Improving Your Website to Get More Business Online With a Well Tailored Internet Marketing Strategy

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:

  • Improve sales of a product
  • Increase qualified leads
  • Decrease the man-hours required to convert a prospect into a customer or even the time it takes to support a product already sold
  • Increase repeat business
  • Increase initial purchase amount
  • Increase backend sales
  • Etc. etc.

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.

  • We start with research and we formulate an initial plan.
  • We break it down into manageable action steps.
  • We take action and implement one strategy at a time.
  • We measure and test and measure again until we see a constant improvement.
  • With each strategy and tactic we implement, you will see an incremental improvement in your business.

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, please check out our new website WebMarketing.ca to learn more.