Tag: workhorse website

In our last two posts, we talked about the Five Ingredients Workhorse Websites need to stay healthy:

1) Measurement
2) Pain
3) Offer and Opt-In
4) Automated Follow-Up and
5) Online Marketing Campaign.

Today we’re going to finish with more in-depth information on

5) the Online Marketing Campaign

The Online Marketing Campaign is what makes your website RUN.
Or more accurately, it’s what makes your target audiences find and run to your website. This is about Website Traffic.

This is a broad topic I can’t cover all here, but let me share with you a summary, and then we can learn more together later on.

The Online Marketing Campaign is what gets traffic to your website.
If you don’t have a campaign going on, it’s as if your workhorse is standing alone in its stall. Our objective is to make this baby RUN and even win recognition.

The Plan
A marketing campaign begins with a plan.
You have to identify your target audience(s).
You attract your target audiences by finding out what keywords they are putting in to “Search” to find answers to their problems.
You develop your keyword list – which are words you make sure you put in your content so that when you audience is searching for those terms, your content shows up.
You identify which social networks you are going to publish your content on – Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter, YouTube, etc
You develop a blogging schedule – how often are you going to blog, on what topics.
You develop a content schedule for new pages on the website, videos, tip sheets, press releases, etc.

You focus your content on the intersection between your expertise and your audience’s interests.
This intersection is where the magic happens.  This intersection is what brings you traffic.

Execution of the Plan
You create your website using the most popular keywords as the Titles of your Content pages and website structure.
You write or acquire your content – pages, blogs, images, tip sheets, videos, etc.
You release your content or references to it in timed sequence across the various social media you have chosen.  Daily, weekly, every other week, monthly, etc.

(For many of our projects we post social media once a day, blogs once a week, videos every two weeks, press releases every 1-2 months.
For our examples check out:  https://adhdinadults.com, https://newbrainnutrition.com, https://medicalwritingnetwork.com.)

These tasks are like feeding your horse, grooming your horse, riding your horse, letting it out for a run.
It’s a regular schedule of caring about your audience – inviting them to come to your website, getting them to rely on your publishing schedule.

You measure your traffic and visitor behavior. (Google Analytics is fantastic for this.)
How many visitors are you getting?
How long do they stay on the website?
What pages are they visiting?
What keywords are drawing them?
How many (what %) are opting in for your free offers?

And periodically, perhaps quarterly, or at the half year, you evaluate your performance, and make adjustments to your keywords, content, pages, social media focus.
This is an iterative process.
It’s a process that involves perseverance and patience.
You are motivated by a) the quality of your content, and b) how people are attracted to and consuming it.
It’s like fishing….. your aim is to throw your line into a large lake with the right bait, so that fish bite on your line among all the others.

This process is never a failure.  It’s an effort from which you learn and improve, or a pattern of success you can enjoy for a long period of time.

We’re here to help.  Let us know how.

Feedback

Our website is for training…. to help YOU do what we know and what we’ve learned.
We are expert at this entire process.  If you need a consult, or Done-For-You solutions, get in touch.
Any questions or comments, please email us. We are here to help!

medicalwritingtraining@gmail.com

In our last post, we talked about the Five Ingredients Workhorse Websites need to stay healthy:

1) Measurement
2) Pain
3) Offer and Opt-In
4) Automated Follow-Up and
5) Online Marketing Campaign.

The first three ingredients, measurement, offer and opt-in, and automated follow-up, are easier for website owners because they are more mechanical. Do them and they are done, for the most part.

The two ingredients that give website owners, medical writers, and medical writing businesses the most trouble in the care and feeding of Workhorse Websites are:

4) Pain and
5) the Online Marketing Campaign

These two admittedly take more work, time, expertise, and consistency. They are not what you would call “Set and Forget,” which we know is what most website owners would prefer to do, so they can focus on their medical writing specialties.

And we don’t blame them. Your business is your specialty that is worthy of focus.

In raising a Workhorse Website, sometimes it takes a village.

4) PAIN

You’ll recall that “Pain” on your Workhorse Website is your written, audio, and video response to the market segment you are trying to attract.

You have to demonstrate that you understand the Pain of your audience, that you can express it for them so they say “Yeah! You get it.” Further, your visitors need to know that you have a solution to their Pain. That you can take them out of their Pain and take them to their Pleasure. To their new life without the Pain.

You know the example of the person who walks into the hardware store to buy a drill. That person doesn’t really want a drill. They want a hole.

If you as the website owner tout the features of all your drills, you’re not addressing the problem. Focus rather on the types of holes and widths of holes the client needs, and then show him or her the drill that will work.

