for your website and internet marketing.
And more than likely, you’ll get more people contacting you.

Test it and if I’m wrong and it doesn’t work for your particular business then what have you lost?

If you’d like more information about anything, simply call 01454 852414 or try our internet marketing training system here at http://www.mklink.com/freetrial

’till next time,

Mike Knight. MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips

Traffic, Conversion and Retention
Checkout http://www.mklink.com/training/
for more internet marketing tips

Breaking Down Your Sales Process

Whenever I speak to someone about their website or their internet marketing, it helps me to know which part of the marketing we’re talking about, so I can instantly think of suitable strategies and techniques.

Just a like a decent golfer knows exactly which club to use for a certain shot, I have certain ‘tools’ which I know can be used in certain situations.

The reason I say this is because most people don’t really understand it all and so it all seems a bit of a blur and consequently confusing.

So, I apologise in advance if this next bit sounds bit silly and simplistic but I think there will be a few people that have an “Aha” moment.

Let’s imagine that your job for the week is to catch butterflies and put them in a big jar. At the end of the week, the amount of butterflies you’ll have collected will be related to how many you caught in your net, how many escaped from your net and how many stayed put in the keep jar.

If you’re hunting butterflies in a field where few butter files are to be found, you’ll struggle. Conversely, if you’re in a field with lots of flowers and things that they like – in the summer, you should have plenty of them. This is the metaphor for visitor traffic.

You can run around all day swiping at butter files but if the holes in the net are too big, most will slip through. This is the same as your conversion rate. (Most people spend a fortune swiping butter files only to let them slip through the net)

Lastly, you need to have a look at the butterflies in your jar. If you have left the lid off, a number will escape, making the whole process futile. This is equivalent to your retention process.

Like I said, baby talk it may be but it does at least illustrate the three areas that every business needs to address to be successful, although most don’t simply because they only focus on one or at best two areas and then waste their time and money because it’s not a combined effort.

Increasing traffic - this can be done by SEO, PPC, Affiliation, Article writing, banners, microsites, advertising, viral marketing, social media – you name it.

Increasing conversion. This can be done with web analytics, trial & error, usability testing & focus groups & good old fashioned good design.

Increasing retention : Upselling, cross selling, regular communication, loyalty initiatives, customer feedback and so on.

So you see, when you break your marketing down into these three areas and put together a plan for working on each, and measuring the results over a period of time, you’ll catch more butterflies (customers). And you’ll sell more to them and retain them for longer.

Like I keep saying, it’s not complicated. You simply need to learn it and apply it consistently.

If you’d like more information about anything, simply call 01454 852414 or try our internet marketing training system here at
http://www.mklink.com/freetrial

’till next time,

Mike Knight. MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips

Commenting on Blogs and Forums
Checkout http://www.mklink.com/training/ for more internet marketing tips

A Great Way to Make Yourself Part of the Community.
I often get asked by people what they should put on their blog.

By the way – if you haven’t got a blog then get one!
Contact us at http://www.mklink.com/contact2.php if you need help.

Anyway, the simple answer is to do some research first. Find out what other people are doing. Given that the internet is a big place and there are lots of people blogging away, try and find a niche about your products and services that you can write about on a continual basis via your blog or Twitter or whatever.

That’s yet another reason I mentioned recently it’s a good idea to focus on niches.

Whilst you’re in your ‘research’ phase and looking at other peoples’ blogs, you can start to see who the real players are. Blog Search Engines like technorati.com help you to find the categories of blogs that you’re looking for.

Commenting on other blogs.

After a while, it’s a good idea to start commenting on other people’s blogs.
When I say commenting, I mean adding comments or questions of value – not simply trying to get links back to your own site or blog as often there’s a no-follow tag anyway.

The idea is that in the ‘blogosphere’ life is usually less formal than on regular business websites. This means bloggers are more receptive to linking and helping each other out.

This policy of adding value to other people’s blog in your industry will be repaid when you have your on blog and you know other bloggers that would want to link to your blog because you are giving information that will be beneficial to their visitors as well.

Most people do all of this the other way round. They have a business selling mortgages or business loans or office equipment and all they do is blog about their stuff – a complete waste of time for the most part as there’s no leverage.

Far better to be king of the blogs in a small niche and then be an integral part of the blogging community and so gain the leverage of other people’s information and networking.

Leverage Benefits of Blog Research

Of course, the additional benefit of researching other people’s blogs and commenting on them and in turn updating your own blog is that you’ll have plenty of material pre-written for your email communications and also fuel for article directories if that’s part of your strategy as well.

You can make huge improvements to your web marketing simply by getting the right advice.

Here’s a challenge for you.

Here’s how you can instantly and dramatically improve your web profits for less than the cost of a tank of petrol in your average car.

