"You have a nice site
Mr. Jones, does anybody know about it?
This article is
really not about website marketing, it's not about how to market
or where to market your website. This is article is about something
much more basic. It's about the reasoning and belief behind online
marketing. I
see so many companies that pay good money to have their websites
developed and then do nothing about marketing it, and I am not talking
about the SOHO businesses out there, I'm talking
about good size corporations. The old adage of "Build it, and they will
come" is far from true on the Internet. Your website is not a
building that they drive by everyday, or a shop at the mall. If you intend to build a
website and do not intend to market it, save yourself some money
- "Don't Bother Building It".
In contrast if you
have the mind set that your website will be the best sales person in
your sales force and believe in the power of the this new medium we
call the Internet, then
you have the right attitude to make it on the net. Websites or the
Internet should
not to be taken lightly and should not be built for the sake of
saying "We have a website". Lord, we have taken companies
out of Bankruptcy with internet marketing alone. So we know it works
and we believe, do you?
Your company's website is your window to
the world and an easy way to expand your business nation-wide or world
wide if you prefer. It is very often the first and possibly the last
time that many potential customers will see your company name, logo,
products or services.
The old adage about "First Impressions" however, does
sound true even on the
net. Your website needs to be professional, clean and easy to use. It
also needs to sell your potential client on whatever it is you are
selling, be it a product, service, subscription or membership. First
Impressions are formulated by your site visitor in under 15 seconds.
Make those 15 seconds work for you, not against you!
I am not suggesting
to add a 3 megabyte high-tech flash file on your homepage to impress
your visitor as research shows this does little to impress anyone.
What I mean is it should be clear, concise, have a professional look
and feel with sufficient amount of white space that says "we are the
pros, how can we help you" right down to the color selection, fonts
etc. Everything from the menus, graphics and any technologies such as
flash, Java etc, must have a purpose, load fast and be done with class.
It's the difference between walking into the lobby of the Ritz Carlton
vs. Motel 6. Which one are you most comfortable in?
That is one of many
differences that a marketing company brings to the table in creating
your website or working with your web designer - It's about creating a
pleasurable user experience that says this company thought about me
when they designed this site and it's a comfortable place to be. In my experience, when I was working for
Web Development companies instead of marketing companies, user experience was the last thing on the
designers mind. Their number one goal was focused on designing a site
that would make the client happy - not the end user. Of course this
should be one in the same, but don't kid yourself, the two mindsets
usually always have a very different result. There was also little to
no regard in creating a marketable site. The difference is again mindset
and focus on what it is that is going to make the client happy... a
website designed for the client, or the client's customers. We say,
the people spending the money?
"The DotCom Bomb"
I for one, would like
to once and for all put this DotCom Bomb thing to rest. Let's face it,
the Internet as a medium is here to stay and continues to grow
although you'd never get that impression from the media. But then
again, how often does the media report good news, or for that matter,
all the facts?
The fact is, the
Internet is live 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and
it is the only public medium that is World Wide in the blink of
an eye. It also happens to be the most cost effective means of
marketing and advertising in existence today! A total of 47.8
billion dollars was bought and sold on the Internet in 2001 and 60% of
that was by AOL users on dial-up connections (so forget that 3 megabyte
flash file). The projections are that those numbers will more than double
for the year 2002. Yet, all you hear about is the "DotCom bomb". I
wish the media would take a second and just step back for a moment and
think with their heads instead of their keyboards.
The Internet is just
another medium like TV, Print, Radio etc, the delivery and day to day
task are of course entirely different, but the basic principles of
business and marketing do not change when doing business on the
Internet or selling hotdogs at the ball game.
When the Internet was
really booming there was all sorts of investment money to be had by
just about anyone that had a bright idea and was holding out their
hand. However, many of these companies holding out their hand simply
failed to do their Business homework, or maybe they never went to
class. What I mean is many of them did not have a solid business plan
to begin with, they had an idea and they wanted to see if it would
fly. They failed to do their research to see what the competition was,
or if there was even a need for their products or service or if there was
excessive market saturation.... all very basic principles of starting
a business. They had poor customer service, poor support systems and
other things they just didn't plan on up front. Business 101!
Most of these businesses were doomed to fail from the start. Did you
know that in the offline world 80% of new
businesses fail in the first year, year after year: and the media
barely raises and eyebrow! So why would they think this
would be
greatly different for Internet companies? Should we call this the
Non-DotCom Bomb.
So lets just say that
the DotCom Bomb was inevitable and leave it at that. However, If you
really have to blame someone for the DotCom Bomb, blame the frenzied
investors that were handing out free money to any teenager with an
idea and a punk hair-do. My thoughts are, they invested poorly and
lost big because they didn't use the common principles of basic
business and so 80% of them are now gone.
"You have a nice
site Mr. Jones, does anybody know about it?
OK, so what am I
trying to get at here, you haven't told me anything that I really didn't know?
Yes this maybe true, but you would be surprised at some of the mindset's
that we deal with everyday. We have worked with clients that have
invested 15 - 100 thousand dollars on the development of their website and
then would not invest a penny more to market it.
Another common
MindSet is: "We'll have our in-house people do
the marketing on the site". Whoa, is that a BIG mistake! I always have to caution clients that trying to
market your website yourself usually will cost you many times more
than investing in a professional firm to market your site for you
because mistakes you make will take months to correct when your
dealing with search engines. And some of these mistakes can be very
costly to your profitability and sometimes your reputation.
"Trial and
Error" marketing of your website could possibly degrade your ratings in the search
engines or even could get you banned from it. Leave it to the people who have the tools and are
experts in this field. The people who know the do's and don'ts of
every search engine, how to effectively get high rankings, how and when
to submit your site and a thousand other variables that you have to
take into account. Doing business on the Internet is different in the
sense that on the Internet, everything is tracked, quantified and
measurable. You don't get this kind of thing from your Sunday news
paper Ad.
If your website isn't
getting the visitors you expected, it's most likely due to the fact
that people can't find you on the major search engines. Did you know
that in recent eCommerce studies, over 90% of consumers find the
websites they visit by using the major search engines like MSN, Excite,
AltaVista, Yahoo, Lycos, WebCrawler, HotBot, and many
others.
The single most
important key to online marketing success is having high visibility or
a very large budget. If you aren't found in the top-30 search listings,
you're missing a large percentage of your potential customers. To make
a web site truly effective (and I stress this) it takes constant
maintenance and promotion, tracking and tweaking to obtain maximum
results and visits from your potential customers and from each search
engine, and you need to know the do's and don'ts of each one.
Building a web
presence
is not an over night process; Although, you may see some results in a
month, it takes a good 6 months to a year to optimize a website to become
an effective online sales tool. This is just another basic
principle of business, to build up your clientele and make your brand
known and this doesn't happen over night in most cases. When online
marketing is done correctly and methodically, it can be very
profitable and even bring companies in the RED, back into the BLACK as with some of our clients. These are the
clients that had the "MindSet" and the vision to believe in
this relatively new medium and develop a solid marketing strategy by
someone who deals with it everyday.
Train yourself to think globally,
not locally! Because you are now competing on a global basis with
the best names in every industry, a task you
should not go alone. You need the expertise and the experience that a
"professional marketing company" brings to the table in order to obtain the
results you want, a high (ROI) return on investment and obtaining and
retaining customers.
About the Author:
Robert Boilard is a professional developer, marketing strategist
and one of the principals' at i4Market, LLC. Since 1993 Robert has
been producing successful website and marketing campaigns for
companies from the 2 person office up to the Fortune 500's. Visit us
today! http://www.i4market.com
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The
i4Market Team
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