Using Your Website To Follow Up With Customers and Achieve More Sales
One of the most useful function a website can bring to the table is the ability to wrap your visitors into your “marketing portal”……and to do so on complete automation!
Ok, so you have a visitor to your site. Now what? Well, obviously, you want that visitor to either call or come in and buy something. So, what are you doing on your site to help that process along? Are you offering anything for free? Are you portraying your business as an expert at what you do? If not, then you are really missing out on the full usefulness a website can provide.
What exactly do I mean? Take a look at www.replacementwindows4less.com
As soon as a visitor lands on the homepage, they are greeted with an audio message from the owner. They are then offered free info that is of huge value to anyone looking to purchase windows for their home. In order to get the reports, all they have to do is fill out a short form. Once they fill out the form, they are immediately and automatically sent an email with a link to the free reports, which are set up on a separate page of the site. This gives the business two advantages….
1) Building Trust - By giving his prospects something of real value, the owner is only adding to his credibility and gaining trust.
2) Marketing - The owner now has the prospects name, email and phone number. He can now follow up with his prospects either through email or over the phone. And all of this can be done on 100% automation through a tool called an autoresponder. The autoresponder can be pre-loaded with as many messages as you need and told when to send these messages. So each new prospect that enters their info is automatically taken to the free reports and automatically followed up with.
“OK, but I own a consumer electronics store, how would this help me?”.
It doesn’t matter what business you are in, these principles can be applied to virtually anything. Why not offer a 20% off coupon “sent automatically to your inbox by entering your name and email address”. Now you’ve just given them a reason to come into your store and you also have the ability to send future emails/offers. Let’s say that after awhile you have a list of 200 people. Your having a special clearance sale on your car cd players. Why not send out a quick email to everyone letting them know your offering your stock of cd players at a very special price?
It doesn’t matter whether you sell large ticket items or lower priced services, these methods can be applied to almost any business and more importantly, they will help you achieve more sales and convert more visitors into actual customers.
My company, Medina Web Marketing, is dedicated to helping you get the most from your site. To learn more about us, please visit http://medinawebmarketing.com or call (330) 723-0720
Tags: small business web design, Small Business Web Marketing, small business website
. 09 Oct 08 | Small Business Web Marketing | Comments (0)
How To Make Sure Your Small Business Website Targets The Right Audience
If you do business on only a local basis, there are still a myriad of reasons why you need a site. Generating new business, communicating with customers, added credibility, and allowing people to learn more about your business are among some of the most important functions a website can give your business.
Of the many benefits of a website, the ability to generate new business is, in my opinion, one of the most valuable functions for the small, local business. Just how is this accomplished? Simple, when someone goes to a search engine and is looking for a, let’s say, snow removal company in their area, they will likely type in something like “snow removal service in xxxx” where xxxx is whatever city/town they are in. It only makes sense, then, that if you provide this service and your site ranks high for that search term, these people will visit your site and hopefully call and have you plow their drive!
But how do you make sure that your site ranks well for these types of searches? Believe it or not, I often see simple, simple mistakes keeping websites that should be at the top down at the bottom. Let’s go through everything and I will explain what gets you ranked well and correspondingly, what mistakes are typically made.
1) Content - It is extremely important to make sure you mention locality at least a couple of times on each page of your site. This really is not hard to incorportate into your content, but you would not believe how often I see this one simple mistake. If you serve, let’s say, the Denver area, you better mention Denver, as well as any major outlying localities, somewhere in your page.
A past client had a business where they had crews in 16 different locations around the country. How did we manage to incorporate the names of all these cities in a single page? Simple, at the bottom of the pages we put “Proudly Serving…” and listed all the cities where they do business. They rank #1 and #2 in every town they serve for terms relating to their business.
2) Tags - Tags are line of code that the user never sees. Rather, they lie in the code and are meant to help the search engines identify what your site is mainly about. Although not as important as they used to be, proper use of tags is still, in my opinion, essential to getting the best results for your site as far as the search engines go.
