Marketing Consulting for Small Business
Marketing Strategies for Small Business

FACT: “65% of Your Buyers Start with a Google Search. But if Google Can’t Find Your Website, You’ll Never Get the Sales Lead.”

Business Owners & B2B Sales Executives…

You do have to admit, having Google work for you would be a boost to your business!

Wouldn’t it be great if Prospects searched on a keyphrase, and your website was on Google’s 1st page? …Instead of being stuck out on page 83 (like you might be right now).

It would be like hiring Google to do your lead-gen.

Because the cold, hard reality is that, at the click of a mouse button, Google is taking your customers and prospects to a website. The question to need to ask yourself is this: “How can I get Google to send them to my website?”

What’s the Value of a Qualified Sales Opportunity?

For most businesses, it’s $5,000 or more…

When your Prospects search online, do they get to your website? If not, you’ve already lost the sale. And your website failed—once again—to be anything more than pretty pictures and words.

Let’s fix that. Pronto!

In just 30-days (from Start-to-Finish) you’ll discover all the basics for making your website Google-Optimized—so Prospects find Your WebsiteNot just your Competitors.

Why is SEO/Google Optimization so critical for small business websites?

  1. Because Google has changed the way Customers buy (forever). Even if your sales team are the best closers in the world, if Google can’t find your website, you’ll never get the opportunity to sell.
  2. More than likely, your existing website was built by a designer who didn’t know about Google. Dollars to doughnuts they built a “nice” website that brings you very little traffic. I will show you how to fix that so you will get your fair share of sales leads from your own website.
  3. In this economy, a Google-Optimized website is the smartest (and least expensive) move you can make.

If your business depends on lead generation and putting new opportunities into the top of the funnel, Google Optimized-SEO is something you don’t want to put off. Sales Lead Generation is the lifeblood of small business, and I want to show you how to make sure you get your fair share.

And yes, you can do this yourself.

“We have better content on our website than any competitor, but when it came to our Google rankings, we didn't know what we were shooting for. After John's 30-minute consultation and following all the instructions in the Google Optimized book and the bonus items, we now know what Google wants to see and how to organize our web pages to jump ahead of the pack. The good news—It's a whole lot easier than I thought it would be.

 

Thanks, John, for boiling it down into bite-sized pieces."

 

Chip Chapman, President
Integrated Building Systems
Columbus, Ohio USA

 

Google can really do my sales-lead generation?

Small Business B2B Marketing Expert - John Fox

John Fox
Author: Marketing-Playbook &
Small Business B2B Marketing Expert

The short answer: YES! Google does lead-gen.

The same Google that consumer shoppers use to find the best deal in electronics, books, jewelry, real estate and automobiles has found its way into the highly competitive world of selling B2B products and services. Product managers, engineers, specifiers, purchasing agents, shipping clerks—and even CEO’s—are using Google to find solutions and new vendors.

Google Analytics ReportGoogle statistics for www.Marketing-Playbook.com. Every hit is a potential new Member via Google!

It really doesn’t matter what corporate buyers are looking for—sales training, industrial cleaning supplies, promotional products, small business consulting, offset printing, commercial real estate, internet web hosting, space-age plastics, fluorescent lighting ballasts, tradeshow displays, business intelligence software, flux capacitors, and every other kind of B2B product and service.

The question is NOT about Google’s ability to do sales-lead generation. Clearly, they’re doing a terrific job of directing traffic from their search engine to small business websites all over the world. In fact, B2B Customers and Prospects use Google in every stage of the Buying Cycle—from awareness to research to negotiation to purchase. (ref: Enquiro Business to Business Survey, 2007)

No, the question is NOT about Google’s ability to do lead-gen.

The question is whether or not any of those billions of Google-searches lead to your website!

Need more convincing of Google’s B2B impact? Here are five numbers that say it all.

1.4 million — 60% — 37 billion — 65% — Zero

1.4 million is the number of searches Internet users conduct every minute.

60% of these searches go through Google.

(as of December 2007, comScore’s qSearch study of Internet statistics show Google’s share growing 62.4 percent!)

37 billion searches were handled by Google just in the month of August 2007. That’s more than ONE BILLION web searches every day.

65% of B2B Buyers make an Internet search their first step in the process of finding new suppliers and vendors (and the B2B search engine of choice? 3/4 use Google).

(Enquiro Business to Business Survey, 2007)

Zero is the number of Prospects who got to your website through Google because your
website wasn’t optimized for Google. Plain and simple, Google doesn’t know you exist. And for you, Google is NOT generating leads.

