Marketing, The Internet And Your Business … How To Increase Your Leads In Today’s Market Place!
While marketing principles haven’t changed for over 100 years — consumers still buy benefits and it’s still emotionally based — what has changed is the “medium” used for putting marketing strategies in place.
It’s no different than when the phone book first came out. Prior to that, it was newspaper ads as the dominate marketing medium. It took a while for the phone book and the yellow pages to get a hold in the market place but once it did it was solid, just like what you’re seeing with the internet.
Or how about when the fax machine came out. Pretty soon everyone who was marketing to businesses was using the fax machine to send their marketing pieces. That is until laws were passed to stop it.
The internet is just another medium. That’s all.
But the core elements to marketing haven’t changed. Instead you have another medium for marketing. And with this new medium we’re seeing dramatic changes in consumer buying patterns.
With this medium, the internet has staying power and consumers are gravitating to it. It’s going to be around for a long time. And …
it’s going to generate leads and financial windfalls for businesses much like the yellow pages and phone book did after it was widely accepted by consumers.
That’s because …
- It’s far more convenient (no more needing to carry around a phone book, for one),
- It’s faster,
- Consumers can collect a lot more information,
- Consumers can access it 24/7 from anywhere they’re at with their smart phone or with a broadband card on their laptop, and
- Consumers can go into any city and have instant access to businesses or driving directions.
Do you remember how just 5 years ago there was a payphone with a phone book on just about every corner in any city?
In a lot of cities across the U.S. you can hardly find a payphone anymore. They are becoming a part of our American history.
The internet is a medium you absolutely want to make sure you’re taking advantage of. Just ask the people who come into your business or even your staff, “How do you look up businesses in the city?”
The high majority will tell you, from the internet.
It’s a new world when it comes to marketing strategies today. That’s because the internet and smart phones have opened up a whole new set of opportunities for consumers to find businesses and do research.
Today, not only is your physical location important so is your online presence!
As a business all you have to do is get your advertising and message where your buying public is going using the same approaches to marketing that businesses have used for over a hundred years. You’re just adding a new medium. That’s all.
It’s just that this new medium is as powerful as what a yellow page advertisement use to be 5 years ago. It’s actually more powerful.
Let’s look at it another way. You’ve heard the old saying, “location, location, location.” Why has this been so important over the years?
Because you want your business located where a lot of consumers drive by it every day. That accomplishes two things …
1) It gets your name out there. They see your business name frequently. Because people like doing business with people they are familiar with, since they see your business on a frequent basis it significantly increases the odds that when they’re in need of a business like yours they’ll stop in or call you.
2) Consumers drive by, have a need for what you sell, and because consumers are basically lazy since you’re conveniently located they just drive into your parking lot and do business with you. A convenient location alone gets the sale.
Today a very powerful medium is the internet. And the statistics are in … the high majority of consumers rely on the internet and a businesses website to help them decide who they will be doing business with!
Here again, your location is key. The question is, can consumers find you online?
- When they search for you by name, will they find you?
- When they search for you with partial information … part of your name and/or address … will they find you?
- When they search for your type of business … dentist spokane, home insurance spokane, decks spokane, [fill in the search for your business] … will they find you?
Your “ranking” on the search engines is your location on the internet … do you want to be on main street where all of the traffic is otherwise known as the first page of the search pages or out in Tim-buck-too, which is page 3 and above?
FYI. Only 28% of consumers will ever go past the first page. That’s because the other 72% will find the business they’re going to do business with on the first page.
This illustration is to just show you how the internet relates to what you’ve been taught for years about marketing as a brick and mortar business.
Now, having explained this to you, I also need to point out, once they find you will your website compel them to contact you or will it drop the ball?
It’s going to do one or the other. Which will your website do?
The 4 Key Steps To An Effective Online Presence
So if you look at the strategy behind taking advantage of the internet it’s really just a few key steps…
Make sure you can be found
Make sure your website compels consumers to contact you
Drive consumers who are looking for a business like yours to your website
Communicate and engage your buying public
While there’s really just 4 key steps, each has a lot of strategy behind it! And, be very clear here, you cannot build an online presence for an offline business like you would an online business!
There are very distinct differences between an online business and an offline businesses online presence! MOST of the people who contact you about online strategies and tools do not understand this distinction.
That why it’s important that anyone who works with you and your business has a clear understand of offline businesses and offline marketing. Without this knowledge you end up with having “online” strategies put in place which, unless they are re-engineered for the offline business, just don’t work for the offline business.
We’ve watched many businesses spend large sums of money with other marketing companies and not generate the kind of ROI they could and should be receiving. One of the biggest mistakes we consistently see is how websites are put together. While they may be attractive, they’re not “marketing driven”. And when you’re expecting your website to send you leads and increase your sales, having a marketing driven website is required.
It’s not just required, it’s the key!
That’s why we have highly experienced website designers whose sole job is to design your professional looking website with industry specific graphics and with easy to use navigation.
They do not, however, do the marketing elements required to turn your website into a lead generating, money making website because marketing isn’t what they’ve been educated in.
Instead, they’ll work with our marketing team who lead the way to put in place the key marketing element.
Because your website plays such a big role in your overall marketing, this is generally where we start when working with businesses by making sure the 9 key marketing elements to a lead generating, money making website are put in place first. Otherwise you end up spending a lot of money on marketing and don’t gain the results you should be creating!
In addition to how important your website is, if you’re a business that can benefit from the very explosive smart phone market place, you absolutely want to take advantage of the many strategies around mobile phones. Of course, this all starts by having a mobile phone compatible website.
Get Marketing Help From Someone With 27 Years Of Offline Marketing Experience
We can help you with your marketing efforts. With 27 years of offline marketing experience, we know how to put the pieces together and do it all in an effective and efficient way.
We’ll first analyze your business, market place, competitors, marketability of your products and company, and the demographics of your clients.
Then we’ll establish the first approach to put in place for the greatest results. In many cases, this one strategy will provide the seed money for the following strategies we’ll put in place.
We do understand that money is tight, and we know that you likely don’t like spending money on marketing even though you know it’s the key to generating leads and sales. That’s why we try to remove as much pain from paying for it as possible by generating immediate dollars to cover the investment made into the marketing of your business and the ongoing strategies we’ll be putting in place.
You can contact us by:
Calling us at 888-638-5529, Ext 102
