Website Marketing – Why Are You Afraid of It?

If your website is not bringing you what you want, whether it be new leads, customers or purchases, then chances are you are not keeping up with the latest marketing techniques. It’s time to wake up! And yes I know it’s easy to blame your website designer, SEO company or your marketing consultant for not delivering everything you thought they would, but the truth is when it comes to online marketing, things change. And very quickly. What worked last year, may not be working this year. And the sooner you accept that, the better off you will be.

The bad news is you have to step out of your comfort zone and try new ways to promote your business. But that’s also the good news. If you decide to do it, you will be far ahead of your competitors, because they are still throwing money at advertising, which is no longer working for them.

When it comes to marketing, ask yourself “If I try XYZ, what’s the worst that can happen?”

And I can guarantee you the answer will never be “It will kill you”.

So what are you afraid of?

Why are you procrastinating about setting up a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn Profile?
Why haven’t you yet produced a video with useful information about your business?
Why aren’t you writing articles which will help boost your credibility?
And I could go on and on …

The most likely answer is “because I don’t know where you start or how to do it”

Guess what? Neither does your competitor.

So instead of sitting in front of the TV watching re-runs of Gilligan’s Island, why don’t you jump online and start doing some research? Find out about social media, video and article marketing. And either continue reading and learn how to do it yourself or if you have more money than time, hire someone else to do it for you.

Here are a few things to get you started:

1. Article Marketing

Article marketing has been around for many years and continues to be an excellent marketing strategy. If you are not sure what it is, let me explain. Article marketing is a type of promotion whereby you write useful articles about your field of expertise and distribute them to online and offline publications. Each article contains a bio box which has a link to your website. The more original articles you have published, the more backlinks you have pointing to your website and search engines love that. They see each backlink as a vote for your website and will rank you higher. But that’s not the only benefit.

Article marketing shows your potential customers that you are an expert in your field and boosts your credibility. In fact, Google has recently introduced “Google Authorship” and rewards those that write useful, original articles by showing a picture next to their pages. This can greatly increase the clickthrough rate.

2. Facebook Marketing

I’ll be honest, this is not for everyone. Even if your uncle tells you that you should have a Facebook page, because everyone else does, don’t waste your time setting it up, unless you know that you can get captive audience and have time to interact with them. Make sure your potential customers are hanging out at Facebook. And if they are not, find an alternative social network. There are hundreds of them. Each one is set up differently, so do your research and find out how it works and how you can benefit from it.

3. Video Marketing

OK, this one can be a little scary. Perhaps you feel like you don’t look good on camera or you don’t know what to say, or you don’t have the right equipment. Well forget all that. Everyday people are making lots of money with videos they took on their smart phone. You don’t need the latest equipment, your hair doesn’t need to look perfect and it’s ok if you stumble in your presentation a couple of times. That doesn’t make you look incompetent … it makes you look human.

Potential customers watch videos for one of two reasons – to be entertained or to find a solution to a problem. If you can show them how to clear their blocked dishwasher or help their baby sleep better at night, they won’t notice that you are wearing last year’s sneakers.

So think about what knowledge or expertise you have that other people may not. What do your friends usually ask you to help them with? Then make a video about it.

The truth is there are hundreds of ways to promote your website. The trick is for you to test as many of them as you can. Then choose the marketing strategies that work for you and discard the ones that don’t. Website marketing is not a one off exercise, you need to keep up and keep reading. Burying your head in the sand hoping it will go away is not going to help your business. So stop making excuses for why you can’t do it and just say “What the hell … ?” and give it a go.