Who should read this article? Anyone running (or planning to run) an offline business, who desires to take advantage of the Internet to achieve cost effective marketing reach and impact. I assume you already have a website or plan to get one. It’s a basic requirement for marketing your business online. My purpose here is to challenge you to avoid the pitfall of investing your hard earned money in building a website just for the sake of looking good, or keeping up with others. (NB: At the end of this article, I invite you to post ANY questions about how to attract potential customers via the Internet, so I can provide answers to them. )
Your purpose should be to make your business run more profitably (through reduced expenses on business promotion, increased leads generation/customer conversion etc). Sadly, in building their business websites, some CEOs still focus narrowly on how they feel, rather than aim to serve the interests of those they wish to do business with, who NEED the solutions they offer.
The truth is people looking for solutions get attracted to the person who offers the most convincing “argument” or “presentation” for addressing the problem they have. Now, sometimes, that person may NOT be the best looking or most attractively dressed. This is especially true on the Internet – which is why I call it the greatest leveler of all time. The Internet allows small companies or individuals compete on an equal basis with large corporations, and even win.
If your website only “looks pretty”, but does not make a compelling offer, it will lose potential buyers to the competitor. This is a proven fact.
Below, I discuss 3 important factors you need to consider carefully to ensure marketing your business online is successful:
1. Your Web Marketing Strategy
A Web Marketing Strategy spells out periodic steps you will take, to promote your business using carefully adapted marketing tools and resources based on (and off) the Internet. In a way, it’s like a business plan – albeit a dynamic one, to be tweaked based on results you get – for your online presence.
Most progressive minded and profit focused individuals/businesses today, use the Internet to dramatically cut their business promotion costs, while extending their marketing mileage. They do this based on a carefully developed plan of action – or Web Strategy. It is crucial that you implement a sustainable web-marketing strategy, to fully reap the rewards of taking your (brick and mortar?) business online.
By this I mean:
1. Your website’s appearance must be consistent with your offline image/status as a business aiming for constantly improving performances. So, the design should not be sloppy. You need not aim to win a beauty competition with it however. Such extra efforts should be channeled towards creating response generating content on it.
2. You must agree a formal strategy for leveraging the website to be used as the cost effective yet highly powerful marketing tool that it can be.
3. Your clients (prospective or existing) should be able to find – on your site – anything and everything they need to know/use in order to do business with you quickly – and easily. Simply put, your website should make you do less work in continually “selling” yourself to get more business, from new or existing clients. In other words, you need more than web design.
The days when a website design with bells and whistles swayed visitor buying decisions are long gone. These days, such aesthetics are readily delivered within minutes using powerful automated web design applications. Even a 5 year old can do it. What you NEED instead, is to use a custom web-marketing strategy to make it “sell”.
2. Your Website Leads Generation Ratio™ (WLGR™)
One effective way to asses how well your website is doing, is through the measurement of a parameter I call the Website Leads Generation Ratio™. That’s why I’ve listed it as another factor you need to pay attention to, if you want to succeed in marketing your business using the web.
If a reasonable percentage of your website visitors do not contact you (giving you the opportunity to convince them to do business with you), then your website is wasting money. The standard for the web is quite similar to that for traditional offline marketing i.e. 1 to 3% of those exposed to your marketing messages are likely to respond (NOT buy).
WLGR™ is calculated as follows:
Number of visitors to your site who decide to make contact with you(via email, office visit, phone etc) : Total No. of visitors to your website.
i.e. Website Leads Generation Ratio™ = Website Respondents : Total Website Visitors.
Using the above formula, if 100 people visit your website in a month, and only 5 contact you, then your site’s WLGR™ will be 5 :100 = 2%.
To get your website to deliver satisfactory WLGR ™, you need to build it to convert visitors to leads, by incorporating response generating copy, and not just content.
Like Michel Fortin says “content informs“, but copy “invites people to take action.” And that’s what you want to happen on your website i.e. for more people who visit it and who fit your ideal customer profile, to take action to at least get in touch with you about your products, and services.
If you cannot set this up yourself, I suggest you hire the right person or company to do it for you. There are eight(8) Questions I recommend you ask anyone you’re considering, in order to verify they have the ability to give you the desired value for your investment.
Send me an email via “8questions at cbstudio.biz” with your name and phone number, and I’ll send you a PDF containing the questions. Read through them, and then call me on 234-803-302-1263, if you’d like me to give you a general idea of the kinds of answers that the right provider is likely to supply. You’ll come away better equipped to make the right choice!
3. Getting The Right People To Visit Your Website
Not every business will offer products and services that are wanted or needed by virtually everyone such as toothpaste, water etc. This is why you need to get the right kind of people to visit your website – if you want to make sales.
