Now that every customer has a network of hundreds of friends on Facebook they can immediately promote your business earning a referral reward for themselves, a discount for their friend, and more paying customers for your business. 

Here is a referral program we put into place that generated over 900 paying customers per month at an average profit of $30 each or roughly an extra $27,000 monthly of income for the company.

How do you get 16,444 Google Search Network Adwords Clicks for $4,776 dollars?  Try new things when the price is right, usually when they are first coming out before everyone piles on.  

I created a web based groupware platform in 2001 and operated it until 2009.  Trying out Google Adwords early in 2003, I was able to get the best prices.  At the time I wasn't really aware of the bargain click prices, I just wanted to advertise my web collaboration product.

I was determined to bootstrap this product and do everything myself from programming, sales, to marketing.  I spent about $8 a day on Google Ads, I entered into some web 2.0 contests, and had good word of mouth.  This equaled into about 50,000 organizations signing up but I just kept programming and programming... stuffing more features into the system rather then really defining a good workflow and how to use the system beyond collaboration.  One large missing feature is that while you could add a file, forum, or calendar to a sharing group you had to go to each module to see that modules data.  

I have recently started to re-work the interface, workflow, and inter-connectiveness of the data across modules.  Once finished with the programming I will seek out funding for marketing and sales.

Let’s say that your site gets 5000 visits/month, and 20% of those people touch the page you want to test (e.g. the home page). So that’s 1000 visits/month, or 33 visits/day. If the conversion rate on the page is 2% and you are looking for/hoping for an increase to 2.5%, i.e. a 25% increase in your conversion rate, you can run four combinations and complete your test in a month. Four combinations can be 2×2 or 1×4. Or, in real-people-speak, that would be two elements, like a headline and a photo, with a control and variation that you want to test for each of them. Or that could be one element, like a piece of copy, with a control and three variations you are testing. Either way, it is four combinations.

And how about A/B testing? One of my colleagues pointed out to me that an A/B test, early in the process, might be a lot more valuable than a whole bunch of multivariate combinations, especially when you can look at a site and say, “Oh my, how awful. We really think we know how to fix this.”

And not all optimization is about MVT or A/B..N. How about user testing? I really feel that user testing never gets enough press. It isn’t exciting like MVT, but I learn so much from it. When I present it to the customer, s/he often says, “Oh right, usability,” but the truth is, we learn things about the offer (“I would never spend that much money,”), we learn about trust, (“Well, ok, it’s your credit card,” they say to me, “But I would never give that site my card. I just don’t trust them.”) We learn that customers can’t even understand what the site does.

And now that you know that you can use the Google Website Optimizer for even the smallest of sites.

A few months ago I added a "coupon code" referral system that makes every customer an affiliate.  When the customer finishes the online education course they get a 7 digit number that to give out to their friends via Yelp, Facebook, and other social media. 

When their friend, with the coupon code now, takes the course it tracks back to the referring customers account, giving a commission.  This encourage new customers to use the referral code (by a discount) and gives the giver the knowledge that the referral will put in the number so the commission gets tracked.

This leads me to Yelp, as our customers  started leaving reviews and their referral codes on Yelp suddenly conversions  from Yelp took off and Yelp became the 3rd most provider of referrals (after Google Adwords, Google Organic).  Now we have over 100 yelp reviews which really stands out when found through a Google search, and with so many reviews the business is always listed above all of the others.

Yelp has a great deal of visitor traffic and when you harness Yelp by fully completing your profile and any
encouragement you can provide to customers to leave reviews you will certainly see a dramatic increase in sales.

I have been thinking a great deal about link profiles and keeping your main websites clean from bad SEO ideas . This can be done by using all of those extra domains you have bought (I am sure you have a few unused) and creating some simple WordPress websites that are designed to market your main website much like affiliates driving in traffic but only your doing all of the creating not someone else.

Most domain name registrars offer a free or low cost website that they host for you.  The other day I paid GoDaddy $37 for a years worth of hosting on a "managed wordpress" website.  This is a great idea because this website is on your domain and on the registrars ip address so it is unique and separate from your own site (so Google doesn't get them confused).  

As you create your "mini-website" about your topic you can now try different marketing techniques on it.  This allows you to experiment with ideas without hurting your primary website.  For example I have made a number of websites targeting specific keywords, "long-tail" keywords they would be called.  These keywords only drive a handful of visitors each day but if they make a purchase then I didn't have to pay Google Adwords for the click and just 1 sale per day adds dramatically to the bottom line.

Some ideas are to use services on http://fiverr.com/ to do marketing to your new mini-site that is hosted by your domain registrar. 

One of Google's Ranking Factors is popularity.  The more internet users who Link, Pin, Upvote, and talk about your website the more Google trusts that your site is the real deal.

