8 things that should improve your email marketing this year

December 30, 2007 | Leave a Comment

By Chris Auman

I believe in the power of permission marketing if it’s used properly. That should include properly setting up an double opt-in system, to effectively writing content that actually drives traffic. Part of our mission here at Sanctuary Media Group is to help you learn how to use email and permission marketing effectively and I’d like to start off the year by offering up 10 suggestions on how to improve your results. This is not a “best of” list or the final word on best practices, but a list of suggestions to jump-start your campaigns.

1) Improve your Opt-Ins - Converting Click to customers.

Before you focus on any other issue, you need to build a decent list of subscribers with the goal of converting those subscribers into customers. How you do this is the big question and one that we’ll spend a lot of time on in the future. But right out of the gates, you need to focus your efforts on creative ways to get highly qualified and targeted subscribers to sign-up - that have actually granted permission to receive your emails. The words “highly qualified” and “targeted” are key here because the last thing you want is a herd of freebie hunters scamming you out of your incentives - or worse - populating the list with addresses that you think are potential targets, just to find out that they could car less about your message or worse, they consider your efforts spam because you manually added their address to the list without their permission. Read more


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New website and member area for AABOR.com

December 6, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Our commitment to our long time client The Akron Area Board of Realtors continues. We’ve completed a redesign of their website and member’s area. The new website has been built from the ground up to bring their web presence up to date and further grow the participation in their organization. We’re very proud of the completed project and we hope to continue working with AABOR for many more years to come. View the new website Read more


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SMG launches new website and custom e-commerce for Rino’s Woodworking

October 29, 2007 | Comments Off

rinos-small.jpg
After a lot of design, programming and testing, Rino’s Custom Woodworking has officially launched their new site featuring a custom e-commerce system by Sanctuary Media Group. We’ll also be heading up their online marketing efforts for the new website. If you’re ever in need of custom woodworking look no further than Rino’s Woodworking Shop in Willoughby Ohio. Click here to view an enlarged version of this image | Click here to visit their site


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SMG designs site for Ohio.com

August 2, 2007 | Leave a Comment

ohiocom.jpg

After a few months of design, programming and testing, Ohio.com has officially launched their new site featuring a custom face lift by Sanctuary Media Group.


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Nearly half of small businesses do not have a web site yet

April 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Nearly 25 million U.S. small businesses, 46 percent do not have a Web site, according to the Kelsey Group, a research firm in Princeton, N.J.

But Web sites are not only powerful tools for e-commerce, they also can boost almost any business, as consumers look into products they might buy.

“When customers are doing research for purchases, they are going to the Web,” said Jed Alpert, vice president of marketing for WebCollage, a provider of online media technology based in New York City. “Sales that happen in the store are influenced by online research.

Read more here to learn ten ways a web site can help you grow your business online and off.


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Advice on Landing Pages

March 5, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Online advertising can be a messy business. It’s very different than traditional advertising in that the traditional rules don’t always apply. For example, when running a traditional newspaper ad you simply decide how much space you need to catch attention and create some interest in your product or service. Then you sit back and wait for the phone to ring. If the ad doesn’t do it’s job, your phone won’t ring and that’ll be the end of it.

With online advertising there are many ways to measure and improve your campaigns but for now I want to deal with one major difference - the landing page.

A landing page is essentially where a potential customer comes once your online ad does it’s job. What’s the job of an online ad? It can be branding but mostly it’s sole purpose is to get CLICKS! With online advertising, your ad doesn’t have to give them every bit of information to close the sale, it just needs to peak their interest enough so they click on the ad and seek more information. This is where the landing page and the real selling comes in.

We’ll talk more about this in the future but let’s look first at the purpose of an online ad vs. the purpose
of the landing page. A properly designed landing page can do much more than any
print ad or commercial ever could and the bonus is that your landing page is free and unlimited space to sell.

The purpose of the online ad:

  1. Capture attention
  2. Compel the user to click on the hyperlink - a call to action
  3. The ad should NOT be designed to close the sale
  4. The ad should open a dialogue with an interested prospect
  5. The ad should stress the importance of purchasing

The purpose of the landing page:

  1. Should act as a bridge between the ad and the sale.
  2. The landing page should expand on the reasons and importance of the offer
  3. The landing page could show examples where the ad does not have room.
  4. The landing page should be suited to the particular ad that directs customers to it
  5. The landing page should carry over the theme of the ad
  6. Simplify your pages. Keep the goal of the landing page simple. Is it a lead, sale, subscription, etc.

