Marketing Made Easy

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

Well, maybe not literally so, but if you are serious about marketing, you are probably serious about business, which means you have a plan. This business plan, with its goals and objectives, includes a marketing plan, with its marketing goals and objectives, these are your web site road map.

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.