SECRET RECORDING: High Powered Websites & Online Marketing with Awesome Martha Arifin

September 2013 was a great month in which I did this amazing dual Webinar with my Friend, Colleague and Awesome Expert Martha Arifin on “High Powered Websites & Online Marketing”.  As the name directly implies – we dug that little bit deeper and focused on the amazing world of “Online” and the endless opportunities it provides for Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs to get more awesome clients and become leaders in their field.

I have always enjoyed working with Martha for quite a few reasons.  Firstly – she is the “Quiet Asian” to balance out my “Loud Persian” side! Secondly – She is ethical and you can trust her with anything! Thirdly – She knows her stuff and is really generous with her amazing levels of Strategic and Technical knowledge when it comes to online.

We discussed everything from Website Basics, to improving your Conversion Rate and also gave some key tips to getting the most out of Facebook – and it was a lot of fun we had in putting it together and talking to a great turn out on the line.

Love you to check out our Webinar Recording and if you are a word person more – feel free to read our transcript of the great “Radio Show” like Webinar we had.

Like always – if you like what you see and want more awesome Sales & Marketing Strategies – make sure you check out my Awesome Marketing Vault right here!

Thank you from Edward Zia – Marketing Mentor and man who loves releasing secret content.  Yay!

Please see the transcript as follows:

Edward Zia: Good evening everyone and welcome to our next Excellence Above webinar. I think the month of September- Is it September now, Martha?

Martha Arifin: September. That is correct, yes.

Edward Zia: Excellent, excellent. We’re very excited tonight. As you can tell, this is another powerhouse duo. Tonight, it’s myself and the awesome Martha Arifin on High Powered Online Marketing and of course going on Facebook as well.

It’s great to have you here Martha. How do you feel tonight?

Martha Arifin: Very excited, everyone, to be here.

Edward Zia: Martha is excited, so there you go. I’m happy and it’s great to have you all here. As you guys know, we know- There’s a few people on the line we don’t know, but we know quite a few of you. As you know, this is me at the top left. You’ve seen Martha in your opening slide. I’m your crazy Persian marketing mentor.

Tonight’s a very special one. I know a lot of you guys online. There’s a few people I don’t know. A few naughty people are still coming in. This is all being recorded for YouTube. Really, tonight, what we’re about is giving you some high quality and very compelling content to really help you, as small business owners and entrepreneurs, really master your marketing. It’s always a pleasure to have you here. What it is that before I hand over to Martha … And she’s going to wow us with nothing but amazing powers content. This is really what tonight’s about.

What I’d like to ask of you to really keep your mind open to … First thing’s first, what do you want to achieve online? This is a big issue we find all the time and I found all the time working with hundreds of people across town. A lot of people say, “I want a website. I want a Facebook page,” and then the question is, “Why do you want it?” They just stare at you saying, “Because everyone else has one”. That is not a reason. What’s your take on that issue, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Yeah. I get asked a lot. Someone comes to me and say, “Martha, can you just build us a Facebook page or a website?” and the first question I ask them is always, “Why do you think you need one?” “Because everyone else has it.” It’s not a good enough answer for me because you need to have like a proper goal, a proper purpose. Anything that you do in terms of business investment, and that’s probably the first question I would ask them.

Edward Zia: Wow, very compelling. That’s the thing. That’s one of the reasons why I love Martha, which is what we’re going to go into. Martha and I make a very good- We were telling this joke the other day. Between Martha, there is no chemistry whatsoever, however, we often walk into places and people mistake us for husband and wife, don’t they Martha?

Martha Arifin: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Edward Zia: What’s the reason is because we complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses very well. I’m the marketing guy, the high-energy guy and Martha’s the quiet, cautious, detail-oriented character. Big comment, Martha?

Edward Zia: Exactly. To me, this is really one you should keep your mind open to tonight. How is your current website going, assuming if you got one? With your website, what kind of tweaks do you need? You might be sick of your website and you want Martha to come and burn it down and help you start again which is great. She can certainly help you out there. Or it might be some tweaks. You might pick up some from tweaks and do it that way. In fact, Martha, do you ever see someone’s website and you just suggest burn it down and start it again? Do you ever do that?

Martha Arifin: Yeah, actually, on some occasions it’ll probably be better if we start from scratch because trying to fix something that has not been working might take longer and at the end it will then obviously allow them to- Rather than currently working with the current site, it might just better off working with the new one. Get a proper plan in place and build it that way.

Edward Zia: Exactly. Nothing wrong with burning down the house and building a new concrete slab again. Of course, Facebook. Isn’t Facebook a hot topic or what? Right, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Yes, yes. Facebook is probably one of the major platforms, like one of the major players when it comes to social media.

Edward Zia: Facebook is sizzling hot. Of course, what to do next? These are the things we want you to keep in mind. Now just a few stereotype things I want to go through is we’re going to give you heaps and heaps of content. Don’t panic if you miss something because we’ll record it and stick it on YouTube. It’s about giving you as much value as possible. Here’s the thing. Like all our clients, we like to get a big truck, fill it full of stuff, and drive over our clients with them and overwhelm the poor guys.

Again, please don’t panic. We are going to hit you with lots of knowledge. Don’t get overwhelmed. Don’t worry about it. We’re going to be around for questions. You’ve got a great chatbox. Feel free to ask us questions. Here’s a big thing: We need questions from you because Martha and I are just sitting here in my house eating chocolate talking to a machine. Is that right, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Yeah, yeah. A big bowl of chocolates.

Edward Zia: Yeah. It’s a little bit awkward because Martha and I are just talking to a strange computer. We need you to talk back to us and boy do we have one great crowd tonight. Talk back to us, ask us questions, and look, at the end we’ll stop recording and we’ll be around to answer questions. Get them through and help us out. Here’s a big thing: What Martha and I are doing in this one- I’ve crossed 10,000+ consulting hours. Martha, you’ve must have done at least that in your cycle?

