Leverage the Internet to Help Expand your Market and Increase Sales

Attracting more targeted customers to your web site is the fundamental purpose of doing business on the Internet. With continuous technological change and global competitiveness, a well positioned Internet presence is an essential element for today’s business success. After all, the Internet is the 21st century’s version of the yellow pages.

When assessing your current web presence five key elements need to be analyzed; search engine optimization, ease of navigation, visitor retention, content richness, and communication value.

The major search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN all have ranking criteria to help their visitors find what they are looking for on the Internet. A properly optimized site will incorporate key words, phrases, and meta tags (code seen only by the search engine to determine the topic of the web page) to rank in the top 20 search results. This higher ranking insures your web site will be seen by the majority of visitors requesting a product, service or business program matching your offerings.

Your web site should be like your favorite retail store; one where you know exactly how to find what you need. Easily navigating to an area of the site for answers to the basic questions of, who, what, where, when and why is an important visitor element. One effective navigation test is to have a friend or a business colleague view your site. Ask them to give you objective comments on the ease or difficulty they encountered while looking through your site. Use their feedback to improve the way your site flows and provides visitors with information.

Stickiness, the art of keeping visitors engaged longer with your site and providing memorable content, makes a big difference in how your site is viewed and utilized. The key to retention is creating interest through information sharing, subject relevance, uniqueness, and novelty. Look at your competitor’s web sites, determine what is lacking and fill the gap. Create links which are true resources, ones which closely relate to your market, and provide expert ideas. The ultimate compliment from a visitor is to reward your site with a bookmarked status in their favorites tab.

I have developed a number of tips, tools, techniques, and resources to help improve the sales and marketing efforts of business. Please contact me for a no obligation review of your company’s sales and marketing process.

Mark Marlin received a Master of Science Degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has held a variety of increasingly responsible positions as account manager, regional sales manager, divisional sales manager and owner of a manufacturers’ representative sales organization.
Mark’s sales and marketing consulting business helps small to medium sized organizations improve sales performance and drive business to the next level.