Fred Schebesta

Here are 12 quick Christmas online marketing review tips to increase sales online.

Have your own epiphany

Interestingly, the song The 12 days of Christmas is not actually a countdown to Christmas Day. Instead, it counts from Christmas day to the 6^th of January, “The Epiphany Day”.

This Christmas, while you are pottering around and have some time on the internet, give yourself a break in 2008 and do a little review of your online marketing with these 12 tips.

1. Review your competitor’s website – Type in the main keyword you are competing for in Google and browse through the top 10 results to see what they are doing that you might be able to do. Sometimes comparing yourself to the competition can bring about quick shortcuts you were pondering before.
2. Review your web stats – If you don’t have access to your web stats, I suggest you spend the time to get it. Check out these metrics and set a reminder for this time next year to make a comparison of:
1. Major keywords bringing you traffic.
2. Which websites are bringing you the most traffic.
3. Number of unique visitors on your website per month.
3. Test your website – Just click around it and pretend you are a customer. You are looking for:
1. Quick improvements.
2. Spelling mistakes.
3. Errors.
4. A reminder of where you are at with your site.
4. Increase trust and review your content – Remove your 2005 press release on your website and consider replacing it with some latest news. Fresh content is very persuasive as it shows that the website is alive. Actually read your homepage content and make a quick assessment.
5. Write a quick article – A good article for your website that helps visitors is invaluable. It helps in the sales process for your visitors and it is also great search engine food. If you are stuck for ideas:
1. Pickup a magazine that covers your area and write about what your take is on the industry and what your predictions are for 2008.
2. Write a “How to choose a (your profession)” – for example, “how to choose an online marketing consultant”.
6. Hunt for a new domain name – Check if the generic keyword for your industry (www.Shoes.com.au) has expired and if you can snap it up. This happened to me quite a few times with our clients. Domain names with keywords inside them are easier to rank in the search engines.
7. Build your email database – Collect together all of those rogue business cards and other email addresses you have and compile them together into a spreadsheet ready to be put into an online mailout database.
8. Write a quick enewsletter – Get together some content and prepare to send out your enewsletter in January next year. Be ready to press the send button next year, before it gets crazy again.
9. Tweak your AdWords – Kill poor performing ads and pump up ads that are performing well. If you haven’t got a campaign, get one up and running in 27 minutes at www.StartSearchMarketing.com.au
10. Rewrite your “About us” page – Include all of the new things that happened in 2007 into your “About us”. Include new clients, new products and any other big news that occurred.
11. Check your “Contact us” form – Make sure it works. Is it logical to use, does what it requires make sense to you. Fill it out. Got back to your website and think where else you could put links to your “Contact us” page to get more people to it?
12. Plan your 2008 online marketing – Jot down things that you want to do, wishlists and what you won’t do next year.

Fred Schebesta’s company Freestyle Media is an established innovative online marketing agency specialising in building search engine friendly corporate websites and running online marketing campaigns.

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Comments

Lisa Gorman writes: Fred, thanks for sharing at this time of Christmas giving! You’ve got some great tips here. I am going to take on several of the suggestions as I build my website. Happy Christmas.

Fred replies: Lisa, great to know you are on your way to online marketing success. You can usually do some christmas updates without interuptions and that just might spark your new year when people come back to work.