Dear CEO:

I want to thank you for the opportunity to reach out to you today, I know that you are busy…..so I will try and keep this brief.

Your web presence is poor, non-existent, incognito, losing you money and quite honestly….sucks! It lacks the true meaning behind having a website and that is to increase your profits, yes that is correct….increase your profits! Now you are asking how do I know this?? Well, it is quite simple…..your potential buyers (prospects) cannot find you, which means you do not exist in their eyes, which means they will never have the opportunity to buy from you, which means you are losing money.  Feel free to continue to spend your hundreds of thousands of dollars on trade shows, trade journals, print advertising, TV commercials, Radio Spots, direct mail and the many other traditional forms of marketing available. Meanwhile, realize that 90% of all buying research and decisions takes place through the internet.

I know what you are saying, we are doing SEO, SEM, Social Media and some other forms of Internet Marketing Services and I have to stand right up and tell you…..you are not! You might be dabbling in it, playing around with it, testing things, increasing traffic and perhaps feel that your outsource firm or internal efforts are maximizing your potential, when the truth is due to their uneducated, lack of knowledge….you are losing money. Your Internet Marketing campaign must be conversion and profit focused and most external and internal teams do not have the experience or knowledge to make that happen……so you keep losing money.

You see I have been through this with your marketing department, sales manager, IT department and various other executives within your company and they seem to have this fear that you will deny this need even though it is a MUST HAVE. I have strongly demanded that I cannot believe you would take this approach since this is such a missing link to your overall marketing strategy and one that cannot be ignored any longer. Perhaps, you should re-engage your marketing department and various other execs showing them your support of such an initiative.

See my job is to take your online presence to a whole new level that you cannot even comprehend and I know that sometimes there is not even a budget established. Not having a budget is truly not a good enough reason to lose an enormous amount of potential income especially for a strategy that is so precisely trackable. Go find out how many people viewed that TV Commercial you ran or saw the full page magazine ad you placed in that trade journal…..not gonna happen, is it?

Well I have taken up enough of your time today and I will follow this letter up with repeated phone calls and contact points until you see the error of your ways and want to start making a difference and increase your companies profits. After all, you would not want me to start reaching out to the owner and/or board of directors…now would you?

Make it a great day!

Sincerely,

Your Best Shot At Internet Immortality

Note: Jeff Plucker is the newest addition to the ProspectMX team of internet marketing consultants. If your company is in need of SEO or internet marketing in the Atlanta-area and you’re interested in learning more about how ProspectMX can boost your business in 2010, please contact him.

Question: How much do you know about your website and internet business?

What percentage of your revenue is generated online? How many people search for your business? How many people search for what services your business offers? If you increased your online presence by (fill in the blank) percentage what would that do to your bottom line?

Roughly 2 billion searches are done everyday on Google! Is your piece of the internet pie what you want or know you can have?

You can write me a check, I’ll take a picture of it with my cell phone and immediately have it deposited into my account. Takes all of about 2 minutes…

As for traditional advertising… TV, radio, magazines, billboard, etc… while there is a decline in their quantity and effectiveness, I will admit they are not going away. However, newspapers are widely shutting down, going online, or drastically reducing their staff to cope with the change. And how many of you now record shows so you can skip the commercials? With the iPod, CDs and satellite radio who really listens to their radio anymore?

More and more people are “living” on their computer. My brother, for example, shut off his cable and uses the internet’s many options to watch TV, movies, gather news and communicate.

What does all this mean? It means that 2010 is the Year of Internet Marketing!

Get The Most Out Of The Year Of Internet Marketing

“As of 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth’s population uses the services of the Internet.” - Wikipedia.

2010 is the year that successful companies will realize they must have a proactive approach to the internet in order to maximize their overall marketing and sales goals. They must capitalize on the internet’s power and mobility:

• increasing traffic to their website
• converting the traffic into a lead or the lead into a sale

Companies will be capturing the interest of roughly 1.5 billion people that are online everyday. Trust me…this is a piece of pie you want to have!

