Fair Measures Corporation: A case study in online

Fair Measures Corporation: A case study in online ขthinking outside the boxข

by: Philippa Gamse

Fair Measures Corporation is a nationally recognized management training company made up of attorneys and professional speakers. They consult with companies such as Oracle, Sun and Cisco around preventing employee lawsuits by treating employees with respect.

Their Web site, at http://www.FairMeasures.com/ contains over 500 pages of free indepth legal information and analysis, provided for both employers and employees. It includes a monthly enewsletter, and an ขAsk the Lawyersข page where visitors can post additional questions. The site attracts frequent media attention, and has been featured in ขHR Magazineข.

Last year (2000), we completely restructured the site to add content for the many employees who come there looking for information. Previously, we’d been concentrating on the traditional markets for Fair Measures – human resource professionals and managers who hire them for workplace training programs. But we realized that in doing so, we were missing out on a very different audience for their expertise – and one that really only exists in the online context.

How did we know this? In two main ways:

1. by looking in our traffic analysis at the key search phrases that brought visitors to the site; and

2. from the content of questions submitted to ขAsk the Lawyersข.

We could see that many visitors were looking for information around sexual harassment, overtime exemptions, Internet email monitoring and privacy issues, and wrongful termination. Employers wanted to know how to create policies and practices that would protect them against costly lawsuits, and employees wanted to enforce their rights.

So, we created a whole series of new products instantly downloadable online guides and sample policies around these topics. They are available in Word, pdf, and html formats – at the buyer’s choice, and come with a full money back guarantee. The price point – currently $10 for the guides, is intended to encourage impulse purchases.

The latest of these products – a ขWrongful Termination Guideข was added in April, and is now achieving a nearly 5% conversion rate in sales. This is far higher than the average 12% that is typical of most ecommerce sites (and perhaps indicative of the current economic climate!) And, with realtime traffic analysis from Hitbox, we are tweaking the language and length of our selling pages to see what’s most effective with each audience.

Our downloadable products are now generating a steady additional revenue stream, from a source that is very different from the traditional markets for this company.

So, lessons learned (and still being learned) from this exercise:

1. Be open to new and different potential audiences for your online business;

2. Study your traffic analysis – there are many valuable clues as to visitor needs that can be translated into new products and services; and

3. Keep monitoring your visitor response and try new spins on your content.

About The Author

Philippa Gamse, CyberSpeaker, is an internationally recognized ebusiness strategist. Check out her free tipsheet กBeyond the Search Enginesก for 17 ideas to promote your Website: http://www.CyberSpeaker.com/tipsheet.html Philippa can be reached at (831) 4650317 or mailto:[email protected].

This article was posted on November 14, 2002

by Philippa Gamse

Five Ways to Profit from Using Video Online

Five Ways to Profit from Using Video Online

by: Liz Micik

The newest media wave to hit the online shore is video. Individual emails abound with links to ‘the funniest video ever,ก or blurry clips of new babies or birthday parties.

Businesses, on the other hand, have largely been left standing on the shore, scratching their heads and wondering if thereกs any real value to be earned from diving into making their own live video broadcasts, video emails or video on demand infommercials. Here are just five of the many ways video adds to the bottom line of any company.

1. People remember more of your message

While people generally remember 10% of what they read and 20% of what they hear. But, theyกll remember as much as 50% of what they see and hear together. Before anyone can act on your message, they need to process and remember it.

2. Increase responses by up to 30%

A call to action is much easier to follow if it is actively delivered. Sound and motion are powerful action drivers, especially when they are delivered by your sincere enthusiasm and passion for your topic. Companies who have made the switch to video email and on demand broadcasts have reported response rates jump as much as 30% following a broadcast.

3. Build your credibility

People do business with people they know, like and trust. When you cut through the technological barriers of the Internet and put yourself online, you put กyour self on the lineก as far as viewers are concerned. The time it would normally take you to build a relationship with a potential customer can be dramatically shortened as a result.

4. The cost savings are obvious

Anytime you can avoid the high costs of sending someone on the road to meet with clients or attend a meeting, the bottom line savings are immediate and obvious. In addition to any costs associated with attending a meeting, you need to factor in travel costs covering airfares to taxis and tolls, hotel costs, meal expenses, and even your internal costs to process the expense paperwork.

5. Soft cost savings multiply returns

Spare yourself the productivity drain and the physical and mental tolls travel takes on your companyกs road warriors and you could enjoy กsoftก cost savings that dwarf your hard dollar travel costs. Want an example? Look at your own calendar for the past month and count up just the hours you spent traveling to and from meetings. Multiply that by your hourly wage, and then by the number of employees in your firm.

