Skip the Gimmicks: Plan for Success

By Jeanne Neath and Paula Mariedaughter

One of our new customers recently took their first step toward developing their web presence and signed up for a domain name. As they were completing the online registration process, they were offered a special promotion – one month of web hosting for free.

Another new customer, who already had a web site, approached us soon after receiving an upgrade offer from their web host. For $20 a month more they could upgrade their hosting plan and receive more megabytes of web space, greater monthly transfer volume, plus a number of marketing tools. They didn’t think they needed more web space and weren’t quite sure what “transfer volume” was, but they were frustrated that they weren’t having more visitors and sales on their web site. They thought the marketing tools offered by their web host – including a search engine submission tool, trial pay per click advertising offers from two major search engines, and software for an email newsletter they could send out to their customers – might make a real difference in their web site sales.

What do you think? Do these sound like good deals to you?

Probably not. The customer reserving their domain name did not yet have a web site and would probably not need web hosting services for several months. Our second customer had identified a real problem with their web site – not enough visitors and not enough sales. But, like the first customer, they were in danger of being taken in by one of the countless promotional gimmicks on the Internet. Because the Internet is so complex and mystifying, many businesses can be reduced to searching for magic bullets instead of developing a sound plan for developing and promoting their web site.

In the second example, the business owner needed to do some research and planning. They didn’t understand why their site had so little traffic, nor did they have a realistic strategy for bringing customers to their site. In this situation, the first step involves simply finding out about the options for promoting a web site: search engine submission, search engine placement, “pay per click” advertising, email newsletters, shop hops, link exchanges, traditional advertising, promoting the site to existing customers in the shop or at quilt shows. The second step is to evaluate which combination of these approaches would work for the business.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty! Do some digging! Find out if your site is listed on the important search engines by searching for your business name at Yahoo, MSN, and Google. Find out your search engine rankings (#1, #50, #1,000,000?) by doing searches on the major search engines for the products you specialize in or the key phrases that you want to be known for (e.g. quilt patterns, western fabric). Would pay per click advertising be feasible for your business? How does the pay per click system work? How much money are the top bidders for your key phrases paying per click? What would your return on investment need to be if you ran a pay per click ad program? What would it require in time, energy, and money for you to produce an email newsletter? Would your customers be stimulated to make purchases? Where can you find the best deal for the resources you need to publish and manage an email newsletter?

The marketing package offered to our second customer might have been useful if our customer had evaluated all of their options and then decided that their best choice was to try out pay per click advertising and an email newsletter. But more likely this “magic bullet” would have provided many unused and unwanted features and a steady drain on the monthly budget. When you find yourself in this situation, figure out what you really need to effectively develop and promote your site and pay for that, not a one-size-fits-all plan.