So your core business is down and sales are flat…what can you do now to get more business?  Look to the internet!

Internet Ideas:

• If you are not collecting emails from your customers, START NOW. Email communication with customers is the most effective and least costly way to get business.
• Focus focus focus: Connect your exact product to the right customer using keyword themes (SEO), landing pages, Pay-Per-Click and internet PR.  If they ask the right buying question, don’t distract them with other messages or links.

Non-Internet Ideas:

• Design a simple telemarketing program to get new names and phone numbers.
• Mail five - call five: Send a note to 5 new prospects on Monday and call them on Thursday every week.

“NO” just means you have not sold them yet!

Every company needs an internet strategy. Website marketing is not just for consumer products or retail sales. Furthermore, it involves more than just a virtual brochure. It is the living, real-time representation of your entire marketing, sales, public relations and branding programs.

There two types of people who visit your website.

1. People who know your product and/or services and want answers right away, or
2. Strangers who search for your site and will linger and be “sold” in the best sense of the word.

The website has less than four seconds to do either.

Advanced web architecture and good planning can meet both visitors’ needs. Whether you are a Retailer or Wholesaler, B to B or B to C, Non-Profit or For-Profit, your website must mean business. It is worth having a plan!

Something to think about:

• The number one reason people visit a website is to find a phone number.

• The average purchasing agent spends an average of 5 hours a day on the internet.

It is commonly said that a dog’s body ages seven years for every twelve months of accrual time.  The same can be said for Internet marketing.  The Internet is moving so fast your current strategy needs revisiting almost as soon as you execute it.  Here is an example using written communication: I graduated from college 30 years ago. The only written communication was using snail mail (the post office). I have three children, ages 21, 24, and 27, who all left the state for college. In 2000, all written communication with my son was by email.  In 2004, all written communication with my middle daughter was IM (Instant Messaging) and email.  Today all written communication with my youngest is texting and on Facebook. She never checks her email…that is old school.  What is your Social Media Strategy for communicating with your clients? Facebook, linkedin and other socal sites are growing…are you part of the scene?

Too often websites and traditional marketing are judged and driven by ego, habit, tradition or fear…not by measured results. It is a huge misappropriation of time and money!

Print media can take time to analyze. However, on the Internet you can know in 24 hours if a SEM (Search Engine Marketing) program is working. With a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) program you can know in just a few weeks if your efforts are making a difference.  It starts as simply as setting up your site with free analytics from Goggle. http://www.google.com/analytics/ .

Important: Take the time to look at web analytics…it is worth the time!

Next: Remind your staff to ask either of these simple questions every time a customer calls…”Where did you hear about us?” or “What promoted your call?”

Important:  Write down each answer and review them at least once a month! 

Finally, every time you communicate with customers, re-read your words and ask the question, “So What?”…or think what’s in it for them

Important: Advertising is about the customer…not you.

My friend Eric describes good search engine optimization as putting “Google Juice” on a website. More Google Juice powers your website to the top of the search results list. Less Google Juice holds your website down or causes it to drop off the Google map.

What is Google Juice? It’s feeding Google all the things that it likes to eat so its bots or spiders visit your website often, believes you are a real business, understands what you do and sees some outside source confirming your authority. Everything from how many years you have pre-paid your URL (web address) to website reviews and links to your site from web articles will give your site various amounts of Google Juice.

Here are 5 free ways that create efffective Google Juice

1. Title Metatags
2. Additional Content
3. Key Themes on Home Page
4. Deep Links on Home Page
5. Google Site Map

Here are 5 paid ways to get effective Google Juice

1. Internet Press Releases
2. Associative SEO - Leveraging Authority Sites
3. Social Marketing (Blogs, Facebook, MySpace)
4. Pay-Per-Click Advertising
5. Pay-Per-View Marketing Campaigns

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

                John Wooden

The character of a person, business or nation is defined by its value system.

When we do a Ninety-day Strategic Brief we start with mission, vision and values.

• Mission — is what you do
• Vision — is what you are striving for
• Values — are the guiding principles or deeply held beliefs that you conduct all business by

What are values that define you, your business or the people you choose to elect or follow? Here is a list to ponder.  How would you order these, starting with the most important ones first?

• Respect
• Responsibility
• Commitment
• Perseverance
• Integrity
• Discipline
• Trustworthiness
• Patience
• Compassion
• Fairness
• Cooperation
• Courage
• Cleanliness
• Loyalty
• Helpfulness
• Friendliness
• Cheerfulness
• Reverence

Every website design starts with the company’s logo. The logo dictates the graphics, colors and fonts of the website. It is the cornerstone of every page and must communicate who you are and what you do quickly. Most websites have the logo in the upper left hand corner of every page because that is where the eye begins scanning a page.

Wikipedia defines a logo as follows:

A logo (Greek- logotipos) is a graphical element, (Ideogram, symbol, emblem, icon, sign) that, together with its logotype (a uniquely set and arranged typeface) form a trademark or commercial brand. Typically, a logo’s design is for immediate recognition, inspiring trust, admiration, loyalty and an implied superiority. The logo is one aspect of a company’s commercial brand, or economic entity, and its shapes, colors, fonts, and images usually are different from others in a similar market. Logos are also used to identify organizations and other, non-commercial entities.