But what does internet marketing really entail? Is it as simple as just having a website? Or doing a PPC campaign? Or using Social Media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter? Am I restricted to just my website? Or is it one of the dozens of other services out there?

To give a short answer… a true internet marketing campaign entails everything that the internet offers. And everything the internet offers is extensive. Since no one wants to read a blog longer than War and Peace, I will break it down as simple as possible.

The Building Blocks Of Great Internet Marketing

It all starts with the website. People want pretty, but a website needs certain things that sometimes makes pretty - well, pretty difficult. Once you have the design then you must make sure it’s optimized. Pretty doesn’t sell blue widgets. Starting to get a little discomfort in your head?

You must optimize for the search engines. What does that mean? How about your conversion ability? It’s great that you have 1000 people coming to your website a week.  But if they aren’t converting - what have you really accomplished?

What keywords do you rank for? How ARE people coming and how MANY people are coming to your site? What is your competition doing?

Oh… and does anyone have some Tylenol? I have a full blown headache.

The Marketing Piece Of Internet Marketing

Now that we have the website ready - what’s next? Now you have to get it seen. Since you don’t just want your friends and current customers being the only ones on your website - do you do organic? Pay per click? Now more questions come up…

How do I do that? Where do I do that? Is it more important to go from 5th to 2nd, or 12th to 8th? How long does it take? What are the benefits of one versus the other? Are these the only two options?

What happens if I just want to skip this step and use social media marketing? But Facebook will not help my business you say? Twitter is for celebrities like Ashton Kutcher… not my multi-million dollar business! Think again. You have customers that love you… now let’s use them to spread the love!

What about using other people’s websites? What happens when someone uses the internet to harm your business? What can you do? And can it be done wrong? Will Google punish you if it’s done incorrectly? How about blogs, articles, press releases, forums, etc?

Ahhhh… please get me the Extra Strength Tylenol… it’s a full migraine now!

Hire The Right Internet Marketing Firm

How do I know which internet marketing firm is correct for me? How do I know it’s not someone that just wants my money? Or a kid sitting in his basement that I never see? Can you really know “what I want” by just a 15 minute conversation on the phone? Or more importantly can you really know “what I need?”

Because I might want the fries… but an apple is better.

So… 2010 is the year of Internet Marketing. It’s the year more and more companies will maximize their online presence. But it’s important to do it correctly. And it’s important to hire the right firm.

But mostly - it’s important to start early! This is one area you don’t want to wait while your competitor is doing it.

Yes… keep up with the Joneses on this one!

At ProspectMX, we are proud to say that we aren’t just another internet marketing company that can rank websites with no regard for business goals. While sending an increased amount of traffic to a client website is a goal in nearly every campaign we launch, that increase in traffic is worthless if it doesn’t lead to more conversions on a site.

One of our clients recently came to us with a great question after noticing that a keyword was converting on their site while also generating traffic to on more than one webpage:

“Which landing page converts the best on my site for this keyword?”

The video above is a Google Analytics tutorial showing how to find keyword conversion by landing page. Hope you find it helpful. Enjoy!

So why is this Google Analytics tutorial valuable?

Because the information this analytics data provides can dictate which pages should rank for a particular search query in order to maximize conversions.

In the video above, the webpage that is home to our SEO link building chart drives more traffic than our homepage for the search term “SEO link building.” However, when reviewing goal conversion data by keyword, our homepage generates a much higher percentage of web leads and proposal requests for that same keyword.

So, from an search engine rankings perspective, the page hosting the link building chart is considered more relevant for the term “SEO link building” than our homepage. The ProspectMX.com homepage, in contrast, seems to be the better choice for generating conversions for that same keyword.

Based on these findings, it would be my recommendation to the client that the higher converting page should have a stronger presence for the search term. Perhaps a link building campaign and a review of the on-page optimization could done for that page, with the goal of creating an indented search result of the higher converting page underneath the higher ranking, traffic-generating page.

Search result listings that also include indented listings generally acquire a higher percentage of clicks than surrounding results without an indent. In some studies, the no. 2 search result with an indent even gets more click-throughs than the no. 1 search without an indent.

