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Dear Friend,

This week we are going to continue to wrap up our big series revolving around internet marketing, and this whole last three or four or five weeks now we’ve been talking about this formula for internet marketing, which is eyeballs plus emails plus hearts equal faces.  And the two most important pieces of that formula are eyeballs and emails; they are the linchpin that drives it all. 

If we can focus only on getting visitors to your website that’s going to improve the results that you get, and if we can get more of the visitors who come to your website to actually leave their name and their email address. Remember that’s all we’re looking for, just a very, very low barrier of resistance, the easiest thing that people can do. 

If we can get more people to leave their name and their email address I don’t care whether they ever come back to your website again, because now we’ve got the ability to communicate with them one to one, whereas your website is about communicating with people one to many. 

So this week I have chosen some URL’s. I had lots and lots and lots of people submit their request for me to take a look at their website, and I’ve looked at a lot of them, and I’m going to choose some that are illustrative of what we’re talking about today. 

So when I call out these URL’s I’m going to put links to them so you can go and look at the site, and I’m actually going to go there and I’m going to look at this whole marketing system that people are using, ‘cause that’s really what your website is about, it’s about a marketing system, and I’m going to look at it through the eyes of your prospects. 

It’s very interesting how objective we can be when we’re looking at somebody else’s website, but when we’re looking at our website we often get blind. It’s very funny but you’re going to see some things pointed out, and I’ve chosen three for us today, but I could have chosen any of, I think I had 220 people who responded with their URL’s, and they all fall into one of a very few categories.  So the ones that I’ve chosen are going to be illustrative of those categories, and you’re going to see as we go exactly why I chose those.  And you might see your website reflect in this because they each illustrate a different point. 

The first and most important part of this, and we’ve spoken about it a lot, is to chose a crystal clear, super specific, benefit oriented dot com, as the name of your website. 

Now I went, just tonight, and looked back here and chose, just the first five or six at random people that had submitted their sites.

So when I say things, when I say these URL’s, I want you to see that these were six in a row, six like just taken out of a middle chunk here, six in a row that were submitted where betterhomesbyhelene.com, homesbyterry.com, noreenandwayne.com, movewithbill.com, gailsellsrealestate.com. 

Can you notice a pattern here?  What are you seeing?  And these are just a cat scan slice of all of the replies that came in here, that if I went and took more and more you would see exactly the same thing, but what are you noticing about those right now?  Betterhomesbyhelene.com, who’s that about?  Homesbyterry.com, who’s that about?  All of these are very, very illustrative of our focus that our website is about us.  We’re the most important part of our website in most cases. 

You know, when you start looking at it, is that what your prospects are really interested in?  Are they really looking for a website that’s all about you? Not at all.  What they’re focused on is their own selfish needs, their own selfish desires. 

They want a site that is exactly what they’re looking for.  So it doesn’t matter, and you know, if I took those types of sites, and there are dozens more that are just like that, if I take yourname.com that would probably represent another third of the people who had submitted their websites, but your website is not about you; that’s the real objective here, that your website is not about you.  We want your website to be about your prospect.

So you’re far better of to have a URL that promises a benefit for coming to your website.  So if I say lovelyhomesinportland.com or lovelyportlandhomes.com. or affordableportlandcondos.com, or winterhavenlakefronthomes.com, anything like that which is very specific and labels exactly what it is your prospects are looking for, those are the URL’s that they’re going to be most attracted to. 

I would say that out of all of the URL’s that I got, there were very, very few that were what I would call benefit-oriented, that offered any kind of a benefit just by looking at it. 

I’ve got a couple of them that I’ve chosen here because I want to illustrate the next point, so here are the three websites that we’re going to go and take a look at joeysells.ca and then we’re going to go and take a look at YouCanAffordVegas.com, and then the final one we’re going to go and take a look at is MyTampaBayHomesearch.com. 

Now do you see those last two, YouCanAffordVegas.com and MyTampaBayHomesearch.com, do you see how those are more outwardly focused?  Those are certainly going to attract more people because they promise some sort of a benefit in there, but joeysells.ca is not very clear on what we’re going to get when we click on it.  You know, I’m pretty certain that it’s going to be about Joey, so let’s go there, joeysells.ca.

Now just as we suspected, when we go there, guess what this website is about?  It’s about Joey.  So we look at it, we’ve got the very first words that we see: Joey Van Benthem – Royal LePage Gale.  Then we’ve got a picture of Joey over there on the corner, and then we’ve got Joey in the middle, Joey Van Benthem impressing clients everywhere. 

Then we’ve got Joey Van Benthem elite program member, and then Joey Van Benthem thanks you for visiting his website.  And there’s another picture of Joey in case we didn’t know that he was there, and there’s “My Listings, and “About Joey”, “Why Sell With Joey”, and Joey, you know, I am pointing this out, I chose you, you sent me two emails asking me specifically to choose you and I did, but I’m doing this as an illustrative thing. 

I’m not picking on you, Joey, I’m showing – because I could have gone to any number of these websites.  As a matter of fact if you go and look at the sites that had some of the URL’s from earlier that I pointed out, you’d find that same thing. 

The symptoms that your URL is indicating to me show up when you get to your website.  If I see a URL that appears to be all about you, all about your name, or you selling something, or homes by you, or anything that’s you-centric, when I go to that website I don’t expect to see anything but you.  And that’s what your prospects are looking for.

You know, your prospects are looking or information about them.  That’s what they really want.  If you look at even from Joey’s situation here, what are his prospects really looking for?  Joey lives up in Canada in Ottawa, and what they’re really looking for are homes in Ottawa.  So you know if you were to take this mindset of focusing on your prospects and turn the attention of your website around, you’ve got a lot of great offers on the site here, Joey. There are lots of things where you’re offering: free reports that people can get, you’re offering information that will be very valuable to them. But it’s kind of buried down, in the middle to bottom of your website after we spend our time focusing on the most important thing about your website, which is Joey. 