Bottom Line: Google is now the main artery between a qualified Prospect and your small business. But, unless you’ve “trained Google” on what you sell, what makes your products and services different than other suppliers and provided responses to common sales objections (all the stuff you probably already use to train your Sales Reps, by the way), Google can’t divert any of its search traffic to your website.

You mean I don’t need outside sales reps anymore?

Shaking hands and selling like 1979Selling before Google: Smiling, dialing & shaking hands

No. You still need Sales Reps. After you accomplish just the SEO Basics (i.e., making your site “Google-Optimized”) and you begin to move more of your lead generation to the Internet and implement other worthwhile marketing strategies, your Sales Reps will be talking with Prospects who’ve sought you out, not the other way around.

But maybe this is a good time to stop and answer this question:

“Are you still selling like the Internet doesn’t exist
or that it’s just a passing fad?”

You might still be hanging onto the same formula for generating new business I learned when I started my career at Intel in 1979. It went like this:

100 dials on the phone = 20 meetings = 10 proposals = 1 or 2 deals

It was Predictable. Measurable. Cost-Effective. It was “Old Math.”

In pre-Google Old Math days, when the need arose Buyers called their favorite Sales Reps and set up a series of fact-finding meetings and presentations. For the times when Buyers had to find a new supplier, they’d turn to the Thomas Register—a multi-volume directory of big green books (each the size of the New York Yellow Pages) which covered 67,000 industrial categories.

“Marketing” meant something different back then, too. In those pre-Internet days, Marketing was what Sales Reps, like me, did to drum up business between client meetings.

Yes, those were the good ol’ days. Vendors closely guarded and controlled product information and specifications. And if a Buyer wanted the data, they had to get it from a Sales Rep. That gave Sales Reps incredible leverage.

Today, Selling and Buying are very different!

No longer a news flash, it’s nearly impossible for a Sales Rep to cold-call their way to a meeting. Stopping by a Buyer’s office without an appointment is a surefire way to make a potential customer angry. And e-mail? Forget about it. Unsolicited e-mail marks you as a spammer.

Buyers simply don’t want to see you.

Why? Because the Internet has created such a freeflow of information, Buyers no longer need to talk with a Sales Rep to get what they need to do their job. Today, Buyers have all the leverage. For the early steps in the buying cycle where needs are uncovered and opportunities are explored, a Sales Rep has been replaced by an anonymous Google search.

But many B2B marketing and sales people continue to sell and market like it still was 1979. Trying to survive only on the power of personal referrals and how much territory their Sales Reps can drive (or fly). If this sounds like you and your small business, my friend, you’re living in a state of deep-seated denial.

But you are not alone.

John Fox presentation b2b marketing small business owners and Sales ExecutivesOne of my B2B Marketing workshops for small business owners and sales execs

Just recently I conducted a workshop for small business owners and sales executives on the topic of B2B sales & marketing in the post-Internet world.

Prior to the workshop, I randomly selected 5 of the attendee websites and ran each of the sites through my Do It Yourself Google SEO Optimization Checklist. Not one business had even the most basic of basics on their sites.

As much as Google might want to index the content on these 5 company’s websites, because their websites lacked basic/fundamental instructions that search engines require, Google ignored them.

When I brought this to the attention of the workshop attendees, I got a unanimous shrug. As I later discovered, these small business owners were so invested in Old Math selling, they refused to realize that Google had caused their entire sales process to change. Unfortunately for them, it is not business as usual. And it never will be again.

It’s a lesson I had to learn the hard way, too!

Is your website ready for Google? Mine wasn’t.

About a year ago, I reached my decision-point. I couldn’t afford to ignore Google’s impact on my market (and my small business). For every hard-fought personal referral earned through face-to-face selling, I was missing 20 other qualified prospects that would have come to my site if Google’s search engine had been able to find me.

But to Google, my website was invisible. I simply didn’t exist. I had to do something to get visitors to my website. And as you may know, that meant optimizing my website for Google SEO—or—making it “Google-Optimized.”

What better way to learn about the basics of Google Optimized-SEO/Optimization than online? I found several forums and websites that seemed to offer good information and I took it to heart.

Based on what I read, I made a number of changes:

Now you would think, with all this, I’d have no trouble showing up in Google’s search engine. But you’d be wrong. Even though I had religiously followed the suggestions I read, after about 8 or 9 months I had hardly made a dent in Google’s rankings.

Hiring an expert to fix it.

Looking for a solution to my Google-problem, I interviewed a bunch of Google SEO search-engine consultants to see if they could help get my site onto page 1 of the Google search results. These consultants fell into 2 groups: Sleazy and Expensive—

Group 1 (Sleazy): These guys sounded great on the phone, but their sales pitch was too slick for me. Most of their results were based on outdated information, website trickery, website submission services (which don’t work) and link exchanges. I had read enough about these schemes to know Google was wise to them. This option was a no-go.

