Uncle Bob Advertising Concepts

I should probably apologize to anyone named "Bob" just to get started. The only reason I picked on "Bob" was because it's the name of someone I kept stumbling over last week.

"Uncle Bob" was the standard by which my comments and suggestions were being rated. You probably know an "Uncle Bob" of your own, it's the person whose opinion you count as being an authority. "Uncle Bob" is successful in his community and quite willing to share his expertise with anyone who is willing to listen.

The problem with "Uncle Bob" is that he has never sold anything on the Internet. That's not going to stop him from expounding on what will be successful, though. His opinion will govern what his listeners will believe of your message. Everything that is new or different has to get past the "Uncle Bob" filter before it will be considered.

I had a client telling me that what I've been doing on the Internet for the past four years obviously won't work because it's contrary to reason. His "Uncle Bob" tells him exactly how the ads should read and what people want to hear about his product.

"Sigh....... sigh ...........sigh!"

I wonder, what's the point in going to an Internet specialist if you're going to ignore the advice they give you? A weekly magazine I take talked about customers and their attitudes this way.
"If you approach me and tell me you want your website to perform better, what's the point in telling me that I can't change anything about the website? Why do you waste your time and mine if you are not willing to take the advice of the consultants you hire? What part of "You must change your website," do you NOT understand?"

There must be a lot of "Uncle Bob's" out there. I get copies of so-called "marketing studies" that are written by people with NO Internet experience. The clients seem surprised when I discount this material. They've paid someone for the analysis - the wrong person, but there isn't a good way to tell them that. It is nothing more than a starting point. Traditional advertising does NOT work on the Internet. Unless you're prepared to understand this, you are wasting your time (and money).

Good Luck.

Grandparents raising Grandchildren.

Here's a great new "how-to" book for Grandparents who find themselves raising another generation. Full of places to find help the book is written by people who are doing this themselves.

The book uses examples from their own lives and the lives of their friends to show you how to make life a little easier when your grandchildren move in and even offers reasons why this is happening to millions of families.

This is a must read for teachers, counselors, foster parents .... anyone who leads support groups or works with people raising grandchildren.

An inexpensive gift for friends and families, this can help open conversations about what is happening in your life.

The book is available exclusively through Myklin Publishing. Find it here:
www.myklin.com/grandparents-raising-grandchildren.html

Sonja K. Ayres Artwork - Get a Free Catalog

Award winning Oklahoma artist and potter, Sonja K. Ayres has a new electronic catalog that you can download. You can see high-resolution copies of her prints that depict diverse subjects from around the world and your own back yard.

• Tuscany scenes
• Ivory Billed Woodpecker (thought to be extinct for 60 years and recent in Arkansas)
• Horses
• Fly fishing scenes
• Portraits
• Native American scenes
• Western scenes
• and much more .....

Plus, Sonja takes commissions for portaiture so you can give your loved ones a truly special gift, a painting of themselves to treasure forever.

The catalog is completely free with no obligation. Get your copy today at www.myklin.com !

Cathy Armstrong Photographs Displayed

My good friend, Cathy Armstrong, wrote to tell me her barn photos are on display at the Fort Smith Art Center until December 30, 2005. It's upstairs in the Photo Alliance's Mini Gallery.

Cathy is a very talented photographer and this is a rare opportunity to see her work publically displayed. If you have the opportunity, please do go out and take a look!

The Fort Smith Art Center is located at 423 N. 6th Street, four blocks north of Garrison Ave. They are open Tuesday-Saturday 9:30 AM - 4:30PM.

Website Entry Pages by Maintained Website Services

I was sitting in on a company’s marketing meeting recently. The head of IT was laying out a very pretty picture of how visitors would be experiencing the newly updated website. They had spent a lot of energy on creating a good experience for the buying public. He talked about how people would be able to find what they wanted by selecting options as they moved through the site.

The problem was that they had not made much preparation for a visitor who entered the website some place other than the home page. This was the place where the options started from and you were already selecting options when you moved deeper into their information.

So why is this a problem you ask? Wouldn’t someone find a website by entering at the home page? The answer is, not always. It has to do with how the visitor found the website and how you have laid out your information.

Successful websites are optimizing their pages for Search Engine results. In doing this, different pages are optimized for different search terms. Pages at our main website (http://www.myklin.com/) get visitors using very different search terms such as, “maintained website services, pictures on candles, Native American wall art, and fingernail decals.” There are others as well that direct people to our information.

Each specific page has information optimized towards a specific search term that the visitor is looking for. Because of this, each page has become an entry page. Many people never see our home page but they do get a chance to select which product they want on every page. Plus, I can use the higher traffic pages to encourage them to look at other goods and services.

You can argue that the self-selection process started away from our website but if you don’t allow the visitor to continue to make a full range of choices they will stay visitors and not become customers. You ignore the opportunity to cross-sell and that is under utilizing the website’s potential.

Finding new customers is the expensive part of the process. Existing customers are usually easier to make new sales to assuming you gave them a good experience the first time. To make a visitor into a customer you must engage them in a conversation and let them find what they want to see in the easiest possible way. Making it difficult for them to make choices is a good way to make them leave.

Mike Myklin is an author, a lecturer, and an e-commerce owner specializing in Internet Marketing. If you have questions about the Internet and e-commerce, you can send them to him and he will try to answer them in his column. You can also get information on-line at http://www.myklin.com/.