Abbott & Costello Buy a Computer
After 2 weeks of tackling a variety of technical difficulties, I thought I’d share some computer humor with all of you. I love Abbott and Costello movies, and hope you enjoy this spin off of “Who’s on First?” as much as I did!
——-
Computer store: “Can I help you?”
Lou Costello: “I’m setting up an office in my den, and I’m thinking about buying a computer.”
“Mac?”
“No, the names Lou.”
“Your computer?”
“I don’t own a computer. I want to buy one.”
“Mac?”
“I told you, my name’s Lou.”
“What about Windows?”
“Why? Will it get stuffy in here?”
“Do you want a computer with Windows?”
“I don’t know. What will I see when I look in the windows?”
“Wallpaper.”
“Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.”
“Software for Windows?”
“No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What have you got?”
“Office.”
“Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?”
“I just did.”
“You just did what?”
“Recommend something.”
“You recommended something?”
“Yes.”
“For my office?”
“Yes.”
“OK, what did you recommend for my office?”
“Office.”
“Yes, for my office!”
“I recommend Office with Windows.”
“I already have an office and it has windows! OK, lets just say I’m sitting at my computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?”
“Word.”
“What word?”
“Word in Office.”
“The only word in office is office.”
“The Word in Office for Windows.”
“Which word in office for windows?”
“The Word you get when you click the blue W.”
“I’m going to click YOUR blue W if you don’t start with some straight answers. OK, forget that. Can I watch movies on the Internet?”
“Yes. For that you want Real One.”
“Maybe a real one, maybe a cartoon. What I watch is none of your business. Just tell me what I need!”
“Real One.”
“If it’s a long movie I also want to see reels 2, 3 and 4. Can I watch them?”
“Of course.”
“Great, with what?
“Real One.”
“OK, I’m at my computer and I want to watch a movie. What do I do?”
“You click the blue ‘1′.”
“I click the blue one what?”
“The blue ‘1′.”
“Is that different from the blue W?”
“The blue ‘1′ is Real One and the blue W is Word.”
“What word?”
“The Word in Office for Windows.”
“But there’s three words in ‘office for windows’!”
“No, just one. But its the most popular Word in the world.”
“It is?”
“Yes, but to be fair, there aren’t many other Words left. It pretty much wiped out all the other Words out there.”
“And that word is the real one?”
“Real One has nothing to do with Word. Real One isn’t even part of Office.”
“Stop! Don’t start that again. What about financial bookkeeping? Do you have anything I can track my money with?”
“Money.”
“That’s right. What do you have?”
“Money.”
“I need money to track my money?”
“It comes bundled with your computer.”
“What’s bundled to my computer?”
“Money.”
“Money comes with my computer?”
“Yes. No extra charge.”
“I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?”
“One copy.”
“Isn’t it illegal to copy money?”
“Microsoft gave us a license to copy money.”
“They can give you a license to copy money?”
“Why not? They own it…”
——-
I got this a few years ago so I’m not sure who the original author is, or I would give them credit here. But kudos to you, whoever you are!
Client Spotlight - Colorado Business Coach Barb Wade
We’ve officially launched a brand new website for Colorado business coach Barb Wade of BarbWade.com. Barb is a 6-figure business coach for the entrepreneur mom. She specializes in helping coaches and consultants get more clients.
She’s also my business coach, and I highly recommend her.
Barb already had a thriving life and business coaching practice when we met. But she was ready to focus her services as a 6-figure business coach and needed a way to stand out online from the crowd.
We started with an in-depth look at her niche and her competition. Next, I found her online marketing “sweet spot” where she could easily outrank her competition and helped her create a plan to do it. Then we topped it all off with a Mother Lode WebsiteTM, complete with an online marketing strategy to maximize her lead generation and sales conversion.
We’re very excited with Barb’s beautiful new site. And I think you will be, too.
Take a look here: Barb Wade - Get More Clients
Barb’s site is our second website launch with our brand new site design for coaches and consultants. It’s “stylish web 2.0″ meets “cutting-edge Internet marketing,” and the feedback has been tremendous.
“Karen is a true expert on what Coaches and Consultants need…”
“Karen Brunet and the team at ESS have absolutely outdone themselves in my book. I came to them knowing I needed a new, updated website for my business. What I got was a full and comprehensive internet marketing strategy designed to get targeted traffic right to my new site — and it’s working! It truly is the Mother Lode.
