I was listening to my monthly Glazer-Kennedy Inner Circle CD yesterday. It was a recording of Armand Morin’s interview with Dan Kennedy about how to boost online marketing using proven offline methods.

In previous interviews and newsletters, Dan has stated that recorded messages are the most popular and effective destination to send your responders to.

This has been a source of irritation for several years - for two reasons

• Obviously because I have produced a marketing website product - the Rapid Niche Websites System, and
• In South Africa, we don’t have the recorded message services. Certainly not the type available in the United States. This meant that some of the methods taught by Dan would be less effective in the South African direct response market.

I was delighted when Dan commented in this interview that more and more direct response packages are now starting to direct their responders to a website. Initially websites have been offered as an alternative response option to a 0800 number, but now increasingly, direct marketers are using their websites as the only way to respond to a mailing. Dan went on to mention that the site needs to be set up to maximize the visitor value of anybody coming to the site. This means that your site shouldn’t be a simple one-product site. Ideally you should be trying to cross-sell more products and up-sell customers to a better product. While the prospect is interested, use the time to maximize the value of the sale.

This is great news. Naturally I made the immediate mental leap to what type of site would be most effective as a landing site. Seeing Dan is mailing out all the time, it made sense to take a look at the Glazer-Kennedy site - which has recently been revamped.

It was interesting to see that the format that Dan is using is so easy to replicate with Rapid Niche Websites. Both Dan and Bill Glazer are very smart marketers - and of course Dan has amongst others Yanik Silver and Derek Gehl to call on for any IM inputs.

One interesting thing on the site is a FAQ regarding the site design. It states that the site was hand-coded. I wonder how much longer this took to create compared to setting up an equivalent site with RapidNicheWebsites. No doubt days, versus a few hours I would take to set up the structure and capture most of the product details.

Even more interesting would be to see how much more effort goes into updating the site each time Dan and Bill come out with a new product (which is pretty often). The effort to update a site is often an ignored consideration. In the long term, however, having an interactive, flexible marketing site that is quick and easy to update is going to save an active marketer a lot of time.

For a smart marketing option, click here for more information on the Rapid Niche Websites System.