Of all the tags, the three that I find the most important are the keyword tag, the title tag, and the description tag. The keyword tag tells the search engines what keywords to rank your site for. Let’s make an example. Say you own a fitness center in Cleveland, OH. The mistake I would typically see are keywords like “fitness,fitness center,gym”, when they should be “cleveland fitness center,cleveland fitness,cleveland gym”. You do not need to compete for the term fitness center, you are competing with businesses from around the world. All you need to do is reach local people, so “cleveland fitness center” is much more appropriate and much easier to rank for.
The title tags and the description tags should always be used, and should include use of your appropriate keywords.
If you manage to match your tags to your content, you will have a sure winner and should have no problem dominating the search engines for the keywords you are targeting.
Please visit http://medinawebmarketing.com to learn more about our services
Tags: local seo, small business seo, small business web design, small business website, small business website design
. 19 Sep 08 | Small Business Web Marketing | Comments (0)
A Website For Your Small Business is Essential
Think that websites are only for bigger companies? WRONG! As a small business, you can take advantage of the tremendous benefits of a site without all of the cost!
What exactly do I mean? Well, a website can actually provide a few very beneficial functions for your business….
1) Generating New Business - If you are doing business locally, a properly optimized website can provide you with a steady stream of new business. It is now accepted that up to 80% of the population uses the internet as a ways to look for local businesses. Same as the phone book. By simply having your website optimized to target local searchers, you can take advantage of this awesome advertising opportunity!
2) More Power for Your Other Advertising - Chances are you probably advertise in a number of ways and places. Your ad is successful is people see it and act on it. Why not give those interested viewers a way to learn more by putting in a website address? This is a great opportunity to really maximize all of your advertising efforts and dollars.
3) Free Marketing to Existing Customers - You should be collecting names and email addresses both at your place of business and on your site. With a list of emails from people who are already your customers, you can quickly and cheaply send out periodic offers or items of interest. By staying in touch with your customers, they are more apt to remember your business and come in more often.
Of course, there are other benefits to having a website for your small business, but these are some of the most important ones. When done properly, a website can provide all of these valuable functions on complete automation. So, you get the benefits without having to invest your time on a daily basis.
When you are ready to start taking advantage of these benefits, please visit us at http://medinawebmarketing.com or call us at (330) 723-0720
Tags: small business online marketing, small business web design, small business website, small business website design
. 16 Sep 08 | Small Business Web Marketing | Comments (0)
Two Free Ways to Market Your Small Business on The Internet
Yes, having a website is, in my opinion, an essential “base” to any type of online marketing/advertising. However, your site alone is not the only way you can use the power of the internet to generate new business and gain exposure for your business. Below are a couple of ways anyone can go online and advertise their business…
1) Craigslist - Craigslist is an awesome tool to bring in new business. In a nutshell, Craigslist is a free online classified ad site. Each major city/area has it’s own dedicated site and users can post ads for everything from free stuff and jobs, to cars and personals. There is one reason why I feel Craigslist is so useful….the site itself has a very, very high ranking with all of the major search engines.
Advertising on Craigslist is free and easy. All you have to do is open a free account using your email address, then you simply post your ad in whatever category best fits. Here is where the strategy comes in to play….when writing your ad, there are two basic components, which are the title and the body. Make sure to include the appropriate keywords in both. For example, let’s say you want to put an ad promoting your high-end hair salon in the city of Cleveland. Make sure in the title you include the words “cleveland” and “high-end hair salon”. What will essentially happen is that when someone goes into a search engine and searches for “high-end salon in Cleveland”, or something of the nature, your ad has a great chance of popping up fairly high in the search results. Just make sure to include how they can contact your business, either by way of telephone or directing them to your website for more info. Another thing to keep in mind is that to be effective, you should place an ad about 2-3 times a week.
2) Article Directories - This is a method used by many successful internet marketers. Basically, there are hundreds of different “directories” on the net that allow you to post “articles” about a topic. Again, these sites hold high ranking with the search engines and a well-written article with the proper keywords will continue to draw traffic indefinitely.
So, for example, sticking with the high-end salon example, let’s say you wanted to promote your massage services. Why not write an article (300-500 words) discussing the benefits of massage. Maybe the title could read “Cleveland Salon Shows The Many Benefits of a Massage”. Then at the end of the article you would put a link to your website or the phone number of your business.
