The ad was plugging the “hands-free” features of the car.

There was lots of jumping, like young people jumping off buildings, not in a suicide type way, but a happy way, like catching air. It looked almost like the jumps were synchronized to bright and happy music.

There was lots of movement and energy.

Lots of freedom.

There were unicyclists (hands free) carrying umbrellas, smiling happily.

The coolest part?

They didn’t show the car. Well, for about 3 seconds they showed it.

So what can we learn about marketing from the Ford Fiesta ads?

Well, I think the lesson is this: It’s not about the car.

In other words, your offer is not about you, what you do, your features, your process, blah, blah, blah.

Your offer is about your client and what they need and want.

So if you’re a coach or a consultant you’re like the bridge to that happy place every client wants and needs.

That’s what you’re offering, right? Not the bridge but the happy place.

Your clients don’t care about coaching or your process.

All they want to know is “How will my life be better or different after working with you?”

So tell them.

You can do it. I’m with you all the way.

Photo: Flickr elvire-r

—-
Beth Cole is a web consultant and business coach specializing in small business launches. Tweet with her @websrvnt,  comment on her blog or say hello on Facebook.

by Beth Cole

As long as a candle has plenty of wick and air it will keep flickering and giving off light. But watch out. Too much air too fast will blow it out. So will not enough. And even a sprinkle of water will quench it fast.

Your business is kinda like that precious light and I want you to protect your flicker from going out from too much to do, not enough boundaries, or too many Debbie Downers.

It can happen to anybody.

Grab a piece of paper and a cup of joe and give yourself a small break from your day to interact with these questions to help you keep that flame alive.

1. Think back to the time before you launched your business, remember the excitement? What was motivating you to start your new adventure? How can you keep it in sight?
2. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear “What do you do?” If you have trouble answering that question, what does that tell you?
3. Is there one client (or more) you wish you didn’t have? Why is that? Make a list of the attributes you don’t like about this client. Then thinking of opposites, make a list of what you are looking for in your ideal client. Remember, you’re the boss! Give yourself permission to say “no” to clients like this, so you can say “yes” to your ideal clients.
4. Take a look at your surroundings. Do you like what you see? If not, what would you change?
5. Make a list of all the things that are sucking your energy dry right now. I you could eliminate just one, what would it be? What would that do for you?
6. Make a list of the tasks you are doing in your business right now. On a new piece of paper create three columns: Marketing; Finance; Products/Services. Now categorize everything from the master list into one of these columns. This will help you get a sense of what is taking the most of your time. Is there anyone else you can involve in your business to help carry the load? (Think Virtual Assistant or Accountant).
7. Think about what it takes to deliver your product/service to your clients. Write down all the steps from the beginning agreement to when you cross the finish line. This is your process. Are you satisfied with it? Can anything be automated or improved?
8. How did you arrive at the price for your services? How is that working for you?
9. Think of the last time you felt really joyful and energetic. What was giving you that feeling? Is there a way to tap into that energy every day?
10. Who is the one person who will always be in your corner, you know the one who will have a good word no matter what? Is there a way to interact with this person more?

There will always be pressure and difficult circumstances in your business. Finding ways to cope with these pressures will help you grow as a person and enjoy the benefits of being your own boss.

So can you keep your flame alive? I think you can — I believe it and I’m with you all the way.

What are your thoughts?

Photo: Flickr Ezioman

—-
Beth Cole is a web consultant and business coach specializing in small business launches. Tweet with her @websrvnt,  comment on her blog or say hello on Facebook.

BUT.

I hate to clean.

I have had cleaning help off and on so I get the RESULTS I want without any effort, but you know what? I think I enjoy my clean house that much more when I do the cleaning myself.

I have a love/hate relationship with exercise, too.

I don’t like the plank pose, and the treadmill is boring. But I love the RESULTS of exercise. I feel better, I have more energy, and my pants aren’t too tight. Hooray! It’s enough to keep me going.

So for me, doing the hard things like exercise and cleaning are all about RESULTS.  I think this mindset of getting through hard things applies to almost anything in life, especially your business.

Launching a business is EXCITING, but not every part of launching your business will be fun. Much of it is hard.

For example, many of our clients want a steady flow of prospects from a well-written, compelling website, along with vibrant Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook spaces, but most dislike claiming a specialty (niche), writing website content, or figuring out how to tweet, link and face with people.

What if you could focus on the RESULTS of pushing through these things? Would it be easier to create awesome content, unique services, and a marketing presence online?

What do you think, are you motivated by RESULTS? What helps you push through the hard things?