If reasons like these don’t help you convince the reluctant decision makers in your company to add video to your communications mix, please be patient with them. Historically they are in good company. There were many who claimed the smeary images on hard to handle rolls of paper called กfaxesก could never function in place of an original document. And who, they asked, would ever want to spend more time typing an email message when they could so easily pick up a telephone and place a call?

Copyright 2005 Liz Micik

About The Author

Liz Micik turns your video learning curve into a fast and easy profit curve in her newest book, ขCue the Director: 10 Simple Steps to Online Video Success.ข Visit www.powerpresenters.com to have free weekly video tips emailed to you.

This article was posted on March 11

by Liz Micik

Why Autoresponders are an Absolute Must

Why Autoresponders are an Absolute Must

by: Glen Hopkins

With autoresponders, you never have to lose money advertising again! Thatกs right, every ad you place from now on can be a winner even when you lose money!

I know, I know, you’re thinking, กOkay, now youกve lost it Glen.ก But I haven’t. Let me explain.

Letกs say you place an ezine ad, which costs you $200. and you make $20 for every sale made. If you make 8 sales with the ad you will earn $160.

Gosh, you just lost $40. Thatกs a bad ad right? The answer to that depends on how you wrote your ad. Let me show you how losing $40 can actually be a win.

When you create your ad, don’t advertise directly for your product. Advertise something that will กbring them in the doorก. Freebies like this minicourse, sweepstakes or items at exceptionably low prices work well.

The job of your advertisement is to create leads. That is, to get the readers email address with permission to follow up Yes, thatกs that one to one marketing thing happening again.

Using autoresponders that automatically followup will give you the ability to set up a completely automated followup system for your product or service. You can use three, eight, or even thirty email followup messages to generate sales for your product.

Instead of only having one chance to sell your prospect, you can have thirty opportunities to sell them all for the price of one ad. Which do you think will make more sales?

Marketing guru Jay Levinson figures the average person needs to see an ad twentyseven times before it has the desired impact. Twenty seven times! Now you know why you see CocaCola everywhere you look.

Okay, so letกs do the math again. You paid $200 to run your ad with a link to your automatic followup system. Letกs say you send seven followups. You made $160 on the first ad. Don’t forget what the guru says the more a person sees an ad, the more likely they will buy. But for argument sake, letกs say your conversion rate stays at $160 per followup. $160 times seven followups equals $1120. Now youกve made a profit of $920! Pretty cool isn’t it?

Try to use some element of viral marketing in your offer. I give this minicourse away for free to people who sign up for my ListOpt List Builder Program and I allow you to give it to your friends and even offer it to your prospects in your ezine or on your website as something to กget them in your doorก.

Yes, thatกs right, you can offer this minicourse to your prospects for free when they sign up for your ezine. All you have to do is give them this link (mailto:[email protected]) in your welcome message that you send out when they subscribe to your ezine. You could say something like:

‘thanks for subscribing to MyEzineName. You will receive your first issue shortly… blah, blah, blah…

As our gift to you for subscribing, please send a blank email to mailto:[email protected] Within seconds, you will receive for free, the marketing minicourse, ‘the 7 Secrets of Making Money with Ezinesก.

Best regards,

Your Nameก

This is a winwin situation.

You Win because:

You offer people this minicourse which will increase the number of people who sign up for your ezine and will drive traffic to your site.

Your Subscribers Win because:

You gave your subscribers this minicourse which will not only teach them how to make money with their ezine, but also they can use it to produce more traffic and sales at their web site. This my friends will please your customers and create loyalty (which is another win for you).

And I Win because:

A traffic virus is being created with this minicourse! Wow! A winwinwin situation. Everyone is happy.

To sum it up, using an autoresponder followup system with an element of viral marketing will reduce your advertising risk. If you have a traffic virus in place, then your ad will continue to work for you for many years to come.

You have permission to reprint this article provided you include the following resource box:

About The Author

Glen Hopkins is the director of ListOpt Publications Inc. If you’re looking to build your newsletter subscriber base quickly, easily and inexpensively, visit Glen at: http://www.listopt.com and learn what hundreds of other publishers are saying about ListOptกs amazing List Builder service.

This article was posted on October 14, 2004

by Glen Hopkins

12 Reasons Why You Need A Blog

12 Reasons Why You Need A Blog

by: Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian

กWhy Should I Blog? I Simply Don’t Get Itก

This post on a popular discussion forum set me thinking and I came up with 12 reasons you should blog.