Martha Arifin: Yeah, yeah.

Edward Zia: You’ve done a shitload of consulting work.

Martha Arifin: Yeah, a lot.

Edward Zia: Yep. We’re going to teach you everything we know within half an hour. Is that right?

Martha Arifin: Wow, yeah.

Edward Zia: No, but we’re going to try to. We’re definitely going to work hard for that. Big thing before we get into content: If you’re like me, if you’re a high-achiever and you made heaps of mistakes, don’t worry about a thing. All your mistakes have got you to this point in time where you can create something new and start fresh. Forgive yourself and keep an open heart and mind. Here’s a big marketing thing we say to everyone we know: Marketing is not just about sending out ads. It’s about making a business more awesome, helping people find it, and selling more stuff. What’s your take on that, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Yeah, totally agree. Totally agree. At the end of the day, we’re running business so it’s got to be making money, selling more stuff, and delivered to your audience.

Edward Zia: Amazing, amazing. Now without further ado, a lot of you people online do know Martha. I love this photo of Martha. I was stalking her Facebook page and Martha’s married, got a lovely husband, and of course that very cute little Asian girl’s obviously her daughter in the backseat of her BMW. Is that right?

Martha Arifin: That is correct!

Edward Zia: It’s a very cute photo. Look, when Martha and I sort of connected, Martha and I met each other probably, it’s been a good year or two, wasn’t it, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Yeah, a year ago.

Edward Zia: Yep. The thing was, Martha and I instantly started working together. Martha originally hired me as her marketing mentor. Did I deliver or did I do a crappy job, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Oh, you’ve been great, Ed.

Edward Zia: Aw, shucks, I’m blushing now. I’ve now got a birthmark on both sides thanks to Martha. Look, I’ll tell you where Martha’s really taken off. Martha’s been amazing at 4Networking as a leader. She’s been amazing there. The big thing I really love about Martha is that when it comes to small business websites, Martha is outstanding. She understands small business, she understands the budgets they have, she understands the pressure. She also really understands Facebook inside out from a small business perspective. The thing you’ll find about me, I’m considered the loud mouth of the room. Martha is generally the quiet achiever in the room, aren’t you, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Yeah, I’m quiet.

Edward Zia: Yeah, she’s very quiet. Martha will sit there and say nothing and sell like four three grand websites in 20 minutes. She’s that sort of character. What we’re going to do, without further ado, I really want to introduce Martha now. Here’s the thing I just want to close on before Martha takes over: I’ve been in the marketing profession since- I’m 35 now, since really the age of 21, and I was a full-time marketing major when I was 24.

Online marketing has rapidly changed, even my own business. As a lot of you know, I’m going into online products myself. Online marketing and Facebooks and websites have totally changed the world. In the last ten years, we’ve had a complete revolution. In fact, a few of us this morning, a few of us online were actually at a presentation from Microsoft this morning. We were just talking about, the internet didn’t even exist about 10, 12 years ago. Now we spend our lives on Facebook, don’t we, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Yeah, it’s as if Facebook is part of our lives that we can’t live without. At least not for me. Considering it wasn’t even there ten years ago, it has changed dramatically the way we do things.

Edward Zia: Precisely. Now bringing it back to small business and why we’re telling you this is that websites and Facebook and even LinkedIn and all those other channels, they give us untold imaginable possibilities to market and grow a business 24 hours a day. That’s really what we’re going to talk about today. Martha’s going to go through the basics. Everyone, let’s give Martha Arifin a hand, everyone. Yay, yay! All yours, Martha, take it over.

Martha Arifin: Thank you, Edward. Hello, this is Martha. Tonight we are going to show you some of what makes your website a success. Now there are a couple of things I got asked often. “Why can’t I just get a website done?” Nothing against Indians or Bangladesh, sorry, but anyone can get a website nowadays. A 12 year-old can build a website. You don’t need to have a coding experience. Like you don’t need to know how to code HTML if you know what it is, to code a website. You can easily build it. There are platforms out there that allows you to build websites very easily, but that’s not what we’re here for.

We need to build a website so that it does not only look good, but it also functions and towards the end of the day, like Edward mentioned before, that actually delivers. What makes your website a success? There are three things that make your website a success, from my point of view. Other people will have different takes on this.

My three takes on this is number one, we’ve got a designed usability. You design usability and return of investment. To design let me just cover that a little bit. When it comes to- I came from a graphic design background, so I was trained as a graphic designer, moved into web design, and now I’m developing, I do online marketing here and then social media. I’ve got a good grasp understanding of what makes a good design when it comes to online.

Consistency is one of them. Consistency of colors, consistency of positioning of elements, the font choices, the font sizes, the proportion of the elements. They all deliver your brand as in how you deliver the message of your brand.

Let’s take a look at Virgin, for example. Virgin is one of the biggest brands out there. They have spent millions of dollars trying to get the branding wide across all their products. When we’re talking about Virgin Airlines, Virgin music, Virgin gym, and all the products all across the range. They have delivered an amazing brand experience. No matter where you look, you know it’s Virgin. You don’t have to look into the ether. You get to look at the airplane, you got to look at logo, the business cards. Sorry, not business cards, the credit cards. Facebook page, their websites all deliver it consistently.

That is what I’m talking here is the consistency. If you look at your, where we’re talking online, let’s have a look at the website. Have a look at how your Facebook page looks like, your Twitter if you have a Twitter account. Your YouTube channel if you’re working anything online very close to video marketing and things like that. Email marketing, how is your email template looking? Are they consistent? We’re not even mentioning all the offline marketing materials like your business cards, if you have flyers, brochures, banners, CDs, DVDs, whatever it is. Make sure they’re consistent.