These are just two example of creative ways you can begin using the internet to attract new customers to your offline business. The best part is that they are not very time-consuming….and they are FREE!
Make sure to visit us at http://medinawebmarketing.com to see how we can help you grow your business with our custom-tailored solutions.
Tags: small business online advertising, small business web design, Small Business Web Marketing, small business website design
. 15 Sep 08 | Small Business Web Marketing | Comments (0)
Basic Principles For Small Business Website Design
As I keep saying, having a website for your small business is getting more and more essential if you are trying to keep up in today’s competitive environment. It is a fact that a large number of consumers look for local businesses online, the same way they would in the phone book. If you are not there for them to see, you can bet that your competitors are. And when you consider that the cost of a professionally designed website is really pretty affordable these days, there is simply no excuse not to have a site for your business.
There are, in my opinion, certain elements that should be used to maximize the effectiveness and overall results you get from your site. These are all things that we include standard in every one of our web design packages, and I would like to take a minute to go over these things here.
1) Local SEO - This is probably the most important aspect of your site. It only makes sense that since you do business locally, you need to be in front of this audience. This is not very hard to achieve, and it relies on following a few simple principles. Some designer will tell you that you simply need to have the right meta tags on your site. This is somewhat true, but it is less important than making sure your content matches those tags. In fact, some search engines do not even look at meta tags, they judge your site solely on the content. By making sure you use the proper blend of keywords in your content, you can expect to rank well for local search terms.
2) Collecting Email Addresses - This is a very important part in making sure you maximize the results from your site. By having a place where visitors can voluntarily give you their name and email address to receive news and/or special offers, you have the ability to build a very powerful marketing tool. Imagine having a list of 100, 200, 300 or more people that you can send out special offers to with the click of a button. No need to waste money on postage, paper and envelopes when you can get your message out instantly and with literally zero cost! When we design your site, we build this feature in and then make it very simple and easy to manage your database of names.
3) Call to Action - For people who are visiting your site for the first-time, having some sort of “call to action” or incentive to call or come in is a very important part of your site. Although they likely will, you want to try to get the visitor to come to you without checking out your competition. This can easily be achieved by putting some type of special offer or coupon up on your site. It’s the same principle with coupon mailers….readers see your ad and the coupon or offer displayed is the “call to action”. Like I said, not hard to achieve, but important in maximizing the results of your site.
These are very simple principles, but they are essential in making sure your website and web marketing efforts are a success. I hate to say it, but we come across a lot of businesses who have paid nicely for a great-looking site, yet they are not generating any positive results on their business from having the site. Many designers do great work, but are so focused on look that they never stop to think about what the site actually means to the client’s business.
At Medina Web Marketing, we are in the “business mindset” and feel this is what differentiates us from other design companies. We are more than happy to talk with you and help you figure out a solution to getting the most out of your web marketing efforts. If you want more info, you can visit our site at http://medinawebmarketing.com or call us at (330) 723-0720.
Tags: local business website, local seo, small business web design, Small Business Web Marketing, small business website, small business website design
. 14 Sep 08 | Small Business Web Marketing | Comments (0)
Why Local Businesses Benefit from Having a Website
Although most small business owners are jumping on board and utilizing the potential the internet offers, there are still some smaller businesses who simply refuse to believe that they can benefit from having a site for their business.
There are simply too many reasons why having a website can be beneficial to any business, whether a large corporation or a guy with a van and a carpet cleaner.
The first and most important reason, in my opinion, for a small, local business to have a website is because of the new business it can produce. The most recent studies suggest that possibly 80% of US consumers use the internet as a means to look for local merchants. If you run an auto repair shop in the city of Trent OH and someone types in Trent OH auto repair shop and you show up in the first few results, you have just targeted your most relevant target prospect! Having a website typically means a one-time investment, but the result is an ongoing, highly effective form of advertising for your business.
Another great reason to have a site is for all of the other advertising you do. Perhaps you have a small take-out restaurant and you regularly send out coupons in the local fliers. By having your website address on the ad, customers can than go to your site and see your full menu. It is a convenience for the customer, and it also helps curb the number of people calling and asking “so, what all do you have?”. Also, would it not make sense to think that by being able to see your full menu that the actual amount ordered might increase? Having a site is very complimentary to your other advertising….if your ad works and someone is interested in what you have, they will more than likely want to check out your site if they have an internet connection.
