Excerpts from an interview with Jody Jelas, the WebChik, on January 31, 2010.
Good evening everyone. This is Debra-Sue Cope, with Key Market Research, helping business owners build bridges between their Key Buyers and their Key Business.
Today we have an exceptional quest who has helped many entrepreneurs and business owners create websites that attract more leads and convert them to highly paying clients.
Let me introduce to you the website design expert Jody Jelas, the WebChik. She’ll be showing you what makes a great website GREAT and how to get a website online in less than 10 days with only $1 deposit. Her offer comes with a satisfaction guarantee: You don’t pay for your website until it’s complete and you are 110% happy with it!
Jody Jelas – author of the WebChik blog and founder of Big Fish Website Design – has been helping people make money online for over 12 years. Jody and her team were responsible for putting together my Key Market Research website.
Her team of designers, programmers, and marketing experts work together to create beautiful websites that really work! What Jody enjoys most is seeing her clients online business ideas come to life and start making them money!
Before we get started, Jody, let me say that working with you has been incredibly easy and pleasant. The best part, in addition to the great web design, is that you truly bring with you a business perspective. You’ve understood that what I want to do is to use my website to attract new clients and build my business. You’ve shown me great ways to get traffic to my site and most importantly, how to monetize my site. Unlike web designers I’ve used in the past, I haven’t had to explain that to you. You understand my purpose behind my site and have helped me to move forward on that goal. Thank you Jody, I’m delighted with the work you did for me.
Jody: Excellent. Thank you, Debra-Sue. Thank you for having me on this call!
Debra-Sue: Here’s our first question: What’s the #1 best way to build an online business and get traffic to your website?
Jody: I seriously believe in giving people more than they expect. To increase value and going the extra mile for them. One way to do that is to give regular advice and tips to show you really DO know what you’re talking about. The most cost effective way to do this is with a blog.
If you can consistently blog—and I recommend 2 or 3 times a week—you can create a following of subscribers who come again and again to your site. The more you blog the better, but it’s also important to do it consistently. The more you blog the better for you with the search engines plus you give more value to your customers.
Debra-Sue: That’s great to know. Can you give me the 3 most important things to keep in mind when getting a new website?
Let me give you an example of how my blog has worked for me, not to brag, but to show you the value of blogging. I started with having absolutely no one—I didn’t even have a list. By week 8 I had over 200 people regularly visiting my blog. Many of them have become clients.
There’s a book I highly recommend for people. It’s about building your brand, blogging, and turning your passions into profits: Gary Vaynerchuck’s Crush It! It’s all about how to make money on line with your passion. If you go to my website, www.bigfish.com and the resources page, you can get it there.
You also can download from my Big Fish website the “ 7 things you need to know before you spend a dime on a website” Free Report. I’ll give you one here: Start with the end in mind. You have to know your big picture and develop your brand.
Debra-Sue: How do you determine who is your target audience and what to write about?
Jody: There’s where your services would come into it. You can help them with your company, Key Market Research, to find their niche and how to market to those people. What do you recommend to your clients about finding their niche?
Debra-Sue: It’s not effective to try to be “all things to all people”. First you must decide who to market to. One of the best ways to determine this is to start with potential buyers you have an infinity with. Who do you already do business with? Who do you know well? You can add more niches later, but this is the best way to get started—start with the people you know the most about and like working with.
The second thing you must do is to overcome your “curse of knowledge.” What do I mean by that? You know so much about your topic that you have probably forgotten what it’s like to be a beginner. You must think like they think and write in the most accessible way. You must speak in their language about what is important to them.
There are so many ways to find out what’s on their mind and dialogue with them–surveys, other blogs…. With so much information available, it’s a great time to have a blog. To find out more and to sign up for a live interactive webinar, go to http://www.yourkeymessage.net and pick the day and time that’s best for you.
Jody: That’s going to be a huge help for my clients.
Debra-Sue: Thank you! Here’s your next question. Social Media like Facebook and Twitter can be overwhelming. Do we need them if we’re not actively on them?
Jody: We build all our websites with wordpress.com as a base. We add modules and customize it for you. As you blog it automatically updates your Facebook, twitter and any other social network sites you use. You won’t have to spend your time keeping your social media updated. Every time you put it out there they will want to read your latest post. It grows all the time, doesn’t it?
Debra-Sue: Yes—it’s the greatest thing in the world to be seen and heard. It’s really fun—I had no idea what I was missing before I began blogging.
Jody: You must go to pingfm, set up an account, and automate your website with a pingfm account. All this sounds very complicated but after working with you for a few weeks it will be all set up and updating automatically.
Debra-Sue: It’s so simple and easy. I’m delighted you’ve gotten me started.
Jody: If you ever get overwhelmed you can go to www.Bigfish.com and visit the “how to library.” We have a library of how to videos on how to do just about anything on your site. You can request a “how to video” if you get stuck on something that I don’t have a video on. That’s one way we add value to our clients.
Debra-Sue: How do people get a website that is a reasonable price that they can update themselves really easily?
Jody: We designed our offer based on what people have been complaining about with web designers. They “take too long and charge too much”.
When someone contract with us for a website, we begin working right away. To get a website it’s only $497. It used to be thousands of dollars to get a website, but now because of technology, we can create it for just a few hundred. As long as they can come up with their content, we can upload it for them.
Debra-Sue: I’d like to take a minute to talk about what’s working today from a marketing standpoint. Today, we must create a dialogue with our prospects and customers. A blog site connected to online social networking is excellent for that. By offering valuable, sought-after free information you can capture emails, invoke reciprocity, and build credibility.
The second thing to have is a landing page/sales page which asks your potential clients to take a particular action.
With the economy the way it is, what people want most is the knowledge to make their best possible decision. This kind of marketing is called education-based marketing. Jody, what you are doing is exactly in line with what I help people create—a client-focused, education-based Key Message that provides rich content for a website.
Jody: It’s all about giving value, more than is expected. It’s like the movie “pay it forward”—people who are your right target audience will move toward you. I teach trust marketing and using the law of attraction instead of chasing people who may not be interested in what you have.
It’s a much easier way to work because the work comes to you—self-selected people who want your unique offering. When you do take time with a client, they are well informed, primed and ready to go.
Debra-Sue: How can they get started with you?
Jody: We begin with a web consultation with me or one of my team. We ask questions to find out more about your business and where you want to go. When you choose a package all you pay is the $1.00 deposit. It’s not until day 7 that you get charged for website, when your website is about done.
Debra-Sue: That’s right, my site took only 5 days before it was up and running. Working with you has not only been a pleasure, it has expanded my ideas about how to grow my business online.
Jody: I find out what people’s passions are and how to monetize online.
Debra-Sue: That kind of entrepreneurship is exactly what we need to jump start this economy—a positive can-do attitude that looks past the obstacles to the vast opportunities available online.
Thank you so much Jody, it has been a pleasure. One more time, how can people get in touch with you?
Jody: They can go to www.BigFish.com where they will find FREE helpful information on how to get started.
Debra-Sue: Any business owner who wants a powerful online presence that attracts leads, builds relationships, and converts them to highly paying clients, would do well to contact you without delay, Jody.
Thank you and good evening.