Traffic used be called “hits” and then eventually as the web became more humanized we started realizing that actual humans visiting was the important metric and we now track “absolute visits” or people. This hasn’t alleviated the fixation on traffic, but clarified what traffic is. Good.

So dominating Google rankings for your “keywords” is great, if and only if, the people looking for the information, products or services you offer are searching those keywords. That’s step one.

Step two is that these people then actually convert to customers in whatever form that takes, making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, whatever.

Knowing your keywords is logically the first step that is all too often botched or not targeted enough. In other words, you can rank for the wrong keywords, get tons of traffic, and your bottom line sees no change at all. Be sure to target the right keywords.

Remembering that driving sales is the goal, not just driving traffic, will keep your eye on the prize and not divert you into a meaningless numbers game.

Not Search Engines. Being on page one isn’t necessarily all that.

So what am I getting at? Google doesn’t buy from you.

The meaning here in the internet marketing realm is that qualified targeted prospective buyers, people, are more important than statistics, or being on page one of Google’s rankings if your site sucks.

Search engine optimization or search engine marketing has swept the internet marketing realm with thousands, so it seems, of SEO or SEM “experts” hawking their “guaranteed” rankings and so on. The reality is far different.

The reality is that all the traffic in the world is worthless if that traffic doesn’t buy, doesn’t increase your profits. Rarely, if ever, will you find an SEO or SEM expert offering to increase your sales, they simply offer to increase your traffic. This is actually quite easy to do. What isn’t so easy is to make your site sell. Well, actually, it is, but that is the most overlooked part of internet marketing, copy that converts.

So being on page one for the wrong keyphrase, or an almost never searched keyphrase is pointless, but more pointless still is having a web site that does not communicate well and simply fails to close the sale.

Targeted traffic + top quality copy = increased profits. ]]> http://www.offmedia.net/blog/?feed=rss2&p=19 http://www.offmedia.net/blog/?p=16 http://www.offmedia.net/blog/?p=16#comments Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:10:11 +0000 admin http://www.offmedia.net/blog/?p=16

This is one of my favorite topics simply because this question has stumped many a web developer and marketer. “Because it’s cool” doesn’t begin to justify putting hard earned marketing dollars into what many used to feel is a dubious proposition. Why not? is a valid answer, especially today, but doesn’t really answer the question does it?

The web has changed the power of communication so much that “why the web?” has largely been answered by the fact that a web site can be a central hub for ALL of your business, ease communications, keep customers updated, provide interaction and market your products all in one feel swoop 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Still, why the web?

All of the above benefits aside the real answer is sales. Sales. You want what a web site that works can do for you. Increased sales. Increased profits. You don’t want a web site, you want increased sales. You don’t want a web site, you want better customer relations. You don’t want a web site, you want to communicate your message clearly, all the time, open 24 hours a day. You don’t want a web site, you want your customers to know why they want your products and to contact YOU, not the other way around. You don’t want a web site, you want SUCCESS.

You get the point. Why the web? To create and build a successful thriving business at a much lower cost than dictated by “traditional” sales and marketing.

Until next time,

Mark Stamas

Well, maybe not new, but certainly worthy.

Holistic is a word that has gone through many iterations of societal perception and definition. Much like “whole wheat” popular in the 1970s (remember them?) holistic came to be associated with alternative medicine and nutritional healing. Even the dictionary definition is identified with nutrition, behind holism. But leave behind these definitions for a moment, the practical meaning of the word is simply “big picture”. An holistic approach is a big picture approach. Look at the entire system, or business, not simply the individual parts when taking any action.

Marketing can suffer from a lack of this perspective. When a marketing firm is asked to promote a business without being let into the long term corporate objectives and goals along with the subsequent marketing objectives and goals they are really working at a loss. How can one accomplish a goal without knowing what that goal is? Or put another way, movement toward long term objectives cannot happen if those objectives are unknowns.

I’ve likened this to traveling. If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll never get there. This metaphor highlights the simple idea that being able to quantify progress is just a matter of identifying the objective. This is oversimplified of course, but what we can glean from this idea is that knowing what your business is becoming, doing, creating, will facilitate any marketing firm’s efforts to help you reach them.

Marketing, and all life, is about communication. Don’t leave your marketing firm in the dark.

Next week: Objectives and Goals Defined - Is There a Difference?

Thanks,

Mark

If you want your site simply to be informational then this won’t apply to you necessarily. A web site can be a “gravestone” advertisement like you see in the back of magazines, like a book, static, unchanging, read it or not.

More importantly, your web site can be so much more, a critical component of your corporate or business objectives, your marketing goals, your marketing plan, and can help get you there. You want your web site content to communicate, to speak to your customers, to elicit a reaction, a reaction involving action, the call to action.

Once you’ve done your research, discovered who your prospects are, gotten them to your site, you put yourself in the mind of your prospects, and give them what they want, in specific steps, leading the way to the ultimate objective of the site, to meet your corporate goals yes, but in the short term, to provide your prospects with the information, service or product they desire, your products. Without this specific plan with specific prospects your web site will be fishing in the wrong pond, catching, if anything, the wrong fish.

Keep your web site project well connected to your overall business goals and the web will become the anchor of your business, providing the tools and conveniences your prospects, and you, want and need.

Commerce ( or trading) is an age old practice, not only unique to humans, but refined to the point of the philosophical and delusional by humans. Commerce is and of itself the economic underpinning of all human survival but our discussion is limited to its role in capitalism, for the most part. (We’ll leave discussion of the earth and nature’s support of the human race, the ultimate support, to another web log or diary on a more holistic topic.)

In the simplest of terms, commerce is why marketing exists. So we can think of commerce as the “what” and marketing as the “how”, how we get to. . . . . .commerce. Read more about commerce and what it is >>>

What is Marketing? What, therefore, is easy marketing?

Answer: Marketing is taking a product to the end user. Easy marketing: Doing this correctly.

We’ll answer all the questions imaginable about marketing, everything marketing does, is and can be, here at Marketing Made Easy.

Thanks,

Mark Stamas