by Francois Muscat | Oct 4, 2009 | Business Opportunity
I spent the last 8 days in Orlando at the lovely Portofino Hotel at Universal Studios. For 4 days I networked with as many WSI Internet Consultants as possible. I really have a great job because it doesn’t feel like a job. Being an Internet Consultant (IC) with WSI enables me to travel all over the world meeting ICs from each country.
I was in Spain on the 6th September conducting 2 days of training with the Spanish ICs and it was at this session that Maribel Guiste (VP of Operations) approached me to help WSI to create some new induction training material for new franchisees. It is a real honour for me and as many of the ICs know I really love sharing my techniques on how I run my business.
So I am on the plane from Orlando to Toronto as I write this post using Windows Live Writer. It is really neat and easy to use. When I next get connected this post will be uploaded automatically.
My agenda for next week is to workshop the new training content with the WSI Executive Management team. We will be covering:
- Preparing for your WSI franchise business
- New ICs will work on some social media activities and learn how to create credible profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter
- Creating our sales presentation folder that encourages consultative selling and educating your prospect. No hard sell here
- Building your IC site on Efusion
- Hands on practical exercises to optimise your IC site for local visibility as well a setting up a Google Pay Per Click campaign
- Then we create our Content blueprint.
- This is the part that I enjoy as it lets me be creative
- We will be using the WSI Power search tool to help with brainstorming ideas
- Next we work on building our list and creating email journeys for ongoing communication with our prospects and clients
- Finally we close off by role playing a sales call
There is going to be a lot of hard work this week and I look forward to it.
I have also been invited to dinner by a number of ICs and look forward to building more friendships with,
- Liana Ling
- Shane Serra
- Jeff Green
- Peter Jasniewski
- and the top WSI performer Doug Schust. Doug is a real character and he was kind enough to let me spend a couple of days in his office a few years back when I was green at this business. Hanging out with Doug is great as he is so creative and generates a lot of excitement and energy.
I am travelling for quite a while and will look forward to getting back to South Africa on the 11 October.
I return back to Toronto on the 24 October for a week where I will be conducting the initial training with Lee Scott. Lee is a professional trainer so I will be learning a lot from him that week.
Till next time..
by Francois Muscat | Oct 3, 2009 | Business Opportunity
My dream came true on day 2 of the Excellence & Innovation conference. I finally got the opportunity to present in the USA to over 300 people in attendance.
I also won the best presentation for the conference which was a real bonus for me.
My presentation title: Leveraging Social to enhance your SEO results.
The main points:
- Why SEO is important?
- The SEO landscape – past to present
- A look at audience behaviour
- How to craft a content marketing blueprint?
- How to use social media to leverage your content?
- The 6 steps to success for your content strategy
I am a big believer in content marketing as a way to build your website into a business asset. By adding regular, relevant content to your website, you increase your online visibility.
I always refer to the Enquiro & Marketing Sherpa B2B survey 2007. Their findings of what content searchers look for are:
- White paper
- Technical reports
- Product information
- Download information
- Product comparisons
- Case studies
- Podcasts
- Webinars
- Multi media
- Knowledge base
- Easy found prices
- Onlibe chat
- General information about your product/service
- Information on your company
- The company’s approach to business
Along with generating a persona plan one can begin to develop valuable relevant content that is focused on what your target market is searching for.
When creating these “Landing Pages” you must place strategic calls to action that will help convert your visitor into a prospect.
Here are some comments from my fellow WSI ICs on the presentation;
Shane Serra “Hi Francois, you are the man! Congratulations on the best presentation. It is amazing how your clear & simple explanation was so highly received.”
Francisco Hernandez “I have to say that the presentation to the ICAC was very impressive and brings value. That is what a IM Consultant should do.”
Once again I recommend that all ICs make a concerted effort to attend the E&I conferences as they are a great event to get valuable information that is freely shared as well as the opportunity to meet and network with other ICs from all over the world.
by Francois Muscat | Sep 30, 2009 | Business Opportunity
Well now we have Michael Richards getting ready to present to us. Last night Michael & his wife Ellen walked off with no less that 3 awards. This is is an outstanding achievement for them as they only started their franchise in the last 2 years.
