I assume that most people have a business website for the purpose of getting more customers to it. Most business websites fail miserably in that goal. The lack of a clear business marketing online strategy is crippling their goal of gaining new customers via the internet. It is not that they are “horrible” websites either. But there are 2 main aspects of a website that the majority of local businesses just seem to get off track with. They are:

1. The “Sales Ability” of the site.
2. The search engine optimization

Most websites that you look at are really a glorified yellow page ad. They have lots of, “We carry this and that.” “We are located here and there.” The only thing that might be different is that they have a piece of the website that has pictures of the building and the warm and friendly staff.

The thing is, all of this is nice, but it doesn’t motive me to call because Joe and Sally are members of your friendly staff. I don’t know Joe and Sally! Most sites fall short of giving me a real “Reason” to pick up my phone and call!

With the state of technology and the speed of the internet, there are ways to present your company to the online prospect that was not possible 5 years ago. Companies that are taking advantage of these capabilities are raking in far more business than those companies that have a Yellow page ad online.

The other part of the equation it getting found on the web. You can have the most sales oriented site in America, but if people can’t find your site or don’t run into it at some point, it is all for nothing. I was looking at a friend’s site the other day and noticed that the title of his website was his company name. While this is good for the ego, it will do nothing for someone who is looking for his type service and isn’t looking for his company in particular. He simply will not be found. Think about this… Even in the Yellow pages, businesses are not found by business name! They are listed under category. Then you find their business name. The same applies to the internet.

This is just one small area of an overall website that makes a huge difference in the number of people that find your site. There are dozens of other factors that my friend had few of them going for him. He was frustrated that he was getting little if any business from his website. How about you? I talk to business owners all the time that spent big bucks getting a website up and are seeing little benefit from all that money spent on it. Their website look very pretty, but they either are not getting much traffic or they fall into the category of being a really nice presentation but with very little “sales ability” in the offering.

Either way, it makes for a disappointing internet experience. But there is hope! I would dare say that most business owners are experts in their field of business, but when it comes to online marketing their knowledge is not up to par with their desire to be successful at it. Hiring a small business internet marketing consultant would be a move that for many business owners could put a whole lot of extra profit in their pocket.

The thing is, implementing a business marketing online strategy is something any business owner can do on their own. Really, it’s not hard to learn and there are plenty of places to go to learn that on your own or with some guidance. But for you bottom line, I would recommend that you either study up and do it or have it done for you. If you don’t, you are leaving a whole bunch of money for your competitors to snatch up.

Source by Daniel Hatcher