Most business logos were not designed with the internet in mind. They were designed to look attractive and print well on calling cards, letterhead, catalogs and brochures. These logos don’t always translate well to a computer monitor. The wrong logo looks dull and can take up to much space on the screen. In short, the wrong logo will lessen the impact of the entire website.

Before you start designing a new website, it may be a good idea to have your logo either “freshened up” or redone to maximize the effect of your website. The cost of a new logo can range from $150 to $2,500. There are advantages to either depending upon your overall marketing plan and budget.

Here is a list of things to wrap-your-head-around when you are building a new website: 

The words that build trust and guide your organization

• What is your organization mission? What do you do, in 3 sentences or less.
• What is your organization vision? In a perfect world this is how you will perform.
• What are your core values? How will you act under pressure in the most extreme business conditions?

Your goals for a website

• What is your sales or marketing strategy?
• What are the 5 most important ideas, services, or products to your organization?
• What markets do you serve?
• What applications do you have in those markets?
• How do your products fit into those applications?
• What geographic area do you serve?
• What words do you think prospects use to find you?

The visitor’s goals for your website

•  Name the right customers for your business - occupation, knowledge, background, interest, and level of decision-making ability – categorize them.
• What is each visitor categorys’ goal when they visit the website?
• Identify the most frequently use Google search terms visitors use to find your business, product, or service.
• What is the ideal sales presentation to each category that matches the correct product/service to visitors needs?

More thoughts

• What is the end game of your website? What call-to-action do you want to express?
• Is your phone number easy to find?
• Everyone process information differently. Does the website have 3-5 ways to get to critical information (pictures, text, links, feature boxes, info-buckets, etc.)?
• Can a power user get right to the information they want in one step?
• Is your website an effective silent salesman with easy “step-skipping” links
• What is your marketing “add-on” strategy for each product?
• Content is king in SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Include information that makes you look bigger and/or demonstrate industry leadership
• Successful Websites are a balance between SEO, graphic design, content, and ease-of-use which in sum maximize an internet strategy’s results.

“A strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal, most often “winning”. Strategy is differentiated from tactics or immediate actions with resources at hand by its nature of being extensively premeditated, and often practically rehearsed.”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In business, marketing is “strategy” and sales are “tactics.” You cannot have one without the other. They are two sides of the same coin. Good marketing is the plan of action to reach your winning sales goal. It identifies who the best customers are, defines what attracts them and ranks them by profitability. Good sales are the immediate actions you take with each qualified customer to answer questions, provide information and offer solutions that will allow them to make informed decisions.

So what is Internet Strategy? It is one part of the over all marketing strategy of any business. Its importance is growing by “leaps and bounds.” It stems from the overall marketing strategy with its own goals and objectives.

What is the Website? It is an online salesperson that executes the tactics that will achieve those marketing goals. It has a well-defined “call to action” that is extremely premeditated — using the companies most rehearsed sales presentation that is tight and clear.

All sales start by attracting interest in a product or service. Good salespeople have an “elevator speech” they use to quickly introduce a product to a prospect. It’s a well-rehearsed very tight sales presentation that can be given between floors during an elevator ride. It is delivered in less than 11 seconds. It can not be longer or you loose the prospect’s interest and they walk. If they stay, you can answer questions, provide information and offer solutions that will allow them to make an informed decision.

On the internet you have less time, only three seconds, to deliver that same “elevator speech” before a potential customer hits the back button. Your homepage must quickly and simply communicate what you do and build trust if you want visitors to stay. You will close a sale or get a good leads if they look deeper into your business, get questions answered, and find the right information and solutions to make an informed decision.

There’s something happening here… If you make a product or provide a service you better have a website strategy or you will leave a lot of money on the table. You have a business plan, a sales plan, and marketing plan; you have a product development plan, an employee development plan, a family plan, maybe even an exit plan… so where is the internet plan?.

It is a well-known fact that an effective website site can make a business money. It finds leads and makes sales. It will reduce the cost of customer service and improve customer satisfaction ratings. It is the cheapest tool in your business arsenal…and yet you don’t have a plan for it!

Your website operates 24/7 and is a window into your business. Every second of every day on the World Wide Web people will judge your business by what they see when they land on your website! Are you ready for that? A recent national study of professional purchasing agents showed that the average time spent looking for suppliers on the internet was 8 hours every week. Is your website going to answer their questions and prompt a phone call?

What is it worth to you to get more sales and reduce costs? It is not magic; it works like any other marketing tool. Have the right message, get that message to the right people and a percentage of those people will respond. That is how marketing works.

Your website’s competition is not your competitor down the street (or on the other side of the world) it’s the “back-button” at the top of the browser window on your customer’s PC. If they don’t quickly understand the “who, what, where” of your website, they are gone. The lucky winner is the next business on the search engine return list!

Here is the deal:

If they don’t know what you do in 3 seconds…they hit the back-button

If they don’t know who you are in 4 seconds… they hit the back-button

If they don’t trust you in 6 seconds … they hit the back-button

If they cannot find what they want in 8 seconds… they hit the back-button

If it is not clear you are the solution in 10 seconds… they hit the back-button

If they cannot contact you the very second they decide to… they hit the back-button

If they last 45 seconds or more on your site… your strategy is working!

NOTE: if they cannot find you easily by doing a simple key-phase search on Google…there will be no back-button to hit. Your business opportunity with a new client is lost! For what that is worth…

”Stop children what’s that sound, everybody look what’s going down.”