An additional benefit of social bookmarking and liking is websites that track "trending" links.  These sites post your link, are indexed by Google, they get copied by other websites (scraper sites) and now you have a whole new set of links pointing to your website.

The problem with popularity is that a "Google Dance" can occure.  A Google Dance is where you go up and down in the rankings, sometimes daily.  To prevent a Google Dance you need to have a sufficient number of incoming links to your website.  These links will help your website maintain it's position as it is trending.  Without a good number of incoming links, your site is very might only rise to the top to fall down to the bottom of the first page or top of the second page.

I would suggest to ask your customers to "like" your site by giving them a list of sites where they can socially bookmark it and if they are willing leave testimonials on sites like Yelp which has the same affect as social bookmarking.

It is good to not communicate to every customer that you have to do these things to help you out all at once.  It is better to spread it out over several weeks because you will not be able to carry the momentum and Google will think your site was a sort of "Flash in the pan" here today, gone tomorrow.  Better to achieve stability then quick but short rankings.

Social Bookmark Sites
1. Twitter
2. Reddit
3. Pinterest
4. StumbleUpon
5. BuzzFeed
6. Delicious
7. digg
8. FARK
9. Clipmarks
10. Chime.in

Plus many others that you can find searching Google.

You are marketing to the same customers and for the most part you need to keep up on your competitors marketing or they get ahead of you to outrank you in Google if they are not already.

Signining up to Google Alerts sends you an email every day if there are new links found and where they are so that you can go and try to place your own link as well.  The Google Alerts page is at http://www.google.com/alerts

The alerts interface is easy to use.  Just put in your search term and your email then click Save Alert.  Keep all of the other settings to the defaults.

Learn more about Google Alerts
http://www.googleguide.com/alerts.html
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-ninjas-guide-to-google-alerts/48068/

You offer a service or product and are an expert on it.  Often customers want to learn how to do a task that takes a certain skill, then pay once they find it difficult.  Why should anyone pay you for your skill or product over someone else?  They will pay you because they trust you and the way you build trust is to teach what you do.  You only need to teach enough so customers know you are an expert but you should teach an end-to-end short course so the customer feels they could if they wanted to do it but in the end would just prefer to go to you, the expert.

Working on the marketing for a local flight club (Golden State Flying Club) I videotaped their FAA Approved Private Pilot Ground School Classes.   I then put segments of the classes on YouTube. These videos have tens of thousands of videos and hundreds of comments.   No one questions if Golden State Flying Club is an expert at teaching flying because it is made so obvious through the videos there isn't any doubt left.

Providing proof that you are an expert isn't difficult, it could take a few hours of your time but once it is done and you post it then it is up forever.  Be sure to leave a very descriptive title of what you are teaching so it can be easily indexed by Google.

Upload videos to more then one video sharing site for best results. YouTube.com and Vimeo.com are two popular ones.  Get your friends to view the videos one time so you can build up the number of views from unique visitors.  You might also buy YouTube Google Ads to promote your videos and be sure to add a video page onto your website with these videos embedded. 

More ideas on video marketing
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy

After all of the money and effort has paid off the visitor you wanted is now on your homepage looking at it... making decisions.  There are tens or more likely hundreds of other sites the visitor can go to the question is will the customer stay on your site or leave and why?

The last thing you want is to have spent $3+ on a targeted ad click or even a free Google organic click and not have it pay off.  Conversion is just another way of marketing.  Now your marketing to someone who wants your product but the customer wants a very clear value proposition and to know that your product or service will work for them.

Your website is built to answer questions. Is your product or service in the customers price range? Are others are happy with it? Are a reputable person/company offering this service or product? How about what your product solves what is it and why should I spend money on it?

Page Elements:
1. The shortest most clear text "Always Have a Clean Pool" or "Healthy Value Priced Bird Food"
2. Clear way to order
3. Phone number that doesn't go to voice-mail.
4. Video(s).  People want to see it in action to better understand it. 
5. Multiple Images, screen-captures = proof. 
6. List of value propositions... how will this make the customer or save the customer money?
7. Customer Testimonials
8. Any awards, business associations, or anything that can prove you are a legitimate company.

Testing:
Use a service like www.mturk.com to cheaply hire people to test your website for usability, post to your Facebook friends and ask if when they go to your website do they clearly know what your offering and how to order it?  Be sure to ask people will give you their true opinions

Next test your site live with new customers. Spend $100 on Google Adwords and see if you have any results.  Make a goal, for example you might need one sale for every 10 clicks or every 5 clicks.  Be sure to look at your competitor websites and incorporate anything that you like from their designs in your own way to your website.  Remember the main goal of your website is to make sales, if it isn't performing then your website needs further work.

Inspired From:

http://searchengineland.com/7-tips-to-avoid-high-bounce-rates-on-your-landing-pages-141003?utm_source=sel&utm_medium=scap&utm_campaign=email