Sales people are always thinking about their sales funnel. A sales funnel describes the conversion of prospects into stages from inquiry through to the final sale. Prospects start at the top of the funnel and convert into a sale at the bottom. The success of this conversion reflects the quality of prospects at the top of the funnel and the sales skill at each conversion stage.

Sale Funnel and E-commerce

All these concepts apply to an e-commerce web site. That is, what is the quality of your prospects and how are you informing them so that they can “funnel” down to a sale? I use the navigation bar to describe the key components of the funnel. What would an ace salesperson say to a prospect first - that is, what should be on the farthest left of my navigation bar. What would they say next? And finally we have the buy tab on the far right. I am not suggesting that this is how sites should be displayed, but I am suggesting that all the steps should be on your website in a logical order.

The Sales Funnel and SEO

One of the best ways to build useful search engine content is through your sales funnel.  Suggest a path for your prospect. They can always choose to skip a component. This is the beauty of the self-help e-commerce system.

An Example

Let’s use an inn as an example of building content using the funnel. If someone were to call the innkeeper for information, what would the innkeeper say? Maybe the innkeeper would like to tell their prospect about themselves, then a little about the town they reside in, then about some upcoming activities, then maybe describe their rooms, then say which rooms are available and their rates, and finally ask them the information that is required to book the room. That is the sales funnel. At each step we have a potential conversion, which leads to the booking of the room. This is the method of building a logical set of web pages that inform a buyer throughout their buying process.

Adding Quality Prospects

But how do we insure that we have the right “quality” of viewer looking at this information? By using the right tools we can increase the quality of the prospects. If we see that visitors that arrive from a specific website are staying longer, viewing more of our web pages, or booking more rooms, we either increase our presence on that website or find other, similar sites to have a presence on. Search engine optimization done correctly is more about marketing than it is about technology.

Ahh, the funnel of love.

Recently many users and programmers on the web have developed great applications that are Open Source, that is, non-proprietary and free. The Firefox browser is an example of Open Source software.  Fortunately there are quality open source CMS systems. The advantage of an open source CMS system is that they are free (!), many, many people developing niche applications, and often the core product is well tested. One of my favorite Open Source CMS applications is Joomla. I suggest going to their website and taking their Demo. Other quality Open Source CMS applications include Drupal, Mambo, and Plone.

With a system like Joomla, adding new content is as easy as using MS Word. Also the cost of maintaining your website will probably decrease. If you are interested, I know of developers who can quickly estimate how much it would cost to simply migrate your website to this new software, and how much it would cost to maintain your site.  Currently businesses as large as the IHOP restaurant chain use Joomla, but most of the users are smaller businesses. Their site has a comprehensive list of who is using Joomla.

Often people don’t purchase from the low cost provider. Sometimes they don’t buy from the most convenient vendor. Instead customers often buy from the company that provides the best advise and has trained the buyer to be a discriminating buyers. This is true of the bike shop, the wine shop, or the consulting shop. On the web this advise is also called content.

The Web Offer

Follows is an example of offering a customer something they want that is not your product. I have a client who offers corporate strategic consulting services in a niche area. In order to differentiate potential clients visiting the website, from people interested in the service but not decision makers, we offered the potential client, a RFP template. No one but a potential customer would want this. But a potential customer will find a RFP very attractive. It could save them a lot of work trying to develop their own proposal. We also track who referred these RFP-interested visitors and then we altered the web advertising accordingly. The key is to think about who your customer is. In this case it wasn’t the CEO, it was the middle manager whose job it was to find potential consulting firms.

Developing Online Customer Relationships

There has been much written about developing online customer relationships. I believe that companies must become their industries thought-leaders. That is, they must become the “go-to” experts by providing quality content. Having a distribution mechanism like e-newsletters is critical. In fact, collecting email addresses on your website might be the single most important activity that you accomplish on your website. Often companies fail to place client-valuable content on their website like fact sheets, data sheets, old newsletters, and mixed media. A blog can also allow you to share your expertise, but this is a topic onto itself. Become the expert and the client relationship will follow.

