The Big Website Question: If You Build It, They Will Come?
Q: I recently launched a website for my sporting goods business.
Do I need to do anything special to attract customers to my
website? I know nothing about search engines and marketing as
such. Please tell me where to begin.
A: That is a question that has been asked by every business
person who has ever launched a website. If I build it, will they
come? Of course they will -- if you've built a website that
appeals to dead baseball players.
For those of you who didn't get the "Field of Dreams" reference,
let me put it this way: No, Sean, if you build it they will not
come, at least not without some effort on your part.
Assuming that a website will automatically attract customers is
the single biggest mistake that many business owners make. It is
this mistake that eventually leads them to dismiss their website
as a failure and abandon their online sales efforts.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard a client say, "Well,
I threw up a website, but nobody ever came to it and I didn't
sell a single thing from it! Dang thing was a waste of time, if
you ask me ..."
Forgive me, but "threw up" is the operative term there. These
short-sighted entrepreneurs (God love them) mistakenly think
that all they have to do is throw up a website and that their
business will automatically double overnight. And when nothing
happens they blame it on the infallibility of the Internet, on
El Nino, on the Bosa Nova, on their customers... everything but
their own lack of marketing efforts.
If you build it, will they come? That, Sean, depends totally on
you.
When it comes to attracting customers, opening an online
business (or an online branch of an existing business) is no
different from opening a traditional brick and mortar shop.
Without a little fanfare and a well-devised marketing plan,
chances are your website will become just another spot of
roadkill on the Information Superhighway.
The first step in devising your marketing plan is to ask
yourself this question: Who is my customer? Who is it that I
want to attract to my website? Believe it or not, this is a
question many entrepreneurs fail to ask. The identity of your
customer is incredibly important because if you don't know who
your customer is, how can you expect to market to them?
The next question concerns the locality of your customer. Do you
want to attract a local or global clientele to your website? If
the answer is local, then you will gear your marketing efforts
toward customers in your own backyard, which means incorporating
your website launch with your offline marketing efforts.
If the website is the online branch of a brick and mortar
business, include the website URL in all your print materials
and advertising campaigns. Consider running ads in the local
paper, on radio or TV announcing the launch of your site. Use
direct mail or in-store posters to announce the site launch to
your existing customer base.
In short, keep doing what you're doing to attract customers to
your physical store, just add your website address to the mix.
Just remember, it's important to consider your website a branch
of your brick and mortar business because that's exactly what it
is. A good business website will help you sell more products,
widen your range of clientele, and increase your revenue without
adding overhead. Don't sell your website short. Make it work for
you.
If you are seeking a global audience, your marketing efforts
will be quite different. Attracting customers from around the
world is a more difficult task than attracting customers from
around the block. Fortunately, the task is not impossible. The
Internet has leveled the playing field in many ways. Now every
business, no matter how large or small, has the ability to do
business internationally.
In the most basic sense, an online marketing campaign to attract
global customers should include the following efforts.
Register With Search Engines There's not enough room in this
newspaper for a thorough discussion of search engines and their
effectiveness (or lack thereof) in driving traffic to a website.
Suffice it to say that 95% of search engine traffic comes from
Google and Yahoo, so start there. It's also important to realize
that just registering with search engines does not guarantee you
traffic, but it certainly can't hurt.
Unfortunately, the free search engine lunch ran out a couple of
years ago when search engines figured out that people would
actually pay for listings and higher placement. Since that time
the only way to guarantee a high (or at least higher than
others) ranking is to pay for it. The two most popular
pay-for-placement programs are Yahoo's "Yahoo Express" and
Google's "Adwords." Visit their respective websites for details
on these programs. Be prepared to spend several hundred dollars
at a minimum to get your site listed.
Exchange Links With Similar Sites One free - and potentially
effective - way to drive customers to your website is through
link exchanges with sites of similar interest. Locate sites that
make a good match to your own and contact the owner to ask if
they will link to your site in exchange for you linking to
theirs. If you sell golf balls on your website, set up a link
exchange with another website that sells golf clubs. You post a
link to them and they post a link to you. It's called digital
back scratching, and if done properly, can work well to drive
traffic your way.
Go To Where The Customers Are If the mountain won't come to
Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain. One little
known way to attract customers to your website is to market your
products on a mega-site like eBay. There are thousands and
thousands of people on eBay at any given time and each one is
potentially your customer, so it's a great place to drum up
business.
Your goal is not to make a living selling on eBay, but to use
eBay as a marketing tool to drive traffic back to your website.
Go to where the customers are, then bring them back home with
you.
Let's use our golf ball example. Post a few auctions on eBay
selling your golf balls at a ridiculously low price so your
auction attracts plenty of attention. When customers make a
purchase, add them to your client list and send them an email
inviting them to visit your website for more great products.
eBay also lets you create your own "About Me" page that you can
use to advertise your business.
We have just scratched the surface, but hopefully this is enough
to get you started. I wish I could tell you that attracting
customers to your website is easy, but the truth is, it's
anything but. It takes hard work, creativity and above all,
perseverance.
Here's to your success!