In this day and age it has become very easy for small to
large businesses to market their business effectively and inexpensively. How?
Internet has made marketing to attract qualified visitors to a website and converting
them into clients a very straightforward task. However, it is still not easy!
Many people I come across with have built a lovely website,
with all the latest technology and populated with all their products and
services – which is great but when I ask how they are getting traffic to their
fabulous website they explain a vague idea that they had once and are from time
to time implementing it. Worse than that I have met more than a few who don’t
have an internet marketing strategy in place at all!
Below I will discuss 4 reasons why you don’t afford to start
with the design of your website first and internet marketing strategy later.
Reason 1: Online is the ONLY Way Forward!
Without an internet marketing strategy set in place, you might be spending a lot of your marketing budget on expensive offline advertising forms. Today you can reach your specific target audience via many online mediums which besides costing less also give you quantitative measures that allow you to fine tune your campaigns for better results and less cost.
Assuming that you are online and are using facebook, Linked In, HooteSuite, Google+1 and all the other fancy sites without a plan you might not be moving forward but instead going round in circles. A strategy always starts with goal setting. Goal setting is a very important part of the journey if you ever want to arrive at your destination!
Assuming you took my advice and sat down and created your internet marketing strategy for the next 6 months or a year you will find that it will take you very little time to carry out what you need to do to reach your goal.
With no clear goals in mind you might end up changing one thing and then the other to try and get the results you want. You might even need to change the whole website!
So moral of the story is that you should never start an
online project, no matter how small or big it is without a clear internet
marketing strategy laid out! You wouldn’t open a restaurant in the middle of
nowhere and later decide what your marketing efforts are going to be, who your
target audience is and what would be your special deal! At least I hope so!
