“I’ve had my site for ages, and I’m just not getting results. I have a healthy client base, but I would love to start bringing in even more new clients in the next few months. I’m ready to update my site, SEO it, and sign up for all the social accounts. Then I want to automate everything to make it easy – I just don’t have the time to spend time with it every day. What type of results do you think I can expect from this?”
Congratulations on wanting to bring your website more up to date, and to start working with today’s technology. There have been some massive changes over the past few years, and if your site is more than a couple of years old, it really is time for an update.
For example, you may be using Flash technology to animate parts of your website. Did you know iOs technology won’t recognize Flash, which means every potential customer that is trying to access your site with their Apple devices can’t view your information?
Or did you know that mobile technology is quickly taking over as the top way to search the Internet? If your site isn’t mobile friendly, people will abandon it when they can’t read it on their phones or tablets.
All of these are good reasons to update your site.
But updating your website or adding profiles to a few social sites won’t instantly bring in customers. You can’t spend a few dollars/hours SEOing your site and expect instant results. None of this is the magic pill to increase your Internet marketing strategy and start bringing in sales.
Why? Because if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it.
Updating your site, making it mobile friendly, and setting up a few social profiles is only your starting point. From there you have to become active, stay active, and connect with people over and over again in order to build their trust and convert them into paying customers.
Lets compare it to a more traditional way of marketing – using postcards. If your main form of marketing is using a postcard system, it may look something like this:
- Design and print up postcards
- Choose a mailing list and send them out
- Repeat again and again, mailing postcards on a regular basis
- Answering the phone when people call inquiring about your services
- Meet with them face to face
- And finally, sign them up as a new client
You wouldn’t stop at the design and print phase and expect business, would you?
Yet in essence, that’s the expectation when people stop at the design phase of a website and a few social sites.
There is still work to be done. You still have to:
- Drive traffic to your website and your social sites
- Provide quality content again and again to get them to your site and keep them active
- Connect with them to answer questions
- And finally, turn the lead into a sale
If you don’t create a strategy to make sure every piece is in place, you simply won’t have the results you are looking for.