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Internet Marketing - Tips and Hints

For some businesses, launching a web-site complements other ways of selling products and services – others might decide to sell exclusively using the internet or “e-commerce” technology.  If you have a business that has always marketed using traditional methods or “off-line” - how is “online” marketing different?

First of all you need to be clear about what you are trying to achieve with your web-site.  As with all marketing, it's good to have a plan and set some goals.  You may want to raise awareness using a web site as an online brochure and a method for your potential customers to find out more about what you do.  If this is the case, the golden rule is to treat the web-site as you would any other piece of sales and marketing material.

Your brand should be consistent and fit with the rest of your business to strengthen your image and reassure potential visitors.  It is a common error to appoint a web site designer who produces a wonderful looking web site that bears no resemblance to your core brand and business image.  If you provide guidelines to your web developer including information on colours, logos and layout, this can be avoided.  Getting on with your web designer is also important, as you're likely to be working together for a while, and it's worth bearing this in mind when you choose them.

Secondly – make sure you include your web site address on all other marketing communication that you do!  It's easy to forget but consider things such as leaflets, brochures, business cards, stationery, email signatures and signage.  Leaving the web site address off of these is a missed opportunity!

If you are intending to trade over the internet using e-commerce, or really want to attract a larger audience to your business, you may need to adopt different forms of marketing to get your web-site known and ranked highly in search engines such as Google.

You should think about the following:

  • Updating content regularly (search engines like this)
  • Getting other web sites to link to yours (they like this too)
  • Setting up a blog, which will also drive traffic to your web-site
  • Advertising if you have a budget, using something like Google
  • Adwords you can set a daily limit so you can dip your toe in the water (see Google AdWords for more information)
  • Inviting visitors to register in return for regular updates, useful information, newsletters.  This really adds value to your service and encourages people to come back to you.
  • Make it easy for people to contact you wherever they are on your site.  They will go somewhere else if you make it difficult!
  • What can you put on your home page to make sure visitors want to stay and look around?  Like any other marketing, your message should be as clear as possible and attractive to potential customers.
  • Check out your competition.  What are they doing on their web-site?  Staying one step ahead is always a good idea.

Finally, let your existing customers know if you have a new web-site or have made changes.  A bit of PR will be useful here.  You can email or mail out information (if you have their permission to do so), or you can approach local/regional press if you can come up with a good story, promoting what you're doing at the same time.


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