What Are Your Web Marketing Goals?

Are you thinking about marketing your business over the web? If so, you need to set some web marketing goals. There are three goals that you may want to think about. Some businesses need help with only one or two of these goals, while other businesses need help with all three. Whatever your business needs are, you should be able to meet them by marketing your business online.

Lead Generation

If you want to stay in business, you need to continually attract new customers. The Internet provides an excellent means of doing this. When you put your website online, you could potentially attract thousands, if not millions of customers. Of course, not everybody who uses the Internet will be interested in your business.

Before putting your website online, look back at your business plan to remind yourself of who your target audience is. Develop web content geared towards your target demographic so that you have the best chance of attracting the type of visitors who will want to spend money on your business.

If you sell products or services to more than one segment of the population, your website might be an opportunity to attract a particular segment of your target demographic. For example, if you sell cell phones and related accessories to people of various ages, you might want to target web sales towards younger people who are more Internet savvy while focusing your in-store advertising on the older members of your target demographic.

Sales

Generating new leads is useless if the result is zero new sales. You want your website to not only attract new customers, but keep them online long enough to decide to order your products. To be successful in this area, you need to provide customers an eCommerce website as a way to order products directly from your website.

Some businesses allow customers from all over the world to pay for products and then ship the products to the customer’s home. Other websites allow customers to pay for products online, but the customer must visit the physical store to pick up the merchandise.

Your customer base, business size and type of business dictate which method works best for you. However, you should provide customers with the opportunity to purchase products online because they are more likely to buy while looking at your website than if they have to visit or call your business after reading online about your product line.

In addition to providing customers with a means of buying your products, you must also build an attractive website. Customers should enjoy looking at your site and want to spend some time there. Fonts and colors should be easy on the eyes, and you should have clear pictures of all the products you are selling.

Brand Building

You want customers to be familiar with your brand and associate it with superior customer service. You can do this both indirectly and directly via your website.

Provide customers with a means of contacting you on your website so that they can bring customer service concerns directly to your attention via email, and make sure to spend time addressing customer service issues within 24 to 48 hours of receiving emails.

You should also provide customers with free information related to the products you sell. Customers enjoy getting freebies and are more likely to visit your site and browse your catalog if you share articles or tips about solving common problems that your customers might have.