What Next For Your New Website

Earlier this week I had a few things come up that made me think about some of the failures of small businesses after they receive a new website or start a new social media presence on Facebook or Twitter. I got sidetracked and could not write the post but a very timely post by Mark Fulton at DotSauce.com fit nicely with my thoughts as well. The post also reminded me of my post I did awhile back concerning offline marketing tips for promoting a website.

When presenting to small businesses we online marketers tend to focus on talking about driving traffic through SEO, PPC, Social Media, and other methods that drive targeted web traffic to the customers, hopefully, quality domain name.

Although businesses like Amazon.com can focus the majority of their marketing online local businesses have different needs and in many cases a good portion of the traffic to their website will come from offline marketing methods.

Many of these local businesses are new to promoting on the web and have a perception that they need not do anything to promote their website once it has been turned over to them. I cannot tell you how many times I have witnessed customers pay real money for a new website but visit the business month after month and never see their domain name on their business cards, menus, t-shirts, or billboards.

What a missed opportunity. Most consumers will NOT remember a phone number or address. A phone number is really 10 words, a website can be as short as one word. Which are you going to have a better chance of remembering?

It is important that small business owners remember that, yes their web development partner should make sure their site is properly optimized for the search engines, but unless they are paying a marketing company to handle all their marketing promotions, that they treat their domain name as they previously treated their phone number or address. They can provide more information on that domain name than they could possibly provide on a business card or an ad in a newspaper or billboard. Use those methods to drive people to your prime real estate on the web, your website.

We at LocalTek make it a point to help our customers understand holistic marketing and making sure customers promote. As much as we do our best to help our customers it is typically less than a 50 percent ratio that take advantage of the FREE ways to promote their website in the places they are already paying for.

With more people using mobile phones and search everyday it is important to keep your online brand in front of them, let them search for your website and cut your competitors off at the pass. Your online marketing does not stop once the website is handed over, no matter what web development company you are working with, the ability to attract customers only starts with the website hand off. Making sure your website continues to work for you is part of a holistic marketing approach that continues like any other marketing that you may be doing.

Thanks To The Best Customers In The World

In the past two days I have had multiple deals come from multiple customer referrals. To me this is the best advertising you can possibly get, and I sell advertising. This also means as a business we continue to turn a corner into a phase of having both active feet on the street as well as having our base of customers doing selling for us as well.

One of the new customers is actually a website for a local community, always good to have the city governments or associations on board. To get the call that they have heard and seen our work and called us based on that helps a ton.

But the second story is even better, one of our customers actually had a long radio spot where he was being interviewed. During the interview the radio host actually made reference to the customers new website and ad. The customer, God bless him, actually said yes we have a new website and I want to say thanks to the team at Localtek for what they have done.

The announcer then asked for the website, instead of giving the address the customer said, well you can find us by searching for (insert several various related terms here) because after the work Localtek did we are number one on Google for all of them. Sure the radio host had said the businesses name so there is confidence that the audience will find the website anyway, but how is that for a customer that understands the value of local search.

On a side note there, I went and checked traffic to the customers site and it went up tonight and most of it was search traffic for the various terms he would want to be ranked for.

Anyway, I wanted to say thanks to my great customers. I know many of them read this blog and this is a public thanks for all the references we have been getting.

New Website Advertising Fail

One of the themes that seems to come up fairly frequently when we talk to customers about their current website or plans for their new one is the lack of a plan for promoting it.

So many times we have spoke to customers and they indicate that they have never really thought about promoting their website, they buy it with no idea of what they are really going to do with it or how they can promote it to bring people into to see their message. This really came to mind today when we passed a billboard for a customer of ours who we had done a re-branding effort with and created a great looking new logo, a really nice e-commerce site and some other items that would help them move from their old image to new.

The customer had asked us to do this work for them so they could move forward on some other promotion initiatives they were working on that involved some offline marketing (billboards and also signs around their office complex). We did not have our hands in that part but I wish we had now.

My wife saw the billboard today, now keep in mind my wife is not a tech person, at all... But the first thing she said was "Why do they have their phone number but not their website on that new billboard?".

Good question.

We actually send out promotion tips to customers and give tips and advice but at times there is work done that we are not involved in, as mentioned above this is a case of that. As I mentioned in previous posts, more and more I hear people tell me that they do not even look for phone numbers on billboards or signs but they look for websites (DOMAIN NAMES).

Why?

Well, it is because they can go get the info they need from the site. Sure you need the phone number on there, but you also need your website on the billboard, driving people to the website allows a small business to promote more of their companies products. I would venture to guess most people can not remember 7 or 10 digits but most will remember a few words (I wish I could remember the book I read this in, but it was tested and proven).

