Marketing Articles

Today I thought I was seeing things. I was looking at a local resource publication that is delivered to offices in the area and to my amazement I saw an ad in there for a local website designer. She put her website address in the ad and under the address she place the words Under Construction. What??!! This is terrible! What was she thinking? Even worse what was the money hungry ad salesperson thinking? Why didn’t they tell her that as a bad move? Did they need her money that badly? This type of mistake could kill a business.

Please think carefully before you advertise your company or place any advertisement in any media.

Don’t put about the company information on the home page. Nobody cares who you are.  They only care what’s in it for them.  What they’re there for is not an education about you.  Tell customers how they will benefit from doing business with you.  Use your unique selling proposition.

About the company need to be there, because once they like your product or service offering they are going to check you out. But in the navigation, not on the home page.

The site should always be set up customer centric.  Customer centric, not company centric.

If you are in business today you should always be looking out for new ways to attract lifelong customers. This is obvious however an overlooked technique by small business owners is to get people into your sales funnel right before they are married. Think about it. Besides the obvious things a newly engaged couple will need to purchase for their wedding they will also need other items. A place to live, appliances, insurance, retirement accounts, local restaurant information, furniture, linens and towels, mattresses, etc. The list goes on and on.

There are many engagement lists you can acquire. You should use these lists to send them educational information related to your products or services. You should not necessarily bombard them with sales and offers. It should be a subtle sale as many brides to be will be overwhelmed with getting their special day perfect and a sale on a refrigerator might […]

I’ve been involved with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) since 1996. I’ve been teaching legitimate ethical techniques at College for over 16 years. It wasn’t even called SEO then. And I’ve seen my full of unethical techniques that amateur SEO “Professionals” use in an effort to get their websites to the top of the organic search. Most are found out by the major search engines and stopped. One is so alarming I need to speak of it here.

Many sites I have seen which has been “tweaked out”’ by Search Engine Optimization Amateurs do NOT take into consideration the experience of the actual customer who read the copy of the site. They use paragraphs stuffed full of keyword phrases and over linked, that border on nonsense when read. Example: Our company makes widgets, our widgets are the best; don’t buy your widgets anywhere else. Widgets are great. We love widgets. Give me […]