With a CMS you log into an administration area and then go to the page you want to change. Often you will have an interface that is similar to how you work with a document in Microsoft Word. You can easily make changes to content, create links, insert pictures or graphics, etc.

Having a CMS eliminates your need to contact your webmaster every time you have to change something on your site. You will still need your webmaster if you want to add new functionality to the site or there is something within the template of the site.

We have created dozens of sites in WordPress over the last couple years and our clients really love it. It’s easy to learn and easy to use. Plus it has a blog build into it, which will help with your marketing.

I’ve had clients who was spending a lot of money in Yellow Pages or other places that wasn’t giving them proven results so they moved it over to pay per click so they could track their leads better.

If you are worried about blowing your entire budget all in one day then you need not worry. All of the major pay per click advertising services allow you to designate how much you’re willing to spend on a daily basis. Once you’ve spent that amount for the day, then your advertisements are turned off until 12:01 A.M. the next day.

For example, if you want to spend $900 per month, then you should budget $30 per day. This will control your spending so it doesn’t go out of control.

Setting up your conversions can be simple. If you are using Google Analytics then you can track the number of times people land on your “Thank you” after filling out a contact form.

If you aren’t using Google Analytics, then you just put a small piece of code provided by the pay per click services provide on your “Thank you” page.

I’ve been managing pay per click accounts since 2003. I find it a great way to get traffic to your site quickly and also a way to advertise your company more broadly than with search engine optimization (SEO). It’s definitely a different animal than SEO but it’s a good complement to SEO.

Click here to read more about pay per click advertising.

Once you nailed things down with Adwords, then go to MSN adCenter. You can get visitors through here because your ads will show up in Bing and Yahoo. There system is a little harder to use but can get you visitors that you’d miss in Adwords.

Another avenue is to advertise on Facebook. These are the ads that show up on the right side of the page in Facebook. You can gear your ads to certain locations and demographics.

I think sometimes we think we have such a great reputation that we don’t need an outstanding website. But I’m sure many people come to our website who haven’t necessarily heard of us. So, the only way they can judge us is by design and content of our website.

I would suggest a good place to start is by looking at your five closest competitors and to compare your site to them. If you are lacking great design and persuasive content, then you should look at spending some money on a redesign as a long-term investment in your marketing and sales.

You want to be able to at least get in the door to bid on projects. The cost of lost opportunities can be pretty steep when you’re dismissed because of a poor website.

We recently added a couple new Case Studies to our bevy of internet marketing success stories. And we rewrote several of our older ones to help clarify what we did and how they succeeded.

We’ve been doing Internet marketing now for more than 10 years now. We could tell even more stories about where I clients have entrusted their marketing to Green Chair and seen their sales grow incredibly.

One of the common denominators to the stories is that there was normally more than one approach we took to increase sales and leads. We would redesign their websites and add search engine optimization. Or we would increase the effectiveness of their pay per click and also help their email newsletters be more effective. Routinely it’s not just one thing we do to get more leads.

And that is how we work. After 11 years in business we understand that each business we work with is different and they require different efforts to reach their audience.

We’d love to help you better reach your audience. Call us at 720-922-3124 to talk about your Internet marketing. We are low pressure in our sales and high initiative in our marketing for our clients.

Click here to read our new and revised Case Studies.

But let’s run some numbers for you. To be a bit more conservative, let’s say you have a 2% conversion rate. If you have 1,000 visitors a month, that means you get 20 leads per month. If you convert 30% of your leads to sales, then you should expect 6 sales per month. If each sale is worth $2000, then you make $12,000 per month through your website.

If you increase your conversion rate by just 1%, then you can expect to get 10 additional leads, which translates to 3 more sales (or an additional $6,000 more per month in sales). If you increase your number of visitors AND your conversion rate, then the sales really start racking up.

One of the bigger buzzwords from the past year in Internet marketing was Conversion Optimization. This is when you make a variety of changes to your website to convert more visitors to leads or sales.

Part of our monthly marketing services is Conversion Optimization. We want to get more visitors to your site and convert them to leads at a higher rate. By implementing this strategy with the client I was telling you about earlier, they have grown from $50,000 per year in sales when we first started to more than $1 million in sales last year.

We would love to chat with you about how to increase your leads. Call us at 720-922-3124 to see how we can help you.

We were just talking with a client on Monday about whether or not it’s worth it to them to advertise in the Yellow Pages. They get some business from it, but is there a more cost effective way to get business? I would say that local search engine marketing is the way to go, which we’ve been doing a lot of over the last year or two.

Read the NPR article about Yellow Pages

I was in their shop a few weeks ago and went out the door with some delicious brownies, a chocolate bar and a canister of sipping chocolate. The shop looks great and is a fun destination for anyone living in or visiting Boulder. They are located west of the Pearl St. Mall on Pearl Street.

We’ve had the privilege of working with Sarah over the last several months designing her logo and website. Click here to take a look at the site.

Congrats, Sarah. We look forward to frequent visitors when we’re in Boulder. Here’s to many years of great success and happy customers.