Category Archives: Website

Does your brand represent your business and you the way it needs to?

By Lisa Nelson  |  Marketing, Website

A brand is more than your logo. Your brand is the experience your customers have with you and your business that leads them to buy. Your brand is determined by the reason or reasons why you do what you do…your values and beliefs.

This in turn influences everything encompassing your business, including the visual aspect of your business. Your logo, your colors, your website layout, your handouts, your fonts, your image choices, your communication style, etc.

A clearly defined brand will allow you to more easily connect with your target client and make it easy for them to say “yes” to working with you.

It’s time for a rebrand.

I started the Health Practices Online branch of my business back in 2010. Businesses naturally evolve and mine has changed significantly in the past five years…in ways I love! I’m long overdue for my visual brand to catch up to the service and experience I actually provide to clients.

Creativity and flushing out ideas from a different point of view….not exactly my strengths. Do you remember Kristen Domingue from the September event Your Wellness Business: From Practice to Profit? Happy to say I signed up with one of her programs to receive one-on-one insight into the changes I needed to make with my visual brand to better connect with my ideal client.

My education and background stems from being a dietitian. I worked hard to obtain my dietetic registration and I’m proud to be a part of the health field. It’s a natural fit for a significant number of my clients to also be health professionals. However, a majority of my clients do not come from a health profession.

I’m blessed that my client roster fills mostly via word of mouth referrals and returning clients. But imagine the impression someone gets when they visit my website or receive my newsletter and they do not work in the field of health. It screams THIS IS NOT FOR YOU!

Hence, the reason it’s time to rebrand to ensure I connect with both health and wellness professionals, as well as some of the other industry I enjoy serving.

The rebranding process.

Have you ever done a rebrand? I’ve been in business several years now and didn’t really know the right way to figure out the branding piece. I want to give you a highlight of the steps in Kristen’s branding process so if you are in a similar position you have some guidance on where to start.

Continue Reading…

3 Must Have’s for a Website to Generate Income

By Lisa Nelson  |  Email Marketing, Marketing, Website

Don’t think of your website as a glorified business card. Think of your website as your business hub. All online marketing efforts should funnel into your website, BUT when that traffic comes in you need to some key components to convert sales and generate income.

Yes, you do want an attractive website with a good design. However, if you want to make sales online you need to consider more than just text and images.

  1. Blog — Blogs are an easy way for you to highlight your expertise while sharing valuable tips and resources your target market seek. Consistently providing new content via a blog keeps both your target market engaged and google regularly scanning your site.
    • Video — Blogs can be text or video format. Video is a more powerful way to connect with a potential client. It allows a relationship to grow faster because you are providing a face and voice for your potential client to connect with. Plus, YouTube searches are at times as high as Google searches.

    Continue Reading…

How to Have a “Bare Bones” Online Presence to Market ‘in person’ Appointments

By Lisa Nelson  |  Marketing, Website

I was contacted a few weeks ago by an individual looking to discuss his online presence. He had a website set up quite awhile back that was eventually discontinued due to lack of results….his main goal being to increase in person appointments.

As is often the case, budget was tight so looking for the most cost effective methods for using the virtual world to grow his in person practice.

Let’s talk “bare bones”…

1. Marketing plan

First, before you do ANYTHING, you need to have a marketing plan. There is no point in putting up anything online if you do not know how you will use it. This is not a “build and they will come” scenario. If you set up a website, you need a plan for driving traffic to that website.

Also, consistency is key online. You can’t just start a virtual presence (let’s say a Facebook page), use it a week or two and then drop off. Building a following online that leads to in person clients takes time. Have a plan!

2. Collect names and emails

Most people will not buy or schedule an appointment the first time they come across you on the web. You need to collect their name and email address so you can follow up with them. You need more than “sign up for my newsletter” to accomplish this. Think….how much email do you get? Do you really want to sign up for more in exchange for nothing? No. You need to provide your potential clients with an enticing offer that they just can’t pass up. This might be a tip sheet, free report, audio exercise/training, video series….anything they get in exchange for giving you their name and email. This “freebie” you offer needs to not only be of value to your target market, but also should highlight your expertise so they start thinking of you as the go to expert when they are ready to purchase.

Continue Reading…

How to Sell an Ebook from Your Website

By Lisa Nelson  |  Website

Do you have your ebook written and you’re now ready to make it available for purchase on your website? If so, here are your next steps on how to sell an ebook:

1. Save your ebook as a pdf with an appropriate title.

Let’s pretend the title of this blog post was actually an ebook. When I save this word document I save it with the title of “How to Sell an Ebook from Your Website”. Works find in a file folder on my computer, not so great once uploaded online. If my intention was to upload this for use online, I’d save it as “how-to-sell-an-ebook” or something like that. All lowercase with words separated by dashes – no blank spaces.