Group 2 (Expensive): This group knows what they’re doing, but their fees were out of sight. Plus, when I found out that I was still responsible for writing the content, it just made no sense to outsource it. Great for big businesses, but not for me and my small-business budget.

Up to this point, I felt like I was just pouring time into a black hole and I had little to show for my effort. I needed the right procedure (i.e., the Google Optimized-SEO Basics) to follow so I could manage my own Google optimization (ala the “Do It Yourself/DIY” method). A to-do list that would give me a starting point, as well as an endpoint (so I knew when I could start looking for light at the end of the tunnel!). I lacked step-by-step guidelines that a mere mortal could use as a checklist to measure the work that was being done for me.

That’s what drove me to get a Google SEO search-engine guru to train me how-to do it myself. Step-by-step. I got my assignment, made the changes myself (or made sure they got done), checked it off my list, and went onto the next step.

 

“The traffic on our web site is getting better and better every day. Now I will need help in converting more of this traffic into sales."

 

Marc-Andre Pilon, Vice-president
Barry Cordage Ltd.
Montreal, Quebec CANADA

 

Google Optimized gives you my Do-It-Yourself (DIY) procedure

My Google Optimized eBook (combined with my 30-day Jumpstart lessons) record the steps I followed, organized into 4 sections (what I call the 4 Key Google optimization Factors). It’s how I attacked my own Google problems and what allowed me to get the Google Optimized-SEO rankings I was looking for. It’s short-and-sweet, concise and to-the-point.

It’s your 30-day, Do It Yourself (DIY) plan for accomplishing all the SEO basics for your small business B2B website.

As an example of the concise format, on page 7, I tell you to avoid building your site with Flash technology. It takes me about ten words to tell not to do this. But that one direct command—if you follow it—will spare you from the feeling of complete stupidity. Like how stupid I felt when I had a Flash-based website built for my own small business several years ago. It took me six months to figure out what a mistake I had made. I wish someone would have just told me not to do it. That piece of advice—on its own—would have saved me at least $10,000 for the cost of the site design, not to mention the loss of prospective customers who couldn’t find me on Google!

“As an entrepreneur and someone who has studied search engine optimization and website development for years, I found John's book not only highly informative—but essential to my website success and organic rankings!

 

He brings to light areas I had never considered which will put me far ahead of those competitors in my field. It's like having a secret weapon few people know about—just hope your competition doesn't find out about him! I plan on using his concepts and ideas not only on my website, but in my marketing campaign overall as well.

 

A++ John and thanks!”

 

Greg Phelps, President
Independent Fee-Only Financial Advisor
www.redrockwealth.com

 

The 4 Key Google Optimization Factors of Do It Yourself (DIY) SEO Basics

You may be familiar with how Google indexes websites and know the important role topical content plays in my Google ranking, but have you mastered all four of the optimization key factors covered in this eBook?

The 4 Key Google Optimization Factors

  1. Formatting your content to make your website easy for search engines to index.
  2. Site architecture: linking your site together so that Google knows which pages are most important.
  3. Placing your keywords in the proper locations on your page for optimal ranking effect.
  4. Staying on Google’s RADAR by monitoring the latest search engine strategy and tactics.

While some sites get one or two of these correct, I found out that it’s rare to see a site which has mastered all four. And that’s good news for people like you and me, because once we understand the art of creating a Google SEO-friendly site, we’ve got a huge advantage over our less agile competitors.

For each of these 4 key factors, the eBook provides a checklist of do’s and don’ts. Sound simple? Yes—that’s the whole point. Is it an exhaustive, do-all Google Optimization resource? No. But that’s not the purpose of this eBook.

“This eBook and all my resources are built for small business owners who want to control the ‘horizontal and vertical’ in their business… Business Leaders who want the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) SEO Basics they or an employee can follow… won’t be disappointed… It’s a 30-Day step-by-step plan, from start to finish And it’s written specifically for B2B websites.” —John Fox

How in-depth can an eBook be?

Ever done any cooking? Let’s say you want to try something new, but you want to make sure you’re doing it right. You get out a cookbook, check out some recipes that sound good enough to eat and you pick one.

Now it’s up to you to follow the directions. That recipe is your checklist for success. You follow the instructions and you get the desired results.

Does that recipe or cookbook make you the next Rachel Ray or Bobby Flay? No. But you sure can be a hero to your family or friends.

