THE BARBER-OSOPHER:
Marketing Services B2B on the Web
Successful Website Promotion: Case History #1
 Terry Sumerlin, Professional Motivational Speaker
When Janet Macdaniel met Terry Sumerlin, he had been a professional motivational speaker for more than 10 years. It was clear that public speaking was his passion, but he had had a difficult time marketing himself to large corporations and associations that could pay him well. At the time, his standard speaking fee for a 45-minute presentation was $1,000. He regularly spoke on-board Princess Cruise Lines, but had not been able to generate interest from speakers’ bureaus. He had published two books, which he used to give himself credibility as a speaker.
Building an eBusiness to Get Results
By the time his website had been on-line for two years, Sumerlin had increased his standard fee to $3,500 and was now represented by more than half a dozen speaker’s bureaus. In the two years since, his fee has grown to $5,000. He uses his website to sell his (now) three books and a DVD. He even has considered selling the barbershop he has owned for nearly 20 years, so that he can devote full-time to his speaking business.
How did 1st Click Consulting and the Internet enhance the marketing of Terry Sumerlin’s business and make it significantly more profitable?
Creative Website Development
The process began with discussions about his business and developing a profile of both those people who tend to initially contact him about speaking engagements and those who are the final decision-makers. Because his low fees often attract organizations that do not hire professional meeting planners, we decided to load up his site with guidance for someone who might have volunteered for that task, including not only “how to hire a speaker” information, but checklists for meeting packets, room setup, etc. We also decided to target four major convention cities— Orlando, Las Vegas, Dallas, and his home city, San Antonio. For each of these cities, the site includes a database of links to other resources that someone planning a meeting would need—caterers, meeting facilities, entertainment, florists, transportation, etc. And, the database also includes links to meeting planners' websites in each of the target cities. This kind of content helps him build search engine traffic from his target audience.
Email Marketing to Build Customer Relationships
Sumerlin has been a columnist for the San Antonio Business Journal and other publications for many years. So, an important part of his site is an email database and distribution system that allows him to send branded graphical emails of his column. Every two weeks, he sends humorous Barber-osophy to his ever-growing list of contacts. This keeps his name in front of potential clients. His website offers to send those who sign up both a sample chapter from one of his books, and a subscription to his bi-weekly column. The contact form captures information about the contact, so that he can respond appropriately to those who sign up.
In 2006, Sumerlin began making semi-weekly audio recording of his articles, using a service recommended by 1st Click Consulting . A link to these recordings appear in his emails. We showed him how to use the online audio application to create and distribute podcasts, available as RSS feeds, as well as how to set up links to it from his emails and his blog. This has proven to be an important way to give his readers a sense of the voice he uses for his speaking engagements.
Internet Education and Training
Training our clients is a priority for 1st Click Consulting, as the more things they can do in-house, the lower their overall cost of using Internet marketing. As a speaker and writer, Terry Sumerlin has a number of opportunities to take advantage of the Internet to communicate with the world about himself and his business. He writes and posts articles, and 1st Click Consulting helped him identify and learn how to best use them.
In addition to teaching him how to create and distribute his own emails, blog postings, and podcasts, 1st Click Consulting has shown him how to submit his articles to Internet article banks. These regular submissions allow him to build in-coming links to his site, which improve his site’s search engine ranking and traffic. Yahoo now identifies more than 120 incoming links to his site.
Pay-per-click Advertising
When Sumerlin’s site had been on-line for about eight months, we began a pay-per-click advertising campaign for him on Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing. 1st Click Consulting set up several campaigns, carefully testing different keyword phrases, ad text and offers, and elements of the click-thru destination web pages. Though he cannot profitably compete with the top bids for the most popular search phrases, he regularly gets 200-250 visitors a month from his highly targeted pay-per-click ads.
Other Services As Needed
1st Click Consulting assisted Sumerlin in digitizing an audio clip for his site and in producing a video of a full-length presentation for distribution on DVD. 1st Click Consulting put out RFPs to qualified film production studios and DVD replication companies and managed these projects. We also participated in the creation of a short promotional video based on the full-length version, which will be used on-line.
In Conclusion
Internet marketing is an on-going process that gets the best results when the client and marketing professional work together over time. It does not need to be expensive, but it does require diligence and a good understanding of the client's business. That's why 1st Click Consulting considers our most important role to be partnering with our clients to build their business on-line.
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