2. Upload the ebook to your webhost.

You have two options here. The first is to upload directly to your webhost via your control panel. This means your ebook will be located at a URL somewhat like https://detailprojectmanagement.com/how-to-sell-an-ebook.pdf. If you have a WordPress based website, the second choice is to upload the pdf as a media file. In this case the URL will be something like https://detailprojectmanagement.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/how-to-sell-an-ebook.pdf.

Once you have your ebook uploaded note the URL. You’ll need it later.

Continue Reading…

Does Your Website have Too Many Choices?

By Lisa Nelson  |  Website

How many programs and services do you have for sale?

Does your programs or services page scroll on forever? If so, it’s likely you need to pare back your offerings.

You want to keep the options easy to navigate. What’s that saying? I think it’s “A confused mind always says no.” It’s better to keep the options few and easily understandable so a potential customer knows exactly which is right for them.

You don’t need to try and meet everyone’s needs on your website. Narrow it down to one or two package options. If someone wants a particular combination you haven’t identified, they can always contact you to inquire about alternative options.

Continue Reading…

How to Complete Keyword Research for Search Engine Optimize (SEO)

By Lisa Nelson  |  Website

Do you understand SEO? SEO stands for search engine optimization. Google is an example of a search engine. Yahoo is another search engine. When you do SEO, you are optimizing your website so that a search engine, such as Google can easily find you (i.e. your website).

To do so you must understand keywords. When you go to google.com and type in what you are looking for in the box, what you type is considered a keyword. So, if your ideal client goes online and searches for the services you offer, what will they type in? You want to spend time researching this information so that your website comes up in the Google search results when a potential client is looking for the services you offer.

I attended SHINE this fall and James Roche taught a session on how to do effective keyword research. The video covers pay per click advertisers for particular keywords (these are the results listed on the right hand side of a google results page), the average price paid per click for a keyword (and how you can use this to determine if it’s a profitable keyword for you to use or not), search volume for a particular keyword (and the best range to stay within for better results). The general guidelines shared by James in the video are:

Pay Per Click advertisers of between 10 to 50
Cost per click between $1 to $2.50
Search volume between 15,000 to 80,000 per month

Continue Reading…

Is Your Website Set Up to Make Sales?

By Lisa Nelson  |  Website

It takes more than having an attractive, professional web presence to convert site visitors into paying clients.

There are a series of steps they must move through and it’s your job to make sure they know the steps. You don’t want someone to land on your page and guess where they need to go next.

Here are some essential pieces you need to have in place to convert website visitors into clients/customers and generate website sales.

#1 – Landing Page

This is a stand alone webpage that is used to collect the names/emails of site visitors in exchange for a “free taste”. By free taste I’m referring to a free report, free ecourse, free audio series, free video series, etc. that gives individuals a taste of the service you provide. This free taste needs to address whatever their burning question may be so they can’t pass it up.

Continue Reading…

Google Analytics – Are you tracking website visitors?

By Lisa Nelson  |  Website

I’m a big advocate of tracking your results online. Some of the many statistics I check on a regular basis include the number of visitors my websites receive, what sources are referring traffic to my sites, and what are the web pages with the most views.

If you have a WordPress based website there is a plug-in that makes tracking simple . . . and it’s free!

The plug-in I use and recommend is Ultimate Google Analytics for tracking website visitors.

If you do not currently have this plug-in installed go to your WordPress Dashboard. Select to add a new plug-in and search for Ultimate Google Analytics. Click install and activate.

After activating you still need to connect the plug-in to your Google Analytics account.

Continue Reading…

5 Changes to Grow Your List and Increase Conversion Rates

By Lisa Nelson  |  Email Marketing, Social Media, Website

Do you get a decent amount of traffic to your website everyday, but your list size continues to grow at a snails pace? If so, here are some suggestions I encourage you to analyze and tweak if need be.

1. Are you asking people to ‘Join Our Mailing list’?

Just about all online sites are now trying to collect names and email addresses of their visitors. That’s why just having a ‘Join Our Mailing’ list box doesn’t cut it anymore. You need to entice people to give you their name and email address and this requires more than just a subscription to your newsletter. Examples of enticements would be a free report, ecourse, or audio file that focuses on the reason they came to your site in the first place. For example, if your ideal client is trying to lose weight your free report may be geared toward ‘The Top 10 Steps for Lasting Weight Loss’. Whatever your ‘freebie’ is you want it to be something they just can’t pass up.

Tip: If you have a freebie and it’s not converting well you may not need to change the content of your freebie, just do some trial and error with the title to increase conversion rates.

2. Are you leading traffic to an opt-in page or your website home page?

Continue Reading…

Create a Swipe File for Writing Ideas

By Lisa Nelson  |  Business Manager, Email Marketing, Website

Are you struggling to come up with a topic idea for this week’s blog post or newsletter article? If so, it’s time to start a swipe file for writing ideas. This is simply a place you can store ideas when they come to you.

That’s exactly how I’ve come up with the topic for this blog post. I made myself the following note I don’t know how long ago:

Where to get content ideas

Continue Reading…