Thursday, July 19, 2007

Using your website as an advertising tool - Part 1/6

A website can be a powerful tool in your overall marketing offensive.

Unfortunately, especially in South Africa, a very large proportion of business owners have yet to catch on to the idea that, in a website that has been properly optimised for the search engines, they will have an invaluable online "marketer" working for them on a 24/7 basis on the world wide web - and opening up new business possibilities by tapping into a tremendous potential client pool.

As a result of this lack of knowledge, websites are often seen, and treated, as the least important part of the marketing campaign of any given business. Literally, the stepchild of your business. Because you do not understand it, you do not spend time on it.

They are not kept updated and are left, totally neglected, to "rot" in cyberspace. So often you open websites and find that the info is sometimes years old! Outdated prices. Specials that ended months ago. Photographs taken 3 years ago, but in the meantime the guesthouse has been repainted or renovated. Faces of personnel that have left the company more than a year ago. The list just goes on.

And THAT is the impression of YOUR business that people get when they visit the website! IF they can find it, but more on that later in this series.

The general understanding is "I have a website - cool!!" Then it is forgotten about, notwithstanding changes to the business in the meantime.

It is often a very sorry state of affairs.

So, how do I market my website on the internet?

Business owners spend large amounts of money on websites. Of course, they do that on other forms of marketing as well - and often amounts that makes you short of breath, but for my purpose I will stick to the subject at hand, the good old internet.

So, they spend tidy sums on their new website. Then they sit back and wait for the goldrush. Except that the goldrush never happens. Their pride and joy is not getting in new business!

What they never realised, was that their pride and joy was still-born - a Dead Duck from day one.

Then they usually reach a stage where one of two things happen - either they figure that this whole internet thingy is just so much blah blah, or that something MUST be horribly wrong!

What they haven't yet realised is that they have joined the ranks of legions of website owners who have a website - a website that is but one of billions floating around on the internet totally unseen by the search engines.

It is only normal that advertisements must be paid for!

Then they call in the artillery. In the form of their webmasters. And all too often the advise is that they need to do Paid or Sponsored ads on the internet. Yip, you pay for ads everywhere, right? Why should it be different on the World Wide Web?

So they end up spending yet another small fortune on that much hyped pay ad - because they were told by that scourge of the business world - "someone who knows about these things" - that you need you need to get your website visible on the internet. And there is only one way of doing that - you pay for that top spot!

Next time we will examine a couple of PAY options available to you....

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