Marketing Can Make or Break Your Web Site

Let’s face it. The World Wide Web, for all the glorified opportunities it presents, is still no “Field of Dreams.” The mere fact that your business put up a web site might seem a big deal to you, but in reality, you probably haven’t made as much as a ripple in the vast Cybersea we know as the Internet.

Many businesses build web sites because they know they want or need to have an Internet presence, but they have given little thought to it beyond the initial concept. Think of it as having a terrific-looking mass mailing piece that never gets mailed - if no one sees it, what good does it do you?

Since the Internet is so vast, as a web site publisher, you really need to think about the marketing of your web site from the time of its creation: Who exactly are you targeting? How are prospective clients going to find out about your web site? What do you have to offer visitors once they get there? Have they a reason to return to your site in the future? Do you collect information from them so that you can communicate with them on an ongoing basis?

It is conservatively estimated that there are now over 320 million web pages. That’s a lot of clutter and competition for your prospect’s eyeballs. In order to count on generating a serious flow of traffic to your site - particularly if you are trying to conduct electronic commerce - you had better have a strong plan of action in order to promote your web site. That’s where Internet marketing comes into play.

What is Internet marketing? Quite simply, it’s anything you do to maximize your web site traffic and visibility. Marketing - or convincing people and/or businesses that they need what you’re selling - is crucial part of most industries. Your web site is no different and needs to be sold to a skeptical public.

And don’t think that registering your web site with the major search engines will automatically sell your site. By relying solely on search engines, you’re basically saying, “Let’s just sit back and wait for someone to come looking for what we have to offer.” This approach rarely works - on the Internet or in many other industries.

Internet marketing is also about creating a web site with your audience’s preferences and behaviors - not yours - in mind. It’s about knowing the minds of your visitors, their expectations, how visiting your web site can help them by either making their lives easier, more convenient, or providing them with information they couldn’t otherwise readily obtain.

It can be about building a sense of community with others in your industry or about providing them with a way to receive quick and easy updates to your price or new product lists.

These site enhancements are only limited by your imagination, but one thing is for sure: once you have incorporated them onto your site, you’ll want to promote the dickens out of it if you want results from your Internet investment.

These days, we’re seeing more and more evidence of using traditional media to promote web sites - television, radio and print ads, direct mail pieces and billboards. Start URL-dropping. Use your web address on your business cards, letterhead, envelopes, brochures, corporate vehicles, telephone book ads?anyplace where your company name may be. Do not forget the online world in this mix.

Though search engines are one part of the Internet marketing puzzle, registering with them is a passive and incomplete approach to web site marketing.

A more active approach to online web marketing is thinking, “How can we use the Web to reach our target markets and let them know we’re out here?”

Ask yourself what is it that your site does best. What can you promote about your site that would interest someone who reads about it elsewhere? Can you use other web sites to cross promote your own?

These questions call for methods falling into the active Internet marketing category, and include such techniques as site linking, affiliate programs, recommendation campaigns, content contribution, participating in listservs, online forums and bulletin boards (otherwise known as “e-dialogue,”) banner advertising, site sponsorships, permission-granted emailing, online public relations, e-mail signature files, and more.

As a closing thought, remember: you might find that you are getting a lot of site visitors, but little interest in what you have to say. You’ll know this if your web site statistics show a heavy volume of traffic, but you are receiving few inquiries or orders. This might be because even if you do have visitors, they might not be the crowd you thought you invited.

This reinforces one thing you must always be doing to optimize all of your web marketing efforts: analyze, evaluate, refine and re-work. Fortunately, this electronic medium makes that relatively easy.

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