Ideal Marketing
A Case For a Dynamic, Interactive Website
Every Business Needs to Market
A Website, in most cases, is a marketing tool. It should be one of several marketing tools you, as a business owner, have selected to get your message, your product(s), or your service(s) to market.
The most common types of marketing tools and/or methods are:
- Direct mail – Pulls half to five percent. It’s important to determine cost per thousand mailed (cpm) and cost per order (cpo).
- Advertising via various media – Be sure to determine cpo.
- In-store sales – Very dependent on location and advertising.
- Out of store ‘direct sales’ via salesmen – Has the high cost of peoplepower.
- Telemarketing – Don’t expect me to like you.
- Lectures and Seminars – Good but lots of costs and peoplepower.
- Word-of-mouth – You have done a good job.
- Press releases – Smart use of resources.
- Internet and Websites – Primarily initial costs – Works while you sleep.
Marketing Objectives
The obvious result we are looking for is sales, but to make sales (or get orders) we need leads or traffic to the point of sale. We need to get to first base before we can go on to second base. So to get orders we need to generate leads or traffic. We have the option to use any of the nine marketing tools and methods above. The question, in the long run, is which method will produce the most sales for the least amount of cash, but you may wish to divide the problem into its logical parts again and ask what method will bring in the most leads or traffic?
Well, wouldn’t we all like to make a profitable business on ‘word-of-mouth’ advertising alone? Strangely, it can be done, but you will direct all of your marketing energy into satisfying your customers. That is a good thing. However, if you want to get off to a faster start, you might like to take a more active marketing approach. One option might be issuing press releases for every opportunity that presents itself. Press releases, like word-of-mouth, is another good form of free advertising, and should be done as well.
But, I have saved the best approach for last: Internet and, particularly, Website marketing. These are two natural companions in Internet promotion:
Internet Advertising
Internet advertising is quite unique as it offers extensive ‘per inquiry’ (PI) advertising. This means there is no cost to you unless a lead or sale (often your choice) is produced. PI advertising doesn’t happen very often, but some have been known to pull in off on radio and other media advertising. In the case of Internet advertising, for example, you could place an ad on say, google, to drive traffic to your Website, and you would pay google for every lead it produced. (This is not the same as people using the google search engine to locate you. That doesn’t cost you a thing.)
Another Website might agree to allow you to place an ad on their Website (or exchange ad space with you) and you would pay them only if you received an order from someone they directed to your Website. So what all this means is that you can have traffic directed to your site (or visa versa) and it cost nothing unless a qualified lead or sale is produced.
Your Company Website
The other Internet promotional tool is the Website—your company Website. It can be described in any number of ways, but if you have a dynamic, interactive Website, here are 22 ways to describe it:
1. Like any other form of marketing, there are initial costs, but unlike the others, the continuing costs are very, very little.
2. But, coupled with ‘1’ immediately above, the Website goes right on selling for months and years after its initial costs.
3. Unless you are very large and require a full time Webmaster, there will be no employee and payroll expenses at all.
4. It can both generate leads, and sell and close deals without help from a person.
5. It provides an overall picture of your company and its people.
6. It asks questions and gets answers via surveys.
7. It shows each and every product or service you offer.
8. It provides a good communication medium.
9. It makes announcements.
10. It allows and promotes discussions among chosen groups such as prospects and/or customers.
11. It allows the actual generation of income on your site by allowing others to advertise on your site.
12. It allows viewers to easily ask questions.
13. It becomes your company brochure in living color for all the world to see.
14. It links to many kinds of other information at which the site visitor might wish to look.
15. It allows for a company intranet for great information exchange among a chosen category of users such as employees.
16. It precisely records all hits to your site, detailing each page by the day, week, month, user frequency or registration and more.
17. It establishes its presence and makes itself available via search engines.
18. It easily allows bulk emailing to specific groups without costs, e.g.; no paper, printing nor postage costs.
19. It provides an excellent place for pictures and testimonial letters of satisfied customers.
20. The potential of hundreds of millions of Web users to visit your site by a mere click or the insertion of your URL into their browser.
21. It works while you sleep.
22. It takes orders and makes sales.
Review the various types of marketing above. Is there any other type of marketing that offers, and will do, so much for so little? Think about it for a moment: Salespeople cost tens of thousands of dollars a year—maybe $50,000 a year. Media advertising will cost thousands again, and its affect is only for as long as you pump money into it—then it's gone. Telemarketing is dismal. People don’t like it and there is nothing visual. It is strictly an aural medium. Seminars are great, but it takes a lot to motivate people to attend even if free, and costs can be several thousand dollars. Nothing beats word-of-mouth and press releases. They are the best.
Where are your marketing dollars being spent and what are the returns?
If properly used, the Web offers by far the best marketing strategy ever developed. And the way to use it is point all other advertising to it. You make it a focal point. Your first real contact with a multitude of would be customers is your Website. Media advertising may help make people become aware of you, but at this point, they are still like fish swimming around your lure. Direct mail can be infinitely more effective if it is successful in directing the prospect to your Website for further information.
In store sales, direct sales (outside salespeople), telemarketing and seminars can all be greatly facilitated by pointing people to your Website first. This is where you prime the pump. People can study you, your operation and your product or service until their hearts content. If they leave your Website satisfied, they become a qualified prospect if they didn’t already make the purchase while visiting your site. At this point, they are very likely to have entered you among their favorites in their browser. That says a lot, because now your prospect has made an effort to single you out from the crowd.
Finally, Willie Crawford writes in his The Internet Business Success Course, “Develop Updated Content, a Newsletter, and/or a Discussion Group. The Web sites with the highest hits and profits are those who provide constantly updated information or materials. Constantly updated content keeps people coming back.” With a dynamic, interactive Website there are many ways in which you can keep the content updated and changing without any action on your part other than the initial setup. Included in the core of our Website, for instance, is a schedule module that allows the setup of event schedules. These schedules can be set up for custom modules that can trigger almost any conceivable event. Standard dynamic modules include an Event module, a RSS News Feed module, and a Weather Network module.
Additionally, think of a Discussion Forum that focuses on important or controversial questions being asked by people in your industry or market group. How about a discussion about a specific product or service of yours? This brings interest and hits to your Website from those who have an interest in the topic. This ultimately results in more sales. This is what I am talking about when I speak of a dynamic, interactive Website. This is what Attaboy Designs offers in a website.
Run with the big boys, many of whom have some or all of the capabilities described above, but get your Website at our basement store price.
Please read our flyer titled Dnn Portal Framework Features (found on the Framework Features tab) to find out why we can offer so much for so little.
Authored by Ken Flanigan