The following is taken and updated from a detailed article written a while ago that outlines the various areas worth considering for your website and for your Internet marketing strategy. Now I’m going to break this down into a few sessions for you – preparing you for the workbook that will then make it even easier for you to get your own Internet marketing strategy right.
There a few important and fundamental areas that you need to look at, ideally before you spend a lot of time and money on your website, but even if you already have (as most of us will by now), then knowing what to do next is still vital to the success of your marketing plans.
So let’s take a look at your website. Most of us already have one, and while in an ideal world we will have created it with a firm strategy in mind, many of us merrily created a website because we were told that we all needed one in order to keep up with the latest marketing initiatives, with the way people were doing business. At this time, in this leaner economy, we need to be more focused on where we are spending our resources; and that spend – whether of time or money – has to justify itself and work hard for our business.
So just what is the point of your website? What do you want it to do? What do your customers do? How are they using the Internet – do they have websites themselves? What do you want them to do?
Consider these questions thoroughly – spend some time online with this; see what others in your industry are doing, and your competitors. What do you want to happen as a result of having a website? Make notes – they will be useful for you – and don’t aim to answer your questions just yet – do the research first.
Explore what you want your website to do for you – if it was possible, achievable, what would you really like to get from your website? It may be that all you need and want is a simple brochure site that you can refer customers to. It may be that you’d like to be more pro-active and get stuck in with attracting more customers through the Internet. Do you know just what your website could do for you?
Spend some time looking around on the Internet (surfing – it’s not just for geeky teenagers or the silver surfers) to see what you like, what you don’t like, and why. This is important. And keep making those notes…
Until next time when we’ll do something with all this research!
Leave a Reply