“Having a website is not marketing.
Getting people to and through your website
when they are ready to buy is marketing.”
Website marketing – or more correctly, digital marketing – recognizes that the greatest likelihood of selling exists with a targeted, motivated buyer. Your company’s best prospects today use the “search-ability” of the internet to refine their information gathering and lead them to qualified suppliers. Your website offers the most cost effective, direct route to a promising lead/sales opportunity – bar none.
Often, industrial manufacturers think that as a niche marketer, your company is aware of the sales opportunities that exist in your market today. The truth is a prospective customer may be researching the web for a company just like yours as you read this.
There are three ways to evaluate how effective your digital marketing is at pulling visitors to and through your company’s website. We say pulling because the internet is not a PUSH medium.
- Websites should be designed (or re-designed) with a strategic goal of having optimum visibility via search engines– in other words, they are easy to find. Your website should be found in a high position on the top search engines by using the most appropriate search terms as defined by actual users of the website.
Note that what you call your products and services is often different from the search terms used by your prospects. If you are successful in identifying these search terms your site will receive a regular supply of solid prospects for your products or services.
We often see factors that conflict with this goal – a disconnection between the buyer-seller terminology previously referenced, as well as faulty site design elements, navigation structure and linking relationships. Identifying these conflicts and revising to eliminate or minimize the conflicts is often the first step in a re-design.
- Your website should receive traffic from a variety of sources. Sources include links from other websites, directories and paid online marketing such as pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-for-inclusion advertising. To be successful, these sources must be cost-effective and produce a verifiable number of high-quality leads. If you are not familiar with online advertising options and/or marketing metrics for your website, please click here or call us at 216-321-8894 for a brief tutorial online or in your office.
- Functionality is the 3rd leg of your digital marketing stance. Your website needs to be fast loading, intuitive, interactive, and easy to use. Your website’s navigation must be logical and all links and on-site features must be fully operational. You must have it hosted on a secure server. It is imperative to design all interactive contact, from email links to online request for quote (RFQ) forms, with ease for the user as the priority. Most importantly, make your visitors’ next step obvious—clear, visible, simple to use navigation inviting a call, an e-mail, or RFQ.
In contrast to many forms of traditional advertising, nearly all aspects of your website yield valuable information on how users interact with what you present. From knowledge about the search terms that lead a visitor to your site, to entry/exit page analysis, to time spent on the site, to evaluation of lead/sale conversion – there is a wealth of data that can and should be used to modify and improve upon your website marketing efforts. Website marketing is not creating monthly reports with endless streams of data. What you do with the data is what matters most.
NetTrack is a part of The Karcher Group, a full-service digital marketing company headquartered in Northern, Ohio. The Karcher Group has offices in North Canton, OH and Charlotte, NC. We are happy to meet with you in person or virtually to discuss your website marketing and search engine optimization needs. Please click here to see what digital marketing can do for you.