Onward Internet Marketing, Inc.

Category: Internet Marketing

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  • 7 Things: Reasons to Have a Business Website

    1. Credibility

      You have a business card don’t you? Can you image introducing yourself and your business without one? You have a business phone, right? Can you image trying to gain new customers without one? The same is now true of websites. Without a professional website you look small; you look temporary.

    2. Save Time & Money

      The cost of getting a website can be a little overwhelming sometimes. Dirt cheap websites start at $500; the best move quickly into 6 figures. Once you have it, though, it costs very little. A website built on a current CMS (Code Management System) like WordPress, allows you to update the site, adding your news, coupons, whitepapers, product pages, without calling in expensive professionals. You should rarely pay more than hosting costs, and those should be cheaper than your monthly phone line.

    3. Find a Wider Audience

      There are people looking for you. And in your wildest dreams, you would never think to look for many of them. Your website lets them find you. It lets them find out about you, without being invasive. They can begin to familiarize themselves with your business offerings in a way they feel comfortable. Once you make a real sales or marketing contact with them, you already have the beginning or a relationship. Now a site optimized for the search engines will do better at this than others, but all sites offer outreach to potential customers that previously eluded you.

    4. Be Available

      Websites ushered in the “24/7” world. Your customers can look up product information on their schedule, not just during your business hours. Your website doesn’t take breaks, it doesn’t sleep, its there. A contact form allows visitors to send you a message anytime, opening up a new communication channel. Posting news provides a mechanism to get product announcements and news out to your customers with minimal cost.

    5. Support Your Customers

      Let your web visitors find the product information they want with photos, graphics, videos and text. Allow them to find out the place and times of events without having to call and ask. Give them photos and images so they can understand your business and its advantages.

    6. Interact with Your Customers

      Provide a contact form so you customers can comprehensively communicate with you, even allow them to upload RFPs, their images, documents, and bid requirements directly in a way that you and your staff can easily find and share.

    7. Measurable Marketing

      What other marketing medium allows you to know exactly what people looked at, how long they took to look? No other marketing medium allows such immediacy in learning what people found appealing and to what they responded. Website marketing metrics are comprehensive and immediate, allowing you to quickly respond to the fluctuations in your market.

  • Improving Internet Marketing with a Contact Form

    When I talk about internet marketing, I am talking about improving the use of email and your website as marketing tools. The two should work hand-in-hand in building your business. Every email you send out should have a link to your website, and your website should provide a way to contact you through email.

    Improve your Internet Marketing by making sure your contact form subscribes to a few best practices.

    While you probably don’t want to post your email on your website, as that will just draw spam, you do want to make sure that you have a contact form on your website. The contact form should be easy to use and to the point. Don’t try to collect too much information on your contact form, just enough to be able to get back in touch with your website visitor.

    Too many contact forms try to collect all sorts of extraneous information like your address, or your fax number. When a form is too long, or requires the visitor to enter information they prefer not to give out, you loose the opportunity to continue building an internet marketing relationship with that visitor. Its just too easy to hit the back button, to try another search at Google, or just leave your site. Keep your contact form as short as possible.

    Clearly identify which fields are required and which fields are not. Use asterisks or a bold font to indicate a required field. Offer a drop-down list when possible (such as a list of states) and provide formatting tips eg. [Phone: (###) ### – ####]. When using a drop-down, always give the visitor the option of choosing ‘Other’ or “I don’t know’.

    Check the email inbox which receives the email and answer those queries quickly and politely. This may be your next best customer.

  • What is Internet Marketing?

    Very simply put, internet marketing is using the internet to market your business products and services. Both websites and email, the components of the internet we’re all most familiar, can and should be used.

    Websites, both your own, and others (in the form of advertisements and links) can be used to directly market and sell your products and services. On your website you promote, describe, and even sell the products and services upon which your business is built. You do this with words, images and video. On your website you are in complete control of your message. When you promote your products and services on other websites, through endorsements, free links, and paid advertisements you may have varying levels of control, from the complete control of a paid advertisement, to relative lack of control when your business is mentioned in social media such as Facebook™ or Twitter™. Your goal, as always, is to get the most favorable, the most persuasive, endorsement of you product in front of as many people as possible.

    Additionally, you can promote and market your website, and use your website to promote your products. You do this with web traffic. Getting as many people as possible to visit your website. People may come directly to your website. They do this by directly entering the URL of your website into their browser. People come from other sites. They may see and add, or a reference (a link) on another website that interests them, and they “click” on the link and are transferred to your website. Finally they may come from the search engines (Google, Bing and the rest) when searching for something. With all these methods the name of the game is to drive traffic (large numbers of web visitors) to your website in the hope that some percentage will be persuaded that your product is just what they want and need right now.

    Search engines may list your website in answer to a search for free, because the Google or Bing have determined that your website is best suited to addressing the search. You may target certain search for phrases on your website: we call this Search Engine Optimization, SEO for short. Google, Bing Yahoo and the others also can be paid to display an advertisement linking to your website. We call this Pay-Per-Click or ppc.

    Your internet marketing goals may also be achieved with email. Some businesses (not yours surely) spray the internet with a continuous volley of junk email that only a tiny fraction of internet users actually care about. We call this spam. This is a bad thing.

    A better approach is to use the email addresses of your existing customers, with their permission of course, to make them aware of special promotions, sales, and new products and services of which they may hold interest. Keeping in touch, and reminding your customers that last year, or last week, they had need of your products, may touch that need again. This can drive repeat business. Correctly used, email can help you build and maintain relationships with your customers. This is a good thing.