Because of the high costs associated with creating a website in the early ages of the internet, this was a luxury item of larger companies; it almost felt more as status symbol. Nowadays as you already know many things have changed.
Today your website is probably one of the best sales tools your business can have, here’s why
It’s your best lead generation tool: in today’s market even the smaller companies can compete against the largest companies in the world for potential customers
It’s your most cost effective sales tool: forget newspapers, yellow books and old media, websites can take orders, accept new customers and much more 24/7 without having to have anyone waiting on the phone to take an order
It’s a fast marketing testing tool: with a click of a button you can change products name, prices, pictures, copy and much more to see what appeals more to your customers, “good luck trying that with a catalogue”
It’s your own retailer and sales person: setting up an e-commerce website today is not only easy but affordable, your website can take orders, payments and automatic process the orders and shipping if needed
Understanding online marketing and its process
Yes, your website is probably one of the most important assets in your online marketing efforts, however its far from being the only thing you need when creating an internet marketing campaign. Most small business make the mistake of believing that by just putting a 5 page catalog website together on the web will bring all the customers they had been waiting for. In today’s competitive marketplace this will rarely ever do anything for your company.
If you want to create a successful marketing campaign you have to create and follow a step by step process to run and grow your business online.
Step 1: Take charge and be consistent
You can achieve online marketing success if you put the time and dedication to educate yourself about the different online marketing strategies and take charge of your online efforts. If you put up a website, Facebook page and twitter account just to leave it alone and never come back to it, failure will soon follow you and most people blame some obscure evil internet god, where you think you got too late into the game, that you are not a 22 year old Harvard genius or that you are just unlucky. Believe me many people go through this, only to come back years later regretting all the success they would have had accomplished if they only had stuck with it.
Your online marketing needs a great image: starting from the colors you choose for your logo and the font you use in your website, your online marketing message has to be clear. Remember will all the clutter that most people see on the media everyday oftentimes less is more. Forget the flying color letters and loud funky music on your website, chances are its just going to get mixed with the sweet soft online radio station of your customer and you just made her close her browser as fast as she could. Remember to put the same creative elements on all your marketing materials as you do in your website so you can create what is called a business brand.
All about hosting and domains: today millions of domains are registered every day it’s not as easy as it used to be to find a good domain name for your business, keep in mind that there are many different online marketing strategies that can be improved by having a good domain name for example if you have a domain that includes the correct keywords for your business this will eventually help you with your search engine optimization efforts. Also keep in mind that hosting is very affordable nowadays back in the day I remember having friends pay over $50 a month for basic hosting service. Today you can get a great hosting service with all the necessary tools for your website at a low monthly cost.
