We are officially launching our Local Accelerator program to the Colorado public. Designed to accelerate online lead generation and sales for Colorado small businesses, this program promises to offer a complete Internet marketing makeover to one lucky local business every month!

The program combines fulfillment services with access to Kutenda’s Internet marketing tool-set and training to get your company successfully marketing online. We’ll be choosing one lucky company every month … Selected companies will receive over $9,000 in services at no cost and 3 months of free Kutenda access.

If you’re based in CO, submit your company here: http://kutenda.com/accelerator.html

According to new projections from Outsell, Inc., digital/online marketing will overtake print in 2010. Companies are projected to spend $119.6 billion on online and digital strategies. For small businesses, marketing online is a known challenge due to the intense learning curve, budgetary constrictions and the lack of available software. Kutenda has set out to change that with it’s Internet marketing tool-set for small businesses and the Local Accelerator program is making the extra leap locally by offering tools, services and training for free.

The Local Accelerator program includes all of the foundations for a comprehensive Internet marketing strategy that will drive leads and sales. We begin by creating a website or optimizing your existing website for lead generation and search engine rankings. Companies walk away with a list of campaigns, content and the tools, training and support to pick up where Kutenda’s fulfillment process ends.

Specifics include:

• Promotional landing pages with automated response emails
• A prospect-focused email marketing campaign designed to convert
• Customizable email templates
• A search advertising pay-per-click campaign
• Live local search listing
• Optimized keyword list for specific products / services
• A knowledge base of Internet marketing best practices

In order to qualify, companies must be based in Colorado. We’re accepting submissions at http://kutenda.com/accelerator.html via a short form. Each monthly winner will be contacted directly by Kutenda’s director of training, Alex Ross. We are allowing companies to resubmit monthly for another chance to win.

Submit your business today!

Suggestions for increasing your chances of being chosen:

1) cross your fingers

2) grab your rabbit-foot key chain

3)  send your intern on a hunt for the perfect four leaf clover

4) maybe eat a bowl of Lucky Charms… whatever it takes…

GOOD LUCK!

We talk a lot about web sites here at Kutenda, but perhaps we don’t spend enough time describing what a good web site can actually do for your business. It’s pretty simple:

A good web site turns traffic into money.

How? A good web site converts traffic into revenue by issuing compelling calls to action, capturing visitor information and generating leads — leads you can nurture and ultimately convert into new customers (revenue).

That’s the big picture. Let’s focus on the call to action, which is the piece that sets the whole process in motion.

In general, your calls to action will involve some give and take with your site visitors. You offer something in exchange for information (name, email address, phone number, etc). Your site visitors get something of value and give you permission to market your products and services — they opt in to a relationship with your business.

This may sound pretty abstract, so here are some examples of calls to action (requiring varying levels of commitment from visitors) that you’ll find on many commerce-driven web sites.

• Subscribe to Our E-Newsletter
• Get a Free Quote / Consultation
• Buy Now / Sign Up Today
• Talk to a Sales Representative
• Download a Free White Paper / Coupon
• Get More Information

The point is to engage, to spur passive browsers to take another step, however small, into your sales funnel. Some will be ready to take the plunge and fill out the ‘Buy Now’ form, others will be more comfortable starting with the ‘Subscribe to Our Newsletter’ form. The key is to give them the opportunity to engage.

There are a few ways to make your calls to action more effective.

1. Write compelling CTAs that appeal to visitors’ self-interest
2. Position your CTAs in high-profile areas of your web site
3. Provide CTAs that ask for varying levels of commitment
4. Make it easy for visitors to take action with web forms

You don’t necessarily need forms on your web site — you could provide a phone number or simply list your email address, and those should always be visible — but forms typically deliver better results because they make things easy and are nonthreatening to prospects, many of whom aren’t ready to place a call or initiate a one-on-one email conversation.

Your web site is also where you can employ some subtler forms of marketing, like filling your pages with high-quality content that educates visitors and positions your business as an authority. Why spend the time to do this? Because the richer and more helpful your content is, the more authority you’ll accrue, and more authority you accrue, the more persuasive your calls to action will be!

