New World of Advertising

It used to be in the "OLD" days before the Internet that all of your marketing was done through advertising. Either in the newspaper, radio,TV or some other print form like mailers and hand outs. These were/are driving the customers to your Company by way of phone or address. That was a good system in it's day In fact it was the only system! That form of Advertising is still being used but, it has become a little more complicated because of the Internet than most people Realize. While Traditional advertising you appeal to the masses hoping to get a small percentage of people that might accidentally see your advertisement and be interested in your products or services. Today we can target the people that are actually trying to find your product or services , so you talking to a more friendly audience.

Research has shown the 83% of all large purchases and B2B purchases start with Google!! 98% of all purchases get a Google search involved some where in the process! That's huge! and also why a web page is the most important business tool you can have today. If you don't have a web site or your web site is not set up SEO friendly for a Google search you are missing Sales!! If your web site is 3rd rate your customers think your company is 3rd rate. But even more important if your web site is set up to give the customer what THEY want you are well on your way to a sale and you never even talked to them yet! They all ready are partially sold on your products before you have a conversation.

One of the main keys however is "Search Engine Optimization" which simply put is your web site(if you have one) set up so that Google or Yahoo or Microsoft can tell what you are about and what you are selling! I'm not talking about the pay per click stuff, I'm talking about the free items just below the paid ads. (In Yellow) The pay per Click ads get only 25% of the hits while the free ones get the other 75%!! That is a little over simplified explanation. There is a lot more to the subject in fact so much more that companies are all over the Internet are trying to sell you on optimizing your site. Some are totally legit, but some are not so be careful and try to use someone you can trust.

It's not enough to have a great looking web site in fact sometimes it does absolutely no good and can even hurt your sales!!. Years ago I helped some people enter into a custom car show just like they have in most medium to large Cities everywhere. We were entering a fancy inboard boat with lot's of chrome and a big engine full of the latest goodies and we were sure that we would win a prize. But no we didn't even make honorable mention, and here is why. Because judging these types of events are very subjective, rules had to be established and a list of these rules were given to every judge. The judges would then go down the list and place a check mark by items on the list that your entry had like Chrome Valve Cover, Chrome Coil Cover and so on. The winners knew what items were on the list(they are usually not secret) and made sure there entry had every one of the items or as many as they could get on there entry. It was a simple matter of arithmetic determining the winner. We had no clue what was on the list so we lost.

The same is true with Web Sites there are certain rules that you have to adhere to in order to win the prize and that prize can be huge! If you can get on the first page of Google you win! and in some cases you can win big. Everyone now knows that it is HUGE to be on the first page so there is lots of competition to get there. Do this simple exercise pretend you are a customer that wants to buy or repair a HVAC unit but you don't know anyone in town or the name of your company, so you Google first your city name, then the state and finally HVAC so it looks like this "Sacramento,CA HVAC" replace the city Sacramento with your city and see if your HVAC business comes up.. Chances are it won't, that's because either you don't have a web site or your web site is not following the rules, it isn't SEO friendly.

Don't despair this can be remedied pretty easily and you probably won't have to change much on your site. You can do simple things like if your web site domain name is about to expire update it to 5 years or more. The Google,Yahoo,Microsoft crawlers actually look at that and if your site is going to expire in a month they will downgrade your rank. They want to see that you are going to be around for a while and if you have confidence then so do they. It's just one of many many rules on the list to make your web site a winner.

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All of this is well and good but, first things first. You have to set up your web site in such a way that the customers get the information that THEY want. They don't care about you or your web site as much as they care about getting information that they need in our examples case information about repairing or buying a new HVAC. If all you do is talk about yourself they will move on to the next site that offers what they want.

Next Blog More tips on how to make your site what your customers want and how to get more people to your site.