Even though we’re not big brands, like we don’t spend millions building the brands, but it is your brand. It is how you want people to perceive and see you. If it is not delivering the right message, it’s something that you should be looking at, the first thing. That is number one. What do you think, Ed?

Edward Zia: Absolutely. Just sort of reinforcing that. It’s funny, I actually didn’t see this presentation till today, which has been really good. When I was doing my post-graduate in marketing at Monash University, Melbourne, Virgin was one of the big case studies because if you’re going back a bit in history, Virgin was one of the few companies that started out. They got their image right across all medias, so be it a website, a flight attendant, a person at the time when they had Virgin stores selling Virgin mobile phones, or Richard Branson on TV. They had a consistent brand experience.

I know what you’re thinking, “Oh, well that’s Virgin. That’s Richard. Richard’s got more money than me and shut the hell up, Edward.” Great, okay, cool. From a small business point-of-view, it doesn’t cost much money to be consistent. Let’s say, in very simple terms, let’s say, Daniel Dougherty’s online, great guy. His team color is blue. It would imply that his branding should be blue, be it his website or his uniform should be blue. Joel De La Cruz is on the line. His image is- Daniel says, “Cian.” Okay, you win, cyan. I’m colour-blind, there you go. Joel on the line, however, his colour scheme is more the red crimson hues. He gets that look consistent.

What I do doesn’t cost money to do it. As small business owners, and even though I don’t want to steal Martha’s thunder, but you want to have the same consistent look and feel. Obviously if you go to a networking event and grab a business card. If someone goes home and they do this, and type in your website, they get that same consistent brand experience when they go back and check out your website. I think they can take away is that everything, be it a Facebook page or a business card, same look and feel. Sounds great, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Yup, yup. Spot on.

Edward Zia: Very good. Back to you, Martha.

Martha Arifin: Okay. Now the second thing is the usability. Now that is a big word. Now what is a usability? Usability is basically the ease of use. Now we’re talking about online delivery. Facebook, any of your social media platforms and websites obviously. The ease of use. How easy it is for visitors or your viewers to look at the website and then navigate around? One of the thing that people don’t realize, people do not read on screen. They scan and they skim.

A study’s done by a usability group, Nielsen. You probably heard of his name. Just search for it online. Very, very, very, very huge in the usability world and accessibility. He’s done a research and this is what you’re looking at here on the right-hand side that resembles the letter F and that’s how, it’s an eye-tracking movement. They put eye-tracking camera attached to the head and it actually track the eyes as they go along and read the website. This is how it is. People actually-

The red areas are where people fix their attention the most, and it will then go to the lesser one which is the green colors, and then the blues colours and the gray ones don’t get any fixation at all. As you can see, people actually skim through. They stop. Like the first line off the letter F at the top there, going across horizontally, then it goes skimming down a little bit. Pause a little bit. Wait for a little bit and then go down and do the second letter. The shorter horizontal line off the letter F, and then it goes skim down.

As you can probably see, they do not read, they skim and they scan. That’s how people are looking at your website when it comes to usability. The conclusion is, the first two paragraphs must state the most important information. If you have information that you want to put out there in your website, make sure that they are actually on the first paragraphs, because people actually read that and use headings to break long articles. If you have long articles, use bullet points, use headings, because people are drawn to it and that’s what forms the letter F. When it comes to usability-

Edward Zia: Yeah. Just jumping on Martha’s bandwagon there, which I couldn’t agree with more, the same goes for all your marketing. You really got to think. When you’re, let’s say, laying out content on a website or even a flyer, you want to think, “Do you have the right words and right images in the right positions?”

It’s always really good to think about where are people likely to look? A very obvious one is on a website, is what heading do you have? When someone opens your website, what’s the first thing that they see? The big question is, “Why should they stay on the site?” If someone opens your website, you’ve got what? How long? What seven seconds to convince them to stay? Is that right, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Less than seven seconds. That is correct.

Edward Zia: Yep. Amazing. If you question, “Why should they remain on your website?” and to me, that’s something really prominent and what we really suggest you talk about. Now I was just going to say as well, you are a beautiful audience, what a great attendance, but you’re all too quiet. Ask us questions. Abuse us, yell at us. Say that Martha has a big nose. No, she doesn’t, Martha has a small nose. But anyway, feel free to insult us. Give us something. We love being insulted, so there you go. Very good, make sure you get your wording as compelling as possible.

Martha Arifin: Spot on, spot on. Okay. Still in the topic of usability is the topic of mobile-friendly website. Now this is a huge topic on its own and we can probably run an entire webinar on itself, is when it comes to a mobile-friendly websites, we’re talking about a couple different things here. Number one is navigation. How many times have you been in a website and you’re trying to click on something on your mobile device and Ed was just talking about how like the sales of tablets and mobile devices surpasses the sales of desktops and Apple PCs.

Putting platforms aside, a lot of people actually accessing your website and your online content through a mobile device, be it tablets, be it smartphones. If your website is not mobile-friendly, you’re probably leaving a lot of audience on the table. That’s not really very good. You’ve been to a website, you try to click on one link, you click on the one next to it because all the text are all jumbled up together and they’re all too close. All the text are very, very close to each other when it comes to navigation.

What you’re looking at there on the screen is one of our clients. One of our clients, ABC Read. We’ve developed a website so that when you look at it on a mobile, on the right-hand side, the menus becomes drop-downs, as you probably are aware. Like for example, on smartphones. Because the size of your thumb and your fingers is actually much bigger than the actual mouse pointer.

That’s one thing that you have to make sure your website, your online presence, navigation-wise, it is easy for people to look at things, to click through, and to navigate. The two-clicks rule apply. If you’re trying to find your phone number, you have to click more than twice, this is for an information-based website, will they find it within two clicks?