So what I would recommend is to flip that around. 

Flip it around and make sure that everything that people see when they come to your website is completely focused on them.  What would they be looking for if they were moving to Ottawa and they chose your website to go and take a look at?  Same thing with any of you listening, if you’re going for your area, what is it that people are most interested in and how can you deliver that to them?  

Okay, let’s look at our second website here which is YouCanAffordVegas.com.  Now I chose this one because it had a very promising sounding URL. 

You know, you say the words “You Can Afford Vegas.com” and that brings to my mind that there’s going to be information on affordable homes in Las Vegas or maybe the hidden areas of Las Vegas that are undiscovered where I can buy inexpensive homes or the best buys in Las Vegas.  Any of those things, that’s what youcanaffordvegas.com brings to my mind.  Now when I go there the first thing I see is a flash intro, which of course has nothing to do with affording Las Vegas, which leads me then to the home page, where front and centre, the first thing that we see is Mark Karten.  And we’ve got his phone numbers there if we want to call him, we’ve got his company there, a beautiful picture of the skyline of Las Vegas, and then the first words that your eyes are drawn immediately to the centre of the page “Mark Karten: The Right Real Estate Agent.” 

But you know, people when they’re coming to a website in the early stages are not looking for a real estate agent, they’re looking for information, they’re looking to find exactly what they’re looking for.  They’re looking to find a home and information about homes, and information about buying homes.  And if you have a URL like youcanaffordvegas.com they’re expecting, as I was, to find information about affordable homes. 

So imagine if you could take that great URL youcanaffordvegas.com, and instead of making it you-centric, what if we focused it on buying affordable homes in Las Vegas?  I don’t know what the starting price range is in Las Vegas.  I see a property here that’s scrolling, there’s for $169,500 there’s another one for $190,000.  I know nothing about what the prices are in Las Vegas, but what if the first thing that I saw was “Welcome to You Can Afford Vegas.com.  This is your spot to find all the most affordable homes in Las Vegas.  Did you know that you can buy lovely condos in Las Vegas starting at just $80,000 and you can buy them with zero down payment?”  Or “Did you know that you can buy lovely detached homes starting at just $125,000?” 

See how I’m talking about things that would be attractive to people who are attracted by a URL like youcanaffordvegas.com?  Those are the kind of things that I would expect to see there.  And what if you had a guide where I could get information on Las Vegas house prices, like we talk about in FindingBuyers.com, where you can easily put together information that will show people exactly how affordable Las Vegas, and how to buy homes in Las Vegas with zero down payments? 

All of those kinds of things that you set up in your URL, especially when you’re using a customer oriented URL, you’ve got to be careful to deliver on that promise.  And the more that you can make your website deliver on that promise with a way that people can leave their name and their email address to get information, that would be a good start. 

Now let’s go take a look at our third website, which is MyTampaBayHomeSearch.com. 

This is Norma Coppley up here in Tampa.  Now you know the great thing about this, there are two things that make me excited about this.  Number one MyTampaBayHomeSearch.com is a great outwardly focused URL, tells me what I’m going to be able to do here, I’m going to be able to search for homes in Tampa Bay.  Now when I come to the site, it’s not all about Norma, and it’s not all about them, it’s about “Find your Florida home today.

Register now for instant online access to all local area listings,” front and centre first thing that you see, I bet that when people come to this website that a lot of the people end up putting in their first name, their last name, their email address and their phone number.

Now here’s a little tip: if you are going to make an offer like this right up at the front, you would be best to combine that first and last name and just have one field called name, and one field called email.  If you just were to put in “Name” and “Email” you would increase the number of people who will actually leave their name and their email address. 

Same thing if you remove that phone number.  Right now it’s not about being able to have them feel like you’re going to call them and chase them down, and having “first name, last name” sounds much more formal, much more serious then just “Name” and “Email”.  Remember, we’re looking for five-star prospects here, we’re using this as a filter to find the five star prospects. 

Now five-star prospects are going to be willing to engage in a dialogue, so whether we force them to leave their first name, their last name, their phone number, all of those kind of things are going to reduce the number of people that will start that dialogue with us, and reduce the number of people that we have an opportunity to sort of engage in a dialogue. 

Because we’ll be able to engage a lot of these people by email, and we’ll be able to do that in an automated way if we’re using an autoresponder. We can send out updated information, and remember the valuable thing, if somebody comes to your website and they leave their name and their email address, now it doesn’t matter whether they ever come back, because now you’ve got a way to engage them in a dialogue, and hopefully that will lead to the next step, which is that they will share the desires of their heart. 

So there are three websites for you to go and take a look at today, they all illustrate different things, but I think the big lessons out of all of this are two things:

Number one, if you’re going to try and attract a very specific target market you’ve got to make sure that you have a URL that promises a benefit, that appears to be exactly what that target audience would be looking for. 

Number two is that when they come to your website after being attracted by your customer oriented, outwardly focused URL you’ve got to make sure that there’s a match, that once they get to your website that what brought them there is actually what they see when they get there, so that now they feel like “I made it.  I landed on exactly the right place,” and the first thing that you should be offering them is an opportunity to get either more information that they can ask for as a free report, or to get information on all the homes for sale, something that they can do where they can leave their name and their email address so that you can communicate with them one-to-one. 

And that’s what we’ll talk about next week.  We’ll stop it here for today, and next time we will talk about how to communicate with people using email so that they’ll share the desires of their heart and want to meet with you.  So that’s it for this week, have a great week and I hope this has been very helpful to you, and email your questions to marketingmonday@gmail.com, and I’ll talk to you next time.