Internet Mogal » Why Market My Website?

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Why Market My Website?

A colleague asked: “Lately, I have been reading a lot about Internet marketing consultants. I have a New Zealand website for my business. Unfortunately, the site gets little traffic and the traffic it does get is from people who are just not buying from me. What are these Internet marketing experts all about and should I be investing in their services?”

Great question. And the answer is easy. Let’s just think about a traditional “brick and mortar” business, like a baby store retailer, for example. How do they get their traffic: just by sitting in their shop and hoping passing people stop in and buy? No, that would be ineffective. The traffic would probably just be browsers who would take up the owner’s time and not buy anything.

The best approach to attracting customers to the baby store would be to target prospective buyers directly, with a well-designed marketing plan that includes advertising and promotional components that land directly in the customers “line-of-sight.” That is, find out where the prospects “hang out” and get in their face with the baby store brand.

An Internet-based business is no different. Marketing a website is simply about targeting the prospective customer where they hang out, and being there when they are looking for your website product or service. These days, people hang out in particular places on the web. One, on google: here people search for something and hope to find the answer as quickly as possible. Two, on social media websites, like facebook.com, myspace.com, twitter.com, youtube.com and others: here people follow recommendations from friends and family when seaching for something, and they hope to find a solution fast.

New Zealand Internet marketing consultants should be expert in all things “search engine and social media.” Thus, it is totally logical and indeed most cost-effective to engage such a service to promote a web business to its target Internet customers.

Does your business have its own marketing consultant?