Internet Marketing Results that speak for themselves

It is suprising how many people don't realise that there is much more to growing a business and driving traffic to your website than just "search engine optimisation".

I thought I'd share some great results I've had with a customer's Internet marketing strategy.

The snapshot from Google Analytics shows a customer's stats since the start of this financial year.



Before coming to us, this business had thrown literally thousands of dollars down the toilet by engaging several companies that claimed to offer search engine optimisation (SEO) but delivered nothing.  The business owner waited over a year before virtually giving up. 

I met with him on July 20 (the start of the stats) to discuss his website needs.  This particular client is a small business which was previously struggling both online and offline.  His website was probably the source of much of his pain.  It was doing poorly on search engines and they were getting less than 10 visits a day on average to their website and barely a trickle of enquiries.  To top it off, he said that economic factors were hurting his bottom line.  More disturbingly, their website traffic was on a downward trend.  Honestly, if you were in the initial meetings I had, you too would feel his pain. 

I did some thorough research into his business and two weeks after my initial meeting with him I had produced a 25 page report at a cost of $475 ex GST (delivered approximately where I've marked the red line). 

The report contained a bunch of recommendations, and most of them could be done by the customer at no cost to them.  The report included nothing illegal and no snake oil tricks, just useful tips and techniques for getting improved results.  While it included paid advertising (cost-per-click, Adwords and the like), this client didn't want to spend any extra money at all because he had used Adwords before and was turned off by the cost and lack of returns.  He said he simply couldn't afford it.  However he was very pleased with the report and immediately set about implementing the things from it that he was most interested in trying and which would not cost him anything but time for either himself or his personal assistant.

After a couple of months the results began to show then came the avalanche.  Traffic has now quadrupled.  The stats on this graph end yesterday. 

More importantly than just traffic, it is targetted business which is reaching their website.  Their conversion rate and enquiries have also increased, but by a greater percentage than their traffic.  In fact, whereas they were struggling to get through a week they now have enough work pre-booked to last them well into 2009. 

In my report, based on  I actually make promises which I can keep.  In this particular case when I promised him quadrupling of traffic and double the amount of new business the website generates within 2 months he didn't at first actually believe me.   The reason being is that I had helped him to set up tools to measure these key performance indicators. 

Needless to say, he does believe me now and has become a bit of an evangelist in terms of my work.  This client's business is now booming and as a result they have referred us several new customers.  He is also considering doing some additional paid Internet advertising on top of this once he has grown his business to cope with all the new work.

While I'm not going to let out all my secrets in this case, but I can say that these sorts of results are not a one-off.  I've been doing quite a bit of this sort of work as a consultant for my clients lately. Over 10 years in search engine optimisation and Internet marketing experience certainly helps when you are advising people on how to drive traffic to their site.