Edward Zia: Yeah. Amazing, and that’s a very good point. To me, what I recommend to you all is that, if you’ve got a website already, go to your mobile phone and visit it, and pick up your iPad or your Samsung tablet and visit it and see what happens. The interesting thing was, at the Microsoft workshop this morning, what was very, very, very potent from all this is that last quarter, there were more tablets sold than there were desktop PCs, so easily in a year or two, there could be at least 60% of people coming to your website from a tablet.

You got to remember the majority of your browsing will be from a tablet. Make sure you get it right and make sure what we call it mobile optimizations. You want to make sure it’s really good. I also want to say as well, thank you for all your questions coming. Come in some more. Thank you for all your compliments and Sebastian asked a great question of, “How I can get more likes on Facebook?” Are you going to go through that later on?

Martha Arifin: Yup, we’re going to touch on that.

Edward Zia: We will come back to you on that one, Sebastian, but good question. Get more of your questions through, everyone. We love questions.

Martha Arifin: Okay, still on the topic of usability is accessibility. Now, people are thinking accessibility is for people with- For example people with specific needs, but it’s not just that. Accessibility means that your online presence must be easily accessible through different devices. We’ve talked about tablets, we talked about smartphones. How about across browsers now.

We’re talking about cross-browsers it is a lot of different browsers on a different platforms. Apple, PC, you’ve got Internet Explorer, which is kind of dying now. Firefox, we’ve got Chrome, you’ve got Opera. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, these are the browsers that you use to look at all your websites. They have to go across nicely across many different browsers. When we come to colours, it’s the same thing. Is the colour accessible for people who use different type of devices?

Edward Zia: Just to interrupt Martha. Martha, you’re saying that be it I’m using Google Chrome or Internet Explorer or Apple Safari, the website might look different on different browsers if it’s not tested properly?

Martha Arifin: That is correct. It might just break on some browsers not tested properly. Colours-wise, the same thing. If you have, let’s say white text against black background, would it come up if someone switched the text colours around? People might just print it out and it might not just come up. Sorry, it’s the issue of accessibility which is part of the usability.

Edward Zia: Yeah, so in other words, you’re saying, Martha, it’s very good to test your websites thoroughly on all platforms, and if not, you can speak to your web designer and tell them to fix it. Or you can hire Martha. Huahahahaha.

Martha Arifin: Yeah, and these are two of the tools that I’m using. Toolspingdom.com and just to check it- Go to that website after the webinar and just try to put in your own URL, your own website URL, and see when it comes to the website loading speed, how fast your website loads, which is also another thing that you should be considering when building websites accessibility-wise.

Edward Zia: Wow, very good advice. Beautiful stuff. Get your questions through, everyone. … All right.

Martha Arifin: Okay, the last point, when it comes to creating a website that works, is the return on investment. Now there’ll be some marketing terms, and we’re not going to talk marketing here, it’s not my forte, but when it comes to website, it still has to convert. We’re talking about sales and marketing strategies which is what Edward here is an expert on, and we’re talking about online, website, Facebook, whatever it is.

We can talk about landing page. Now landing page is basically a single page that you bring your visitors in. You can bring your visitors in through, by sending them the link to that landing page. When it comes to sales and marketing strategies, you’ve got to think about how-

Now you’re looking at the funnel there on the screen. How you can first attract your viewers, your potential viewers, which is your leads. That’s your lead generation. If you’re aware of the marketing term, that’s your lead generation. How do you attract them? You can do Facebook ads, for example. You can do and then after you attract them, the second level is, how do you then interact with these leads? Again, it might be social media, it might be email marketing. You just open the communication there.

Edward Zia: Exactly, exactly. I think it’s good to really think about. Let’s say you create the best website possible. How are you going to get traffic there and are people going to give you a lead or not? It’s always good to really ask yourself these potent questions.

Martha Arifin: That is correct, yeah.

Edward Zia: A good one there.

Martha Arifin: Right. This is another question that I got asked all the time. We have Facebook, Martha, we have Facebook, we have LinkedIn, we have Pinterest, we have YouTube and some of the other things I’ve never even heard of. Especially youngsters nowadays, they’re on Snapchat, they’re on this and that. The key is, I always answer it this way. If you are overwhelmed, it is common because these platforms, they change every single day, if not several times in a day, and they don’t even tell you. Sometimes they do. They don’t even tell you why, they just changed it. One day you log in to Facebook and say, “What’s that?” You just try it out and see what happens, right?

When I got asked, “Okay, how do you then use all this different strategies, SEOs, and optimized web. How do you get your site to be found in Google? Social media, how do you use Facebook? How do you use Pinterest? How do you use YouTube? How do you use so-and-so?”

Email marketing, you know what it is. Email newsletters. Email marketing you can do PR. You can do events, you can do any marketing, you can do flyers, you can use cold callings, direct mail, referrals, whatever it is that you’re doing, it is to drive traffic back to your website. Think about Facebook as just a lead generation to we saw on the top of the funnel.

… Which one and how to monetize? Again, my answer is pick one, stick to one, and master it. For most of us, Facebook is probably going to be the answer, being one of the major players. Stick to one and then master it. Don’t go and try to run the second one, Pinterest or whatever it is, before you master the first one.

My suggestion, my advice always, let’s say you start with Facebook. Stick to Facebook, make sure it’s running properly, make sure you know that you already have the system in place that you can then delegate to someone else to do it for you. You could hire a virtual assistant, you could hire a social media expert, or even an intern. If you do a lot of Facebook content, for example, and you know how you source it out, how often you do it and where you go to source it out, what format does it have to be in? You can then brief this assistant of yours to do it for you. Which means then you can then jump onto the next bandwagon.

