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How to Get (a lot) More Leads from Your Website

By Christian

You may be aware that I do website critiques pretty often. The question I hear more than any other is “Can you take a look at my website and tell me what I’m doing wrong?” The most common complaint I hear from you is poor lead generation. There are a lot of business owners out there that are struggling to get good results from their website. After all, what good is a website if it’s not producing a meaningful result for your business?

If you want to get more leads coming in from your website, I have a new report you’ll want to read. It’s called “High Conversion: How to Get (a lot) More Leads from Your Website“. Pretty simple title; pretty clear focus on this one 🙂

Basically, after reviewing many, many websites over the past few years, certain trends definitely pop up. Here’s one thing for sure…if your website isn’t consistently pulling in high quality leads for you, there’s an identifiable and correctable reason for it. This report shares the biggest mistakes I see small business owners make with their website, and I’m giving it away for free.

If I’m already consistently selling website critiques, why give a report like this away for free? Because let’s face it, there is ALWAYS a time and a place for individualized attention, and if you want a personalized critique, I’m still doing them. If you’re not ready to do a full service critique, or if you just want to make sure your website is on track, this report is for you.

Grab a copy of it here. If you have any questions, I’m at your service 🙂

What I learned from having guns pointed at me

By Christian

Those of you who’ve read this blog for a while know that I originally started my career in door to door sales. Yeah, it’s not for everyone 🙂 But of course…neither is lifting weights or playing in a band, which are other activities I’ve grown fond of. But here’s something you can take to the bank…these things definitely force you to find something within yourself that you might not ever know was there otherwise. And that can be pretty beautiful.

It’s one of the reasons I love blogging and marketing my business in a public forum like this. I know the content here goes out to thousands of people; it’s kind of hard to not do your best. Let’s be real. You’d have to be a pretty big loser to be cool with having a sucky blog.

Push, Learn, Grow

So bottom line, I’m a fan of anything that pushes you to learn and grow. Love it or hate it, working in direct sales gets the job done. And for the record, I know for a fact it can be done ethically and for mutual benefit. It just happens to be the case that, unfortunately, many people are lazy bastards and willing to take their sales skills and use them unethically. It’s a shame, but it’s not a reflection on sales. It’s a reflection on the human race. Sorry, but sometimes people can suck. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch for me to say this. It’s not news. I think we can agree?

One of the situations that I learned from in sales was having guns pointed at me. I live in Indiana, folks. When you randomly knock on doors trying to sell stuff, some people don’t dig it. I know, big surprise, right? Well, a small percentage of people out there are aggressive, and a certain percentage of those people own guns. It didn’t happen often, but it happened more than once.

Instant Significance

As you might expect, wielding a gun makes you instantly significant. Trust me, having a gun pointed at you changes the situation pretty quickly. It’s a horrible approach of course, but I have to admit, it’s an effective way to get a result.

It’s occured to me that if everyone was packing heat, then guns would be a lot less significant. If we lived in a world where we were regularly prepared for that type of confrontation, then pointing a gun at someone wouldn’t be nearly as big a deal. If someone pointed one at you, you could simply point one right back. You’d be ready for that shit. As it turns out, this isn’t the world we live in. Very few people carry guns these days, and I’m cool with that. But this does create an opportunity for someone who is willing to use a gun. If you’re willing to cross that line, then instant power and significance are yours for the taking.

In business, we all seek these exact things. Every business wants to be different, powerful and significant. In fact, the information product industry is full of products which promise instant power and significance. And buy them by the millions. Be honest. You want to standout. You want to be significant. You want to affect a large change in the world. You want everything that a gun would provide you. But you’re just not willing to cross that line. Kudos, you’re not a redneck 🙂

Just remember what we’ve learned here. A gun is only significant when no one is ready for it. It’s only truly powerful when it’s rare. And it’s only powerful when you’re willing to cross the line and actually use one. Thankfully, there’s not just one line. There are millions of them.

Crossing Lines

Every day you can look out at your marketplace. Observe what people are complaining about. Take note of the problems your customers are having. These are lines you can cross anytime you’re ready. They are the lines that no one else has crossed. They are the lines that no one else, until now, has been willing to cross. They are your golden opportunity to obtain instant significance and power in your market.

You don’t need an expensive information products to teach you this. And you sure as hell don’t need a gun. You just need to listen and create solutions. Look at your systems. What can you do now, today, that your competition simply isn’t willing to do? What line can you cross today? These are the small, rare and beautiful opportunities that create powerful relationships with your customers. They are the little details that make all the difference.

Good business is about crossing those lines and doing what others aren’t willing to do. A business that crosses lines is the one that commands attention and becomes irreplaceable to the customer. If you want that type of loyalty from your customers, you need to break rules. Thankfully, there are always a lot of rules begging to be broken.

The Popularity Trap – Why Being Popular Sucks

By Christian

On occasion (more often than I’d like to admit), someone says something better than I could have ever said it myself. Today is one of those days. Dang it 🙂

Seth Godin just published a blog post that really sums up how important it is to be popular. Inside your marketing, your blogging, your prospecting…everything you do to build your business on a day to day business, there might be a silent pursuit for popularity. Look for it. You want people to “get” you, don’t you? You want the masses to pour into your store or office with orders for what you’re selling. Many of us fall victim to this trap. The popularity trap.