See how at http://www.mklink.com/intro.php today.

’till next time,

Mike Knight.
MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips

The Power of Niche Marketing.
Checkout http://www.mklink.com/training/ for more internet marketing tips

Sometimes I think that people forget where the real power of the web really lies.

Most people get so caught up in the design of their website or even just the day to day “stuff” about their business that they lose sight of one of the the best ways to leverage the internet.

The web is extremely good for marketing products and services that are difficult to get hold of or are niche because of the sheer scope of it.

And you’ll know by now that I keep harping on that it’s far better to have multiple streams of niche traffic rather than just one stream of mostly untargetted traffic.

But a lot of people tell me something along the lines of “Oh well I’m a lawyer and I offer legal advice primarily about matrimonial issues” or “Our accountancy firm just operates in Bristol” and so on.

Well how about this for a mind shift? If you only ever offer mainstream “stuff” in your local area then you’ll hit a glass ceiling because there’s only so many people you can help.

But if you have a niche product or service, then you can help people much, much further away and consequently increase your earning potential.

Going back to the previous examples…The lawyer may have dealt with a couple that had a divorce occurring but it was complicated by both partners being in a network marketing company that they’ve both built up. Who get’s the network and how is it shared?

The accountant may have some experience of working with businesses looking to invest in property in Turkey and dealing with Turkish Law.

Now, how many OTHER people would benefit from some telephone(or web based) consultancy about specific areas of Turkish Law? Or Matrimonial issues involving a network marketing company?

Obviously they could offer consultancy to individuals or even other accountants and lawyers!
Yet SO FEW people I speak to leverage their knowledge like this – they simply wait for the next local client and start all over again, not getting more leverage out of their experiences.

If you sell products then of course you should increase your stock with niche products because that’s where you can make good margins. Often, you don’t even need to keep them in stock – just be able to “drop ship” straight from the manufacturer.

So, if you’re a fishing tackle shop, start selling certain baits or tackle that’s really hard to get hold of because otherwise you’re competing on mainstream stuff that everyone else is selling.

If you’re a sports shop, sell products for niche sports or people with specific needs.

The main point I’m making is that if you’re not continually identifying niches and adding them to your portfolio of products or services, you’re probably limiting yourself massively and wondering why you’re never found in the search engines!

Why not try my Private Member’s Training System – Free for a Month?
Checkout http://www.mklink.com/freetrial/

’till Next Time,
Mike Knight. MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips

Checkout http://www.mklink.com/training/ for more internet marketing tips

Don’t Call your Files ‘Silly’ Names

Something that you might want to think about when creating your website is the choice of file names.

This is because the file names should ideally be reflecting what the file is about. So, if you have a web page about fly fishing rods then call it flyfishingrods.html for example. This makes a lot more sense to both humans and search engines when they’re scanning your pages. So much better than page6.html for example.

Same thing with your images and other components of a web page.

Rather than calling a picture of a product you’re selling pic6.jpg for example, call it what it actually is, like antique_penn_fly_fishing_reel.jpg or whatever. Remember, Google might be smart but it doesn’t know what a picture is, it can only look at ‘clues’ such as tags and titles.

Now some of you will have dynamic websites because you’ll have ecommerce shopping carts or forums and Content management systems and what not. This means that a particular web page might be called

http://www.yoursite.com/catalog/dept789/index.php?product=1234&cat=567

Which is completely useless for SEO purposes. If you can, get your designer to configure the software to make the website addresses contain the words of the product and categories such as :

http://www.yoursite.com/catalog/fishingreels/antique/penn234.php for example
so that the search engines can read the URL’s better.

Even better still, you can use more advanced tips like mod_rewrite to tell the server to rename the files so that not only do they have the search phrases in the file names but the pages appear ‘static’ as well.
You can use this particular function for tidy page redirects as well – but let’s keep it simple for now.

This means having pages ending in .html rather than .php or .asp or .cfm or whichever technology your site uses.

There are various schools of thought about all this but my take on it is that if it means people can read what the page is about from looking at it in the navigation or sitemap or even a search engine listing, then you’ll get more people clicking on it, as well as any SEO benefits that it has.

The ultimate extension to all this is domain names. Google likes websites that say what they are.
Another good reason to have a microsite or two!

If you sell vintage bicyle parts then call your website www.vintagebikeparts.com or whatever the most appropriate search term is – rather than mikeknighttrading.com because it has no seo friendly aspect to the URL. (MKLINK should have been called internet marketing tips really – although I have 20 microsites)

Want more information? Checkout http://www.mklink.com/freetrial/

’till Next Time,
Mike Knight. MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips

Hi Folks, I decided to use WordPress for all future blogs and will update all my old blogs when I get a chance!