Edward Zia: Exactly, exactly. I think it’s really good and I love the questions coming through. What we’re going to do is we’re just going to go back and answer a few of the questions, so please type them all now. We got two going from Sebastian, the first one being, “How can I get more likes on Facebook?” Before I give it on to Martha, I’ll tell you what I personally do is I personally like my friends to like my business pages, I make sure I post at least three times a week, compelling content, and also those paid advertising options. What’s your take on that one, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Yup. If your likes is less than 100, let’s say you’re starting out, it is always a good idea to invite your friends, just to jump up the numbers very quickly to 100 before you start running the Facebook ad. That’s my take on it. The Facebook ad is a very efficient, is a very effective way of ramping up your Facebook likes. But you can start with your friends, the people that you know, that’s for sure. Yes.

Edward Zia: Exactly, exactly. That’s a whole area of itself but Facebook marketing is very, very important. Now Sebastian’s asked another question. It’s quite a complex one! “How can I create a Facebook app if I don’t know coding? Do I hire someone?” What do you think, Martha? I can’t do that.

Martha Arifin: Yeah, a Facebook app- Now if you don’t know what a Facebook app is, when you log in to Facebook, you see boxes where you see the photos, the number of likes, those are the default ones. You can also create custom boxes. We call them Facebook app or Facebook taps. You can create one of those. If you know how to code, then you can obviously code it in.

But if you don’t know how to code, let’s say you’re a business owner and don’t know how to code and you don’t want to hire someone to code it for you, what you can do is you can use third-party plug-ins. Now plug-ins basically just provider. You buy a third-party plug-in. Some of the third-party plug-ins allows you to use a certain number of Facebook taps before you have to pay, or some of them gives you a 30 days trial and you can create custom apps.

One of the uses of apps is to collect information, like say a contact form, without them leaving Facebook. That’s good. You don’t get them to leave Facebook, you can still get to collect information. Third-party plug-ins.

Edward Zia: Wow. There you go. I hope that helps, Sebastian, and of course, Martha’s sticking around at the end. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. With the technical stuff, when we stop the recording at the end, Martha can sit there and type out the answers to everyone. Got that on the list. A great one from, I never pronounce the name properly, Supriya.

Martha Arifin: Supriya.

Edward Zia: It’s Supriya, isn’t it? Anyway, Supriya-

Martha Arifin: Supriya!

Edward Zia: Anyway, that awesome woman who does yoga who’s online, Supriya, I hope we get it right. If not, I always mispronounce her name and she hates me. She asks a great question. How can we attract the target population to the Facebook page? Yes, Supriya forgives us. Thank you, Supriya. That’s a good question, Martha. How do we get the right sort of people to like our Facebook page? Martha?

Martha Arifin: Yes, with the Facebook obviously, when you start inviting your friends, your friends might not be your ideal client, which is fine because we’re just trying to get the numbers up. When we do Facebook advertising, for example one of them, you do Facebook advertising, it’s a paid advertising, you can do a very targeted ad. You can say only want a target-

Okay, this is based on your strategy, obviously. You look at your, let’s say, top three clients or top 30% of your clients. Let’s say what the demographics are and where they leave. What’d they do? Are they more likely to shop here or to buy that? Where are they hanging out? Based on those breakdowns, you will then target people with that criteria on your Facebook ads. That’s if you’re doing Facebook ads.

If you’re doing marketing, it is the same thing, yeah. I’ve seen a lot of Facebook marketers trying to just ramp up the likes, for example, by giving away something that is unrelated, got nothing to do with- For example, let’s say I’m a personal trainer. Like someone actually mistaken me as a personal trainer like years ago, so that’s-

Edward Zia: Martha does look pretty fit and she does work out. Right, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Sorry, that’s not the point. The point is, let’s say I was a personal trainer and then I had my Facebook page. I’m trying to give away iPad. Obviously, all of a sudden, I get 3000 like, 5000 like, 10,000 likes. People want to win my iPad. But then at the end of the competition, someone wins an iPad, and then, they’re not my target audience. You get 10,000 likes with no engagement. That’s not the way to go. To reach a target audience, you’ve got to know who you are targeting. That’s number one. You’ve got to know your target audience really well outside Facebook before you do that.

Edward Zia: Yeah. A good way I recommend to small business owners, obviously big companies have a whole marketing department and they just pay tens of thousands for research. The best way I recommend to small business owners, in the case of Supriya.

Martha Arifin: Supriya.

Edward Zia: Supriya, I hope your name’s right.

Martha Arifin: He’s right.

Edward Zia: Yeah, yeah, I can’t pronounce names. I just stick to marketing. In the case of Supriya, who I think’s got a wonderful name, and everyone on the line, is you want to think about your clients you already have. You want to think about the clients you already have. That gives you a fair idea as to the people that you tend to work with and the people you tend to don’t, and that can help you guide your target audience. Definitely a recommended way for small businesses.

Feel free to get to your questions. Everyone’s criticizing my lack of ability to pronounce Indian names, and for that I’m sorry, but feel free to get your questions, or your insults at my lack of understanding of the Indian language. Sebastian’s laughing at my error, which is very funny. There you go. There you go.

Martha Arifin: Okay. Ah, look who’s there on the screen. When it comes to attracting, driving traffic, what you want to do on your landing page. When I’m talking about landing page, could be your Facebook page, could be your website page. You need to have a compelling design, obviously, we touched on that being your brand, being your colours, layout and things like that, but also, which is easily forgotten, is the copyrighting. Like how important is copy on a website?

Edward Zia: Absolutely. It’s funny, I’m actually going through that process myself. I launched my own, first online product last week, which is obviously a massive project and thing for me. The thing that I found as part of that experience is you got to remember, like face to face is different. If you meet someone face to face you can smile, you can shake their hand, you can give them a complement.

Websites are different. You got to think about a website has to do all its selling for you, so the wording is absolutely critical. Be it wording on the ad or in this case, you can see the wording of my Facebook ad for the marketing. By the way, this Facebook ad applies converting. They got .04%, which is a lot for Facebook. You want to make sure your wording is absolutely perfect. Now, a good question here from Sebastian. “Is it common to run your business just by a Facebook when you’re starting?” Absolutely, I would completely agree with that. What’s your take on that Martha?