Well, that’s what the Google Optimized eBook is like. While the eBook won’t train you how-to be website optimization whiz (in other words, don’t quit your day job just yet), by following the checklists in this eBook, you will put yourself and your business way out ahead of the curve and on your way to decent Google search rankings.

One of my customers said it best:

The Google Optimized eBook is excellent…Really valuable to someone who is not deeply entrenched. If I study the eBook and then shore up my business in the areas indicated, it is not too likely I have missed a major area. Once I have it ‘shored up,’ I can drill down—with confidence.”

 

Will Baccich, CEO
Global Data Vault

Who needs this eBook/SEO course?

I’d like to say that Google Optimized is for everyone, but in reality it’s most effective when it’s in the hands of small business owners and sales executives who want to build their own automated uptake mechanism for lead generation. Like me, they want a system that gets integrated into their business. An asset that generates activity 24x7 and won’t leave for the competition and take their book-of-business with them!

Google Optimized is especially intended for smart people who have wised-up over the years and recognize that there is no fairy dust to sprinkle on a website. No, the truth of the matter is that it takes a great deal of work to make it into the big leagues, which for the most part requires—and here’s the big surprise—topical content that humans (not computers) actually want to read!

That said, the book spells out a procedure to follow to give yourself a fighting chance. You can use the eBook and my 30-day Jumpstart SEO Basics lessons (delivered via email) as your “to-do list” for optimizing your website or if you have employees or contractors doing your website work, you can use the eBook as a checklist to make sure the work’s been done correctly.

“We’re in the measurement and metrics business, but when it came to developing our company website I had no way to audit our web designers until I got John's Google Optimized book and the Google Checklist.

 

Do yourself a big favor and get Google Optimized before anyone works on your website. Then make sure your designers follow John's instructions."

 

John Oskin, Founder
Informance International
Northbrook, Illinois USA

 

What you need (3 basic requirements)

Like all things related to websites, you (or someone on your team) has to be able to make edits to your web pages (practical skills), be able to login and upload updated pages (site access) and be able to write about your B2B products and services (topical content).

1. Practical Skills

If you have a website and you know a little HTML, you probably have everything you need. You might be using Dreamweaver, FrontPage or a plain-old garden-variety text editor—any of these is fine as long as you (or your web-savvy 16 year-old kid who’s going to do the heavy-lifting for you) are capable of following directions and are able to look things up online if you don’t understand a particular term.

For example, if I tell you to create an account on Google to track your website statistics (I do tell you to do this—and I even give you a Google Analytics Setup Guide as a Free bonus), you should be capable of going online, registering for an account, and cutting and pasting a few lines of HTML code on your website.

If you or someone on your staff can’t do this, you have 3 options:

  1. Find someone who can do this for you (your 16 year-old, for example).
  2. Postpone this purchase and take a class on HTML at your local junior college.
  3. Recognize this is going to be too big of a challenge. Do NOT buy this eBook.

2. Site Access

There is one important technical requirement (I learned these the hard way. Believe me). You must be able to modify the HTML code on each page of your site. If you are using a Content Management System (like I was years ago), you may think you can edit the HTML code, and the CMS vendor may have even told you it was possible (they lied), the truth is that many content management systems don’t give you the level of control you need in order to get the page ranking you desire.

Make sure to check this out before you start. If you are using a CMS and are not certain about this, just ask your web host or the people who installed your Content Management System or blogging software. They may not want to tell you, but they will if you ask them.

3. Topical Content

For Google to find your website, you have to have topical content. Here are two examples:

While you don’t have to be a professional copywriter to do any of this (in fact, the more you write from the heart, the better you’ll do), the bottom line is that your site has to have relevant, topical content. And since it’s your website, who better to write that content than you? Plus, you probably already have a lot of what Google’s looking for right in the existing materials you use to train your Sales Reps!

Money-back guarantee

I want you to take me up on this. Serious. Assuming you have the 3 basic requirements (above) and have faithfully followed the steps I’ve laid out for you—IF your site ranking hasn’t increased by at least 25% in the first 60 days, I want to give you your money back.

If you give it a good college try and you’re not satisfied with the results, then it’s your full right to get your money back.

Take Your First Step Now!

If you’ve decided it’s time to roll out the red carpet for Google to find your site and index all your terrific content, there’s really no reason to put this off to another day.

The eBook is available as an immediate PDF download, so you can get started today.

I have also included some terrific bonus items to make sure you psyched-up and ready to go.

website SEO scorecardOptimization Checklist
website SEO scorecard

Bonus #1: Google Website Optimization Checklist
Here’s the Checklist I mentioned earlier. The Checklist puts all of the important website criteria on a single page. Think of this Checklist as your one-page, to-do checklist. Just like your honey-do lists, empty checkboxes mean there’s work yet to be done.

