Promoting Your Website:

Tools & Tricks to Build and Keep Your Audience

Presented by Tom Elliott of

Joomlashack.com & Simplweb.com

Why Listen to Me?

Joomlashack.com- 2.8 million unique visitors in past two years.

Simplweb.com- launched in June; over 2,500 trials created in 6 months.

What can we accomplish in 40 minutes?

9. Fly to 50,000 feet at Mach 110. Dive down for occasional sortie11. Land in time for lots of questions

We are here to learn web-based tools and tricks for drivingvisitors to your website, and keeping them coming back formore. (No bobbleheads or Superbowl ads here.)

Agenda for the hour:

3. Build your audience: Principles, Tools & Tricks

4. Retain your audience: Principles, Tools & Tricks

5. Resources to go deeper

6. Questions, questions, questions (20 min)

Before we begin: What’s the point of your website, anyway?

You want your visitor to ______________•Buy•Donate or volunteer•View and click on ads•Spread your message through action

What is the banana at the end of the rainbow?

Building Your Audience:

Principles

Everything Costs Something: Time or Money

Make it better than expected when they land

Measure everything and continuously improve

Broad Channels to fly over:Search

Online AdvertisingFed Content

Community OutreachPaid Buzz

Earned BuzzPartnerships

Contests

Building Your Audience: Tools & Tricks- Search

Search

Most important form of marketing is search

Learn SEO from smart people here at Expo- go see Steve tomorrow at 10am!

Building Your Audience: Tools & Tricks- Online Ads

Building Your Audience: Tools & Tricks- Online Ads

Google Adwords & Adsense

Reinforce your search optimization

Measure & Test optimize everything else you do through Adwords

Building Your Audience: Tools & Tricks- Online Ads

Banner AdsDon’t lose your shirt- are you branding or driving?

Use what you learned from Adwords- optimize!

Diversify networks vs direct placementsNewsletter ads deserve better

Interactivity will be King

Building Your Audience: Tools & Tricks- Fed Content

Fed Content

Why cook if you don’t feed?

Mobile will change RSS- get ready

Great tools: Feedburner and RSS Feeder

Building Your Audience: Tools & Tricks- Community Building

Community BuildingGo where your targets are

“You are not an opportunist” mantra

Media Kits tell allM

Measure with Analytics

Building Your Audience: Tools & Tricks- Paid Buzz

Paid BuzzThe Press Release Misnomer

Genius of PRNewswire:

“Connecting organizations and communicators with their target audiences – the media, consumers, clients and investors - on a general or highly specific basis. We deliver these key messages through content production, news release distribution and online and broadcast media placement services.

Building Your Audience: Tools & Tricks- Earned Buzz

Earned Buzz

Stories make the world go round

Validation & Credibility

A relationship is worth 10 press releases

Amplifier or Distortion?

Building Your Audience: Tools & Tricks- Partnerships

Partnerships

Leveraging relationships for the win-win

Affiliates are powerful friends

Co-marketing that works: iContact

Building Your Audience: Tools & Tricks- Contests

Contests

Who doesn’t love to gamble?

Get Value, Give Value

Give the prize away

Keeping Your Audience: PrinciplesListen, listen, listen

Engage, engage, engage

Hug them back, let them go

Again, what’s the point of engagement?

Channels for Engagement:

Email Newsletters

Email Autoresponders

Building Community

Surveys & Contests

Keeping Your Audience: Tools & Tricks- Email Newsletters

Email Newsletters

As important as your website

All about the list- build it!

Consistency & Quality

Subject line, headlines, images, then copy

Keeping Your Audience: Tools & Tricks- Email Autoresponders

Email Autoresponders

A “diet” of communication

Build it and they will come

Value every time- anticipate the need

Keeping Your Audience: Tools & Tricks- Communities

Communities

Forums

Social Networks

JomSocial & CommunityBuilder?

Keeping Your Audience: Tools & Tricks- Contests & Surveys

Contests & Surveys

Leverage your community to do something

Learn something and share

Give something of value away!

Marketing ExperimentsResearch-based “to discover what really works in optimization” –

free newsletter!http://www.marketingexperiments.com

Marketing SherpaSubscription-based resource database of studies- expensive but

worth it! $600/yearFree one month subscriptionhttp://www.marketingsherpa.com

Useful Learning Resources