Most writer websites we see focus on the drill… what
you do, or what technology you have, or what training or expertise you have.

Rarely on writer websites do we see what your client really wants, which is relief from his or her problem. Focus on the problem and focus on the relief. The before and the after.

So, where do you find expression of this pain and relief so you can use it on your website?

Try this for yourself:

Go to Google.
Type in the problem people have that you address.
You’ll see listings. Read a few and take notes.
In the left column, under Everything, click More.
You’ll see Blogs, Discussions, Real time.
Click, read, take notes.
This is Google telling you what the world is talking about…. today. It may be different tomorrow, so you have to keep going back to stay current.

You now have access to the Pain.

This is what you need to be talking about, showing your understanding for, offering solutions for, on your website, in your blog, in articles, on Twitter, on Facebook, on YouTube, etc.

The care and feeding of your Workhorse Website needs this updated ingredient of your being current on what everyone’s talking about, and lending your voice to the discussion.

In our next email, we’ll talk about your Online Marketing Campaign, which is another topic about care and feeding of your Workhorse Website.

Feedback

Any questions or comments, please email us. We are here to help!

medicalwritingtraining@gmail.com

Lots of medical writers we know spend good money on creating nice looking websites and then expect the poor things to grow and bring in new business all by themselves.

Your website is your baby.

You conceived it. You created it. Once it’s born, you have to
nurture it, exercise it, feed it,
and measure how it’s doing, so it can grow and work for you.

Here are five ingredients you must feed your website to make
it a workhorse for you and keep it that way:

1. Measurement.
All parents are encouraged to take their kids to well baby clinics and pediatric check-ups on a regular basis through the teenage years to assure that growth is happening within normal ranges and to insure against health problems. Your Workhorse Website is no different. Its growth and maturity need to be measured so you know how it’s doing. How many visitors it gets. How many pages are viewed. How many minutes people spend. Where visitors are coming from. What is bringing them there. How many sign up for something. Does your website have an analytics tool embedded in its code, that gives you this information? Google Analytics is no cost, excellent, and popular. If you have analytics, are you looking at what the data is telling you? If you have analytics, what are you doing to improve your results? Do you care about your Workhorse Website?

2. Pain.
Sounds funny doesn’t it. Feed your website pain? What I mean is, you need to understand the pain your website visitor is feeling, what problem they need to solve, what’s keeping them awake at night. You need to express that pain on your website, show you understand it, so your visitor “gets” that you know what they are thinking about and have come to the right place. People are motivated to solve their most pressing problems. If your website can take them from their pain to the vision of relief, escape, an improved life, pleasure, they are motivated to engage with you. Are you demonstrating on your website that you know about peoples’ pain?

3. Offer an Opt-in.
OK. You have them right where they need to be. What do they do next? Do you want them to call? Do you want them to give you their email address? What one thing do you want them to do? Your website is not working for you if a visitor doesn’t do something. Pick that one thing you want them to do and incent them to do it. Where do you put that Opt-In and Offer? Top right, home page. First thing, right away. Capture their interest. Capture their information. Then you can build relationship. Do you have an easy, obvious, enticing way for people to opt-in?

4. Automated Follow-up.
For every person who opts in, you need to follow up immediately. Whether it’s 2am, or Saturday night, or early Monday morning. They’ve just opted in. Whatcha gonna do? You need automation. Automation is like the Navy Seal team. First time, every time. It just happens, and most importantly, without you doing a thing. No follow up failure. No missed opportunity. There are numerous programs on the market. I have my favorites. Web 2.0 is about multi-media and about automation. Automate yourself. Have you automated your follow-up, so that you leverage website activity?

5. Online Marketing Campaign.
Whenever I ask a client if they have an online marketing campaign, they frequently say, “Oh yeah, we do SEO (search engine optimization.) Does your website need to be search engine optimized with the right keywords? Yes, but I’m talking about much more. I’m talking about a consistent, steady stream of activity all over the web (blog, tweet, Facebook, video, articles) all of which point back to your website to create traffic. Put up a website on the internet. What do you have? A website on the internet. “Vox clamantis in deserto.” A voice crying in the wilderness. Your Workhorse Website needs to be fed with traffic driven to it by other posts and multi-media Web 2.0 properties you create. Are you feeding your website with traffic?

So, how many of these five ingredients do you feed to your Workhorse Website?

1. Measurement

2. Pain

3. Offer and Opt-In

4. Automated Follow-Up

5. Online Marketing Campaign

In Part 2, we’ll share with you where and why most website owners fail in feeding these five ingredients to their websites, and then wonder why they don’t have healthy Workhorse Websites.