As a part of your order, you’ll get the 2-page version—FREE! The first page gives you a real-life example that’s been filled out for a client. The second page is the blank form so you can duplicate it and use it for each of your web pages.

I use the checklist in my marketing consulting business to assess the “Google health” of a website before we start work on a client’s B2B marketing strategy.

It’s great tool for making sure you, your website designers and your programmers are building a website Google can find and properly index. A $25 value!

website SEO scorecard

Bonus #2: Google Analytics Setup Guide & John Fox comments
One of my partner companies has written an excellent guide for setting up an analytics tracking account on Google. Google endorses this company exclusively, so their advice is gospel. The guide is really good, but it’s overkill for what you probably need, so I added my own comments to the guide—highlighting the “must-do’s” and telling you which parts to ignore or put on the back-burner.

Why do you need analytics? Analytics allow you to track your progress and give you key statistics about your website traffic, where visitors are clicking, and most important, the keywords visitors typed into Google that got them to your web page! You’ll want to make sure you follow this setup guide.

Google Optimization SEO guru

Bonus #3: Google SEO guru audio interview MP3Google Optimization Guru Audio Interview MP3
I mentioned the search-engine guru who trained me how-to do my own optimization. Well, you get to hear him for yourself. With your order, you’ll get an mp3 downloadable file of a recorded teleseminar I did with him this year. It’s more good stuff. And a $49 value!

Google Optimization 30-day email course

Bonus #4: Google Optimized 30-day JUMPSTART for B2B Websites
I’ve written 10+ lessons for you, teaching you how to optimize your B2B website, just like I did. And you’ll get the lessons via e-mail for the first 30 days after your purchase. Many people tell me these lessons are the very best content available on the web today because they are 100% focused on B2B websites for small businesses. The lessons are a terrific supplement to the Google Optimized eBook and have a $priceless value!

1-on-1 consultation with John Fox

Bonus #5 (optional): 30-Minute Telephone Consultation with John Fox
Go 1-on-1 with me. Starting with your website, let’s role up our sleeves for 30-minutes on the phone and dig into the problems holding your Sales Reps back from achieving the kind of results you know you deserve. It will be an all-out effort on my part to diagnose the problems and recommend ways to fix the situation. If you are prepared, you’ll get fresh ideas and resources you don’t have today. A $250 value!

 

Google Optimized eBook Special Offers

eBook Specials
Google Optimized Combo
Google Optimized Combo + Consultation
Google Optimized
Money-back guarantee!
BONUSES
Google Optimized SEO Checklist $25
Google Analytics Setup Guide & Fox comments
Google SEO guru audio interview MP3Google SEO Guru
Audio Interview MP3 $49
checkbox
checkbox
Google Optimized 30-day Jumpstart Lessons
checkbox
checkbox
30-minute Telephone Consultation $250
checkbox
Special Price
US$89.95
(This special is only valid for this page)
US$99.95
(This special is only valid for this page)
Pay Safely With Any Of The Payment Options Below
We use PayPal to process our payments. Don’t have a PayPal account? That’s not a problem. You can now use your credit card or bank account (where available) to pay for your purchase.
PayPal verified merchant Buy Google Optimized

If your small business needs to accept online payments,
Sign up for a FREE PayPal Small Business account here

Important:
If the system doesn't accept your credit card or if you have any questions that have been unanswered, please e-mail me directly and let me know how I can help. I'd be interested in getting your feedback. The feedback you give me, is strictly confidential. Don't forget to include your telephone number and a time to call you.

Use the contact form at the bottom of this page.

Important Usage: What will happen once you click the button?

You will be taken to a page where you can fill in your credit card or PayPal account details. This will be verified instantly and you will be sent to a page where you can download the Google Optimized Combo right after your credit card has been verified.

Note:
1) If by any chance, you are not able to validate your card please don't tear your hair out in frustration. Send me a message and I’ll find out what’s going on.

2) At the end of the payment process, you should be directed to a download page. If you get directed to another page by chance, please don't panic. Computers take breaks, sometimes. Send me an e-mail, and I will send you an alternate link and you will be able to download your eBook without a problem.

Marketing-Playbook author, John Fox
John Fox - Venture Marketing


P.s., Remember, since there is absolutely no risk, it’s all to the up-side. When you train Google to be a Sales Rep, you have the potential of customers and prospects coming directly to you! This is a minor investment you want to make for your business as quickly as possible!

 

Google, Inc. has not endorsed or approved the content of this eBook.

 

About Venture Marketing

Contact Us

©2009 Venture Marketing