This article is the second in a series of guest posts by Pattie Simone. Pattie is a speaker, writer and mentor, and owns Write-Communications.com, a communications consultancy.
Visit any number of websites on a given day, and you’ll encounter advertising portals that are way off the mark. The content is poorly written or disorganized, the menu options are confusing, the navigation sloppy.
Same goes for e-newsletters, e-based PR, blog posts, and social networking landing pages. "I did it myself" is the common denominator in all. OUCH! Yes, you are the chief architect of your firms’ mission, vision and objectives. Now get serious cash flow in your favor by working with a team of online marketing pros, who actually can do more than throw industry jargon around. Here’s how.
Create an Inbound Marketing Website
It’s pretty obvious that you would not attempt to fix a carburetor if you aren’t a mechanic, so apply that thought process to all your web-based activities, starting with your main sales driver: your website.
When you work with a professional web designer, copywriter, SEO expert and online marketing team, you’ll end up with a powerful inbound marketing portal. That means that your content is relevant and crisp (the spiders LOVE that!), your menu options and navigation are intuitive, your headlines and sub-heads are more than eye candy, your sales pitches are polished and pithy (and sprinkled liberally throughout your site) and your keywords rock.
In other words, the pros that you end up working with make sure you’ve got all the parts you need, to get your sales engine humming (read, folks searching online for your particular products and services find your firm first because the coding is on target, the content is meaningful and updated regularly, the keywords are on point and tweaked as needed, and once they are there, you’ve got a good percentage of browsers turning into buyers).
Testing, Testing, Testing
Thanks to Wolfman, who opined on the importance of testing in response to my first piece, “Why Websites Fail”. He is absolutely correct that this cannot be said enough, and can make the difference of average returns versus nuclear returns!!
While due diligence is hugely important (know who your demographic markets are, their respective hot buttons, the relevant keywords that they will use, etc. etc) no one has a crystal ball! So test the way you are communicating your information: how and where you word various "asks" (buy now, order here, click this for more info, don’t miss out on this limited time offer) and your giveaways (call us today for a free consultation, save 10% if ordered by X date, free shipping till ___, etc.)
Tracking, Assessing & Updating
Successful companies of every size that are driving serious business through their online marketing efforts are always testing, tweaking and testing again. That means you have to actually read the reports that you should have access to, with regard to your site traffic, link usage, unique visitors, time spent on specific pages.
If you don’t have the time, or are not sure how to translate these reports, work with a professional online marketer who does. It’s only by carefully (and regularly) assessing this data, that you can identify weak points and fix them.
Achieve Ca-ching using the Right Team
No matter how much you try, it’s a safe bet that you can’t be the expert of everything. Look at it another way. Pretty much every millionaire entrepreneur I’ve ever interviewed started out doing everything themselves. Those that got the ball rolling faster, quickly realized the value of outsourcing important tasks and projects to a variety of experts, which left them free to concentrate on what they do best. Think seriously about how you can profit from your own team of online marketing professionals; it’s worth it!
Photo: planeta roig