To sum up, here are two bedrock principles for building a web site that turns traffic into money:

1. Establish authority with high-value content. Authority translates into greater persuasiveness, which will come in handy later in the sales cycle. Plus, better content typically draws inbound links, which can give your site an SEO boost. (Read more about SEO here.)

2. Issue engaging, value-driven calls to action and make it easy for visitors to respond with web forms. This will bring in more leads and give you more opportunities to generate new business — and new revenue.

There’s nothing worse than staring at a blank page when you’ve got web site content to write.

It happens to everyone: You design your site and even pick some keywords to use, but that still only gets you so far. Someone still has to do the writing. So where do you start?

For most companies, what ends up on the site is content that’s written for the company CEO, not necessarily the key information that potential prospects or customers are looking for. To get that internally focused “It’s all about me!” out of your system, I suggest you write your company pages first.

Write company-oriented pages first

What are the company pages? Things like About Us, Contact, and other general information pages that orient people about who you are. This isn’t the primary reason they are coming to your site, which is why, many times, you’ll notice that section is buried in the footer (you can see its that way on the Kutenda site for the same reason).

The basic content that you want on an About Us page or section (depending how big your company is)

• How was your company founded? Is there a good story behind your company’s founding? Tell it here, it gives you personality.
• Who are the principals? Is a personal touch important in your business? If so, it makes sense to provide pictures and biographies of key staff.
• What is your vision and or mission? Don’t get too verbose about it, but if you have a vision of what you are trying to achieve, add a few sentences to let people know about it.
• What do you do? Just in case they haven’t figured that out elsewhere on your site, it’s a good idea to give a brief description of what your company does.

The About Us section is great because it helps you unload the standard way that companies write without it interfering with your overall message and goals for your web site. Once you’re done talking about yourself,  it’s time to speak directly to your potential customer.

Figure out why your prospect cares

Before you start writing, think for a bit. Why should your potential customer care about you, your web site, your company? This isn’t as hard as it seems. You could even ask some of your existing customers to find out why they buy from you and what it does for them. This really works. Your customers are going to say what other people like them need to hear. Go and call your best customers to find out what you really do for them.

• If you sell to businesses, ask yourself: What business problem or problems does my company solve?
• If you sell to individuals, ask yourself: How does what we sell make an individual happier, skinnier, smarter, richer, etc?

This may seem like a cheesy thought process, but the reality is these are the benefits of what you do, and connecting with people about what they want to get out of your product or service—as opposed telling them about the bells and whistles—is the way to draw them in to read more.

Here are a couple examples to give you an idea of what I mean:

1. You are a picture-framer. You frame pictures for people, and maybe you also let people come to your shop and do it themselves. Why does your prospect care? Maybe it’s because you have such a good eye for framing you can enhance any image, so people trust you with their most treasured photographs. OR, maybe for the DIY crowd, you offer on-the-spot consults so that every picture that leaves your store is framed right.

You could have talked about the kinds of frames and mattes you offer, your price range for frames and finishes, but that wouldn’t give your site visitors a good understanding about why they ought to come to you. The real benefit you provide? You make their artwork more beautiful.

2. You provide IT services to small businesses. There are plenty of companies and independent contractors you compete against and that provide similar or identical services. To stand out, it has to be on service and providing peace of mind. You could talk about how your company guarantees a certain level of response in a crisis or emergency. You could talk about your expertise in solving various computer and network-related business problems. Or you could address a specific business problem (like potential data loss), explain the risks and describe how your services mitigate those risks.

You could have talked about the pieces and parts you used to provide these services, but ultimately, your prospects don’t care HOW you are going to solve their business problem. They just want to be reassured that you can. The key to good content for a web site is always keep in mind what the customer wants or needs to hear to believe you can help solve a business or personal issue for them.

There’s a fine line between creative web design and effective web design when marketing your company online. While graphic designers work to appeal to the taste of the site’s viewers, it takes a closer look into your target demographic’s psyche to design a web site that’s effective in collecting leads and converting customers.

It’s clear that your web site layout has much to do with the outcome of a viewer’s visit, but psychologists suggest color impression can account for up to 60 percent of the acceptance or rejection of a product or service. By choosing the right colors for key elements of your web site, you can trigger the right emotions and reactions from viewers—and collect more leads in the process.

