Three Marketing Tips for Your Business
I was going to title this post “Marketing Tips for Your Web-based Business,” but I got to thinking. Dangerous, I know.
Why do we draw a distinction between the 3-dimensional aspects of our businesses and the Internet presence that we’ve established? Isn’t the purpose for both to be successful? Don’t we give just as much time and effort to establishing and evolving our Internet presence as we do to our traditional business activities?
Maybe I’ll leave that side of the discussion to another post for another day. Right now I would just like to offer 3 really effective ways to maximize the Internet and our web presence in such a way that they each keep our businesses in front of prospective customers and clients.
Nothing bad can come from touching prospects, right?
I am often in conversations with business owners who are under the impression that all they needed to do was build a website and the phone would ring off the hook. Sometimes they arrive at this conclusion because of their own pre-conceived ideas, and sometimes it’s because they met a designer who doesn’t fully understand how all pieces of Internet marketing fit together.
Allow me to say for the record that Internet marketing is a symphony and your website, Search Engine Optimization, and Internet advertising (e.g. Link Building, Syndicated Articles, Pay-per-Click, etc.) are members of the orchestra.
As the conductors of the orchestra, we need to compose and arrange.
It is absolutely true that we require our web assets to be optimized and tested. What we tend to forget, though, is that we are required to spend time developing marketing and promotional strategies. To this end, here are 3 ideas to help grow our web-based assets and improve the bottom line for our businesses.
- Great calls to action result in sales.
Sales drive business, and prospective customers respond to attractive calls to action. Exploring different calls to action and executing the ones that work is an on-going process for those wishing to make sales.
A call to action is quite literally anything which appears on a web page, in an email, or any other form of communication which inspires action from our prospects. When producing a communication piece intended to boost sales, we often forget about the construction and placement of calls to action. - Maximizing Your Marketing Dollars
After your initial research (i.e. identifying your target audience and determining a promotional strategy) decide on the best path for maximizing your marketing budget. I strongly recommend working closely with your web developer or Internet marketing consultant to find ways that will get the biggest bang for your buck. After examining your business needs, you might find that link building is an attractive marketing solution, or you might choose to publish syndicated articles. You might even choose a combination of both, but one thing is certain, different businesses will each require a different approach.
Remember, whatever strategy you decide upon, the goal is for more prospective customers to be touched as often as possible. It is widely understood that the average prospect will see a product or service up to seven times before taking the desired action. That is, taking action and making the purchase.
Instead of spending your budget on a single promotion or marketing opportunity, it’s much better to appeal to our customers with multiple promotions. Use a combination of link building, syndicated articles, and perhaps a small pay-per-click campaign to get the best mileage from your budget. - Use email to convert “suspects” » prospects » customers.
When done right, email is an economical and reliable way of building and maintaining relationships with the people who come into contact with our business. Over a relatively short period of time, these people become customers, and your ever-growing and evolving email list continues to work for you.
Your regular or semi-regular communications should be about education for your prospective customers, as well as being a call to action for your particular goods or services.
I would be remiss at this point if I didn’t caution you to understand, or find a scrupulous Internet professional who understands the laws pertaining to spam, so-called “opt-in” programs and other means for the collection of email addresses. Nonetheless, a well thought out, easily read note that provides value will also position you as an expert in your field for those may not already be exposed to you or your business.
It is true that a good website is going to set the tone for your business. Whether you are a child care professional, florist, medical practitioner, or an importer of teaspoons, our websites will either say that we’re serious about our chosen field and that we are here to offer effective, valuable service, or it will say something else about us that we’d rather not acknowledge.
This truth never changes, though. Marketing our website is a vital piece to establishing our Internet presence and making it a success.
About the Author
Warren Smalley is the principal and founder of Sonoma Tek. Through strong, collaborative partnerships, Sonoma Tek is rapidly becoming known as the premier web development consultancy in the Pacific Northwest.
Tags: Business Marketing, Email Marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, Sonoma Tek Internet Marketing, Web Development