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Net Watch Article - Having A Successful Website 4
Marketing Your Website

As we wrap up this series of articles, I’d like to recap just a bit. Let me start by saying that the real key to having a successful website is patience and hard work. Generally people want to get rich with little or no effort. You may be able to drive to the second window to collect your lunch in 30 seconds or less, but the same “fast food”, “get it now” mentality does not work when planning and running a business. The internet, howbeit the least expensive venue, is also the most difficult environment to be successful. For this reason we have put together the following plan:

• Step One, plan your site. It is impossible to think of every possible option and potential problem, but having a sound business plan and reasonable goals can help you stay the course to success.

• Step Two, find a good place to host your site. It will be the foundation for all your continued efforts and flexibility and reliability will be key.

• Step Three, design your site with your customer in mind. Don’t get lost in all the flare and flash. You don’t need to like the way it looks, but your target audience does. Design your site to appeal to them.

• Step four, Marketing your site. This is the most critical step of having a successful website. Without marketing your website the likelihood of people finding your site and ultimately buying your products or using your services is almost non-existent.

This last step is often the most overlooked. In fact most of our business is helping people with existing websites develop a marketing strategy to generate more traffic to their sites. Marketing your website is most effective when the marketing strategy has been incorporated into the initial design of the site. Before you hire a web design firm, make sure that they either have the expertise to market your site or have partnered with a marketing firm that specializes in website marketing. This way the site can be productive right from day one.

Marketing a website can consist of many different elements. But before you can market your web site, all your pages need to be “ready” to be marketed. I’m amazed at the number of “professionally” designed websites that we see without ANY marketing information incorporated in them. There are sections of your web pages, both parts you see and parts that are hidden, that need to meld together to help your pages reach your target audience. These special sections are what search engines use to determine how you are to be included into their indexes. Without these sections, the search engines will not be able to index you properly. Not having these sections will actually cause some search engines to reject you altogether.

The first and most common element is search engine marketing. This is where you submit the pages of your website to search engines for inclusion into their database. There are usually two levels, one is free taking several months to be included, and the other is fee based for expedited inclusion. Some search engines now require payment for any inclusion. Your website marketing firm can help you identify the best course of action.

A second element is paying for specific keywords and phrases within search engines. For example if you sell outdoor equipment you can have your site listed number one whenever someone keys in “tents” or “camping supplies.” This can be terribly expensive and usually you pay “per click” (when someone clicks on your entry). You have to pay for EVERY CLICK whether they buy anything from your site or not.

A third element is to sign up with a major search engine, such as Yahoo.com, for a targeted exposure campaign. This is usually beyond the budget of most small businesses. Yahoo.com campaigns start at $5000 per month. They use a mixture of banner ads and keyword phrases to help put your site directly in front of your target audience. I’m sure that this type of campaign can be very effective given availability of resources to cover the costs. The final element that I’d like to address is one that is most often forgotten, especially by businesses that use their website as a supplement to their already established businesses. That is to incorporate their website address into ALL their standard marketing efforts. I’ve seen many clients not include their website in newspaper, radio, and TV ads. In most cases these ads are very expensive, make the most of them by including your website address.

We sincerely hope that this series of articles helps you focus your web related efforts. If you have any questions about any of the articles in this series, please give us a call at 1-843-835-5624. If you’d like to talk to our team about marketing your current website, just email us at staff@dogriverdesign.com or give us a call.