When it comes to Internet marketing these days, we find that many businesses coming to ArmitageInc.com are putting the cart before the horse. With every intent to create successful marketing for their businesses, they’re often excited about the ruckus of “social media” and want to start “tweeting” and creating Facebook fan pages before they’ve built a solid website.
Why would you spend so much of your Internet marketing time in the social media world when you have a wimpy website or nothing at all? How will your prospects learn about you, read your story, identify with you, come to trust you, and begin buying your products or services?
Sorry. I know websites may not seem as exciting or sexy, but they simply MUST be in place first, fully operational (no “coming soon” pages), and following foundational website marketing principles. These successful marketing principles include:
- Well-written, to-the-point content that includes keyword search phrases.
- Easy navigation.
- On-page SEO (search engine optimization) for each of the primary pages of your site so that the search engines (like Google and Yahoo) index ALL of your website’s pages instead of just your home page.
- At least one list-building tool in place such as a free report or a weekly subscription that allows prospects to sign up with an email address to learn more about what you offer.
- Absolute mobile applicability for your site as well, as more and more businesses are accessing websites via their smart phones and tablets.
- Google Analytics installed for immediate tracking of incoming traffic and what it does on your site once it’s there. (Analytics is free).
Once your business has these foundational elements in place THEN truly successful marketing can begin. From this place, you can quickly move into the world of e-mail campaigns, press releases, Facebooking, search engine marketing (SEM), upsells, downsells and more. Our team here at Armitage, Inc. is happy to help with all of this, of course, but it’s important we start at the foundational beginning where it matters most. (See our Scope of Services here.)
The cornerstone must be in place before the kingdom can be built above it.