I recently went to the movies, and they were showing slides prior to the movie advertising various businesses. One of the slides was an advertisement to advertise on the slide show. It said simply, "without advertising something bad happens .... nothing!" Having coached people in business for many years, I'm often astounded at the fact that so few people budget anything substantial for advertising and marketing. The focus is always on fixtures, furnishings, inventory and such, and by the time that's all done, there just isn't anything left for advertising. But the business owner rationalizes this by thinking that they have such a beautiful store, such wonderful products or services, such great staff that people will somehow just know about their store and will want to shop there.



This is even more true for people who have virtual businesses on the internet. They put their money into a wonderful website, and then they just expect people will find them and buy their products or services. Recent estimates are that there are almost 30 billion websites on the internet today. Consequently, the odds of anyone finding your site just by putting it on the internet are about the same as finding intelligent life on Mars. So, in order to get visitors to your site, and more importantly, to buy your product or service, you have to find a way to get their attention. Once visitors make it to your site, your job still isn't done. You have to turn them into customers. Very few of your visitors will purchase from you on their first visit. So the real catch is to get them to come back. In order to do this, you need to get them to give you their contact information to add to your list. Once you have a list, then you can contact your visitors and here is where you really have the opportunity to turn them into customers. We'll talk in future articles about how to build visitors into customers, but today, let's focus on getting them to visit your site for the first time.

Currently, people who advise business owners on increasing traffic tend to focus on five key areas. In future articles, we'll hone in on each of these areas in great detail. Here is an overview of the four key areas.

1. Search Engine Optimization. The first and most basic tool to get people to notice your site is what is known as search engine optimization, or SEO. SEO is the art of making your website receive good ranking on the search engines. So, when people use Google or Yahoo or MSN or any of the other search engines, your website is in a high ranking. The general rule here is that if you can get in the top 5 or 10 websites listed on a search engine search, you'll get a good percentage of the people searching that term to click on your link. There are a great number of tasks involved in search engine ranking, and you don't have to be an expert at HTML or web development to get a good ranking. In future articles, we'll discuss some of the basics of SEO. In the meantime, if you would like to have some links to resources to teach yourself SEO, write me or visit my website.

2. Marketing Co-ops. Over the last few years, a number of marketing co-ops have come into existence. Like any other co-op, the idea is that a large number of people combine resources to purchase goods at a discount. The good marketing co-ops will get you a piece of the marketing action for less that it would cost you to do all of the marketing, and the co-op directors do a great deal of the work for you. Keep in mind that all co-ops are not the same. Some are much much better than others. Do some research before you buy.

3. Pay Per Click (PPC) services. Even with great search engine optimization, it's tough to get noticed above the crowd, particularly if you are marketing a product or service that there are lots of other people trying to sell along with you. All of the major search engines have PPC services in which you can purchase advertising on their website, and you pay when someone clicks on your link. Most allow you to budget how much you'll spend per month, and to bid on clicks, which means the more you're willing to pay, the higher placement the ad will get. PPC services, while criticized by many, when done properly can be the best of all marketing. Paying 50 cents or a dollar for a click might be expensive, but you have to calculate that in terms of what the profit will be for purchases from your site. Much like SEO the art of picking proper key words, picking proper search engines and budgeting properly is an art, but one that can be learned.

4. Traditional advertising (non-internet). Don't overlook the possibility of using more traditional advertising methods to get visitors. As expensive as PPC can be, advertising in newspapers, magazines, direct mail, radio, and other forms of more traditional advertising can have a big pay offs. 5. Paying for visitors. There are services that promises to send visitors to your site. Many of these are coupled with advertising co-ops. Many of these, while they live up to their promises of sending visitors to your site, often send untargeted visitors, and result in very low conversion to customers. This isn't true of all programs, but you must be very careful.

However you plan to market your products or services, you must be systematic and skilled. Plan to put a great deal of your first year's budget toward advertising just as though you were starting a brick and mortar business. Internet businesses are no different than any other kind of business. Without advertising something bad happens for business people ....nothing.

Copyright (c) 2008 Mark Albertson