Look forward to your comments.

[Flickr: Pink Sherbet]

By Beth Cole

Here’s a handy big picture website launch checklist to sum up the Website Launch Series that finished last week.

Check out the other post articles here….

1. Laying the Foundation;
2. Content;
3. Design;
4. Promotion.

Here’s the checklist:

Website Planning

1. Define website purpose
2. Define readers (users) in terms of a persona or personas
3. Clarity on primary action(s)
4. Domain name
5. Hosting

Website Function

1. Define technical requirements of the site, for example
   • Blog
   • Ecommerce
   • Forms
   • Polls
   • Member registrations
   • Private areas
   • Photo galleries
   • Event management

Website Content

1. Decide who will be the website manager
2. Create the sitemap
3. Research and choose keyword phrases
4. Create content for each page
5. Incorporate keyword phrases in page titles, page descriptions, page headings, and links
6. If blogging is part of your plan, create an editorial calendar or schedule for posting
7. Create or source video/photo/audio content
8. Choose optin list management tool

Website Design

1. Research industry trends
2. Create wireframe layout of content buckets
3. Choose color palette
4. Create home and subpage layout
5. Approval and signoff
6. Convert design to xhtml/css and/or cms framework
7. Test on development platform

Website Development

1. Add content and functionality to the site
2. Incorporate social marketing tools
3. Cross-browser testing
4. Train user on CMS tool, social marketing, email newsletter if applicable
5. Launch and support!

Have I overlooked anything important? Please do tell.

by Beth Cole

I had a great time last week at Marketplace 2010, the small business conference sponsored by the Center for Rural Affairs (CFRA) in Nebraska. I had a hard time choosing from the concurrent sessions. I ended up with mostly sessions on marketing because I always want to improve and grow in this area, for myself and for my clients.

Judging from the packed house in all the sessions I attended, marketing is kind of a big deal for most small businesses.

There was a lot of energy around social marketing, you know, how to do the Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn thing. But there was just as much talk around traditional marketing, knowing your prospects, putting it all together in a plan, knowing how your website fits into the strategy, etc.

In working with small businesses, I have found marketing, especially defining ideal clients, as a stumbling block for many.

So I’m just curious, is there anything about marketing that stops you from doing it?

Please fill in the blank and don’t be shy now.

What stops me from marketing is_____________________________________.

by Beth Cole

This is the fourth article in our Website Launch series, here are links to previous articles about laying the groundwork for your site, figuring out your content, and communicating through design.

There are lots of ways to generate traffic to your website. To put these tools in perspective, try visualizing your website as the hub and your marketing tools as spokes in a wheel leading toward the hub.

The marketing tools you use will depend on what works with your target market and your personal preferences. Any tools you choose should be in addition to rich keyword phrases you have already incorporated into your site to gain traffic from keyword searches.

Here are eighteen ideas to help generate traffic to your website:

• Article marketing. In addition to articles you post on your own blog, you can also write articles for articles directories such as Go Articles or Ezine Articles. You will need to be approved as an author prior to posting, but you can place a short bio and link to your website at the end of every article. Your article dashboard will show you popularity and reading trends about every article you write.
• Guest posting. This is becoming more popular and effective, especially if you can forge a relationship with a leader in your industry that will allow you to post occasionally, great visibility!
• Email newsletters. Most professionals include email newsletters along with regular blog posts as standard ways to communicate with clients and prospects. Include a special offer each month to ensure visits to your site.
• Classes and Webinars. All you need is a bridge line to make this work. At the end of the call, give your special offer which can be found on your website.
• Videoconferencing. Tools like dimdim.com or gotomeeting.com make it easy to visually connect and share your desktop or powerpoint presentation, include a special offer so people will visit your website after the meeting is over.
• Email signature. Make sure you are publicizing your website URL at the end of every email that goes out.
• Pay-per-click ads. Google, Bing and Yahoo! all offer pay-per-click advertising opportunities. This works best with a specific offer that you are making to prospects, for example, promoting a class, or a conference, or a FREE webinar or product download.
• Facebook ads. If your prospects are on Facebook, consider advertising there. Like PPC ads, you can set a budget and promote a special offer to prospects.
• Local profile. Google allows you to set up a business profile that is extremely important if you are offering services within a geographic area. Go to google.com/lbc
• Google profile. Your Google personal profile can also help you be found and can send more traffic to your site, set this up at google.com/profiles.
• Social media profiles. All the major social networking hubs i.e. LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, ask for your company website. If you are not using these tools, now is a great time to give it a try. Twitter is the second busiest incoming link to my site.
• Business cards. This goes without saying, your website URL should always be on your business cards. Many people keep cards simple these days with just phone number and website, the rest of the info can be found online.
• Speaking. Whenever you speak, whether it is for an in-person or online event, offer a handout with a special offer from your website. This is a great way to build relationships and your mailing list. (By the way, I am available if you need a speaker, here are some of my speaking topics.)
• Print articles. People still read magazines! If you like to write, magazine articles are a great way to build visibility, credibility, and traffic to your website.
• Print newsletters. You can still send a newsletter in the mail, and you are more likely to stand out if it is exceptionally well done. Include your website address for sure.
• Direct mail. I picked up a great tip from teamdavid.com last week, create a special offer that doesn’t expire and print 5,000 of the jumbo postcards to get the best printing rate. Then send 100 a week to your target market. This way you are always doing something to promote your business.
• Tradeshows. This method will cost more, but might yield greater results if your target audience doesn’t spend much time online.
• Networking. This is not about selling, but about giving. Remember the rule of 3: Find 1 person you want to remember, 1 person to remember you, and 1 person to help. Givers gain and website visits will happen as a result.

