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Last night I added a page to my website. It allows parents of Providence little leaguers to sign up to get emails from me about which Sundays I will be running informal practice for kids in the FPESLL or other kids in the Providence area who play little league baseball.
I have some photos of myself with my kids, so people will recognize us. This morning before school, I was eager to show my 8 year old, Daniel the page. He read it to his sister. Then he looked at me and said, “How will people know to go to this page? How will they find it?”
Even at eight years old, Daniel understands that a web page is useless without traffic. You have to drive traffic to your website to make it profitable, even if you are only using it as an “online brochure,” as too many brick and mortar businesses do.
The power of the internet is not in disseminating your online brochure. It is the consumate direct marketing tool. It provides a cost effective way to reach your target market and the feedback is virtually instant.
I met with a business colleague the other day. He has two businesses both of which serve the business community. The first is video production. Particularly in this age of Web 2.0, in which video is becoming more and more common on websites as faster internet access proliferates, quality video production should do well. Of course the competition is the cheap availablity of digital video cameras which allow people to make their own simple videos. Another problem is location. He lives in Rhode Island, the smallest state. A quick study shows that there are only about 100 searches per month for “RI Video Production.”
His other business provides an online service for sales people, busienss people, or even individuals to send out cards to business prospects or friends. You can even upload your own handwriting font so it looks handwritten. I think I’ll probably use the service myself at some point and might even become a distributor myself. Why? Scaleability.
As opposed to video production, providing customized greeting cards and than you notes are not geography bound. A quick study shows more than 95,000 searches last month for “greeeting cards.” Now maybe that isa good keyword, and maybe its not, but you get the point. The size of the market is substantially larger and is not limited by geography. All it takes is a website, a product, and a way to drive traffic to the site.
The most cost effective way to drive traffic is to get listed by the search engines. There are many services and professionals who can help you do that. Before you hire one, ask what tools they use. In this day and age, you’d rather hire a carpenter who uses a nail gun to build your house than one who only uses a hammer.
Tools I use include software that analyzes your webpage for optimization of of a keyword. The data it uses is taken right from search engine results, so there is no guessing as to what factors the search engines value. It is based on a study of hundreds of thousands of pages and how Google, Yahoo, and MSN rank those pages. Real data without the guessing. You can buy the software yourself. It’s called Rasof and costs $1,000 per month.
There are many other tools I use as well, and I’ll write more about them. But the important thing is that if you are going to hire someone to help your online business take off, look for someone who uses the right tools and offers to take the bulk of their compensation after results are achieved. Sure you have to pay something upfront, just to show your goodwill and commitment to the project. After that, it’s easy to hire someone to do your internet marketing and pay for results.
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