The Other Side of Your Website

Most small businesses these days have a website. And most websites are built and tweaked to be generators of leads. SEO principles are applied and rankings are monitored with a strategic diligence worthy of military presence in foreign land. While ranking, and the ability of customers to be able to find you on the internet is important, there are other very effective uses for your website besides straight out ranking and lead generation.

Generally accepted marketing wisdom suggests that its important to have a marketing “plan” which makes use of multiple media working together to raise consumer awareness about your service and stimulate them to action. Using this approach, you might have multiple other forms of marketing - print, yard signs, soft goods, vehicle graphics and a targeted mailing - all directing traffic to your website. In other words, using all other marketing that you should be doing to drive traffic directly to your website, rather than relying solely on your search engine rankings to pop you up in front of the right people at the right time.

In the past 18 months, our company has experimented with ppc, seo and the simple, good old fashioned marketing to drive prospects to our website. So far, I can honestly report that the targeted marketing we have done in our preferred markets to drive traffic to our site has been the most effective tactic. I am much more comfortable with this approach than hoping that we are constantly satisfying the search engines and landing in front of the right people at the right time. Targeted leads are always a much more likely conversion than random, I think we all would agree.

I think alot of us, in the race for rankings, lose sight of some of the practical aspects of a well-integrated marketing plan. The beauty of marketing is that you can always be trying different things. If you haven’t already, try thinking of your website as more than a marketing lead generation machine, but also as a selling tool. In addition to lead generation, ours serves as an online brochure which does alot of the heavy lifting for sales, in terms of consumer education, differentiation, credibility, etc. It is a great feeling to walk through the door of a sales call and know that customer has been to your website and that some of the sales work has been done already.

Its not hard to get the website dialogue going, and often the prospect initiates it, which makes the process of moving toward a close much smoother. Consumers seem more receptive to learning about a service they are interested in through text and visuals on a well built website than by listening to us explain how great we are face to face. Its a sign of the times. So, give those sites a second look in terms of their written and visual content from a consumer perspective rather than just thinking of them as lead generators built to satisfy search engines.

Scott Burt

www.topcoatfinishes.com