Webinars - What You Need to Know

For anyone who does Webinars or is thinking about doing them here is some great information from Marketing Sherpa. If you haven't discovered them yet, check out their website...and do it often. They post a huge amount of information for FREE for a short period of time and then it goes into the archives that can only be accessed by members. And membership is very reasonable and worth it for serious marketers. Here's a chart that's from the archives on why webinar attendees bail...(with their full permission to distribute)

And this week they have a chart for creating a Webinar Timeline: http://bit.ly/24udQD It will be on their site for free until September 10th along with a variety of other information about Webinars, like -

How Email Series + Personalized Landing Page Lifted Webinar's ROI by 2000%

So if you're into marketing, click here and check out Marketing Sherpa's website.

There is so much great information available for free if you do a little searching. My information-aholic nature loves finding this stuff and putting it out there for everyone.

Keep Tabs on Your Company Names

Now that the internet is the new business marketplace, check to make certain that your company name or slogans are not being used by someone else, even if your business isn’t a web-based business. We have a web page, but our business mainly comes in via the telephone. Because of comments and ideas I got through the forums, I bought some new domain names and have them automatically get directed to our main website…very cool. In doing this I found that our full company name (minus the Inc.) has been being used since 2000 and they’ve got paid sponsors on the landing page. Way back when, we selected a domain name that was shorter and easier to type rather than our full company name. Never thought to buy the full name as protection. So now we probably have a legal issue to have to deal with.

I also found that someone just bought a domain name that is our website name, but with an “e-” prefix. You can’t think of everything, but somebody else just might come up with something that trades on your good name. I signed up with Network Solutions to have a portion of our company name (kind of a keyword) watched and I’m e-mailed when there is any activity using that keyword. Also lets me know if any domain names have become available with my keyword in them. Found two great ones that I scooped up right away.

It still may involve a lawyer, but at least you can address an issue sooner rather than later. The internet has lots of benefits, but it can also create lots of issues…keep a vigilent watch!

An Early Morning Networking Meeting

This morning I was up at 5:00 a.m. in order to go to a networking breakfast at the invitation of a new friend. Mind you, I am not a morning person!

I have never been an outgoing, social, networking type of person, but with my two newest businesses the personal interaction is most likely necessary, at least to get them kick-started. I've tried using AdWords and Facebook Visa ads to test the water and get familiar with these two ways of getting traffic, but haven't been overly impressed with the results for anything except my blog.

One reason may be because I'm sending people to "mirror" sites designed by others that frankly I find confusing and overwhelming myself. So no wonder I've gotten lousy CTR's. But my question is that if I create a landing page that I design myself they still need to go to the other sites in order to take action. Is this going to add a layer that will help, i.e., condense what they need to know before sending them to the link or just frustrate them that they didn't get directly to the information they thought they were being directed to?

Any comments, ideas, experience from people out there?