Top 10 eMarketing tips you must know

When it comes to websites, I’ve witnessed many small business owners make the mistake of thinking ‘build it and they will come’ without considering how to drive traffic to the site to ultimately grow revenue. The best investment you can make when it comes to all things eMarketing, is to get the right advice and help.

Here are my top ten tips on how to make the World Wide Web work for you;

1. Get esavvy – The world of eMarketing is huge and murky so read articles, subscribe to blogs, play around with social media and subscribe to online courses to get educated before you jump in and spend any money.

2. Get the right advice and help – Work with web people who’ve produced the kind of results you want - either for themselves or their clients. Ask around for a recommendation, get credentials and do reference checks.

3. Be a good project manager – If you’re working with a web developer, you must have the skills to ensure the final product is what you wanted in the first place. A good developer will take a detailed brief and ask all the right questions. A good project manager (aka YOU) will know the answer to the questions even before they’re asked!

4. Outsource and specialise - Your role is to be the strategist and the project manager, not the person who does everything. Outsource routine and specialised work such as writing web code, search engine optimisation and design to Uni students and overseas companies.

5. Produce quality content – Writing and publishing articles on your website and blog are great ways to market your business.  You can also tell a story about your brand. People love stories that combine words with photos and video. Put yourself in the reader’s shoes and write stuff that is interesting and informative and don’t be afraid to express your opinion or be controversial.
 
6. Get a great database – There’s no point in attracting subscribers to your site if you don’t have a good database to collect their contact information. Invest as much time and knowledge in getting the right database to integrate with your website as you do in the website itself.

7. Get found on Google – Over 70% of searches are done on Google. Quite frankly, if you’re not found on Google, you don’t exist! It pays to spend time on Google search functions, Google Analytics, Adwords and more and to use them as part of your eMarketing program.

8. Use multiple marketing tools - Reach your market through a number of online tools such as natural rankings in the search engines, adwords, advertising, affiliate marketing, forums, videos, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and many more. Don’t use too many of them though. Choose a few and use them well and regularly.

9. Automate everything – When building your website plan the customer experience from the time they first visit your website right through to purchase and post-purchase. Consider how you collect and store their contact information, send them automated tax invoices and auto-respond to their emails as well as how you’ll handle email marketing campaigns and monitor customer forums and more.

10. Test and measure results – Test, retest and measure everything you do online. Before sending an email campaign, test the content and click-through’s on smaller groups using different headlines before you market to everyone. Make sure you measure traffic, unique users, enquiries and sales as often as you can and compare results to similar periods and previous weeks and months.

Don't know where to start when it comes to getting esavvy? Why not purchase the definitive no-nonsense guide to marketing (& eMarketing) - MARKETING YOUR SMALL BUSINESS FOR DUMMIES

Or why not contact PiperDM for your free Website Health Check