Marketing online can be a powerful and cost effective way to build interest in your products or services, generate leads, and increase sales. For it to be effective, though, it needs to done right. For many businesses, the main challenge is to avoid the most common and costly mistakes. Following are the top 3 to watch out for:
1. Using your website as a glorified business card.
Don’t treat your website like it’s a business card or a parking space on the web. It is not just your online presence; it’s a marketing tool so make sure you use it like one. When you do, it will enable you to build a true relationship with your visitors, allow you to generate relevant leads and, ultimately, sales. Here are the main ways you can turn your site into a better marketing tool:
- Consciously drive targeted visitors to your website through tactics such as search engine marketing, email marketing, linking partnerships, press releases, events, etc. A website isn’t any good if no one finds it and don’t assume that people will find your website on their own.
- Drive action once visitors are on your website. Have defined goals for what you want people to do when they get to your site, with clear calls to action so they can easily follow through.
- Use relevant informational content so that your visitors will want to stay in contact with you.
- Create opportunities to capture their information so you can keep in touch with them. This can be done through web sign up forms for email newsletters, free informational downloads and/or webinars.
- Follow up! Once you have their information, you need to continue the dialog and grow the relationship on an ongoing basis.
2. Lack of search engine preparedness.
The programming and the content of your website need to be created in a way that the search engines understand. Sites designed with this in mind are more likely to rank higher in the search results and will result in more visitors to your site. The solution is to:
- Make sure your site is built using search engine friendly techniques. Use Meta tags according to search engine best practices. Avoid frames based websites and be wary of Flash technology for the time being.
- Incorporate meaningful keyword phrases throughout your site content. This will make your site more relevant to both the search engines and web searchers, thereby increasing the number of visitors to your site.
3. Not measuring your website traffic or your internet marketing success.
Knowing how many people visited your site, how they got there, how many took the action/s on your site that you wanted them to and, of those, how many converted to leads and then sales provides you with the critical information needed to determine the cost effectiveness of your online efforts as well as to strategize and decide where to focus your future efforts. Following are the initial steps to a good measurement strategy:
- Use tracking tools on your website. Google Analytics is a highly recommended and free, user friendly tool.
- Review and analyze the results at least monthly (although even weekly or daily may be recommended depending on the circumstances.)
Of course, there are many additional points to consider when it comes to marketing your business online. If you can avoid the big mistakes and implement the basic strategies, though, you will create a solid foundation for your business so that you see more success faster.