Web Marketing Strategies

So, you've got yourself a web site. It's up on the Web, and now customers are going to be lining up outside your front door to purchase your products, right?

Well, don't count on it. Odds are, no one even knows your site is there. And even if they do, most web sites aren't set up to drive prospects anywhere,  they just sit there like a brochure and talk about you, not the prospect.

Imagine yourself walking into a prospect's office and what you do and what your products are, without any consideration of what the prospect wants. You may as well be in that MSN commercial where a line of vendors stretches out before some poor lady's house and the MSN butterfly drops one vendor after another through the trapdoor under the porch. Don't be like the guy shouting "Baklava, everbody loves baklava!" before disappearing through the floor.

What you need to have, of course, is a Web Marketing Strategy for your business' web site, just like you have a marketing strategy for your business. You do have one of those, right? If not, click here to start the process.

 Success on the web doesn't just happen, anymore than it does in the bricks and mortar world. It's carefully crafted, not by the graphic artist who designed your web site, but by web marketers who specialize in this branch of marketing.

Here are a few points to consider when defining a Web Marketing Strategy:

• Define your web site's purpose - If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. If you're trying to sell something, then make it easy to buy something. If you're looking to generate leads, then focus on that. Otherwise, visitors will leave without doing anything. And in fact, if you look at your web traffic reports, that's just what they're doing, isn't it?
• Make sure you're starting with a professional looking web site. Gone are the days that you could put flaming letters on your home page and expect anyone to take you seriously. Best is to get a professional web designer to do the actual graphical work, but make sure that you keep the web site's purpose in mind.
• Learn or hire an effective copywriter. You want clean, compelling copy that will reflect well on your company. Of course, grammatical errors and typos are always unacceptable.
• Put your phone number (preferably a toll-free number) in a prominent place on each page.
• Live chat is becoming more affordable and popular amongst our clients. Consider a service like eStara's "Push to Talk".
• Put a lead collection process in place by adding an opt-in box to each page of your web site. Have it connect directly to your email manager to automate this process. Don't count on your personnel to add email addresses to the house marketing list. They won't (believe me, we've tried!).
• Give people and incentive to opt-in to your email list. Good choices are:
  • free download of software
  • white-paper
  • survey results that benefit them, not you
  • Promotional items like t-shirts, hats, etc.
  • free e-book
  • free samples of your work.

It doesn't take much imagination to realize that a site that implements these suggestions will sell vastly better than a site that is just a "vanilla brochure site".

Want help with your site specifically? Then contact me, Sandra Schwartzman by email or call me at (301) 230-0045 x10.