In addition to using Google Analytics on your website to track your visitor statistics, be sure to ask every new prospect how they found your website so you can track what marketing techniques are working.

So let me ask you this, what are your favorite ways to promote your website?

This concludes the four part series on launching your website.  I will post a Website Launch Checklist next week that will hopefully be a great resource to help you hit the ground running on your next new website project. Tally ho!

**Please note** This is not a paid endorsement of my company, this is Mary’s opinion, but I want to say thank you in advance for the positive feedback she shares in the interview.

Take it away, Mary!

Q1. What aspect of your website launch took the most time for you?

Gathering the content—which required attention to branding image, tone, flow, relevancy, phraseology, and proper grammar usage. We had three writers and creating “one voice” was vital.

Q2.  What surprised you the most about the process?

The amount of detail that comprises a site and the needed concentrated focus it demands. One main surprise element that we discovered was the smooth process that is possible with a knowledgeable, organized, and efficient website designer who leads the process from beginning to end. Beth Cole guided us every step of the way and we knew step by step what we needed to complete. She was observant if she felt an important element was missing and knew how to create and develop what we needed. She knew what questions to ask us and was collaborative throughout the process.

Q3.  If you had it to do over again, would you change anything?

My experience was superb and I wouldn’t change anything except allot more time in my schedule to tend to the website process.

Q4. What is your top piece of advice for someone who is considering a new website or website makeover?

Ensure that your website designer is knowledgeable, organized, and an efficient manager who can lead the process from beginning to end, pays attention to detail and someone you can count on and enjoy working with on the project.

Thanks to my team (including the best Joomla wrangler ever, @vivclark) and the entire team at CCE!

You might have a picture stuck in your head of what you want your website to look like. I have found this picture is difficult to extricate and put into words. [sidenote @holycowgal and I are working on a moodboard tool for this purpose, if you are interested, please join our launch list!]

I think communicating your vision to your designer is one of the most important steps you can take in the design process. The other, is to trust your designer as he or she refines your vision according to design principles, usability and relevance for your target market.

We like to use a design questionnaire, interview process, and other tools to get to the heart of design preferences and styles. As a website owner, you can add to this process by having a few websites and/or logo examples in mind that demonstrate what you like and what you don’t like so much. It’s important to know what folks in your industry are doing design wise and be able to stand above or apart from their efforts.

Here are a few places you can go for design inspiration:

• Logospire.com
• CSS Beauty
• Smashing Magazine
• AIGA Design Inspiration

After you settle on a design style, your designer will likely apply the design elements to the wireframe you produced in an earlier step of the process. This can be the most exciting time in the entire project because you will see your website vision spring to life, hooray!

Your main role as the website owner is to trust your designer! With all the clipart and fonts and self-publishing and scrapbooking tools we have these days, everyone becomes a designer. That’s okay, but when it comes to your website, certain principles of design need to be at work, and your designer can help you so much here if you will let go.

Try to set your personal preferences aside and focus on your prospects needs and interests and what will make for the best possible experience for them in visiting your website.

Here are some questions to help you think through your design preferences.

• What furniture and decorating style would apply to you, modern, classic, contemporary, vintage, etc.
• Do you have examples of websites you like?
• Would your prospects and clients relate to this style?
• Do you prefer photos or illustrations? What would your prospects like?
• What design elements are your competitors using?

I could write for days on the subject of design, and I’m sure I have missed some important points here, but I’m going to stop now and ask what are your thoughts about the website design process?

