Where To Focus To Grow Your Business Online

In half the time that it has taken any other media in history, the Internet has authenticated itself as a very powerful platform that has changed the way we do business, and the way we communicate. The Internet, as no other communication medium, has given an International or, if you prefer, a "Globalized" dimension to the world. The Internet has become the Universal source of information for millions of people, at home, at school, and at work.

This Internet is actually the most democratic of all the mass media. With a very low investment, anyone can have a web page in Cyberspace. This way, almost any business can reach a very large market, directly, quickly and economically, no matter the size or location of the business. With a very low investment, almost anybody that can read and write can have access to the World Wide Web.

Growing your business isn’t just a worthy goal; growing your business is a necessity for your business’s survival and your economic well-being. What can you do to get your business beyond the bare sustenance level? All of these ways of growing your business have been successfully used by other businesses, our clients, and, with some planning and investment, will work for you.

High-Performance Website Design

All online marketing begins with a website. Not JUST a website, not just a web page, not just a splash of content thrown together and married to an image - A Working Website. Your website provides the foundation for your online marketing campaigns, because everything you do to advertise and market your business online (and offline) will drive people to your website. It doesn’t matter whether you use search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, radio, TV, car side billboards, or email marketing, everything should lead to your website, regardless of what industry you operate within.

This means your website is the most important element of your online marketing campaign, because as your prospects visit your site, you need to convert those visitors into sales. The better your website is at converting visitors into sales, the more you can afford to spend on advertising, bringing more traffic and more sales – and the faster your business will grow.

Therefore the very key to making money online is ensuring you have a website that is set up and designed to convert traffic into sales. This is what we do.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

The name of the game is to send qualified prospects to your website. A “qualified prospect” is simply somebody who is interested in what you sell at the time they are ready to buy it. This is simple to do with search engine marketing, because you specify the keywords that your website will appear for in the search engine results.

For example, if you are a roofing contractor in Denver, you would want your website to appear if anyone typed in the word “roofing contractor” or “Denver roofing contractor” or "roof leaks" – because people who typed in those keyword phrases would most probably be interested in what you do. However, if somebody searched for “auto mechanic” you don’t want your site to appear, as that traffic is unlikely to be anyone interested in roofing contractors. Search engine marketing can be very profitable if used correctly and is one of the highest response advertising channels available.

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

The fastest way to have your website appear when somebody is searching online for what you sell is through PPC advertising. PPC is simply the process of paying a certain amount each time a user clicks on an ad that appears for a particular keyword search.

For example, it doesn’t cost anything for your ad to appear in a Google search for “lawyer”, but it does cost you every time somebody clicks on that ad… which mean you only pay for results. PPC is increasingly becoming more expensive, but it still provides one of the best returns on investment of nearly any advertising channel.

Before you launch your PPC campaign it is critical that you install conversion tracking because this will allow you to drill down on:

• Which keywords are producing conversions
• Which ads are producing conversions

You can also determine which are the most valuable words – because even though they may drive a lot of sales, the cost per action (CPA) for a lead or a sale may be higher then your affordable margin because of fierce competition. These keywords are ideal for SEO.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

After running SEM/PPC (with conversion tracking) for about a month, you will have solid information on which keywords are producing sales and revenue for your business, and which are the most valuable keywords you should focus your SE Optimization efforts on.

With this data, you can begin to formulate an SE Optimization strategy. This means targeting keywords that you want your website to rank for and climb to the top of the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and/or Bing. Of course, SE Optimization research should ideally be done before the web design stage so that your website is properly optimized. We make sure that this process is a priority as we build your page content.

Once you’ve achieved an acceptable ranking for your most valuable keyword phrases, you can then reduce your PPC spend if budget is an issue. Your strategy really depends on your goals. If your goal is to capture maximum sales in the market, then running a PPC campaign and SE Optimization campaign at the same time is the best way to achieve this. One will not negate the other.

For example; if your SE Optimization and PPC campaigns generated 50 leads per month each and you stopped the PPC campaign, you would still receive 50 leads a month from the SE Optimization campaign – this wouldn’t increase or be reduced – but you wouldn’t receive the leads from the PPC campaign. Your strategy will depend on your goals and how many leads you can handle.

Business Blogging

Establishing yourself as an authority is a critical element in any online marketing campaign, and one of the biggest hurdles or challenges in achieving this is proving your credibility. The best way of doing this is with information and content, and one of the best platforms for sharing this information and content is through a blog.

Try to maintain a regularly updated blog where you post an article once a week or at least every 2 weeks, and ensure this is done consistently. Information here should be 100% informational – no sales messages. The blog needs to come across as helping the reader with no thought of selling them anything.

By doing this, you are educating the reader about solutions to their problems and you are setting up your company as the authority in your field. Of course, every time you post an article to the blog you publicize this by sending an email to your database letting them know the article is there, making the email curious enough that they want to click the link and find out what it’s all about.

One of the added interactive components available to add to your new Website CMS is a full blogging system, complete with track-backs, commenting, voting, bookmarking widgets, and more.

Email Marketing (SEM)

Email marketing allows you to build a relationship with your prospects over time so they feel comfortable enough to do business with you.

As part of your original web design, we can set up advanced feature that will capture visitor information from people who visit your website and either contact you (via your contact form), or subscribe to your newsletter (offered on your home page). Our advanced newsletter component will be built in to the backend of your CMS, allowing you to log into one master console and implement all of your marketing strategies.

Automated emails are emails sent at a regular sequence, which you set, and are managed through an autoresponder service such as such Aweber.com. (Our advanced newsletter system allows you to manage unlimited autoresponders from your master console, no need to purchase an outside system) The aim is to provide valuable information to your visitors and educate them so that you position your company as the market educator. The general rule is to send a ratio of three informational emails to one sales email.

The manual element of an email marketing campaign is to send your database an email update every time you post something new to your blog or whenever something interesting happens that they should know about straight away.

With email marketing you should aim to send at least one email every couple of weeks. Once a week of course is better but it depends on how good your information is, as too many sales emails will increase prospects that unsubscribe.

Remember, use email marketing to build a relationship with your prospects – don’t go for the hard sell.