The Online Marketing Formula!

The online marketing formula is not only one of an ever changing strategy but also a different style of business from main street. The atmosphere on main street is one of direct contact.

One walks into a department store and has the experience of “five senses” contact. You get the smell of the store , leather and lace, you can see in 3d the products as they are arranged on the racks. The sounds of cash registers, clerk intercom announcements, “clean up in aisle 5”, the smooth touch and feel of the garments and their particular fragrances. You can even get a taste of the environment or some special cuisine that might be on promotion that day.

None of these things are present online via a website. Of course you can have sounds, music, flash intros and maybe even 3d renditions of products. But these things seem to distract prospects online and tend to drive them off to more simple sceneries. Do you know how long it takes for a site with these special effects to load?

So how do you market to prospects online? Million dollar question. First you have to figure out who is online, what are they doing online, what are they looking for, what do they want and how do you place yourself in front of them? Unlike main street you have to put yourself in the way of your potential customers instead of throwing open your doors and waiting for them to walk through.

There are millions of websites online but how many people are going to be just passing by, type in your web address and happen to visit your site and make a huge purchase?

Happens downtown, not online.

People go online looking for something, information, news, statistics, products, music and such things. A huge percentage of people going online will pull up a search engine like google and type in a few words to match their desire. Will your website show up somewhere in that search?

A lot of people dedicate their business to what is called search engine optimization. But some of those tried and proven methods of days gone by still have not hit the mark for many people. How do you hit the mark? Some websites get to the top by sheer quality of products and some use various techniques.

First of all you should develop a quality website, one that is informative, simple to use and understand and constantly updated with relevant information. Then there are various other methods that you can use to get your site more noticed. More on that next time. In any case your new strategy should be placing yourself in front of your prospective customers instead of trying to get them to come into your store. In other words show up everywhere they go. That is one of the big differences from offline marketing. Of course when you get in front of them you have to be able to get their attention which is another strategy.