If
you don't have an Internet Marketing Strategy, you're not alone. Most businesses just compile a bunch of
information about their company and put it online. They boast about
themselves on their home page, they ignore the needs and expectations
of their target market and they fail to capitalize on the
full potential the internet can provide.
Why? Because they don’t
fully understand the web, how people/prospects search for information,
what they’re looking for and what makes them interested
enough to take action. They’re not to blame – the
web isn’t their specialty, they are the experts in their
own businesses. But failing to hire an expert to
help them with the internet side of their business is, to put
it bluntly, a mistake.
If you want to capitalize on the full potential
the internet can provide, you need to have an Internet Marketing
Strategy.
First, you need an overall strategy,
a Mission, which in most cases is to increase income
and profitability.
Next you need to define goals and
objectives like the following:
Depending on the type of company, whether
it’s local or global, product based or serviced based, you
will define different objectives. To accomplish each objective,
you need a plan and the right people with the right tools –
in that order.
Here’s what happens to many companies
who want their website to do better. For instance, they hear that
it’s important to rank highly in the search engines. They
come to learn that it’s not easy to compete against millions
of other web pages that share the same goal. Then they hear about
Search Engine Optimization and they actively pursue finding the
best deal they can get to improve their website rankings in the
search engines.
Now let’s suppose that they hired a
company that has a proven track record of getting websites to
the top of the search engines. After a few weeks, the optimization
work is complete and within a few months, the website starts to
get a lot more traffic from Google and Yahoo, the two top search
engines.
Surprisingly, and unfortunately, the increased
amount of traffic doesn’t increase sales or leads proportionately. Months pass and the business owner keeps paying
to keep the site as high up in Google as possible. But still,
no noticeable increase in business. Why? Hold that thought for
a moment....
Another example: a business owner wants to
impress her visitors and spends a lot of money on a Flash Intro
to her website (it’s like a mini movie or commercial). It’s
a work of art and she’s quite impressed by the final product.
She gets her web designer to upload the intro in place of the
home page and she waits to see the results in her bank statements.
She waits and waits and there is actually
a dramatic decrease of traffic and action on her site. Why?
Why didn’t these tools help
increase business?
Because in each case they were putting the
cart before the horse. In the first example, just because the
site that is now highly positioned in the search engines is getting
more clicks and visits, it doesn’t mean that the site itself
has improved its ability to convert visitors into customers. The
site is obviously missing several critical components that mean
the difference between zero sales and instant profitability.
The number one most neglected component
on websites is effective sales copy. Since most business
owners in North America speak English, and can write English,
and since they know their business first hand, they believe that
paying someone to write the content for their website is a waste
of money. This is one of the biggest mistakes you can make.
In the second example, the business owner
put her ego front and center and was ignorant of the fact that
90% or more of website visitors skip the intro or leave the site
altogether if they have to wait for anything to load – or
they don’t get what they expect right away. You can’t
blame her, she’s not a web marketing expert. How was she
supposed to know that?
By speaking with an Internet Marketing specialist
first, each of these companies would have both saved a lot of
time, money, and aggravation. Here’s why:
An internet marketing specialist, like myself,
would have asked a lot of questions first. Not questions about
what the owner likes and dislikes in terms of style and colors
or even website features.
The internet marketing specialist would have
asked questions about the business, the product or service, the
customers and target market and we would have looked at the existing
site first before making any recommendations.
Our goal is to improve your business and ultimately make
you more money.
Do you think your business and website
could benefit from a better internet marketing strategy?
Do you think it will save you more money in
the long run?
Do you think it will make you more profit
in the long run?
If you answered yes to those questions, you
are 100% correct! You are already on the right path – you’re
here aren’t you?
If you want to see an improvement
in your website’s results and get more online sales, more
leads, more phone calls, more local walk-in business, I want to
help you.
I have a passion for small business –
I identify with small business owners and I know I can make the
difference between no results and achieving bigger and better
goals.
What’s the first step? How does this
work?
How much will it cost?
How long will it take?
Do you offer a guarantee?
All good questions and if you have time, I
will be happy to answer them all for you but first I need something
from you.