I expect to be on the first page of Google very shortly when people search for the keywords relevant to my business, and I’m already attracting ideal clients who are proactively hiring me for my services. This is all a result of Karen’s direction and expertise — she even oversees the wording and strategies for my sales campaigns.
What I love most is that Karen is a true expert on what Coaches and Consultants, in particular, need to do to attract consistent, high-paying clients. Oh, and did I mention that the updated, web 2.0 site she built for me is gorgeous?”
Barb Wade
6-Figure Business Coach for the Entrepreneur-Mom
www.BarbWade.com
In case you missed our last site launch, you can see it here: Patti Schneider - Learning Disabilities Coach. You’ll see before-and-after pictures there. Patti’s site continues to rise in the search engine rankings, and her clients love the new look and feel.
If you’d also like a coaching website that combines beauty with results, contact me for a complimentary consultation. I offer a variety of packages especially for coaches and consultants. I’m here to help you get more clients and more sales more often.
Client Spotlight - New Site Design for Patti Schneider, Learning Disabilities Coach
Meet my client Patti Schneider of Schneider Centre for Learning disABILITIES Corp., www.SC4LD.com. Patti is a pioneering trail blazer - a learning disabilities success coach - who guides parents and their children from overwhelm to empowered. I was thrilled with the opportunity to help her with this tremendously valuable service.
When I first met Patti during a complimentary consultation session, I knew that my Mother Lode WebsiteTM Package was exactly what she needed to create an online presence that would attract clients in a powerful way.
A Little Background
Those of you following my newsletter for a few months know that my team and I have been following the major shifts in website design and layout that have happened in 2010. Our challenge was to create websites for coaches and consultants that were both visually attractive AND used the latest in Internet marketing strategy.
Until now, you could get one or the other - beauty or results - but you rarely got both. Even worse, most coaching/consulting websites either have an outdated look (pre 2009), use dated marketing strategies, like a “Who Do I Work With” page, or use a standard blog layout as their home page - Yuk!
My team and I wanted more for our clients. We wanted “stylish web 2.0″ to meet “cutting-edge Internet marketing,” and I believe we’ve succeeded with the new line of sites we’re creating now. Patti’s site is the first of several that I am able to unveil for you today.
Back to Patti’s Story
Patti wanted a site with a web 2.0 look that was clean and uncluttered. It also needed to incorporate her new branding, the latest in SEO techniques, and effective Internet marketing strategy. She wanted a site that would be irresistible to her niche and attract her ideal clients.
Here are images of her site before and after.
SC4LD.com Before
SC4LD.com After
Patti says this about her new site:
“I went from having a static, online brochure to an interactive website with a solid online marketing strategy. It’s not only beautiful; it’s exactly what I wanted.
“Karen is a wonderful combination of online marketing consultant and coach. While I occasionally ventured outside of my comfort zone during the process, she provided me with the exact support I needed to take me to the next level - always offering me a way forward.”
If you’d also like a coaching website that combines beauty with results, contact me for a complimentary consultation. I offer a variety of packages especially for coaches and consultants. I’m here to help you get more clients and more sales more often.
Marketing for Coaches – What the Super Bowl Can Teach Us about Beating the Competition
Are you ready to compete in the Super Bowl of online marketing? Can your coaching or consulting web site compete against the “big boys” in your niche?
Last night, the Saints won the Super Bowl for the first time, even though the Colts were favored to win. I’m not a football expert by any means. But as I watched the game, it appeared to me that the Colts were actually playing better as a team than the Saints, especially at the beginning of the game. But the Saints won.
Imagine starting your own football team and immediately entering in competition against either the Saints or the Colts. Well, when you decide to market online, you’re essentially competing against the Super Bowl winners in your niche, not the local high school football team.
Your competition may include sites with a page rank of 5, 6, or 7 - sites with tens of thousands of backlinks and thousands of pages. But before you run off the field in terror, remember this lesson from the Saints and Colts game…
Just because the competition is bigger or more experienced doesn’t mean you can’t beat them. It does mean that you’re going to have to do things differently and play smarter.
That’s where a Mother Lode WebsiteTM can give you an advantage - it’s different and it’s smarter. It uses the latest in cutting-edge marketing technology, white-hat SEO techniques, and Internet marketing strategy. And our step-by-step consulting services help you find your prospects online and reach them with irresistible products and services.
Get your free 7-part audio course “How to Mine More Wealth and Clients with Your Website” on the left to find out how you, too, can enter the Super Bowl of online marketing and win.