Read them and get started on your blog. Or better still, go get your blog up and running and THEN come back and read this 🙂

#1 You Do Not Need To Know HTML

One of the biggest hurdles many hopeful website creators face is they don’t know to design a webpage. Blogs overcome this all you do is type into a box, and the blog software automatically converts it into a webpage and publishes it on the World Wide Web for anyone to see.

#2 You Are กForcedก To Keep Your Content Fresh

Blogs are essentially online diaries. It doesn’t make sense to write in your diary every month or two. Similarly, running a blog itself กforcesก you to update it often. And refreshing your blog often makes it more useful to readers and consumers and by extension, to search engines who are in the business of presenting *their* clients with valuable resources.

#3 Your Blog Is AUTOMATICALLY Optimized For Search Engines

Search engines love fresh content. But thatกs not the only way blogs are powerful tools to rank high. Indeed, most blogs are structured to offer a high degree of search engine optimization.

All sections of your blog are linked together. The terms used as link กanchorsก are keywordoptimized. Categories can be created to host themed content. Navigating through your blog is intuitive. Archives can be customized, and generate hundreds of pages of content that act as กsearch engine spider baitก.

#4 You Get A BuiltIn Linking Structure

With very few exceptions, most blogs are structured to be a tightly integrated network of links to other sections of your blog! Itกs quite easy for a visitor to get กlostก within your blog… without ever leaving it.

Calendars link to posts on specific dates. ‘recent Postก listings point to your freshest content. Archives connect all your earlier posts. Search boxes let browsers look for certain kinds of content. And it all happens automatically, without you spending hours on creating a link structure or sitemap!

#5 You Generate Multiple ContentRich Pages

Every post you make on your blog is content. And by intelligently setting up your archiving preferences, you can turn each post into many different forms of content, each on a page of its own. Blog regularly for a few months, and you could end up having a 100+ page website all filled with relevant, keywordoptimized, themed content!

#6 You Can KeywordOptimize Your Blog Extensively

All parts of your blogกs template can be customized. And a very powerful way to do it is by inserting relevant keywords. Itกs a doitonce job that will give you ongoing benefits for as the life of your blog. You can include keywords in your blog title, description, blog post headings, trackback links, comment invitations, archive titles, and category names.

#7 You Create An Online Community

If your blog is on a specific theme, you can build a loyal readership and develop an online community. You can even take it a notch higher by tying it in with a forum or membership site. Ask for comments, suggestions, ideas and feedback, or invite reader participation. Pretty soon, your blog will be growing organically even if you don’t write a lot!

#8 You Initiate Conversations With Readers

Of course, the first step is yours to initiate a dialog with readers. You could do it with your blog post, asking a question or by inviting comments and interaction. Your blog will be read by an audience thatกs already interested in your subject or theme. This conversation will be priceless to you, the blog owner.

#9 Your กInbound Linkก Process Trackbacks

Blogging is about distributed conversations online. Links are an integral part of such an informal network. Trackbacks are a kind of blog technology that make it possible and simple! Your blog will benefit from the inbound links a trackback will bring, and youกll also get extra traffic from other sources.

#10 You Can Syndicate Your Content Easily

Getting readers for your content is good. Getting your content out where many more readers can see it is GREAT! Syndication (via RSS feeds) is built in to most blogging platforms, giving you a quick and easy way to get a wide readership for your blog posts.

#11 You’re Creating Stuff Search Engines LOVE

Search engines exist to offer their audience a compilation of the best resources on a subject or keyword. Your blog is the answer to a search engineกs prayers! By sticking to a theme and presenting the content in an organized, structured, intuitively connected pattern, your blog will be appealing to search engines in a way only a very professionally planned and designed website can ever hope to be.

#12 You Get กAlternateก Traffic Sources

Remember what we saw about blogs being linked and networked together? Bloggers like to share opinions with others. And when they ‘talkก about you, they are going to point to your site, or a post on your blog, to show their readers what they mean. They become กalternateก traffic sources for YOU!

Other tools like blog rolls, furls, favorite bloggers and more can drive sporadic but sometimes big floods of traffic your way. And best of all, itกs effortless and costs you nothing!

Not yet convinced? Well, then maybe blogging isn’t quite your cup of tea. But if you trust me, try it you just might be pleasantly surprised.

About The Author

Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian is author of กBlog Profit Ideas Exposed 33 Ways To Profit From Blogsก http://www.BlogProfits.com and กHow To Profit From RSS Feedsก http://www.RSSMarketing.com and publishes 8 different กnicheก blogs and has been reporting on marketing with blogs and RSS feeds since 2001.

This article was posted on August 26

by Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian