CoachStrategies

What You Can Learn From Coach Dr. Philip Humbert’s Site

I have been going to Dr. Philip Humbert’s website, www.philiphumbert.com for a few years now. I browse his site periodically, have downloaded some of his e-books and I’m also on some of his mailing lists. What is interesting is that Dr. Humbert has taken the time to detail what has made his site such a success. How much of a success? In his own words:

Between 450 and 1,000 different people visit my site every day. That’s up to 25,000 people every month! Those visitors keep my practice full, create tons of opportunity for me, and make life interesting. They build my newsletter subscription base, and they help me make money! Would putting your full-color, multi-page brochure in front of thousands of people every month help your business? You bet it will!

The “information super-highway” can make you money, attract the customers you really want, and open doors you never thought possible.

Not bad huh? What would your life be like if you were having success like that?

The good news is that nothing he has done is overly difficult or expensive. I believe his success boils down to the following simple principles.

Publish valuable content and update frequently. The number 1 reason I keep visiting his site: the resources are excellent. When I have questions, I can often find answers or at least get pointed in the right direction.

Make sure your page contains valuable, useful information. Make people glad they found you!

Give them a reason to visit again and recommend your site to friends. Give away free stuff, have it change fairly often and make it interesting.

Keep your site evolving, expanding and fresh! This is perhaps the key reason you should invest the time to develop your site yourself. Heard a good joke? Put it on your site! Have a list of favorite quotes, a new recipe, or want to review a great movie? Maybe you can recommend your favorite books, or write one of your own! Give folks lots of reasons to keep coming back to your site.

He updates his site frequently. This is good because I want to know that I’m absorbing current information and not something stale and outdated. I know that his site is updated regularly so I’m likely to bookmark it so I can easily visit it in the future.

Constantly promote your site, online and offline. It isn’t enough to submit your site to Google, then sit back and wait for the world to come knocking on your virtual door. Promoting your site is something you need to pursue as a habit instead of a one time action.

Remember to market your website in EVERYTHING you do! One friend has her website on the license plate on her car. Another guy has his URL embroidered across the back of his golf shirts. Those may not be the best examples, but be SURE to put your site on your business cards, your stationery, as part of the signature block on every email you send, and so forth.

Always keep your eyes open for new places to list your site. New directories are created every day. Do you belong to the Chamber of Commerce? I bet they have a database of members. Belong to a professional organization? Get listed! There are literally thousands of databases where you might want to be included – lists of writers, businesswomen, home-based businesses, members of certain religious organizations, and so forth. Keep your eyes open.

Expand your reach online. Having a great site and submitting it to search engines is a solid start but you still need to reach out in other ways.

Exchange links with lots of people. Have a page where you give a link to other people’s sites, in exchange for them recommending your site. This can be very effective, and easy to set up.

Describe your page and recommend it in newsgroups, discussion sites and so forth. Find a chat room you enjoy, enter into the conversation, and recommend your own site. It works!

I think newsgroups, forums, discussion sites, blogs and various social media sites are an ideal way to help people, build trust and authority and get links back to your site.

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Here are a few other things that contribute to his site’s success that he doesn’t mention directly.

Make your site easy to use. His site has a very simple layout: navigation on the left, content on the right. The navigation is consistent throughout the site so the reader is never left wondering: what do I do next? You don’t want your site so busy or convoluted that visitors are at a loss as to what they should do next.

Let your personality shine through. Dr. Humbert writes the articles himself. He doesn’t use a ghost-writer or sub-contract out article writing. This allows his personality to show. I don’t feel like I’m reading through bland marketing copy, I feel like he is dealing personally with me. I’m more likely to buy from you if I already have a feel for your personality and have built a feeling of trust. If I’m looking for one-on-one help but I feel like you are a faceless company, I’m not going to feel very comfortable getting in touch.

Don’t be shy about asking people to take action. At the top of his homepage, you are asked to subscribe to his FREE weekly newsletter. Lower down you are asked to call or email. Then down the page you are asked to download free e-books and reports and click through to view products. Most of this is mixed in with his other resources. The effect is that it doesn’t come across as “buy something” as it does “let me help you with all these free resources and also with the products I offer”. Instead of blaring “buy buy buy”, show people all the ways you can help through a mix of free resources and your products and services.

These are just the broad strokes. For a more detailed explanation, let Dr. Humbert tell you himself at http://www.philiphumbert.com/WebMarketing.htm.