Your web site should increase business and help generate revenue. 

Your web site is a powerful marketing tool.  Its goal is to grow your company's profits.

You need more than a brochure site: You need a web marketing strategy.

These days, a simple "brochure" site is virtually useless. All it does it tell your visitors that you exist and gives some basic information about your products and services. Unfortunately, a brochure site does not engage your visitors nor does it give them a compelling reason to buy your products or services. They will go to your competitor’s site. They will not come back.

Your web marketing strategy is a specific part of your overall marketing plan. You must create a web site that supports your marketing objectives.

Successful web sites incorporate the following:

1. Your business goals.
2. The needs, wants, and expectations of your target market.
3. Your products and services.

 

A typical small business web site will:

1. Market to new customers.
2. Support existing customers.
3. Give information about your business.

You should define and understand exactly what your want your web site to accomplish.

The goal of your web site will drive its design. Most small business web sites have one of the following primary purposes and may have one or more secondary purposes:

• Advertise your product or service.
• Sell your product online.
• Generate leads or qualify prospects.
• Provide customer service and support.
• Provide product or company information.
• Create an information resource to establish trust and credibility.
• Create ad revenue.
• Earn affiliate commissions for sales and leads your site generates for other companies.

Other Objectives

• The site should be optimized for search engines.
• The site should be "sticky" in that it encorages visitors to spend time exploring.
• The site should encourage repeat traffic.
• Viral marketing techniques encourage visitors to recommend your products or services to others.
• Permission marketing encourage visitors to give you permission to send them newsletters.

It is CRITICAL that you define your target market.

The most successful web sites focus on specifically targeted customers. The entire design of your web site should be based on serving your target market.

It does NO GOOD to target anybody and everybody.

When your prospects are using Google to find your product or service, they are going to use very specific search words. So your product or service must be very specific.

Define your ideal customer.

For example, if you sell antiques, your target market might be older couples that have disposable income and appreciate the finer things in life. These are the people that will buy from you. Target them.

Limit your target market.

Keep your target market to one, maybe two or three types of customers if possible. Each target market usually will have different requirements from the web site. The more target markets you are trying to attract, the more your web site message becomes convoluted and confusing.

 

You should search the internet to see what your local competition is doing with their web sites.

• Who is their target market?
• What is their marketing message?
• What are the features of their web site?
• What content do they have?
• How does the site look?
• Is the site easy to use?

Your site must be better than theirs.

 

At a minimum, your web site must do two things:

1. Attract visitors.
2. Convince these visitors to buy from you.

It's all about the content.

Web content is the combination of text, pictures, and media on your web site. You cannot have a successful web site without good content.

A pretty web site with useless content will fare poorly against a plain web site with excellent content. People primarily use the web to find information. You want your visitors to find out about your products and services.

What do your customer's want when they visit your site?

• To purchase from you online?
• To find out information about your products and services?
• To get customer support?
• To find a means of contacting you?
• To find out the location of our store?

Your web site should exceed your customer's expectations. The content and features of your web site should revolve around your target customer.

Keywords

The content of each page should contain relevant keywords and phrases so the pages can be effectively indexed by search engines. By building keywords into your content, you will significantly boost your search engine ratings. This means that you will usually need to determine the keywords before you start writing the copy and content.

Copy

Web copy is the art of writing persuasive and compelling text that is succinct, to the point, and easily "scannable". How you word and present your marketing message and your call to action can make or break the effectiveness of your web site.

Visitors rarely read web pages, they scan them for relevant information. If they don't find anything interesting within about eight seconds, they're gone.

Keep your content updated

You absolutely MUST update your web site to keep your content fresh. Not only does this encourage your visitors to keep coming back, but it demonstrates a commitment to your web site and respect for your customer's time. Also, updated web content helps boost search engine rankings.

Advertize your web site URL address

Put you web site address on ALL of your written communication:

• Your business card.
• Your email signature.
• Your stationary.
• Your invoices.
• Your print ads and brochures.
• etc.

Submit your site to search engines

Many people will discover your site by using a search engine. After your site is optimized for search engines, you need to register your site with the major search engines such as Google so that they can become aware of your site and index it.

 

Successful web marketing requires a combination of methods. No single technique can bring you the web site traffic you need. The actual web marketing mix you use may consist of a combination of the following web marketing techniques:

• Starting off with a well-designed, interesting and useful web site
• Keeping your content updated and fresh
• Search Engine Optimization
• A judicious Pay-Per-Click search engine ranking program
• Listing your site in web directories
• Building an online community through blogs or a forum on your site
• Collecting testimonials from your customers
• Viral marketing methods such as having "Tell-a-Friend" or social bookmarking links on your web pages
• Participating in online communities by submitting to blogs and forums and submitting articles to other sites
• Regularly distributing press releases
• Inbound link campaigns
• Email newsletters
• Advertizing on other sites using banner ads
• Tracking and analyzing your web site activity (Web Analytics)

You will have to evaluate which web marketing techniques are worthwhile based upon what you're trying to accomplish with your site, who your target market is, how much money you have budgeted for web site development and marketing, and what the potential payoff these techniques will give. You will probably go through a process of trial and error until you hit upon the right combination.