The Ideas Blog

By Jim Connolly
This article is all about how to get the best marketing results from your website. It includes a quick test you can use, which will help you ’see’ your website as potential clients see it!

As we all know, most small and medium-sized businesses get very little value from their websites. To understand why this happens, you need to look at the difference between ‘traditional marketing’ and ‘Internet marketing.’

TRADITIONAL MARKETING
Sales and marketing have been around ever since man started to trade and negotiate. From day one, the focus of marketing has always been the same; to deliver valuable results. For example; sales, leads, enquiries, referrals etc.

The key here is that traditional marketing has ALWAYS been focused on delivering something of value!

INTERNET MARKETING
In comparison with traditional marketing, Internet marketing is still very much in its infancy. Internet marketing was initially ‘shaped’ by web designers and Internet experts, rather than marketing experts.

Because of this, Internet marketing has developed VERY differently. There’s still too much emphasis placed on ‘hits’ or visitor numbers and too little emphasis placed on generating; sales, leads, enquiries and referrals from those visitors!

So, visitor numbers don’t matter?
Visitor numbers DO matter - but ONLY if these visitors are generating something of value for your business! People who visit a website, but do nothing and then leave, are of no commercial value to you. All they do is make your ‘hit’ numbers look good.

I was emailed recently by an accountant, whose website cost him over £10,000 ($19,800) and it gets a lot of visitors. The site is almost a year old but has produced just a handful of email enquiries and not a single new client! He said his focus has been on; “getting as many visitors as possible!”

The single biggest reason that most small and medium-sized business websites fail, is that the businesses write the wording (or copy write) their websites themselves. People will pay thousands for a new website and then kill that investment immediately with D.I.Y copy writing.

FOR EXAMPLE
The accountant I just mentioned wrote the wording for his website himself. Like 99% of all small business websites, it reads just like a company brochure; which is DEFINITELY NOT what you want from your website!

A DIFFERENT KIND OF MARKETING
Unlike a company brochure or mailshot, a website is 100% interactive - so it must be written ina atotally different way! Your wording must guide the reader to click links, press menu buttons and submit information etc.

In order to compel your readers to; visit you, call you, email you or leave you their email address, your website has to be deliberately written, to motivate people to take action. This is a highly specialist area of copy writing. You can achieve not hundreds but THOUSANDS of percent increases in results from a website, once it is professionally written, just ask my clients!

3 questions that will show you how potential clients ’see’ YOUR website!
This exercise is quick and easy, yet really powerful! All you need to do is ask yourself the following 3 questions and then answer either “yes” or “no.” Be as open with yourself as possible with your answers.

Here are your 3 questions:
“After 20 seconds of arriving at my homepage, will a potential client find a unique and valuable reason to use MY services - rather than one of my equally qualified competitors?”

“After reading the 2 most visited pages on my website, will a potential client have a powerful, professional image of MY business in THEIR mind?”

“Will potential clients feel motivated to contact me after reading what I have written - is it compelling enough to inspire them to take action? “

If you can only answer “yes” to 1 or 2 out of those questions; here’s some great news! You can dramatically improve your marketing, with the right help!

WHAT NEXT?
I suggest you find someone with a proven track record of copy writing success, to make your site work for you! If you have a friend, contact or client, who gets great results from their website, ask them who wrote their Internet copy.

Then, contact the copy writer and ask them for a ‘capped quote’ for ‘the whole project.’ This is a quote that will cover all their copy writing, including rewrites if needed, for one pre-agreed fee. (This way you will know in advance exactly what your investment will be!)

Internet marketing, when handled professionally, is easily the most powerful AND least expensive form of marketing in the world! There is no reason why YOUR website cannot be transformed into a goldmine for your business!