Following your implementation of web site best practices, its important to test color variations among other things such as eye-tracking, link placement, sizing and information architecture against your audience. Among these factors, your color choices could mean the difference between a sale and lost customer.

In terms of the main messaging on your site, nothing is simpler than black text on a white background. While you may want to brand your web site heavily with your company colors, you must prioritize! After all, you’ve taken the time to script all that genius web copy – so don’t muddle the message in a mess of competing colors. Keep the contrast between your background colors and font colors strong and forget variety: in terms of web copy design, simplicity is key. Market your service and/or product effectively by providing a basic canvas that allows your readers to focus on your meticulously crafted marketing message.

Not the simple type? Want to get a little flashy and bring in some bright colors? Your “call to action” button is the place to spice things up. Solid bright colors will attract your viewers’ attention and raise your chances of conversion. Without adding any headache-causing voice recordings, the right color choice can have your “call to action” buttons screaming “CONVERT HERE!” in no time.

And for good measure, make sure the details of your color branding are reflected on ALL of the pages within your site. This continuity helps build trust with your viewers and keeps your message clear in their subconscious minds.

So what have we learned? Keep the presentation of your messaging clear, your conversion points LOUD, and don’t forget to rinse and repeat on every page you create!

Summary: Most small business web sites violate a basic tenet of online marketing: Make your calls to action direct, prominent and plentiful.

Action. It’s what separates window shoppers from paying customers. So it’s strange that many small business web sites don’t do anything to spur the conversion from passive visitor to active customer.

Issuing a call to action, or CTA, does not make you a pushy salesperson. In fact, clear CTAs help visitors.

“What you have to remember is that people don’t go to the web to window shop,” observes copywriter Demian Farnworth. “They go there to drive 60 miles per hour—and look at billboards.”

If your site lacks clear CTAs, you force visitors to hit the breaks, something they’re loath to do. (In fact, most refuse to slow down, choosing to accelerate—away—instead.)

Visitors should know exactly what to do on your web site and why. Marketer Jack Abbott writes:

Self-interest is the motivating lubricant that drives most human behavior. Responding to a CTA is no exception… Don’t just tell your prospect what to do. Tell her what’s in it for her when she does it. This isn’t the time for guessing games or cleverness. Define the benefit or set the expectation right there in the CTA in plain, unvarnished English.

The noteworthy absence of CTAs in small business web sites indicates an outdated view of a web site’s purpose. In the early days of the Internet, just having a web site was an accomplishment in itself. As for the actual site, expectations were low. It was seen as nothing more than a digital business card or brochure.

Times have changed. The technology needed to create dynamic, interactive web sites is readily available, yet many small business web sites have retained their static nature.

Ironically, many small-business owners discount the value of their sites because they haven’t generated much revenue. They should consider this maxim from noted web designer Joshua Porter:

“The behavior you’re seeing is the behavior you’ve designed for.”

File under: Small business online marketing > Web site development > Design

Summary: Since people hate to read online, a web site’s photos and graphics carry the burden of establishing credibility and conveying the right message. So, it pays to make sure the imagery on your small business site supports your online marketing goals.

Online Marketing Brain Food:
5 Rules for Using Images in Your Small Business Web Site

1. No unicorns: Relevance and proper tone are essential
Example: Bob sells life and long-term care insurance, and he wants to add some compelling imagery to his agency’s homepage. His young nephew, an aspiring graphic designer, suggests that he use some cool photos of twenty-something hipsters.

Bad idea, right? Yup. It’s misguided because twenty-something hipsters have about as much relevance to Bob’s product and target market as … unicorns. Not only will such images cause confusion among his desired audience, they may cause frustration. In any online marketing endeavor, relevance is key.

2. No mug shots or mystery meat: Know when to call the pros
Top real estate agencies clearly understand the value of professional photography. Most of their agents and brokers have professionally snapped headshots on their personal sites and marketing materials. It’s easy to see the impact these have when you see amateur mug shots—they look pretty bad in comparison, don’t they?

