Every business should consider using the internet for their marketing as over 90% of consumers shop online or use the internet to find out about products and services before making a purchase. The internet is also a way to create a need for products that may otherwise languish on store shelves, and gives resellers the opportunity to represent any number of manufacturers and suppliers since they may not need to actually store and ship products from their own physical location.
It’s a short-sighted but common mistake for business owners to assume that if they have a website for their company then their product is now “out there” on the internet and consumers will somehow find it. In short, this is just plain wrong. The internet must be used properly for marketing to succeed.
Below I have detailed my top 5 Deadly Sins of ineffective internet marketers, so you should avoid these pitfalls at all costs when marketing your product or service online if you want to build a successful online business.
Only Using Your Website To Market & Promote Your Products/Services
Websites are important, but so is social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus. Consumers use these sites to get information about their favourite products and stores, and any company that fails to use these sites will be leaving many potential customers behind.
Your website needs to be a part of your overall online web presence and internet marketing plan, otherwise you will be missing out on thousands of potential customers every day.
Not Understanding SEO
SEO refers to search engine optimisation, which is the process of making your site easy for search engines to find it and ensuring that you are ranking highly in the search engine results for any keywords or search terms that are related to your business and your products/services.
There are many onsite and offsite factors which go into creating a successful SEO campaign for your website – such as implementing keyword-rich content, choosing the right meta information and building incoming links – but all internet marketers should understand the basic principles of SEO in order to help boost their website online.
You need to ensure that your site has a relevant (and keyword-rich) page titles, meta description and meta tags. You should make sure your content is updated regularly, as well as making sure that your content is keyword rich and that you have a good internal linking structure throughout your site.
Letting Content Go Stale
The right content on your website will help search engines – and therefore consumers – find your site, but you need to update this content regularly. Adding a blog to your site is a really easy way to ensure that you have regular, keyword-rich content filtering into your website.
The number of new visitors you have and the time they spend on your site will affect your search engine rankings, and new content will draw in new visitors and customers.
Not Actually Marketing
As with any type of print ad, you need to do more than just provide dry information to your prospective customers and clients. The internet is a place to upsell your products and create a need for them. Be sure you remember the basics of marketing and advertising when creating a website, social media site or using any other form of internet marketing otherwise your internet marketing plan will fail to succeed.
Ineffective Website Design
Your site should be easy for search engines to find and easy for the customers to use. This includes tagging photos with keyword-specific phrases, maintaining links and keeping it free of uploaded malware and other elements that make it unfriendly to search engines.
To be fully optimised for both the search engines and your users, your website should load with speed, be easy to navigate, be easy to read, have the right calls-to-action in the right places and have well written and interesting sales copy to keep the users attention.
Author credit: Managing Director of MTD Sales Training, Sean McPheat is regarded as a thought leader on modern day selling, management skills and business improvement. Sean has been featured on CNN, ITV, BBC, SKY, Forbes, Arena Magazine and has over 250 other media credits to his name. Sean’s Sales Blog is visited by 5,000 people every week and his 6 Sales Training Audios are free to download. Click here to follow Sean online.