Coach Marketing Secrets - Shopping Cart Mistake #5 That Will Kill Your Sales
Mistake #5 - Not having a secure checkout page
It doesn’t matter how secure you know your checkout page is. If at any point your customer starts to feel insecure about the purchase, they won’t buy.
You can do everything else right. But if you mess up here, you’ve lost the sale.
Here are simple things you can include to create a secure purchasing environment for your clients:
- Include your company logo, name, and header graphic on the shopping cart pages.
- Include gold lock images on your website and on the checkout page.
- Use a SSL certificate so a secure lock image appears within the browser window.
- Make sure all the cart and checkout pages have “https://” in the URL.
- Confirm their purchasing decision on the checkout page. Include text or image information that reminds them of the benefits they will receive with the product or service.
Go through the checkout process using Internet Explorer and Firefox. See if any security warnings pop up during the checkout process, especially warnings about your SSL security certificate. Those can kill your sales faster than a New York minute.
Action Step: Read the rest of this entry »
Coach Marketing Secrets - Shopping Cart Mistake #4 That Will Kill Your Sales
So far in this series on shopping cart mistakes we’ve looked at payment options, streamlining the checkout process, and up-sells.
In mistake #4, we’ll look at something that many coaches and consultants over-look - customizing the shopping cart. Many think it is either unimportant, they don’t have the time or skill to do it, or they are trying to cut set-up expenses. But the result is that they end up losing sales.
Mistake #4 - Not customizing the look and feel of your shopping cart
You want customers to feel like they are still on your site throughout the buying process. If your shopping cart pages look different than your website, many customers will think that they have been hijacked to a different site and won’t feel secure about the purchase.
This usually happens when third-party shopping cart systems are used, such as 1ShoppingCart or PayPal.
The problem is usually one of the following situations: Read the rest of this entry »
Coach Marketing Secrets - Shopping Cart Mistake #3 That Will Kill Your Sales
You need more than a buy now button to your webpage in order to make sales online. There’s an entire buying psychology going through your client’s mind during their online shopping experience.
When you understand the psychology, your checkout process flows naturally and smoothly. When you ignore it, customers abandon their shopping carts and leave in the middle of the checkout.
This article series looks at the 5 biggest mistakes that coaches and consultants make with their shopping carts.
Mistake #3 - Offering multiple up-sells on multiple webpages
When someone decides to buy your product or service, your goal is to get them to the “Submit Order” button as quickly as possible and in as few clicks as possible.
We’ve already talked about the importance of streamlining the checkout process in “Mistake #2 - Not streamlining the checkout process.” That streamlining is especially important when offering up-sells.
So what are up-sells?
Up-sells are offers to buy additional products or services. You customer has already decided to buy a particular product and you suggest other related products that they may be interested in. For example, if they buy a audio training course, you can offer them the written transcripts as an upsell.
These offers are made during the checkout process, usually right after the customer clicks the “Buy Now” button. They are a great way to increase your income and help clients get more value from your products and services.
But the best place for an up-sell is right on the checkout page. Read the rest of this entry »
Coach Marketing Secrets - Shopping Cart Mistake #2 That Will Kill Your Sales
For your online coaching business to succeed, you need to be able to convert website visitors into sales. Website traffic is great, and we all want lots of it. But without sales, you don’t have a business - you have a hobby.
Here is mistake #2 that I see coaches and consultant make with their shopping cart that kills their sales. If you’re making this mistake, just follow my simple recommendations, and you’ll definitely see an improvement in your sales conversion.
Mistake #2 - Not streamlining the checkout process
Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream.” As an online marketer, here’s one of my dreams. My clients could just put their thumbprint right on their computer for scanning whenever they wanted to make a purchase. No more clicking a Buy Now button and entering in all their payment and shipping information. Ah, the simplicity!
While that technology is currently available, I haven’t seen it widely used yet. (See BiometricSolutions.com) In the meantime, here are a few things you can do to streamline the checkout process.
First, keep the checkout process to a minimum number of steps. It’s been proven that multiple steps reduce sales. Note that if you are using a third-party payment processor, like PayPal, you won’t have much control over the steps in the shopping cart pages. But you do have control over your website pages.
Optimally, you want a 2-step process: they click a “Buy Now” button or link on your site and are immediately taken to one page where they enter information and click the order/submit button.
Here are additional tips to streamline the process: Read the rest of this entry »