Here’s another example of when to call the pros: If you’re a restaurateur, caterer or pastry chef, persuasive images are essential. Photos will either cause cravings or nausea among prospects. Similarly, a landscape architect or interior designer will want imagery that shows their work in the best possible light.

3. No funhouse images: Don’t distort photos
The biggest indication of a hack small business site—and as far as prospects can tell, a hack small business—is one that’s littered with distorted photos that evoke funhouse mirror reflections.

Distorted and/or blurry photos tell the viewer, ‘I have no idea what I’m doing,’ or worse, ‘I don’t care about the details.’ No small business owner—regardless of the industry—wants to send that message!

4. Consider the blind (people and spiders): Optimizing for search
It’s a common misunderstanding that search engine spiders can’t see pictures. They can—but you have to paint a picture with words. That’s where ‘Alt text’ comes into play. Meant to aid blind Internet users, Alt text describes image content (but doesn’t show up on the page). Search engines read this text too, so it’s an online marketing best practice to give short but precise descriptions of your graphics and photos, and when logical, include target keywords that consumers may use when searching for your products and services.

5. Go easy on the gloss: Avoid overly slick images
Jakob Nielsen has been observing online user habits and crunching numbers since the dawn of the Internet. Every online marketing expert listens to his rules because they’re backed by empirical research. In his article “Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design,” he advises webmasters to avoid displaying “anything that looks like an advertisement.” Why? Because people have developed quite a knack for tuning out ads.

Also, it all goes back to rule number one regarding relevance and tone. In some industries, gloss sells. In others, gloss seems out of place and raises red flags among consumers.

Conclusion
As a small business, your site is the keystone of your online marketing efforts. By taking a little time and money to find the right imagery, you’ll establish more credibility and trust among visitors—setting you up to close more sales. (Because that’s what this online marketing business is all about.)

File under: Small business online marketing > Web site development > Design

About a month ago, my wife and I welcomed our fourth child into the world and the team at Kutenda presented us with a gift certificate to a restaurant near my house. Needless to say, our hands were full, so ordering in seemed like the perfect option.

It was a surprise to me when I did a Google search and couldn’t find a web site for the place. This was a bit frustrating, as it’s tough to order for delivery when you don’t know what is on the menu. Fortunately, the place was only a 6-minute drive, so I went there to find out.

I entered the restaurant and asked for a takeout menu. The hostess said their takeout menus were located in the Yellow Pages. Wow.

Since it was a small business, I asked if the owner was around and she introduced me. We had a nice chat about her place and then I asked why she didn’t have a web site. She told me that she didn’t need one because everyone already knows about their small business or could find them in the Yellow Pages. I told her that I don’t keep a phone book because it takes up too much space and showed her how I could find it all on my iPhone. Again, she said that people just call and place an order. Confused, I said, “but I don’t know what’s on your menu.” We ended the conversation back at the Yellow Pages.

It was clear she was marooned on Phone Book Island. (Well, it was more of a self-imposed exile.)

This experience showed me how vital it is that small local businesses understand changes in consumer behavior and the importance of having a web presence. To cling to the phone book is to isolate your business on an island with a rapidly declining population. The phone book now trails the Internet as the most popular source for local business information, and the proliferation of smart phones will add to the web’s lead.

Just creating a profile on Google Local Search would dramatically improve this restaurant’s chances of being found. The amount of revenue being lost by this small-business owner could be substantial.

As with many small proprietors, she probably does not know where to start with online marketing. According to a 2009 Opus/AllBusiness.com survey, a plurality of small businesses, 25 percent, chose “confusion” as the reason they do not market themselves online. “Lack of budget” was close behind at 24 percent.

Though web marketing may seem daunting and expensive, there are three easy and affordable steps businesses can take to get started:

1. Create a web site
2. Submit to Google Local Search
3. Build an email list

Just starting with these three steps—none of which is harder than setting up a free email account—would allow a small business to be found online. If this restaurant had a web site with a menu, more people would be able to order for delivery and decide if it’s a place they want to go to eat.

What did we think of the food? It was excellent. I would send you a link, but you’ll have to paddle out to Phone Book Island to have a look at the menu …