Here’s a valuable article recently posted on Launch NOW!….

Question:  Hi Sally.  Thanks so much for allowing people to write in with questions – I have a doozy!  Everyone told me that I should have a website because it would bring me more business. Well I now have a website but I don’t seem to be getting any hits and it has not increased my business. Am I doing something wrong?

Answer:  Hi back and thanks for writing. I wouldn’t say that you were doing anything wrong, per say.  What I would say is that you probably haven’t done enough - yet.

If you think about your website, it’s much like a business card or a flyer that is advertising your business. The only difference is that flyers and business cards are on paper whereas a web site is in an electronic format, on the internet.  So let’s look at a flyer as an example of an advertising marketing tool.  Flyers are used by many companies to advertise and can bring in new customers. You get them in the mail, you see them posted on shop windows, inserted in newspapers, so you decide to spend the time and money to get some printed for your business. But just having those flyers made and sitting on your dining room table will not bring you more business. You can even hang one on your front door but unless people just happen to walk by or you give them your address, they won’t even know it’s there so chances are, it will not be seen by many and probably won’t bring you any new business. Your next step would be to market those flyers – get them into people’s hands; you could post them on hydro poles, in supermarkets, send them out via mail, and where ever you think prospects might see them.  You could also pay one of those services to market them for you, such as including your flyer in with all the other flyers they stuff into envelopes and deliver directly to people’s homes. The point is, people won’t come to the flyers – you have to take the flyers to the people. 

Your website is very much like that.  You can build a website and it can be the best website in the world but if people don’t know how or where to find it, then they won’t find you. So your question really becomes, how do people find my website?

As explained in the example above with the flyer, simply building a website is not enough to bring you new business. There are literally millions of websites out there in the world wide web, all competing for the same customers.

- If you want your website to act like an electronic form of your static business card, then simply build it and tell your friends, family and existing customers where to find you (the URL is the WWW web address). 

- If you want your website to actually work FOR you, drawing in people and bringing you new business, then you need to market it. This is what’s commonly known as “Internet Marketing”.

Unfortunately, there is no one single tried and true method that will bring more customers to you. What there is, are many strategies for marketing a website; each tactic helps a little but most successful companies use a variety of these strategies to drive more traffic (people) to their site.  There is a ton of both FREE and paid information available if you want to learn do-it-yourself marketing, or you can pay a company (much like the company who stuffs your flyer into envelopes with all the other flyers and delivers them house to house), to market your site for you.  

Sweet Spot Training is unique in that we specialize in basic internet marketing courses that will show you how to market your website. We’ll help you develop a strategic marketing plan that is personally tailored to your business and custom-fit to target your prospective customers.  We’ll also show you how to implement your Plan yourself (simply follow the steps and do-it-yourself, saving you money) so you can continue to grow your buisness online. Or if you prefer, you can choose to contract us to implement your online marketing plan for you – we’ll do all the work while you focus on managing all the new customers you’ll get! Either way, Sweet Spot Training works with small and mid-sized businesses  – most with modest budgets, to help them get the most out of their internet presence and make the site work for them by driving new business (sales!) to them.

Having so much information available on internet marketing can be very confusing, especially to someone like you who may be new to internet marketing.  That’s the beauty of Sweet Spot Training. We’ll begin your online marketing journey at the stage you are currently at (even if that’s beginner mode) and build upon it from there. In the near future, we will be featuring Strategic Internet Marketing and Internet Marketing for Beginners Courses, on-line and via ebooks, as well as in person at the Sweet Spot Training Centre in Pickering. If you live within driving distance to Pickering, I strongly encourage you to take a few hours out of your day to attend one of these sessions in person. The information you will learn will be of great value to you and your buiness. You cannot afford NOT to attend! In the meantime, something you can do right now (and for free) is get your URL out there!

Here are some examples of what you can do RIGHT NOW! to increase your website traffic:

• Comment on people’s blogs – be sincere and include your URL
• join social networking groups like Facebook, My Space, Digg, Twitter, and others,  – ALWAYS include your URL 
• post your web address in any emails you send out (create a signature that includes your url, so you won’t forget to include it in each of your outgoing messages)
• Be sure to keep track of where you post your web address, so you can include those pages with the link backs* on to your site.

* For example, I placed a link to http://launchnow.ca on my Twitter account. I then added my Twitter link http://twitter.com/iamzelda to the Launch Now web site.  This is what’s known as a *link back* (because it goes both ways) and is a good marketing strategy to start with.  * One word of caution with link backs, be sure that the sites you are linking to and the sites that are linking back to you are respectable websites. Being linked to spamming sites can black mark your website and will actually harm you in the long run! So be sure to use discretion when adding and allowing linkbacks. IMPORTANT !!!  If you decide to contract the marketing work out rather than do it youself, beware of the "GURU". These are self-proclaimed marketing professionals who’s main goal is to sell you products over and over again. If you’re putting out money for marketing, then you deserve to see their credentials beforehand. Good luck with your site and we look forward to seeing you at one of our upcoming training sessions

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About the author:  Sally (Zelda) O’Connor has been working in IT and on-line marketing for nearly 20 years. She has consulted with such companies as IBM, Direct Energy, Red Lobster restaurants and the Provincial Government (to name but a few). Sally is eMarketing Certified with the Canadian Marketing Association and works as an Internet Marketing & Communications Consultant with Launch NOW!  Sally is one of the featured trainers at Sweet Spot Training.