Michael used to work in Ronnie Adelman’s office and got mentored by the best in our network. So all of you ICs out there, have a look at the top 25 earners and find out who mentored them, you will soon see the benefit of mentorship.
Michael is a specialist in Virtual sales and for all of you out there you would do well to see if you could join Michael on a sales call.
Here are some of the tools that Michael uses:
- Wordtracker, use action words to come up with great keyword ideas
- Wordstream is a free tool that will give you great insight as well
- The Google keyword tool and plug Wordtracker keywords in here for more information
- SEO Sniper for competitor analysis
- SCOUT to improve your quality score
- SEO Recon
Then use Google analytics to create professional reports on conversion tracking and cost per acquisition.
Michael talks about his satisfied clients becoming raving fans of theirs all because of the value that he achieves and demonstrates for them.
They drove over 21,000 visitors to their clients website and with the addition of Facebook advertising they were able to target a specific demographic. They received a great testimonial from the CEO of Alameda County Fairgrounds. Check out Michael’s presentation for some great ideas on how to define what succes for the client will mean.
by Francois Muscat | Sep 30, 2009 | Business Opportunity
What a treat, WSI have arranged Jeffrey Eisenberg as our keynote speaker for today. His first presentation is on Persuasion Architecture, Adding value as a consultant.
He says that most Internet Marketing consultants overcomplicate things by focusing on technology. Rather add value by asking “when do we pop the cork?”. When do we get to say that we did a good job. This is how you can measure the success.
Good points from the presentation
- Technology can enable to accelerate our communication
- In his book “Waiting for your Cat to Bark” he recommends that you look at the angles of approach
- There are 4 patterns that people eye track on, they are prospect, spontaneous, methodical or deliberate
- 81% of people don’t trust branded websites
- With Social media, listen actively, intention matters, create a dialogue, learn the rules & participate
- Jeffrey speaks about the information scent and that Google wants to present relevant information
- Plan for sales conversion
- Eisenberg’s hierarchy of Optimization
- Optimize your calls to action with colors, use contrast
- Pay attention to size of the call to actions
- If people on a site are motivated they will get to the content that they want
- If you are competing against a site that has motivating factors then you need to get the persuasion right
Thanks Jeff for a great presentation and once again we get great value from WSI Excellence & Innovation Convention
by Francois Muscat | Sep 30, 2009 | Business Opportunity
Well last night Neal won a couple of awards, congratulations.
His presentation today covers the critical principals for Pay Per Click success. His client was spending $55,000 a week on Pay Per Click, that’s impressive.
The client said to Neal if you get me more sales they will spend more money.
Their client grew revenue from $70,000 pm to R1m per month but it took some clever strategies to be able to get the budget to be spent.
Neal’s team focussed on getting keywords that were uniquely targeted for conversion and they created landing pages that were customized to each search phrase
Their purpose was to match the “customer intent” and the “webpage purpose”.
The learning points:
- Establish metrics as they give you the credibility
- Obtain conversion data, sales, quotes etc
- Constant tweaking of the campaign & measure
- Use analytics to optimize key-phrases and reduce bounce rates
- Measure the conversion paths
- Landing page with variable ads
- Constant client communication
Great job Neal and thanks for sharing your success with us.
by Francois Muscat | Sep 30, 2009 | Business Opportunity
What a great time we had at last night’s annual WSI Excellence & Innovation awards evening.
The standard of the submissions by the nominees was really high and it was great to see a number of new ICs come through and win numerous awards.
I had 6 nominations so you can imagine how my heart was pounding every time they had the countdown. Well by the end I received two awards of which I am very proud of.
- The Web Analytics award for our Shark cage diving website, www.apexpredators.com ,a site that regularly gets in excess of one million visitors per month
- The 2nd award is one that means the most for me, An Area Representation award. I look after the South African region and we meet regularly to share information and get up to speed on training and new strategies that can help our business.
We had a great party afterwards with my Mexican & Panamanian friends, boy can these guys party.
Now I am preparing to do my presentation on Leveraging Social to enhance your SEO results. I am the last speaker for the day so I better put on a good show.
Thanks for visiting our blog, chat later.