Yet another reason to have a site is to keep your current customers informed of what’s happening and also to promote any specials or things of interest happening at your business. When we build sites for our clients, we typically try to encourage them to allow us to put an area where visitors can give their name and email address to be added to a mailing list. This gives the client the opportunity to send emails with special offers, news, etc. For example, let’s say you are a massage therapist and you have a list of 200 people. Christmas is a month away and your revenues are a little down. Why not send out a quick email alerting your list to a special you have going on, or reminding them that massage gift certificates make a great gift for loved ones!
These are just a few of the reasons that having a site for your business should be a no-brainer. There are definitely more, though.
To learn more about Medina Web Marketing, please visit us at http://medinawebmarketing.com
Tags: small business web design, Small Business Web Marketing, small business website, small business website design
. 13 Sep 08 | Small Business Web Marketing | Comments (0)
Why Every Small Business Needs a Website
Recent studies suggest that as much as 80% of American consumers use the internet to search out local merchants!
As more and more consumers are turning to the internet to find local merchants, small, locally-based businesses without an internet presence are really losing out on one of the most cost-efficient, effective forms of advertising for their business. Even entrepreneur.com published a lenghty article discussing why every small business needs a website.
The old way of thinking that you need to shell out thousands of dollars to a designer and have a big, complicated site for your business is, in my opinion, outdated. Since you conduct your business offline, your website only needs to serve as an advertisement for your business, not a method of doing business. By having a site that is optimized to show up for local searchers and combining that with an effective, direct-response message to get those visitors into your business, you can have an advertising medium that is out working for you and your business 24/7!
WHAT TO THINK ABOUT BEFORE YOU HIRE A DESIGNER
Before you rush out and hire a designer, there are a few things you should consider…..
- Does the designer have any marketing or advertising experience? Many designers do awesome work, but their minds are geared toward appearance rather than business functionality. You want a nice, professional, catchy site, but you need to remember that the real value in the result the site produces for you. A site obviously does no good if nobody sees it. Furthermore, it does no good if the right audience does not see it. If you sell landscaping services in Cleveland, what good does it do you if someone in San Francisco sees your site?
- How many ways can your business benefit from having a site? A website is a great tool, you can send current customers to it, use it to draw in new customers and many other useful tasks. For example, when I design a site, I like to include a way for visitors to “opt-in” to receive emails from the site owner. The enticement is usually some sort of coupon or other valuable tidbit. This is awesome for a couple of reasons. For one, it makes the visitor more vested in you and your business and hopefully provides the enticement to either come into your business or call. Secondly, the site owner can now legally send an email to the people who have opted in. Imagine having a list of 500 names and email addresses that you can automatically send an email to promoting a new product or a special offer. This is very powerful!
- What kind of ongoing support does the designer offer? Will you just be handed a site or will the designer provide hosting? If hosting is provided, how much does it cost and what does it entail? Does the hosting include revisions or do you need to pay every time your site is updated? Basically, unless you know your way around the technical parts of a website, having your designer on hand to host the site and make changes is a good idea. Some designers charge a flat fee just for hosting and then if you need revisions you pay their hourly rate. Other designers offer a more broad package that may include a certain number of revisions every month plus other services to keep your site performing well. This is just one of the areas you must thoroughly research with your designer before signing up.
At my company, Medina Web Marketing, we are only focused on smaller businesses. This allows us to develop plans and products that fit into the smaller business budget. For much less than you would likely pay most design companies, we will custom-design a beautiful site and make sure that it provides many valuable functions to your business.
You can reach Medina Web Marketing at (330) 723-0720
So, if you are small, local business without a website you should seriously consider having one because your competition probably does!
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Brian is the owner of Medina Web Marketing, a small design company in Northeast Ohio catering specifically to the internet marketing needs of small, local businesses. You can learn more by visiting their site at http://www.medinawebmarketing.com |
. 12 Sep 08 | Small Business Web Marketing | Comments (0)