Marketing Strategy -- Marketing Your Business Online

Marketing, whether online or off, requires more than  "just throwing an ad out there" or "turning on a website."  You must have a marketing strategy to market your business online or off.

Let's use this analogy. If you were manning an artillery division on a hillside and just taking potshots at anything that moved on the opposite hillside, you may devastate anything that moves on that hillside, but it's likely that you won't do much of anything toward "winning the war."

Shooting at Anything That Moves

And most people start off their marketing ... online or off ... by "shooting at anything that moves."

And one thing that frequently happens with a website is that you go to your local web developer and ask him to "turn on a website" so that you can shoot at anything that comes by. But what you get is a website that can't even see anything moving, let alone being able to shoot at it.

Your Website Is Your Internet Billboard A Critical Part of Your Marketing -- Make It Work!

Imagine that your website is your "internet billboard." And that your web developer just "turned it on." But guess what, if you didn't do any more than that, your internet billboard, your website, is now turned on but setting in the middle of a cornfield, turned around backward where no one can see it. It's turned on, but certainly not on the internet highway. Not yet anyway.

Your Billboard Isn't on the Internet Highway -- It Can't Be Seen -- A Total Waste

First we have to move it to the internet highway. We have to strategically determine who you want to get in front of, and how they are looking for what you do. A good tool to do that is Google Keyword tool.

Type in a keyword that you believe people will actually use to search for you with. Google will show you how many people are searching using that word, and will also provide a bunch of other similar words that people may actually be searching for to find you.

Now pick those that people are actually searching for, and where there is enough of them searching. Also make sure that you aren't into competition that's so stiff that you'll never get a search engine position for that word.

Feed that to your web developer so he can help you set up the website so that search engines will know what you are important for. Then go get some other website to link back to you using that keyword.

If you'd done this right, you'll start seeing your website coming up on the search engines. NOW you are on the internet highway.

But that's not all. Now that you are on the internet highway, just imagine what it's like to drive down the highway looking at those billboards. If something those billboards say doesn't get your attention in about 3 seconds you are past them and didn't see anything else it said.

Your Internet Billboard Must Get Attention First -- Or No One Will Read the Rest of the Sign

That's what happens on websites. People will click onto your site, glance, and be gone within 3 seconds or less IF you didn't get their attention with what you said at the top of the page.

What get's people's attention?

Something they were looking for . . . and it wasn't your name, your company's name, or what you do. It is "their pain, or their problem" , "a solution to that problem", and "the value of that solution." So, when you say something like"

Hey struggling business owners, trying to get more customers?

That will get the attention of someone struggling with that problem.

And then, follow it up showing that IF they would just call you or go to another page on the website, or sign up, they would find this kind of answer

How to Double your business within 3-6 weeks

Notice something? At no time did we mention a company name, my name, r what I do. Why?

Because that wasn't important to the guy driving by. We wanted something that would get his attention.

Marketing -- A Step by Step Strategy or Just Setting Their Waiting, Hoping, Praying -- another Waste

Marketing, online or off, requires that we have a clear strategy, who we are talking to, what he's struggling with, and what kind of solution he'd like to have. Now we have to put that together so that we lead him through his thoughts to "finding us" and "the solution" we'll bring to him. It isn't just throwing up an ad, or throwing up a website and hoping. I believe there was a book called "Hope Is Not A Strategy" Well the way most people market they just HOPE and PRAY and not much comes out of it.

I'll guarantee that if you connect with your target market that is struggling with something, and indicate a valuable solution, that 5-10 times more people will come to your website than ever before, maybe more.

When I ask people attending my workshops "How many calls a month do you get from your website?" The answer is almost always ZERO. When I ask how many months has it been since you did get a call from your website? The answer is usually 10 months or longer. So, if you were getting zero calls a month and upped it to dozens, that would actually be an infinite multiplier . .. wouldn't it?

Marketing works this way.

It's the number of people that get to see your marketing times the conversion rate of your marketing (your website) and that equals the number of people that will call or sign up, or guy on your website.

So, you have develop a strategy that

• Brings traffic to the website (exactly the number of people you need to deliver the number of customers you need)
• Converts that traffic into the action you want them to take (a good conversion si around 5% to 10%, but most websites are getting less than 0.1%).
• And work that strategy so that you always have the right number of new clients coming out of that website pipeline that you want for your business.

And IF something slips up, you fix it RIGHT now, no longer than a week without fixing the pipeline to keep it delivering at the predetermine rate, number of clients a week.

Do you have a strategy, a system, a game plan. Or are you just waiting to see what happens?

You must have a marketing strategy to market your business online or off. 

Let me clue you in. Whatever you are getting now you will continue getting at the same rate unless you change something. What is it you are gong to change?

Alan Boyer

 816-415-8878
alanboyer@leaders-perspective.com
http://www.leaders-perspective.com