Get the Message Out
The Web site is up and running, your content is good, you’re in search engines, but you still aren’t getting the kind of traffic you hoped for. Unless you are a big entertainment or gaming company, this is a common struggle for almost every company. It’s also why the search engine optimization industry even exists. So what can you do about it?
Short of hiring a marketing agency that understands the online world, there is fair amount you can do. A good agency would make this recommendation as well. Remember this fact: Content is King and it must change regularly. Even with that rule guiding you, people still are not going to just flock to your virtual doors unless they know you exist. As we know, everyone has short attention spans these days. People get what they want then change to the next thing. They will soon forget to come to your site even if you did have great content. And if they bookmark your site, odds are they are not going to be back to your website a very regular basis.
A Web site is passive. It doesn’t reach out to your customers. Someone has to come to your site to get the great content or tools that have been created. Therefore, you must be proactive in getting information into the hands of your customers. You want people coming back regularly and spreading the word about you. Marketing 101 states that it is easier and cheaper to sell to a previous customer than to cultivate new ones. This is true for the Web. If they have been to your site and like what they find, they will come back, if they remember. As a business or organization, it is our job to help them remember by being proactive. There are many tools, but the two easiest tools to accomplish this are:
- Email Marketing
- Content Syndication or Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
For all of our customers that use these two techniques of reaching out proactively to customers, the impact on their Web site is obvious when you watch the site statistics. The number of site visitors tend to spike (sometimes dramatically) when an email is sent out to a list of subscribers.
RSS is similar to email marketing in that people will subscribe to an RSS feed on your Web site to get the latest news or blog entries.
Both of these tools are relatively simple to implement, but they must be handled appropriately so as not to annoy your customer base. Don’t let a Web site just sit there and hope people find it. Online marketing is proactive and reaches out to the customers and cultivates those relationships. In the next two issues, we’ll explore more details about each of these tools and how to more effectively use them.
