Reprinted from the November 1997 Professional Speaker magazine, and posted here for those attending Jeff's panel session at the 1998 NSA Western Winter Workshop in San Francisco.

As a Web Presence provider and consultant, two of the questions that I am most frequently asked are:

1. "Are speakers getting any business from their Web site?"
2. "How do I build good, qualified traffic on my Web site?"

The answer to the first question is a definite yes! As co-founder of The Expertise Center Web site for speakers, consultants and meeting professionals, I recently sent out an E-mail to solicit success stories from our membership. The response was heartwarming:

"In the month of April, we booked more than $10,000 from two new speaking clients who contacted us after viewing the Web site."
  -- Ed Brodow

"We've lost count of the number of engagements we've received as a direct result of prospects visiting our Web site. They're finding us through keyword searches, general surfing, and follow-ups from our listing the URL on all of our materials. We're getting at least a call (or E-mail) every week."
  -- Roger Herman CMC, CSP

"I don't expect my Web site to generate new business for me, but I have had great success using it to cut the sales cycle down, as well as save me money on marketing costs."
  -- Steve Miller

What Goals Do You Want to Achieve with Your Web Site?

Just as in traditional marketing and selling, professional speakers and trainers need to put in the legwork to produce profitable results. That means knowing what your business goals are and developing and implementing a well-thought-out plan to achieve your goals. Some possible objectives you might consider as a professional speaker or consultant are:

• Conduct current business activities electronically (and at less cost) by sending out electronic newsletters or providing your customers with follow-up articles that give them value-added content on your topic automatically via "E-mail-on-demand."
• Provide a forum for communication with customers or prospects (such as meeting planners) by allowing your Web site to serve as a quick reference of your expertise in lieu of a brochure.
• Shorten your sales cycle by using your Web site as an interactive brochure when discussing your services with clients over the phone.
• Expand your marketing activities to reach a larger global marketplace and generate increased sales.
• Provide customers with a way to access your speaking schedule, pre-program questionnaires, bureau-friendly Web-based brochures and other educational information.

But, let's assume that you have good objectives and know what kind of people you want to reach. How do get more of them to visit your Web site? The three primary action strategies that successful speakers use to enable clients to find their Web site are:

• registration in Web search engines
• "think links" that provide recent and relevant information interactively
• the use of traditional marketing methods to promote your Web site.

Action Strategy No. 1: Register in Web Search Engines

Business Web browsers look for a specific business purpose -- a particular type of speaker or consultant.

Shep Hyken, CSP, had success after he was found through a search engine. He said, "A man saw me at his convention and told his wife, who needed a speaker. He didn't have a clue how to reach me, but she searched the Internet and found me. Within fifteen minutes of her search, we had a booking. She didn't need a brochure or video, either."

Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE, said "A gentleman went to Yohoo! and typed in 'speaker.' He E-mailed 60 to 70 of us asking if we would like to be considered to open a user conference of 300 people. Guess how many replies he got? Four! They liked my video best and I got the booking. No quibble about fee."

Making it Work for You

To get the most out of search engines, you have to do two things. First, you must design your Web site in a "search friendly" way. That means making sure your designers know how to write the code for your page so that it's easy for sites to index and find the proper search words. This is becoming increasingly important as the search engines move more and more to automatic indexing. They send out little robots to scour the Web for matching sites and index them. As the search process becomes more automatic, the more page design becomes your primary tool for influencing search engines.

Secondly, you must register in the top search engines. You are not limited to one page per site, so make sure that all highly valuable information is registered. It is more effective to register more pages with fewer, more important sites rather than try to register on every search engine that's out there. At The Expertise Center, we recommend registering with Yahoo!, Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos, Webcrawler, HotBot, Infoseek, Magellan, OpenText and NetGuide.

To register your Web site in the most effective way, you need to prepare certain information ahead of time. First, develop several descriptions of varying lengths of you and your business (i.e., 10, 25 and 75 wards) because different search engines allow different length descriptions. Suppose your home page is titled: "Mary Smith Seminars." Someone sits down at a browser and does a search on "seminars," which brings up a long list of entries. One entry is a link to your home page with a description of what Mary Smith Seminars does. What will you say in your description to make that person want to visit your page? You might say, "Seminars on Sales and Customer Service for the hotel industry" or "How to turn cold calls into hot prospects every time." Which of the above descriptions would likely appeal to this potential customer?

Secondly, you will need to identify keywords that someone might use while searching the Web. For instance, if a prospective client sat down and said, "I want an X," what would "X" be? What similar terms are related to "X"? A sample list of keywords for Mary Smith Enterprises might be: professional speaker, trainer, presentation, program, training, seminar, sales, selling, cold calls, prospect, closing, sales cycle, sales management, service, customer, customer service, meeting, conference, convention or keynote.

Also, the title on your home page should include more than just your name. Use some of the most important keywords in a very short description (e.g. "John Smith -- Seminars & Keynote Speeches on Sales and Leadership") for a title.

Finally, some search engines don't allow you to specify precise words for your listing. Rather, they use the first 50 or so words that are displayed on your home page as the description. Therefore, be sure that the beginning words on your home page give a good description and overview of your business and include the most important keywords.

Action Strategy No. 2: "Think Links"

The strength of the Web lies in the links within and between sites that interactively provide timely and relevant information.

When trying to attract people to your Web site, consider other sites that qualified visitors might visit. Think about people who might logically refer you or other businesses that are part of that process. For example, a speaker on a real estate site might include links to home improvement or title companies. Then, see if these same companies will place a link from their sites to yours.

Will They Come Back?

Once you get them to your site, your job is not over. You must get them to continually revisit the site. You can create a dynamic Web site that provides benefits and value to bring your visitors back time and again by providing regularly updated information through various interactive Web-based tools such as:

• Contact information opportunities for visitors to E-mail you and ask questions or provide valuable suggestions
• Autoresponders that act like "Email-on-demand" and automatically deliver text files that contain a variety of information such as articles, promotional literature, product or service updates
• ReaIAudio that allows your visitors to hear sample audio messages
• Chat rooms that allow "real time" keyboard communication
• Forums, newsgroups and mailing lists focusing on your visitor's special topic interest
• Newsletter subscriptions that are accessible via your Web site or E-mail
• Informational material archives accessible with search functions
• Hypertext documents that allow the visitor to read interactively about your speaking and consulting services, etc.
• Interactive data collection forms, such as questionnaires, which supply you with customer information

Action Strategy No. 3: Traditional Marketing Methods

List your Web address on your business cards, brochures and other collateral material. Have your sales and administrative staff refer prospective customers to your Web site for additional information. Update contact data collection forms or questionnaires to include those two magic questions:

"What is your E-mail address?" and "What is the address of your Web site?" Include your Web site and Email addresses in all traditional forms of marketing and advertising media that you use to generate business, such as radio ads, TV spots, magazine and trade journal advertising.

CSP, CPAE, Dr. Tony Alessandra successfully applied the action strategies of "Think Links" with interactive information and "traditional marketing advertising." First, he had Ken Braly develop his Platinum Rule Web site (www.platinumrule.com) to give visitors an opportunity to respond to a series of questions about their behavior or other people's behavior. The site would then automatically provide individual tips for dealing with their or others' behavioral styles. NPR radio gave the site their "Award of Excellence" and USA Today chose it as one of its "Hot Web sites" in August. The impact was amazing. Tony said, "We went from 69 hits in July to 2,105 hits in August."

Apply these action strategies to your Internet technology and you too can enjoy the Web success that your fellow speakers are achieving right now.