It’s pretty pathetic when the “content manager” of an internet marketing company has very few posts on said company’s blog. So, I’m trying to rectify the situation. It’s time to step up, put my blogging hat on, and get to work. I’ve been told by many different people that I’m a good writer…but I personally don’t feel as though I’ve actually proven it. Sure, I’ve written some articles, posts, website copy and even ebooks, but a lot of the stuff I write that I really like never winds up seeing the light of day.

So I’m making 2009 my “year of blogging.” Get ready to start seeing me crank out more content, both on this site and hopefully as a guest poster for several other sites.

Of course, we can’t all be rockstars and write rockstar posts like David Brown. Mainly because if all of us were as confident (read:cocky) as Brown here in the office, our heads wouldn’t actually fit through our doors. (Sorry Brown, you know I love you!). Besides, when you’ve reached a certain level of success and made connections the way he has, you deserve to be a bit cocky.

That being said, I wanted to set out and make my first post of 2009 an awesome one. So I sat down to think about what I wanted to write about. And I sat. And I sat. And then I ate something. And then I sat some more.

Ahh, Writer’s Block 2009

And, just my luck, I got smacked in the face with a big bag of writer’s block. As a writer, especially in the SEO world, it often feels like everything has been said before. And it has, with the exception of when you’re lucky enough to be the first on top of a breaking news story.

For instance – there are THOUSANDS of articles on writing and writer’s block, but here I am, writing the 54,873rd post on it. Because when it comes down to it, it’s not so much about what you’re saying, but how you’re saying it. It’s about engaging your readers and keeping them interested.

It’s about your writing voice – does yours flow? Is it fun to read? Or are you a big bore? I don’t have a magic answer that will instantly make your writing more interesting. However, I do have one big suggestion, one that not only got me over my writer’s block but has helped me to develop my own voice and style as I grew up.

And the 10 Steps Are…

But before I give you my suggestion, I would take a peek at Brian Clark’s “10 Steps to Becoming A Better Writer,” a short post he did on Copyblogger back in 2007. I agree with his post, but I think he could add 10 more steps:

1. Read.
2. Read more.
3. Read even more.
4. Read even more than that.
5. Read when you don’t want to.
6. Read when you do.
7. Read when you have something to learn.
8. Read when you don’t.
9. Read every day.
10. Keep reading.

I read. A lot. Blogs, articles, magazines, the occasional newspaper, you name it, I’ve read it. But I believe it is my love for fiction, both quality AND trashy fiction, that has really given me my writing skills. I probably read at least 1-2 novels a week, sometimes short, sometimes long. Shoot, I’ve banged out 4 this week alone (I don’t get much sleep). Literary novels. Romance novels. Fantasy and Sci-Fi. Christian Fic. Mysteries and horror. You name it, I read it.

I gained a large vocabulary from reading (nevermind that I can’t pronounce half of it). I gained an instinctive feel for grammar and spelling (not that I am anywhere near perfect, grammatically speaking). Most importantly, I’ve developed a style all my own by voraciously consuming other authors’ styles.

Keep It Short, Sweet and To The Point

So how did I overcome my writer’s block? I read. Mostly blogs this time around. And suddenly, I felt the urge to write. Granted this blog post is unnecessarily long but hey…it’s the first of 2009. Cut me some slack.

Perhaps next time I’ll write on the importance of keeping blog posts short and sweet. That is definitely something I need to work on. New Year’s resolution: Keep blog posts under 500 words, unless it’s really, really important.

You simply just have to accept it!! Getting it is what we do!

Internet marketing is an absolutely essential piece of your overall marketing plan, regardless of your business model. It is easier to track ROI than most other marketing efforts. Some businesses need to do a lot and some may just need to do a little. Some companies may just need a strong link building campaign. Other companies may need to combine link building with social media and a strong lead generation campaign to find their success.

Even if you are starting out and the first step is simply getting indexed by Google, or your keyword phrase is number two in the organics and you want to be number one, you simply have to accept that an internet marketing company with talent and experience is going to help make a difference.

It is not about having too much or too little SEO. It is truly about having the right amount to meet and exceed your goals and expectations.