Make News

The elements of a press release are fairly well established. PRLog has a good summary of these components.

I’d like to discuss the finer details of a press release - that is, what makes it interesting.

1) A captivating image or photo is critical. Images express so much that a  verbiage laden press release cannot.

2) A quote from a relevant person with an important sounding title adds credibility and readability to the release.

3) Finally we have the subject. The most captivating subjects deal with the humanity of the organization. Therefore a dry description of a new product might be a PR fizzle. Instead consider a volunteer effort that your company was involved in, some community outreach, or at a minimum something someone earned or accomplished. While I don’t totally understand it, animal-centric stories seem capture attention.

On-Line press releases provide an efficient method do gain organization exposure. And exposure often leads to increased traffic and revenue.

Embed Keywords in your Website Content

Google and the other search engines analyze who your site is relevant to. The search engines want to ensure that they place the most relevant sites on the top of their search. Our job is to BE the most relevant. Don’t be coy. Use your keywords throughout your text. In fact you want these keywords to represent between 2 and 10% of all the words you use on your site. It is best to keep them in the order you had for your phrase, but that is not as important is using them. Back to our bike shop example, including in the website, Smurf Bike Shop is the best in Bend, Oregon, is not quite as good as saying that Smurf is a Bend Oregon Bike Shop, but it is better than not saying it at all! Click here for my current favorite free keyword analyzer .

Methods for Embedding Keywords

One of the best methods for embedding keywords is to exchange pronouns with keywords. E.g., We Welcome You, could become Bend Oregon Bike Shop Welcomes You. Look for opportunities to add keywords in links, headings, and the verbiage that exists behind an image (alt tag).

Remember that while search engine rankings are important, customers are the MOST important. Do not try to force the wording on your website to meet the 2 to 10% goal at the expense of readability. However, with a little forethought, you can get both the right keyword “density” and good sounding prose. Repetition is important for both the technical aspects of search engines and for the readers. Using a different adjective or noun may not be in the best interest of your organization.

An e-newsletter that you send to your customers, clients, and potential clients is a great monthly or quarterly device. Always stick to a schedule when sending an e-newsletter (but that’s a new topic and a future blog). The best part of a newsletter is that it shows up in your readers’ email box. They take action, hopefully by reading it, but the information is there in front of them. With a newsletter you can offer advise, sales items, coupons, event notification, and a complete litany of information to your email list.

A blog is typically shorter, and for the writer, easier to produce. You write more often so it can stay very current. The disadvantage is that it is up to your customers to decide when and if they are going to bookmark your blog and read it. But the interested and involved customer will do this, for you are offering them something they want - professional information, social information, or simply price discounts. For the more technically savvy there is RSS, i.e. the customer can automatically put your new blog information on their My Yahoo, etc. but this is pertinent to only a small percentage of customers. The big upside to using blogs is that you don’t need an email address, therefore the entirety of the web world can find your blog.

Putting it together. Send out your e-newsletter. Tell them about your blog and why they should read it. On the other side, make sure you have the capability of collecting email addresses on your blog site / web site with an offer to send an informative newsletter. This is a great way to collect email addresses of interested parties. Therefore blogs and e-newsletters work in tandem, so there are no versus, only compliments.

Sam Handelman, Owner of SCS

• • Your mission statement - what is it that you do. The customer wants to know what your purpose is.
• • Your target market - who are you trying to attract. Describe your customer. Customers want to know if you are focused on them.
• • Your value proposition - why are you better. Personally, I like testimonials to tout my strengths.
• • Finally, your call-to-action - what do you expect your customer to do next. Be reasonable be honest.

With these four categories, you can build a home page that has both form (design) and function (content). From here search engine optimization techniques can fine tune your message for easier catagorization by Google, Yahoo, etc.

Sam Handelman, Owner of Search Consulting Service