We strive to be #1. We want to be on top. We want recognition for our hard work. We want others to see our success and envy us. We all do. As business owners, we’re competitive by nature. But these are just labels. Why not simply strive for being great? Let your greatness speak for itself. Funny thing about greatness…most people don’t “get” it. They don’t want it. They don’t appreciate it. And they certainly aren’t willing to pay a premium for it. Funny thing about popularity…these are the exact people popularity attracts. The people who don’t get it.

Greatness on the other hand, could care less about popularity. It doesn’t need accolades. It’s just awesome, whether you like it or not. Whether you “get” it or not. Greatness serves it’s customers on the highest level, and it is rewarded handsomely as a result. Greatness attracts customers who value what you do and who are more than willing to pay a premium for it. Turning your focus towards greatness requires that you turn your focus AWAY from popularity. You simply cannot pursue both simultaneously. Focus on being great. Popularity is a costly distraction.

For the real juice, read Seth’s post. That’s what got me started on this rant 🙂

Traffic is Down and Business is Good!

By Christian

I took a break from posting to the blog for a couple weeks. I know…you’ve been biting your nails in anticipation. You’ve been wondering where my words have wisdom have gone. How could I put you through this? Your nerves have been so wracked by the absence of my blog posts, that you’ve probably even started smoking again, haven’t you? Sorry about that.

It’s not that I haven’t been working. In fact, that’s kind of the point of this post…I HAVE been working, but conventional wisdom could have you convinced that I’ve been being a slacker.

While I’ve been “taking it easy”, I took on a few new consulting clients. I also wrote articles about;

How to generate leads
Relationship marketing
How to make sales
…and some other successful business ideas

I also wrote a guest post on Blog for Profit about whether your blog will fail or not.

I did a webinar and a radio show, and I also redesigned the blog, got an awesome consult from blog consultant Michael Martine and have set several more tweaks to the site in motion.

So, what do I do when I don’t blog? I blog 🙂

Are you wasting your time?

I would wager you’re busy generating awesome content in your business as well…whether you’re running a blog or not. You’re talking to people, giving presentations, responding to inquiries, etc…this is all content. Do you realize this? As a small business owner, it’s not really a question of whether or not you’re creating content, because you are. The question is whether or not you’re leveraging your content. If you’re not leveraging your content, you’re wasting your time, because you’re doing the work, but you’re not reaping the maximum benefit.

As Marcelus Wallace said to Butch in Pulp Fiction…”Now that’s a hard motherf*ckin’ fact of life, but it’s a fact of life your ass is gonna have to get realistic about. ”

marcellus-wallace-butch — As Marcelus Wallace said to Butch in Pulp Fiction..."Now that's a hard motherf*ckin' fact of life, but it's a fact of life your ass is gonna have to get realistic about."

Bottom line: leverage rocks; it puts the work you do to it’s highest and best use, and BLOGGING is a simple discipline that enables you to ensure your work has maximum impact. That’s why I’m a blogging advocate. Blogging is leverage, and us small biz owners need all we can get.

A myth that needs addressed (so you can feel good and be more effective)

While I took this two week “break” from blogging, I noticed my traffic went down 50%. Dude. My first reaction was to be upset, and then about two seconds later I realized two things:

I’ve taken on MORE business, not less in the past two weeks.
As soon as I get “back to normal” on the blog posts, traffic will go back. It’s really not an issue.

There are times of reaping and times of harvest. I guess I’ve been harvesting. Does a farmer get upset after a harvest, when he looks out at his field and sees nothing but dirt? Nah, he feels great, because he’s taken care of business. So should you. It’s easy to look at your analytics and get upset sometimes. We all do it. I get calls from clients in a panic about this. They want to know why their numbers aren’t where they think they should be. Know two things:

Your numbers really can be anything you want them to be. There’s a business model for anything. Let’s just sit down and put a plan together. You’ll get the numbers. I swear…it’s as simple as putting together a smart plan and executing it.
It’s important (for both your business and your sanity) to know WHY you want those numbers in the first place. Does traffic, for example, directly translate to your income? Know your business. There is no substitute for that. In the example I’m giving in this post today…notice that my traffic is down, but business is good. Numbers can be misleading.

Where does your business come from? What role does your blog play in your business? What real effect do the analytics you’re tracking (traffic, SEO, inbound links, twitter followers, etc, etc) have on your revenue? If you don’t know, we can definitely work through some of these issues together, so you can have some insight. One way or another, these are questions that MUST be answered. This is how you have both peace of mind AND results in your business. And yes, it is totally, totally possible to have both.

After all, having a blog is a great thing, but it’s not a strategy. The strategy (and the awesome benefits) come from how you use it. Seriously, sit down and ask yourself the questions I pose to you in this post. Fire me an email or hit me up on Twitter if you have questions as you work through it. It will pay you big dividends.

What Is The Easiest Way To Get Better Results With My Blog?