Things to focus on with the landing page:

  1. Enhancing desire - build on the offers direct benefit.
  2. Creating a purchasing rationale - the facts and the extras
  3. Building trust - brand names, secure server, location, contact information,
  4. list trusted organizations like the BBB, TrustE, etc., advertise guarantees
  5. and return policies, show the links or numbers for support
  6. Tell your story and use testimonials
  7. Anticipate questions and concerns and address them.
  8. Present a clear call to action and a way to make the purchase

Posted by chris.auman | Filed Under Blog : 

The beauty that is Chipotle

February 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment

If you haven’t tried Chipotle yet, what are you waiting for? Let it be said that I LOVE Chipotle. Not just their food (oh the Guacamole!) but I admire their values and their core business plan. As a business owner I aspire to run my business as they do and hopefully just as successfully.

For example, Chipotle bills their menu as “Fast Food with Integrity”. This means that they’re truly trying to give you the best tasting, most healthy food possible and they’re completely open about how it’s made and that you’re going to pay a little more to get it. I think this approach is just great because there’s a massive market of people out there that want great food and are willing to pay a little more to get it.

Chipotle is also very focused in what they do which is a core business goal of mine and should be for you too. It’s very hard to be everything to everyone. In the words of founder Steve Ells he states that “It’s important to keep the menu focused, because if you just do a few things, you can ensure that you do them better than anybody else.” These are great words to post in your office as a reminder. Do what you do and do it better than anyone else. The minute you start branching out is most likely the moment you’ll start to lose momentum as a company.

At Sanctuary we follow the same model. We don’t sell Burritos and Guac, but we do sell high quality services. As our website says “We build and promote websites”. Our menu is focused and we make the best tasting (I mean) functioning web sites and online marketing services possible for a great price. We’re not the cheapest bunch of geeks in the industry but it’s a promise that we’ll give you high quality work for your money.

Ells continues “Not that I want everybody to eat at Chipotle every day, but great food is something that everybody should have access to. And people should demand this from every place they eat. I hope there is going to be some tipping point when we all say, “My God, why are we putting up with this fast food?”

From here on out Sanctuary will have a mission of providing “Online Marketing With Integrity” and I’m hoping that everyone will consider giving up their current fast food diet and switching to a more “whole” service.

Thanks for listening. For more reading, click to learn more about the business of Chipotle.


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New (and old) ideas for driving targeted traffic to your local site

January 28, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Getting real traffic to your site these days is a never ending battle that most people think is beyond their reach if they don’t spend thousands of dollars on search engine optimization or further fill the pot of gold that Google is building with their pay-per-click Adsense program. Obviously these techniques are a cornerstone of your online marketing program. But there are many more affordable techniques that can help you drive traffic and all it takes is a little elbow grease and maybe a few extra bucks.

I’m not talking about just any traffic though. What we want is LOCAL TARGETED WEBSITE TRAFFIC that drives real clients and customers to your website and your local business. In the ol’ days any link to your site was a good link and traffic was traffic. We all thought that it would reward us somehow. What we want today is high quality targeted traffic that generates results. What those results are depends on the site but regardless, the follow techniques will surely help any site owner affordably jumpstart their traffic and reap real results without spending thousands of dollars. The 10 items listed here are obviously not the only techniques, just some new (and different) ideas to add to your arsenal. Read more


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16 ways to improve your email marketing this year

January 25, 2007 | Leave a Comment

By: Chris Auman
Editor: Dr. Soumitro Das

I believe in the power of email marketing software if it’s used properly. That should include everything from properly setting up a double opt-in system, to effectively writing content that actually drives website traffic. Part of the mission of my web development and marketing company here in Ohio is to provide a vehicle for effective email marketing and to show how to use email marketing effectively. I’d like to start off the year by offering sixteen suggestions on how to improve your results. This is not a “best of” list or the final word on email marketing best practices, but a list of suggestions to jump-start your campaigns.

1) Improve your Opt-Ins - Converting clicks to customers.

Before you focus on any other issue, you need to build a decent list of subscribers. The idea being to eventually convert those subscribers into customers. So, what to do?

Promote your email newsletter in all your print materials and other advertising venues.

Send out press releases about relevant aspects of your product or service and then encourage people to sign-up.

Work hard to provide effective sales copy. Volumes have been written on the art of persuasion - use them and model your message off the masters! (This is a great place to start reading)

Provide incentives for signing up, but don’t make the offer too big or extravagant. It needs to appeal to your target audience, not freebie-hunters who have no interest in your services.

Read more


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Paid vs. organic statistics

January 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment

I found it kinda interesting the other day when I stumbled over some stats regarding which area of the search engine search results drive the most traffic. If I remember right, it was 70% organic vs. 30% paid. This made sense to me because my clicking habits are similar. I look at the organic search results first by default and if I don’t see what I want right away I’ll scan the paid or “sponsored listings”. Read more


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