You may not even need to aim for high traffic to your site. Instead work hard to attract optimal traffic of people looking for the solution (product or service) you offer. When such people visit your website, they are MORE likely to contact your with enquiries and/or orders, because what they see and read will interest them.
Some business owners very unwisely purchase traffic. Most times this yields less than profitable results. And that’s because that method involves getting large numbers of people with widely differing interests driven artificially to your website. Without the right web marketing strategy, you might have people who do not fit the profile of your intended customer, visiting your website. And they will often leave without even saying hello. That doesn’t help you in any way!
So, how do you get the right kinds of people – aka “Pre-Qualified Prospects” – to visit your site?
The simple answer is, by creating website content based on accurate insight into what your target audience wants, and where they can be found. In short, this amounts to creating content that will get them to find you through search engines.
It is a well known fact that organic or natural search results are most favoured by people searching for information on the web, compared to the sponsored ads that pop up on the SERPs (i.e. Search Engines Results Pages).
With Google’s re-invention of what it takes to achieve top search engine ranking, websites that pay attention to doing what I propose above, today enjoy well deserved search engine visibility for their favoured key words and search phrases.
You can achieve similar results. But your website copy alone may not do the magic.
For best results, you’ll need to develop an integrated approach. This will involve leveraging a variety of web based platforms (e.g. social media, e-mail newsletter management services etc), in conjunction with your “response generating” website, to capture the attention, and interest of potential clients or customers. That’s why I always advocate adopting a custom Web Marketing System(WMS)*. Once you have your WMS in place, you can continually tweak it, to maximize pre-qualified leads generation, which over time will eventually convert into sales.
TIP*: Among other actions, you will write useful articles, special reports, white papers etc. Then publish them on your website and promote them via social media platforms, as well as through a newsletter medium(if possible). Do this on a regular basis, without fail. The objective is to cultivate a followership of potential customers by publishing informative and educative content that is likely to appeal to them. Sooner than later, they will come to trust you, and eventually decide to buy from you – and even refer others.
For The Same Amount Of Money, You Can Get More Than Just A Pretty Website!
If you place an advert in a news daily for instance, it faces these challenges:
(a) “Expiry” due to between 1 day to 1-week newspaper shelf life.
(b) Difficult odds of getting read by your target audience due to over 80 pages of news/competing adverts in the same paper.
(c) Not everyone who reads that paper will fit your client profile.
(d) Also not all who fit your client profile will read that paper – or see your advert.
Your website should complement – but not replace – your offline conventional marketing efforts (such as the above), in such a way that you dramatically cut down your expenses on the latter.
Interestingly, the money and time you’ll spend getting a bells and whistles website, will often be the same – or even more than – it would cost you to cater for the three powerful factors discussed in this piece. Yet, the latter can determine the success or otherwise of your business marketing.
Adopting a Web Marketing System (which effectively incorporates the 3 factors discussed in this article, and more), will get you more marketing mileage, while complementing your use of newspaper adverts/other conventional advertising/marketing methods.
It will do this by :
a). making them MORE impact-full (because you’ll include “offers” from your Web Marketing System in those ads that’ll boost responses
b. reducing your need to use them as frequently as you used to (because you’ll get MORE results from combining them with your Web Marketing System). This will save you loads of money.
c). drastically reducing the time and effort it takes to carry out your routine marketing and advertising activities, especially creation/generation of leads, responses to enquiries and follow-ups (through intelligent use of automation).
So, do not just build a website and fold your arms waiting for it to grow leads. Go further to set up a self-sustaining custom Web Marketing System around it .
If you don’t know how to do it yourself (or you need a few pointers) get in touch with someone who does. Someone with real world relevant experience. Who understands the unique marketplace in which you have to operate. And who will be willing to go the extra mile to help you succeed in spite of any obstacles you may encounter. Someone who knows what it takes, having successfully done (and probably still doing) it for him/herself. Someone like…well…me.
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My name is Tayo Solagbade (doing business as “CB Studio“). Unlike most other providers, I sell “Solutions” and NOT “Commodities” or “Processes”. In otherwords, I solve problems. Would you like to spend less money to make more sales of your products and services? I can help you harness technology & the Internet to do that – and a lot more. If you’re willing, we can build a profitable relationship in which I continually apply over 10 years experience to help you succeed in marketing your business online.
Need help attracting potential customers via the web? Post your questions and any other details of what you need my help with in the comments section, and I’ll respond with answers you can put to immediate practical use. If you wish to keep it private, send your message to info at cbstudio dot biz. You can also call 234-803-302-1263. Visit www.cbstudio.biz to learn more about how I can help you make your website work.