This is the second blog post in a series that will get you thinking in depth about your online presence, and ensuring that you are moving in the right direction to maximising your return on investment.

No one wants to be on your website.

Sorry, but it’s a fact. Unless you are selling the most amazing magical unicorn or a can’t-live-without-it product you need to give people a reason to visit.

In my last post I spoke about the importance of having a well-designed website and how you should treat it as a ‘shop window’. The idea behind the analogy was to tempt potential shoppers with your eye-smacking range of splendid offerings, setting it apart from all the other shops on the same street.

The question now is how do you get more people outside your shop window, peering in like a hungry kid outside MacDonalds.

Now in real life, and in terms of a shop window, you would have to alter your window display – showing shoppers alternative stock or offers. If things are really bad you may have to sell up, move to a busier street and pay more rent.

But in the magical world of the internet you can actually encourage more people to appear outside, without having to move anywhere.

We’ll be going on a bit of a crash course here, as each one of these topics could be a blog article in itself – I am sure they will appear in the not too distant future too! For the time being we don’t want to baffle ourselves with science, just touch on the topics to make ourselves aware of all of the ways you can maximise that online presence of yours.

PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE

You have a great website so don’t be shy, tell the world! You should have your web address on everything. (well not everything, it would look a bit weird on a new born baby)

Here are a few suggestions to get started.

• Your email footer – Of course people could work it out from your email address but your footer is the first place they will look. And if they can’t find it easily, why would they bother to find it all? Remember, people are busy!

• Your company stationery – Every bit of it: business cards, letterheads, compliment slips and anything else you use in your regular correspondence.

• Your point of sale materials (POS) – Brochures, leaflets, product sheets, case studies and anything else you want to put into people’s hands.

• Your corporate gifts – USBs, pens, pads, keyrings…or be a bit more imaginative!

• Your building signage – This would work especially well if you have good footfall of traffic outside your business address.

• *Your company vehicles*- This may depend on your brand, but if it is appropriate, splash it across your car or put it on the side of any vans you have.

• Anything else – Anything that a customer could ever see: uniforms, I.D. badges, bags, flash drives, laptops… the list goes on and on.

Get it in front of as many people as possible, you never know where potential customers, suppliers or future business partners may be!

BE FOUND IN SEARCH ENGINES

“You know who needs a haircut? People searching for a haircut,”

Google’s words, not mine. I wish they were though, because they rock!

Think of it this way; if you set your website up correctly, using Search Engine Optimisation techniques, then people hitting your website are not just stumbling upon it accidentally – they are actively searching for what you can offer.

These are not just warm leads, they are practically on fire!

Now when I say set it up correctly, I mean consider the two Rs of SEO Rank andRelevancy.

• Rank is achieved by completing regular monthly work to help improve your website’s reputation with search engines (think of it as a beauty contest, the more votes, higher the rank)

• Relevancy is also key to SEO as the keywords you have chosen to optimise must have relevancy to your business, or more importantly, your customers.

Get those two nailed and you best check the batteries in your online smoke alarms, because your website will be chock-a-block with visitors burning up. (Because your leads are on fire, haha geddit? eh?!, eh?!)

Anyway. It doesn’t matter if you’ve decided to optimise your site to appear in certain searches (known as ‘organic’ SEO) or paid the search engine for the privilege (you would do this using a Pay-Per-Click or PPC campaign), choose keywords that are as specific to what you can offer as possible.

Another day (soon I promise…) we’ll go into all this in more detail. A few of our tips and you could see a huge difference in your website’s position in search results.

BE SOCIAL

Social Media Marketing is a great way to increase traffic to your website and one of the best ways to do this is to share knowledge, not sell.

It may run a bit against your instincts, like using a snorkel to breathe underwater for the first time, but once you start it becomes second nature – even fun!

You will be amazed by the amount of goodwill you will quickly build up. You will get a tonne more hits on your website as people keep checking back to see what other goodies you are offering.

This may sound simple, but the amount of people who just try to sell with every update and status update is astounding! Followers quickly tire of it and, before you know it, they are ex-followers and your brand losses reputation.

STAY IN TOUCH

Regular contact with your clients and prospects is crucial. It reminds them, gently, that you still exist. Give them some information about your products and services, and if possible some more free stuff (knowledge) even if it’s just a round up of industry information.

A really good way to do this is with an electronic newsletter. The tricky part of this is deciding how often you should aim for it to drop into hungry inboxes. It all depends on your business again, but the best bet is to aim for an issue every quarter as a starting point.

It is just enough to keep on people’s radar without becoming a pain in their inbox (ooh-er!) It is also more realistic, as a monthly newsletter can become fairly time-consuming.

If you think this could be a good option for you, our blog post on Electronic Mail Hints & Tips has great advice that can really get you on your way. But remember, if you don’t have anything relevant or interesting to say, then don’t say anything. Nobody wants to read a half-hearted attempt or sales news that only you would be interested in!

I hope that this article has been useful to you and if you take the advice from this one and the last one you will be well on your way to maximising your online return on investment.

Of course, if you would like any assistance with any of the aspects I have discussed, One2create does them all, very well.

Give us a call, we would love to help …

…. See what I did there!