Having been an Internet marketer for over 10 years, and now working with small to medium sized businesses, what we keep finding is that most web developers have no idea about marketing online.
Most of them have come out of traditional media positions where businesses pay thousands for a one page colour advertisement and they translate that online with brochure style sites.
These sites get very little traffic, are not optimised for search engines and virtually never have any follow-up or customer retention built in.
Don’t get bamboozled by technology. Online marketing is very simple.
What do people go online to find?
Information.
They want to be entertained, solve a problem or make money. Simplistic? Yes, but ask yurself why you go online and you will see it will fall in one of these three categories.
A site full of pretty pictures and flash is not information but padding. Relevant content is what people and search engines look for, and by providing this you will get high listings and customer retention, leads and sales.
Coordinating your online content and offline marketing is essential.
You website should act as a filter to weed out people not interested from those that are, follow up people who are not yet ready so you are in the front of their mind when they are ready and finally keep current customers up-to-date with what you are doing and get their feedback so you can improve this.
It should also draw people in who are looking for your products and services, and this is where the content comes in. It is called inbound marketing.
The process is simple if you understand the end goal and the services to make it happen are inexpensive and easy to implement.
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