PetesWeekly

I like pens. I’d like to compare buying one in a ‘proper’ store with the online experience.

If you find a genuine pen store (and there aren’t too many around) it tends to only stock the fast moving brands and models. Like any other store, 20% of the brands account for 80% of the sales. (Of course, that 80% of the brands that they don’t stock don’t account for too many sales!)

The pens are always locked away to stop footpads from stealing them. (Footpads, of course, are avid scriveners.)

Asking to hold the R3000 gold nibbed Mont Blanc means that you’re competing with the three other people in the store. Roald Dahl wants a BIC. JK Rowling wants some paperclips. And Ernest Hemingway wants directions to the nearest travel agency.

After deciding that you want the pen (only because there is nothing else you like, or because you feel guilty for spending an hour there) you find out that your nib of choice – EF (ExtraFine) – is out of stock.

The real life experience, in a word, sucks. (And don’t bother asking for ink, which comes in any colour you want, as long as it’s black.)

Last week I read an article about a fountain pen that a bunch of writers regard as truly great. It’s the Platinum 3776. It is a very long way from being amongst the 20% of pens that comprise 80% of sales, so it’s hardly likely to be in your loocal store.

After reading a few reviews, I started to search for it, and a few seconds later bumped into the Cult Pens site. (A seamless Google marketing experience because the team at Cult Pens anticipated what I might want.)

I ordered the pen. And a few bits and pieces. And some amazing ink. It took a couple of hours to drool and dream, but Roald, JK, and Ernest were nowhere to be seen.

And that’s why Google works so well. No matter how small the niche, enough folk in that niche want what you sell to make Google your best friend. (As a seller and as a searcher.)

These past few weeks we have run a few tests using our new marketing tools .

In one case, selling products (puppies) over four 4 days:

• Google displayed our ads 768 times.
• 198 people clicked on them.
• 27 people asked for puppies.
• These 27 enquiries cost just R49.62 in total.

In another test, selling services (dancing lessons) over a ten day period:

• Google displayed the ads 995 times.
• 72 people clicked on them.
• 22 people enquired about enrolling in classes.
• These 22 enquiries cost R23.13.

Irrespective of what you sell, search engines reach people in ways, and at times, and in places that no other medium can. And, done correctly, all you’re doing is putting your hand up to answer somebody’s questions. It’s about the only time when you have a person’s full attention.

The video of the webinar is here.

When cars first started to replace horses, they each had a different cockpit. This meant that you needed to start from scratch each time you climbed into a new driving seat. For a hint of how tough driving was back then, read this article showing how to start a Ford Model T.

Life on the Internet is much the same. There is so much techie stuff peeking out from under the hood, and so much noise from techies,  that it scares real humans. It makes the learning curve long, costly, and intimidating.  (At least for normal people.)

We like to think that we’re hiding all the techie stuff away, and offering a very clean, easy way to get your products and services in front of buyers.

Below is the dashboard for the new tool we launch on February 1st. I thought you might enjoy a first peek, and a few words about what it all means.

1. Enter a basic idea that describes one facet of your business. I entered ‘seals’. It took a few seconds to type in ‘oil seals’, ‘hydraulic seals’, and ‘mechanical seals’. And then I selected South Africa as my target market for this campaign.
2. The engine scanned Google for a few seconds and gave me list of 100 search terms that real prospects used to find ‘seals’ last year. ‘Oil seals’, ‘hydraulic seals’, ‘seal kits’, and so on. I chose those that each deserved their own page.
3. Then the engine suggested a domain name that search engines will love: sa-seals.co.za
4. I capitalised it because SA-Seals.co.za is easier on the eye than sa-seals.co.za
5. The engine then collected the most searched for terms for each specialist page. This took about 60 seconds.
6. The engine then listed the pages I had chosen, and let me shuffle the the search terms to better fit each page of the new site. I didn’t have to because they were just fine
7. Then  I took a few minutes to proofread the adverts to make sure they had no grammar errors, and adjusted a few where the search terms were too long to fit in.
8. I proofread each page to make sure that the grammar worked.
9. I uploaded a picture that someone looking for an oil seal would enjoy.
10. If I already owned this domain a single mouse click would publish all 8 pages (4 for the products, a thank you page, and a couple of others) in under 1 minute. Sadly I don’t, so I must wait for the web registrars to fire up their Model T Fords – and that takes between 2 hours and 24 hours. During this time I can get on with other stuff. The moment the domain is set up I will get an email.
11. Once the site is displaying itself, one click downloads the complete campaign of 35 adverts, all tuned to match the site pages. All I have to is upload these to my Google Adwords account and a stream of prospects starts to flow, 24/7.

Total time invested? About 40 minutes. Yet that campaign will be seen by about 45 people in SA wanting oil seals in – each working day. That’s worth between 2 and 4 enquiries each day.

I haven’t yet published the site, so please don’t get too frustrated looking for it.

And that, we think, is the future of Internet Marketing for small business. Simple, easy, and very fast. For less than the price of an ad in one Yellow Pages.