Anyway, we will be reaching out to this customer just to let them know that they should also include their new website in any new marketing push that they do.

If you are looking for ways to promote a website offline check out my post called 10 Offline Ways To Promote Your New Website.

Internet Marketing Seminar In Bonne Terre – Thanks Small Business Leaders!

Thanks to the small business owners from Bonne Terre, MO and surrounding communities for taking the time to come to our local search and online marketing seminar held at Mario's Italian Grill. I know that you are all extremely busy and taking 2 hours of your time after hours is asking a lot, especially when it is concerning a topic that is new to many and before the presentation was probably something you thought a business in rural Missouri may not need to be concerned with.

As you know now, it is very important to take advantage of all online avenues to create a holistic online marketing plan, from your Domain Name selection to your use of Facebook and Twitter, it all needs to work together to make sure you customers remember your brand and know where to go to find out what you are doing next, what specials you have or new products you are introducing. As I mentioned, finding targeted visitors for your website is key, understanding what customers are searching for when looking for a service or product you sell is how you focus on turning browsers into buyers. As I mentioned, no longer is having a website something you do simply because you can, now with the shift of newspaper readers and local business search moving online faster than ever you have to think about how your customers use the web even if you do not.

As I mentioned a portion of the content on this blog is targeted at helping my small business customers, as such I thought I would point out a few posts that I have done that you may find useful:

Why Small Business Should Advertise Online - Open Letter

Why Small Business Should Advertise During Down Times

Offline Ways To Promote Your Website

How To Create A Facebook Fan Page

Once again, thank you for my time and let me know how I can help!

You Never Know Who Is Watching

Just got back from an all day meeting so this post will be short today since there is so much left to do today but wanted to tell a little story.

As a blogger (I still do not really consider myself one, but I guess technically I am) we tend to put out what we think, somewhat edited for public consumption, sometimes not so much. I have a balance I try to play here between domain news and general online promotion and marketing topics and so far no one has screamed so the balance I hope is working. As of late I had some level of focus with some of my posts around what my customers would want or needed to hear.

One of the posts was An Open Letter To Small Business Owners which focused on the various things that businesses needed to think about as the Internet changes the way they promote their business, I was not targeting the big multimillion dollar corporations but more the rural or even large city small businesses that are trying to determine what to do as  newspaper readership drops and other advertising mediums continue to have less impact on their businesses than they had hoped.

Well, now to why the title is You Never Know Who Is Watching, last week I received an email from a lady in rural Kentucky who is working to promote her business but has just had no success with conventional advertising but searched for how to advertise to rural America. She landed on my post and felt it was exactly what she was wanting to hear. We had a call this morning I expect we will end up doing business together.

This is the second time that I have had something like this occur outside of the domain investor crowd who makes up the majority of my readers, first with the communications director of a professional cycling team and now with a potential customer who liked the message. There has been much talk lately about targeting end users more directly as it pertains to domain value, well part of that may start with domain blogs focusing more on the external world instead of being so inward focused.....

Also, on this topic take a look at Aron Meystedt's post at Symbolics.com today....

Why Small Business Should Advertise During Bad Times

Although the economy is starting to show signs of life most businesses are still in  a very conservative mode when it comes to any sort of spending. As anybody will tell you advertising and marketing in general is usually one of the first things to be cut when the paring down of spending begins. Today I had an interesting story come from one of the local business owners here in the town I live in. He has became a good friend and a soon to be customer and frequently gives a lot of solid insight into the mind of the family owned business.

Last night as I made my way home I had driven by his restaurant and was smiling as I saw the parking lot was, and no exaggeration at all, overflowing. I was happy since I know the past 3 months or so have been pretty tough as far as business goes for the Husband and Wife ran restaurant.

Today, out of the blue, he came into the office just to sit and chat and check out the new location. I asked him about the parking lot being filled up and he said that even though he knew better he had shutdown all advertising 4 months back. He said in all his years of running a business he, as many have learned, start spending more on advertising when things slow down but this time he went against his better wisdom and stopped spending and immediately saw the impact.

Well, this past week he had turned it all back on, and now things are back almost to where they were. He advertises in very specific spots (not the newspaper funny enough) and tonight when we went to eat at his fine establishment the parking lot was full again. Great news for him and a lesson to be learned for small businesses that start cutting their awareness campaigns as soon as they need it most.

And as luck would have it we agreed on his package with us as well, good timing I guess.

For more information on why businesses should look at creative ways of advertising check out: Open Letter To Small Business Owners.