Internet marketing - What is it? How can it help my business?

Internet marketing is a combination of technology and marketing best practice:

Web design
Web development
Lead generation
Copy writing
Advertising
Persuasion
Direct marketing
Public relations

Our internet marketing system uses these elements to:

Generate new leads for your business
Ensures maximum exposure for your business
Educate your customers and prospects 
Persuade site visitors
Form the basis of an integrated marketing campaign
Convert prospects into customers and site visits into enquiries 

Most Websites Don't Work

More than 80% of websites don't work. Now this must seem like a strange statement but:

Building a website and then not marketing it is like having a brochure printed, nailing it to a tree and just hoping that your target customers will stumble across it.

No matter what business you are in, there are people out there on the internet actively seeking your products and services.

"...there are people...actively seeking your products and services."

We live in a communication age where we are all bombarded with different messages and information overload. We are more savvy, we know what we want and that we can find it on the internet. No longer do people sit back waiting for things to happen, when we want something we actively go out and seek it.

The internet gives us all the ability to shop around for products and services from suppliers Worldwide. Does your business have an internet solution that enables you to compete effectively in this information age?

One day any business that is not on the internet will not be in business.

Simply put, internet marketing is focused on making sure people searching for your products and services can find your website, then once they are there, turning them into customers through refining the conversion process.

If you view your website as a sales and marketing tool (as most web sites are) and it isn't getting visited or generating leads, then it simply isn't working! It is time to sack your current web site and ask yourself the following questions:

What is it that we want our web site to do?
How will this fit into the rest of our marketing and sales programme?
How should we go about achieving this?
What results do we want from our website?

The Internet or 'Web Design' marketplace is dominated by people that should not be let loose on a critical and strategic part of your business, they include:

Your nephew Jimmy - What other part of your business would you entrust to someone with no business or marketing experience? Would you let them do your tax return or sell to your customer in person?

Amateur Productions - Would you give your prospects a home made business card on floppy paper? No, of course not. So why would you show them a home made web site?

Designers - Good designers are great at producing something that is visually pleasing but rarely do their web sites 'work' in terms of generating and converting customers.

Programmers - A programmer will generally build you a technically proficient solution but again you need to ask yourself, will it actually achieve your goals of attracting and converting new customers?

When designing any internet solution it is important to have an overview of the key elements that will make it successful, these are:

The overall purpose of the web site
What needs to be achieved by the site
Content development
What structure should this be built on
What additional tools need to be included in the site
How does this integrate with a wider marketing campaign
How will the site be updated and kept fresh
How will the web site show up on the search engines
What internet advertising will be undertaken

A well executed internet marketing campaign can be the difference between internet obscurity and a steady, predictable stream of new customers.