Help Me Get Traffic to My Coaching Website

Hi Annette,

I'm so frustrated that I'm sinking thousands into my website and not getting the kind of return on my investment I thought I would. Any suggestions?
D

Hi D,

I want you to know I'm behind your success as a coach. I'm not only a web designer. I want to see my clients succeed because when you do, I do as well.

Here's what I'd do, if I were in your shoes.

1. I'd get a mailing list of potential clients or companies together...If you want to work within a certain industry, there are ways to get the names, addresses, and email addresses of key personnel. I'd start by defining a narrow niche and saturate that first, then expand outwards to related niches.
2. I'd write a flurry of newsletters (bi-weekly or monthly) with very CONCRETE tips, not some of the "airy fairy" stuff I see some coaches write. I'd mine your expertise from your experience in business for this.
3. I'd send hard copies of all newsletters to key personnel from above, inviting them to subscribe to the electronic version.
4. I'd include either a testimonial or a sample coaching scenario in each newsletter, so readers can gauge your effectiveness and relevancy to what they are needing.
5. I'd do some FREE seminars for those key personnel, so they can get a feel for you, your expertise, and how you work.
6. I'd do an audiopodium and announce it on the newsletter, website, voice mail, and anywhere else you can.
7. I'd put all back issues of your newsletter on your website. Unfortunately, you have chosen an email management program for your newsletters that doesn't offer an archival feature. I'd fix that right away.
8. I'd look at your site stats to see if there's a way to find out where your site visitors are coming from and if you can contact them.
9. I'd give an incentive to your current coaching clients to refer others to you.
10. I'd find some busy coaching-related websites, such as IFC, MentorCoach, CoachU or any other coaching consortium and ask them to link to yours. This will drive targeted traffic to your site.
11. I'd subscribe to every major coaching referral service there is.
12. I'd network within my desired niche...out the wazoo!
13. I'd stop paying for marketing seminars for coaches and spend the money DOING marketing.
14. I'd start a blog.
15. More.......I'd have more, but my brain is empty for the moment!!

I was vacuuming (my house, not my brain) and came up with a few more ideas....

16. I'd start an online community, such as a discussion board or blog, focused on the needs of my niche.

17. I'd find the newsgroups my niche subscribes to and "lurk" there until I see what kind of issues they are concerned with. Then I'd start posting, but not "flaming" = advertising to the list. This is not allowed, but you can post a link to your website using your email signature.

18. I'd find a way to do a chat with your niche. For example, ivillage.com does featured chats for women. There are also free chat features you can add to your website and host your own topical chat.

20. I'd do an online survey or focus group to determine the needs of my niche and how to best meet them.

21. I'd cull through Chamber of Commerce websites to find possible leads for business coaching/life coaching (as we all know how stressed business owners are!)

22. I'd develop a "prospects" file (mine is now 2 inches thick) and touch base with those people regularly.

23. I'd get a toll-free phone number and use it in advertising to my niche. See www.CallWave.com.

24. I'd advertise my services in specialty magazines and trade journals my niche reads.

25. Okay, I'll stop at 25. That's a nice "round" number.

Thanks for Asking!

Annette

Ask Girl Geek: What Are the Major Search Engines?

Hi Annette,
Which are the major search engines that I should be listed on?
J

Hi J,
Here is a list of the top search engines (not necessarily in any particular order)
Yahoo (www.yahoo.com)
Google (www.google.com)
Altavista (www.altavista.com)
Overture (www.overture.com)
LookSmart (www.looksmart.com)
Lycos (www.lycos.com)
AOL Search (www.aolsearch.com)
Ask Jeeves (www.askjeeves.com)
Teoma (www.teoma.com)
Excite (www.excite.com)
Fast Search (www.fastsearch.com)
HotBot (www.hotbot.com)
MSN Search (www.msn.com)
Northern Light (www.northernlight.com)
ODP / DMOZ (www.dmoz.com)

Thanks for Asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: What Causes a 404 Error?

Hi Annette,

What's this message in my website stats that say 175 people got a "404 error" when trying to visit my website?

Deb

Hi Deb,
Again, I have to go to my trusty expert, Julie, from www.TheDesignShoppe.com. Here's what Julie said.

A 404 not found error could me a lot of things. Let's take me, for example. If someone visits my site and bookmarks a page named design.htm and I change that page a few months down the road and then they come back. It's now gone. It's a 404 error. You will get that for many things even images that were there at one time and now changed or removed from the site. This goes for the search engines too. There are SO many little search engines out there. Of course they don't have the big money to update like google or yahoo. So, they cache many pages of the site. Normally the index.htm stays that and not index.html or .shtml so you never have to worry about that not being found. It's the deeper pages in a site that get cached and then results in a 404. And, it could be as simple as someone typing in a url wrong to a page in her site.

We have custom 404 pages that can be done in her site. Just take her template with the nav and change the text to say "oops, page not found - look to the navigation and find the correct page you are looking for".

Thanks Julie!

And thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: What Do You Know About KickStart?

Hi Annette,

What do you know about Kickstart? http://www.kickstartcart.com/
Ellen

Hi Ellen,

Looks like it's intended for ecommerce sites that are planning on selling alot of products. It has the features you mentioned, but if you're not going to sell alot of items you might be paying for more than you need.

It's got a 30 risk free trial, so I'd go with that to evaluate before you buy. You'd have to buy at least the Basic plan to get all the features you mentioned. It doesn't mention a set up or hosting fee. Seems expensive to me to have to pay an annual fee for their services, when you could have a shopping cart built from free open source code, integrate it with PayPal and not have monthly fees.

If you want autoresponders and a mailing list, you may already have the capacity on your current webhosting plan. I'd check that first.

If you want a mailing list, that's more sophisticated, i.e., in html look at www.ConstantComment.com or I use www.EzineDirector.com because it will allow you to layout your newsletter to look exactly like your website, plus it archives back issues and gives you stats on who reads your newsletter.

Thanks for Asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: A Good Webhosting Company

Hi Annette,

We're jumping back into newslettering again. Can you recommend a reliable, complete package that will send out newsletters, do shopping carts, autoresponders, and the like? We're looking at things like KickStart.

Once we get rolling, I'll email you to talk about updating the website.

Thanks,
Ellen

Hi Ellen,
I'm not familiar with KickStart. What is it?
If you're looking for a new webhosting company, I use www.theDesignShoppe.com all the time. You can host newsletters, autoresponders there. If you buy the right hosting package it will accommodate a shopping cart, but a shopping cart is a program that needs to be created. We build them from OSCommerce, a FREE open source resource.
See www.militaryscrapbooking.net.

Thanks for asking!
Annette