Martha Arifin: Yeah, yeah, it depends on what it is that you’re selling, obviously. We know a lot of people starting selling, could be candles, could be cakes, could be any clothing, apparel, started all on Facebook. The whole business is based on Facebook. Now my take on it is Facebook own separate thing. Let’s say it closed down tomorrow. You’ve got nothing. That’s my own take. You can start with Facebook, but then slowly, slowly make sure that you build your own database.

Edward Zia: Yep, yep. In the case of Sebastian, Sebastian makes a good point. Sebastian’s a hired photographer. He does amazing work. What I suggest you do is by all means, and I have quite a few photography clients, is that Facebook is beautiful for photographers because you list your artwork there and do everything. But may I suggest as well, you may but eventually you want to be listing it on your own website as well. Now the probability of Facebook going down is probably unlikely.

Martha Arifin: Very unlikely.

Edward Zia: Very unlikely, but at the same time, if you can upload stuff on Facebook, you might not put it on your own website, but at least you have a copy. Let’s say Facebook has a disaster, Facebook went down. You’ve got the artwork and you’ve got all the imagery yourself so you can recreate it in your own image quite well.

Now George has asked a great question on Facebook versus LinkedIn. Do you want me to answer this one? Yeah, LinkedIn’s more my baby. Facebook, Martha’s got way better knowledge than me. LinkedIn is definitely my baby. Again, this is quite an important one. LinkedIn is a very good platform and the way I sort of describe Facebook and LinkedIn is that there’s some similarities and vast differences.

Now in the case of George Gilmore, George Gilmore is a risk assessor and high-end insurance broker. Now in that case, LinkedIn would work way better for George. But George is also launching a book real soon. In that case, I think Facebook would work very well. It’s very contextual.

Talking LinkedIn, which is obviously sort of my specialty. When it comes to LinkedIn, think of LinkedIn as a business networking group. LinkedIn is like a business networking group. Let’s say you’ve got a business networking group, you meet 30 people. You might have clicked with only one but 29 people you don’t know that well. Adding someone on Facebook personally you just met, may not be socially acceptable. Whereas LinkedIn is completely socially acceptable.

The good thing about LinkedIn, which is very, very, very powerful, is that LinkedIn’s great for connecting to people professionally, showing your expertise, and also LinkedIn paid advertising is outstanding for targeting people based on profession or the job they do for a living. Facebook’s great for targeting a demographic or an interest like 25 year-old girls who, I don’t know, like horses or shit like that. I don’t know, do 25 year-old girls like horses and shit like that?

Martha Arifin: What are you trying to sell?

Edward Zia: Exactly. Obviously, I understand women well. I should, I have several clients who are women. But LinkedIn, I’m being a smartass, LinkedIn is about targeting, let’s say HR managers and certain people. Also LinkedIn has very, very powerful groups as well. We talk about it. Yeah, any commentary on that one, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Facebook versus LinkedIn, it depends on what you’re trying to do. Some platforms are best suited for a certain type of businesses, some platform are best suited for the others. There’s no right or wrong, you just got to find which one is best suited for your business and services.

Edward Zia: Excellent. We got a question from Jay as well. A very good point. “Facebook sounds good to sell products. Any tips on attracting and selling services like mine?” Just so you know, Jay and Sean own a security and technology company. They’re asking about using Facebook to promote that. What’s your interpretation on that one, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Yeah. On that one there, Facebook is always a good way to connecting with potential leads, potential clients, potential customers, but one thing that you really, really have to know, you really have to be aware obviously, you want to attract your target audience. You just don’t want to target anyone. One of the misconception is people only aim for the likes but not necessarily the engagements. You might have a number of likes, no engagements, no point. Like I said about the issue with the challenge with giving away iPad as personal trainer. Same thing there.

Edward Zia: Yeah. I think a good example is the whole like- Personally, my Facebook page has about 1800 likes these days. Martha will have me killed the way she’s going in about three months, probably three weeks, the way Martha is going. To me, my Facebook page has a lot of likes. Now, I know someone who ran a very successful competition and they got their likes to the thousands. The whole problem is that the people liking their page weren’t their target market.

At the end of the day, you can have freakin’ 10,000 likes to your Facebook page, but if they’re not people that are interested in your products or services, it is completely meaningless. If anything it could be bad because if you’re marketing to people who don’t want to hear from you, they’ll start resenting you, won’t they?

Martha Arifin: Yeah, it actually could become a very, very bad- It will backfire because what happens is, people forget that they’ve liked your page because it’s the iPad they’re interested in. It’s not the service. It’s not your services or product. When your post comes up in their newsfeed, the things that people see when they log into their Facebook account, they might not like it, so they can’t- Some people know how to turn it off and you can actually hide it, but you can mark it as spam or report it. When you get enough of that, Facebook actually penalizes you for doing that.

Edward Zia: Yeah, so please be careful on that one. It’s great to have relevant. Just reinforcing what Martha’s saying, in the case of Jay, images- Jay runs a security company, could be the latest technology, could be guards beating up people- No, please don’t put them up, we’ll get you sued. Or it could be good photos about you hanging out with the guards and doing a great top job. Yeah, very good. Get more questions through, this is fantastic, and Martha’s going to continue the fine work.

Martha Arifin: Okay. Now when it comes to interacting, interacting with your audience, with the leads that come through from driving your traffic. There are a number of things you can do. You can do online marketing- When it comes to online marketing I mean email marketing is one of them. It’s probably one of the biggest one that you can do. Recently, a lot of people are doing video marketing. You see the crazy Persian there on the YouTube screenshot, “Conquering the Top Ten Marketing Mistakes with Edward Zia,” there.