By Christian

“How do I get better results, faster?”

open-road — Ah, the open road. Don't you love it? See how few distractions there are? Just smooth sailing 🙂

There are many ways to ask this question, but bottom line…this is what most business owners want to know more than anything else. What can you do…RIGHT NOW…to start getting better results with your blog? Let’s be honest. You have this question too, right?

The easiest way to get better results with your blog is to simply do less.

Simple is Better

Take a look at your blog. Right now. How many calls to action do you have on your home page? 5? 10? More? Most blogs don’t convert well, because their calls to action are scattered all over the place, and there’s very little rhyme or reason for it.

It’s great to have a link to your Twitter profile. It’s great to have a link to your Facebook page. Likewise, it’s totally cool to have links to all your latest posts. You probably also have an email opt-in form (hopefully) somewhere in the mix. A link to your RSS feed should be somewhere in your layout as well. These are all common fare for any blog these days, so what’s the problem?

The problem is that most business owners don’t take a business-minded approach to their blog. If you want to reach business goals with your blog, you need to look at your blog like a business owner. It starts with deciding on a goal.

What is the primary objective for your blog?

There’s no right or wrong answer to this. It’s simply a decision you need to make for yourself. For me it’s building an email list. Email is the primary method I use for communicating with my audience. It’s how I answer questions, let people know about new articles on the blog, and it’s also of course how I make occassional sales offers.

So when you land on Dangerous Tactics, what’s the first thing you see? An email opt-in form front and center. No RSS feeds. No social media links. Very few distractions. This isn’t a coincidence of course. And it’s not rocket science either. If you dig a bit deeper, you’ll also notice that over half the links in my navigation all point to pages with opt-in forms as well. Some are content-rich pages, with an opt-in form at the end, and others are squeeze pages, featuring only an opt-in form.

You may have a different goal. Perhaps you are only concerned with getting comments and driving conversation. Perhaps your primary focus is to get RSS subscribers. Again, there’s no right or wrong goals. The only way to screw it up is to not have a goal to begin with. Unfortunately, this happens a lot in the blogosphere. Too many bloggers wanting better results, without really even knowing what it is they want to improve.

If your goal is to do everything…build huge email list, huge RSS base, huge comment counts, huge traffic, etc…have fun with that. Can it be done? Well, of course it can be done. But why? Why spend all the time and money and effort required to do all that when all your business REALLY needs from your blog is likely one or two things?

Simple blogging is high conversion blogging. Follow these steps:

Set the goals you want your blog to achieve. Specific, measurable goals. Goals that, when achieved, will be meaningful to your business. It’s cool to say “I want 10k unique visitors a month”. Just be clear about WHY you’ve picked that goal. Don’t just pick some random goal that you think you’re SUPPOSED to set. Set your own goals. This is YOUR blog…and you can do whatever the heck you want with it.
Determine the primary call to action that will help you attain those goals.
Place that call to action front and center, removing all distractions possible.

Something funny happens when you do this. Your message becomes a bit more clear, and what you want your visitors to do becomes more clear as well…and a lot more people will follow the path you’ve laid out for them.

What’s great is that this isn’t something that takes a long time or requires a big investment of cash. You can do it right now, for free.

Is Your Message Convoluted and Obscure (does your website suck)?

By Christian

wheelchair-fail — What message is your website giving people? Do you mean well but end up confusing people? Getting objective feedback is essential.

You are not objective when it comes to your marketing. It’s not your fault. I’m not objective when it comes to my marketing either. It’s impossible to be objective when you’re the one who creates something.

Is your latest blog post one that will engage your readers and get them to act?
Is your website’s layout clean and easy to navigate for your visitors?
Are you losing leads, because your opt-in form is hard to find?

As marketers…as business owners, we are not qualified to answer these and many other important questions on our own behalf. It is our customers who decide, so it is our job to listen and learn. It is not our job to cram marketing down their throat and then simply sit back, waiting for the orders to come in. Good marketing is…and always has been…a conversation.

This is why blogging is such a powerful marketing tool…because it is first and foremost NOT a marketing tool. It is a communication tool. Good marketers are good communicators. Perhaps the best book ever written on how to be an effective web marketer is How to Win Friends and Influence People…a book written decades before the internet even existed. Why? Because it teaches you solid principles on how to, well, win friends and influence people. This is exactly what marketing is always about, and blogging hasn’t changed that.

What HAS changed is that now we have the choice to bring the conversation front and center. What HAS changed is that we now have technology which allows us to interact with thousands, even millions, of people in a way that is very time-effective. This is the highest value of blogging to business owners…effective, personal communication in a way that leverages our time.

If your message is convoluted or obscured…you’ll know soon enough. Your readers will tell you by either complaining, not ordering from you, not signing up for your list or talking about you with others. Silence is also feedback. Most new bloggers seem to fear this kind of feedback, and that’s understandable. Feedback is not always fun. It is, however, an essential part of marketing, and without it your marketing will never be more than guesswork or a crap shoot. Feedback rocks. It can be tough, but at least it sets you on the right path…if you listen to it.

If you want to get some professional feedback on your blog or website, check out this page. I’m happy to do an entire site critique for you.