Web Marketing For Dummies

You’re marketing your business on the web — of course you are! These days, if you don’t do web marketing, your business doesn’t survive very long. Read on for tips on how to market your product successfully. Find out what to put on your site and which search engines to list it with, how to expand your presence with social media, bring repeat visitors to your web site, and become familiar with web marketing terms.

Tips for Marketing on Your Own Website

As a smart businessperson, you want to make full use of the web to market your goods and services. This includes running your own website. Use these quick tips to optimize your site for marketing effectiveness:

• Attract attention with your home page and headline.
• Maintain interest with text that’s about “you,” not about “me.”
• Build desire with frequently updated content.
• Include many calls to action.
• Make your site easy to use and navigate.
• Post your phone number, street address, and social media links on every page.
• Collect e-mail addresses to communicate with prospects and customers.
• Test your site before launching it.
• Use results of your traffic and sales statistics to improve your site.

Essential Tasks of a Successful Marketing Website

Your website can be your strongest marketing tool. It serves as the face your business presents to the online world. If visitors find that face engaging, you’re on your way to increased sales. You should see those increased sales once your site accomplishes these goals:

• Draws new visitors to your site.
• Keeps them there for several pages.
• Brings them back for repeat visits.
• Answers “What’s in it for me?”

Crucial Search Engines for Web Marketing

To market goods and services successfully on your own website, you must submit your site for free to these three search engines. They cover well over 90 percent of the natural search market:

• Bing
• Google
• Yahoo!

Use Social Media to Enhance Your Web Presence

Use social media to entice visitors to visit or return to your hub web site where they will receive your full message. Double the benefits by optimizing every social media channel to improve your search engine ranking. Remember to listen twice as much as you talk.

• Use Facebook for brand loyalty, customer support, and to solicit opinions and reviews.
• Use Twitter for news, local color, events in progress, and time-dependent offers.
• Use LinkedIn to reach business-to-business clients, qualify prospects, and to find new vendors or employees.
• Use content-sharing sites like YouTube (video), blogs, podcasts, and Flickr (photos) to encourage customer participation.

Market Research Sites to Use for Web Marketing

You want your business website to attract customers — that’s the whole aim of your web marketing strategy after all. Time spent researching your target market, industry news, or competition is never time spent in vain. The websites in this list can help you:

• ClickZ
• Internet.com
• MarketingProfs
• MarketingSherpa
• Mashable

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