Next up, What is Involved in a Website Launch, Part 4, 18 Ways to Promote Your Website.

Create a Sitemap

One way to get clear about your content is to create a sitemap. There are many online tools to convert your existing content into a sitemap, but what I am talking about is a planning tool, a simple Word document that has a SmartArt flowchart of what pages your site will include. It is like a roadmap of sorts. You could use a Word document or you could use an online app like Creately or a download like Omnigraffle.

The sitemap will:

• Help you think out loud and visually so you can communicate with your designer;
• Allow you think through classifications and hierarchies of content, i.e. what is a parent page and what should go below that, and are there any branches from the child page.
• The sitemap also becomes a tool for organizing keywords when you start the copywriting phase of the project.

Create a mockup

The mockup or wireframe is the next phase of the launch, this is where you layout the content containers, placeholders if you will, so you can see how your content will flow from page to page. Notice, we still haven’t touched on the design elements of your website. It is so important to get clear about your content before the design can spring to life.

Again, you can use text boxes and a Word document to create your wireframe, but there are online tools that will help you do this, too, try Mockingbird,  or Mockflow, or Jumpchart.

Core Words and Content

Now finally, we are getting to the actual content of your website. Before you begin writing your pages, think about your primary reader (prospect). Can you imagine this person in your head?

I think it helps to create a persona for your imaginary reader, find a picture that works, create a name, give your person a location and a background. Then, whenever you are writing, you can write directly to your new friend and prospect, let’s call her Penelope.

Think about what Penelope would want to do when she comes to your site. Make a list of the features in which she would be interested, note to self – it’ not really YOU, I mean she might be a little interested in you, but she is more interested in herself and what she can get accomplished by visiting your site. Remember, readers are impatient, they are looking for an action to take.

Penelope’s interests and tasks form the basis of the core marketing words you will use on your site. You can test your core words (ie, your keywords) by using a free tool from Google. Some phrases will have more traffic than others. This tool will help you refine the phrases you want to use on your site.

The most important part of your website content is the offer. You probably wrestled with this in the beginning when you settled on your website purpose, action and results. Now is the time to bring this into play. Convert your main action into an offer.

What will your offer be?

Next up, What is Involved in a Website Launch, Part 3, but meanwhile what are your thoughts?

If you are a business owner and want to be the general contractor for your site launch, these are things you should be thinking about before you ever begin.

What is the purpose of the site

If you don’t know where you are going,
any road will get you there. — Lewis Carroll

If you don’t have purpose in life, your days become filled with stuff that doesn’t really matter.

It’s the same way with your website. If you don’t know its purpose, it is easy to create content that isn’t really useful to your readers, I call this visual clutter.

Some websites are created for aesthetics, some to give information, some to raise awareness and others to sell products and services.

Every website has the potential for purpose. What is yours?

What action do you want your reader to take

If you could summarize in one word the mood of your prospects when they are searching online, I agree with Gerry McGovern who says that word would be “impatient.”

Think of your own web browsing habits. When you are searching online it is usually to gather information, complete a task, make a decision, right?

With this in mind, what action do you want your readers to take?  It could be join your newsletter list, contact you for a 20 minute consultation, download your white paper, join your coaching group, purchase your book. If someone hits the back button, you have lost them, maybe forever. Make it easy for your readers to complete a task, even if it’s not the one they first intended.

The two things I see over and over again in terms of actions are vagueness at one extreme, or too many choices at the other.

Imagine walking into a fast food restaurant and staring at the menu. Would be easier to order from a menu of three things or thirty? (I hope you said three).

We have too many choices in life and I think this mentality creeps into our websites. Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and author of the 2004 book, “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less”  says “…one of three things is likely to occur when people have too many decisions to make — consumers end up making poor decisions, are more dissatisfied with their choices or become paralyzed and don’t choose at all.”
[source LA Times, Too Many Choices Can Tax the Brain, Research Shows].

What action to you want your reader to take?

What results do you expect from your site

The action you choose should be tied to the results you want to achieve from the site. Is it an increase in qualified prospects? Or is it actual sales of a product or service?

The clearer you are in this area, the easier it will be for you to write your content and work with your designer. Design and content need to fit together like two peas in a pod, and they are different skill sets.

Your job as the website owner is to first, understand this, and second, be as clear as possible about your purpose, actions and expectations for results so the design and content mesh like butter on bread.

What result(s) are you anticipating from  your website?

Next up, What is Involved in a Website Launch, Part 2, but in the meantime, what are your thoughts?