Video marketing is very, very powerful because people get to see you, people get to experience you even before they meet with you. That’s video marketing. You can also interact with people using social media nowadays, obviously, using scheduled updates. Now this is where it gets very, very huge in that you can schedule updates as long as you like. Let’s say you do it this weekend for the next seven weeks. Sorry, not seven weeks, for the next seven days, and then it will just schedule itself out automatically even while you sleep. Leveraging your time in a way.

Edward Zia: Yeah. Just weighing in on what Martha’s saying there, with YouTube and video- Look, my video on the marketing cost me a lot of money, but for video, you can do stuff with an iPad or an iPhone that’s absolutely amazing. In fact, they have actual, Sebastian was telling me this. Sebastian was telling me, he’s a great photographer online. Sebastian was saying is that they actually have photo competitions where the only technology allowed is an iPhone.

Please don’t think, please don’t look at YouTube and go, “Oh shit, I’ve got thousands of dollars.” Not true. Some of the highest views on LinkedIn, correction highest views of videos on YouTube are done through iPhones or iPads, aren’t they?

Martha Arifin: Yeah, that is correct.

Edward Zia: Please don’t forget that. Now Sebastian’s asked a good question which is probably more aimed at me. Sebastian. Basically Sebastian’s asking, “If you don’t know someone that well, if you don’t know someone at all and you connect to him on LinkedIn is it a good idea?” No. I’ll be upfront with you. With LinkedIn, the problem with LinkedIn is that a lot of people are adding people where they don’t know you. That’s actually against the LinkedIn’s terms and conditions. On LinkedIn it’s called an IDK. It means an I don’t know you.

Now, what happens to me, if you’re connecting to people that don’t know you, there’s two issues going on. One is that if you keep connecting with people you don’t know, they can lodge a complaint- If you get more than five IDKs from memory, LinkedIn can disable your account. Please only connect to people you have met in the real world, or you’ve got some kind of link. Please, please, please don’t go there. Very good.

Now George has asked, George Gilmore, our great risk assessor friend on the line, has asked two questions. “What about paying for ads and buying email lists?” Actually, George, on that one, can you give us a bit more information? What context do you mean that in when it comes about buying ads or email lists? Give us more information there, George, so I can give you exactly the right answer.

Supriya, I hope I got her name right or she’ll kill me, “What is the most appropriate-?” I’m trying to understand the question here. Oh, cool. Supriya’s asking a very good question basically saying, “If you’re, let’s say, in a niche, or your company is very, very specialized, what’s the most appropriate platform to do it?”

Now it depends. If you’re targeting, let’s say, a very specific industry or function in a company, LinkedIn can be very good. But in terms of Facebook, Facebook can be amazing targeting based on just when you set up an ad because you can specify an interest. Or let’s say you’re targeting a demographic. What do you think on that one, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Yeah, if you’re looking at advertising on Facebook, paying for the traffic, especially on Facebook, I would suggest you check out the power editor. The power editor comes with Facebook, so when you log in and you create your own app, you can use the power editor. It allows you to really target it based on a number of criteria’s. Not just the age, not just the demographics, but all other things as well, including their interests, including-

In America actually, and not in Australia yet, I don’t know why, but it’s always catching up. But in America you have database of people. Let’s say I want to target only people who are interested in buying Mercedes Benz in the next six months, and I can target those people. Now I don’t know where they get their database from, it’s a bit scary, but- You’ve been browsing around looking for something and then suddenly- Let’s say, have you noticed in your personal page for example, that you see that little emoticons. The feeling, what is it? The feeling sad-

Edward Zia: I’m feeling sad, depressed, I feel like voting liberal, I feel like supporting a conservative government-

Martha Arifin: Don’t go there, don’t go there.

Edward Zia: Okay, yeah. All right.

Martha Arifin: Yeah, so why do you think they put it in there? They didn’t put it in there just for fun. It’s emotions which are very, very, very important buying power. The more information Facebook has about you- Let’s say you’ve been like feeling a little down lately and you’re feeling sad and you keep posting all this, “I’m feeling sad, I’m feeling sad.” Suddenly, you see ads that makes you do not want to feel sad. I don’t know what it is, but that’s how it is. That’s how it works. A bit scary, but that’s how it is.

Edward Zia: For example, voting liberal in the election will make you happy, right Martha?

Martha Arifin: Oh gosh. No comment on that. Yup. That’s how it is. Yeah, yeah, make sure that you have a very, very targeted ads.

Edward Zia: Excellent. That’s a very good question. George Gilmore- People can probably hear- I’m actually eating a piece of chocolate right now. I picked a bad time to do it but George has asked me a question, so I shall answer. George is asking, “How much for Facebook compare to say buying a list or target?” Now, it really depends. List buying is a different sort of job. In the case of list buying, you can buy a list of anyone from a nation or an industry.

Really, when you think about, if you’re going to buy a list of actual people to ring people up, or email them to target them, you’ve really got to know- It’s not so much an online market, it’s more of a marketing strategy question. Who are your clients, who are you targeting, and why are you doing it? My big question first is who are your clients? Who are your ideal targets? Because that will determine how you target them and whether it should be buying a list and calling them in the real world, networking Facebook or LinkedIn, that sort of thing. Know we’re almost out of chocolate. What’s your take on that one, Martha?

Martha Arifin: Yeah. I’m not big on buying a list, but if you do want to buy a list, there’s a company called Impact List.

Edward Zia: Yep, Impact List. I’m putting it in.

Martha Arifin: Impact List. Yeah, Impact List is probably one of the good ones. The database is very high quality. It’s actually getting updated recently so you don’t get the dodgy ones and you can specify- They don’t cost- They’re not cheap, but they’re very, very hard to target. Let’s say you only want to target certain industry. Only people of, let’s say, the CEO level or whatever it is.

Martha Arifin: Okay. Now, the last step is to convert. Once you’ve driven traffic to it, so that’s your lead generation, you do engage with them. That’s your lead nurturing. Then the third one is your link conversion. This is where you convert people into paying clients, is where the big money is. Now to do this, is not going to be an overnight process. Only 5% of people who comes through your sales funnel, remember that funnel thing, only 5% are ready to buy.

