A funny thing happened on the way to this blog. I was going to write about one thing, but I noticed a key thing missing from most websites and ad campaigns, and I realized that this is the topic I should really be talking about.
It’s simple – really. I probably zero in on it due to my marketing background (which began with a major award in high school and finished with an MBA in marketing long before I really got involved in the digital sphere).
On a daily basis, I devour television commercials, see newspaper and magazine ads, and pass by highway billboards — all of which I can blow holes in based on basic marketing fundamentals, which somehow seem to be forgotten by most modern marketing teams. Even reading the average business taglines/slogans I come across every day make me lose my mind because of how close they get to really selling, and yet they still miss the mark.
The same is often true when it comes to many, many companies and their Internet websites and presence. It seems, sometimes, that even Internet pros forget the marketing part.
When starting a website, marketing fundamentals must be involved. Why? Because a website is, at its core, a tool for getting the word out about your business. And what is that? Yep, marketing.
You see, when you start to advertise your site it is already much too late to start thinking about marketing. Yes, it might work, but you have made your job much, much harder. Would you believe I came across a company recently – let’s call them Mybusiness.com, whose name wasn’t even in their website address! Their website URL was something incomprehensible and not even tangentially related. Did they even stop to think that whoever does have that address just got some free advertising? Can Mybusiness.com succeed? They can…but it just became far harder.
So how does this relate to Internet marketing? With a strong rise in the amount of consumers who purchase from or work with a business they found online, your website is your calling card, and the first opportunity to market your business.
If you want your marketing and advertising campaigns to succeed beyond your wildest dreams, make your website an automated tool that advertises for your business 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week.
You will find that customers will come easily if you run your business right and create systems that funnel them to you.
Start with the name of your website, and make it work for you. For example, a hairstylist working a chair in an exclusive salon, didn’t choose to use her “business name” or her own name as her domain, she chose a name that works as both a keyword and search term. And her dunwoodyhair.com site is bringing her lots of clients. That’s an example of marketing from the bottom up. Pick your name right, write your website copy with marketing in mind, pick a tagline that works for YOU (not something that works generally for your industry), and follow through with a strong marketing and advertising campaign run simultaneously with the establishment of your website. It’s marketing basics and it works both online and offline.
When it comes to internet advertising, this is critical. Think of it as the difference in making money or losing money. What do you want for your business?