People in a different stage of buying, they might already been researching for months and they’re ready to buy right there when you come in into their picture. They want to start their own process and you’ve got to go through all this process with them until they’re happy and they’re comfortable buying it from you. You need a good CRM and CRM is customer relationship management.

A good CRM, whatever it is, it doesn’t really matter what platform you use, like what tools you use. You’ve got to find one that is suitable for your purpose. But that helps you in taking them from generation, from generating the leads through to the lead conversion. That’s number one.

Number two is, from the website point-of-view, make sure that you install Google Analytics. If your website does not have some sort of like statistics behind it, make sure to install Google Analytics. Now Google Analytics itself is free, it’s from Google. You just need to get your web designer or your web developer to implement that for you and you can implement any website.

The idea for analytics is that you can get to see, to a very, very deep level, of statistics. How many people went, what platform they’ve actually seen your website from, how long they stayed, which page they enter in, which page they exit from and how long they stay in there and then what they clicked and all sorts of things. Very, very powerful site, whether or not your Facebook promotions or any type of the lead generation that you’re doing actually is paying off. That’s the Google Analytics. Any-?

Edward Zia: A very good site. It’s good getting- Again, we don’t want to spend too much time on, we do have to wrap up soon, but Google Analytics is about knowing the data that comes to your website and all that. A very good question, this is a very, very big marketing question as we wind this up. Supriya has asked, and I love Supriya questions and I’m pronouncing her name correctly, is, “How do I make my website popular?”

My answer is, making it- I’ll answer it this way: Is it your goal to make your business popular or your website popular? The reason why I say that is a lot of people, I’ve found, and I’ve seen this happen, people will meet clients face to face who have a chance to sell them their services, and they’ll direct people to their website. Now remember, please don’t put the cart before the horse. It’s about making your business popular.

But I know where Supriya’s coming from. Knowing Supriya personally and where she’s coming from is, “How do I get lots of traffic to my website so I get enough leads coming in?” which I understand that would be a question. That’s a composite of everything. Supriya does.

For example, it could be her Facebook page getting in business that way. It could be flyers across town getting stuff that way. It could be a few listings and directories getting traffic that way. Supriya might start a Facebook campaign at $5 a day to bring traffic in. To me, it’s more of a of all the different sort of strategies out there.

Martha Arifin: Yeah, and that is why you have to keep tracking and keep tweaking, because if you don’t know which one works, you don’t know which one to then remove. Let’s say you put in an ad in the local newspaper or you run a Facebook campaign. If both of those running at the same time and you’re not tracking, you don’t know which traffic is driving, which is actually driving- Which method or strategies that could drive in the traffic back to your website. You don’t know.

Edward Zia: Exactly, exactly.

Martha Arifin: Right. It’s all about having a very strong, compelling brand message, number one. Get a good graphic web designer to build the site for you. They’ll know what they’re doing. Make sure that your website is mobile friendly, make sure that it’s- It’s called responsive, if you’ve heard of that keyword before,. Make sure that it’s mobile friendly, and make sure the number two is you have a solid strategy. From the lead generation going through the sales funnel. The lead generation, what strategy are you using to generate leads? Could be Facebook, could be networking, could be whatever is PR, etcetera, etcetera.

Solid strategies from there to their nurturing. Okay, through email marketing, through media marketing. Could be social media scheduled post, then keep tracking and keep tweaking. If it’s working, keep doing it. Just keep doing it. If it’s not working, quickly, quickly change your strategy.

Edward Zia: Yeah. Just an example of putting my money where my mouth is last week my first online product launched. I started out with 15 grand on this project, so I’m taking it rather seriously and want to make it a real hero product. Right now, it’s been about a week’s passed, every day has been tracking, tweaking, analytics. Tracking, tweaking, analytics. Especially if you’re doing e-commerce, where you sell products online without any intervention from yourself, everything’s really critical.

Be it, let’s say you’re Sebastian who’s putting photos up there to get laid or let’s say its Supriya doing yoga, or Jay doing security. Or let’s say me trying to sell digital products. It’s always lots of tracking and tweaking. What this does, folks, is brings us to the end of our webinar. Now we’re going to wrap it up, so get your questions through. We’ve actually gone really well tonight. It’s been one of our longest webinars ever and you guys are still online, which is great. Get your final questions through and some of the big things, I just want to point out, there is- Yeah, I love this pic.

Martha Arifin: Yummy.

Edward Zia: Reflect with a cup of coffee. Have a think about things, plot your next move, and get back and swing hard. Hit back in total style and get a great idea from tonight and take massive action. Now he’s a big thank you from Martha and me. But this is a photo, it’s like we rang each other up that day. We happened to dress the same way. It’s a very funny photo. Now what I want to ask you-

Yeah, George said the guy topless was good looking but he says I’m not so good looking so you’re breaking my heart, George. We love George.

Yeah, here are our email addresses. You’re welcome to contact us at any time. If you’re interested in sort of marketing mentoring help or the strategy, I’m the man for that. If you’re interested in sort of the Facebook and online stuff, Martha’s definitely the woman for that. I just want to say a massive thank you for joining us tonight. We’re going to stop the recording right now and George wrote a funny quote, “No, it was the girl in between, not you,” he said. Okay, there you go. Thank you, George, for protecting my fragile ego.

But we’re going to stop the recording now and we’re just going to hang out a bit longer and our next webinar includes the amazing Daniel Dougherty. He’s going to be talking about email marketing and content creation. Thank you, everyone, a goodbye from me and a goodbye from Martha.

Martha Arifin: Goodbye, everyone!

Edward Zia: Have a great night, everyone, and I hope you enjoy the recording. Talk to you all later.