Stay Close to Your Customer and Stay Away from Ugly Clutter

Type the phrase "Internet marketing tips" into a search engine, and you'll find scores of easy-money pitches laden with more hype than no-money-down real estate infomercials:
"Monopolize your market and automate 90 percent of your sales process — creating a 'hands-free' income that you can maintain in less than an hour per day."

While Internet marketing has grown into a thriving industry, it remains a feeding ground for swarms of "consultants" eager to fleece small business owners ignorant of its aims and methods.
"There are a lot of SEO [search engine optimization] experts selling nothing more than smoke and mirrors," says Mark Levit, managing partner of the New York ad agency Partners & Levit and a marketing professor at New York University.

"Anyone can hang out a shingle and claim they're an Internet marketing expert," says David Meerman Scott, author of Cashing In with Content, which argues a site's content is what drives its ultimate success. "Some search engine marketing firms make it out to be a black art that's proprietary, and which no layperson will ever understand, making small business owners feel they can't do it themselves."

A Constantly Evolving Field

Scott dates the birth of Internet marketing to August 1995 and Web-browsing pioneer Netscape's public stock offering. While only a decade has since passed, he says online marketing is already entering its third stage of development.
The first stage, running until 1999, involved just getting a site up with little consideration for the medium or the message. "It was primarily technology driven, the time when 'Webmasters' ran sites," he says. "You'd have to say, 'Please, Mr. Webmaster, will you put up this content for me?'"
From 2000 to recently, another group took control — site designers, advertising agencies, and "their three-fingered cousins in the search engine marketing space," Scott says. The emphasis: making a site visually attractive and manipulating its content to draw traffic.
Now comes the growing recognition that the content of a site, both its usability and information, is what drives key elements of business success — buying decisions and return traffic.
"The most successful sites excel in a number of areas: writing, navigation, friendliness, functionality, and relevance," says Anirudh Dhebar, a marketing professor at Babson College, which runs one of the country's leading entrepreneurship programs.

Know Your Audience

"The first step in any successful Internet marketing effort is to understand what audiences you're trying to reach and what you're trying to accomplish," Dhebar says. "That's a strategic decision, not a technical-implementation one."
Depending on your product or service, the chief aim may be to build your brand or strengthen customer loyalty, says Larry Weaver, director of Internet marketing services at Raleigh, N.C.-based Cii Associates, Inc. "You can measure your return on investment by tracking the conversion rate that's important to you, whether it's a phone call, a sale, a click-through, or a newsletter sign-up."

Anticipate the Customer's Every Need

"There's not a business in the U.S. that shouldn't have an Internet presence, if only as a reference point for consumers who increasingly go online to research even modestly priced purchases," Levit says. "It can be simple, but it needs a polished finish.

"Many small business owners still believe what a lot of the dot-coms did in the late nineties: Build it and they will come," he explains. "But if people encounter a site that's cluttered, unnavigable, or ugly, they immediately form a poor opinion about the company itself."
Once visitors arrive, a site should logically guide them toward the desired conversion goal with a "clear call to action" on every page, Weaver says.

"You can't force people to go where you want them to, but you can at least highly suggest it. We had one client who went nuts with SEO, but didn't have the phone number on every page. If e-mail sign-ups are what you're after, there should be a sign-up box on each page."

Taken a step further, a site can improve a company's productivity and efficiency. Miki Dzugan is awaiting the day when her dentist's office will let her sign up for an appointment on its Web site, and she can avoid getting an answering service when the office is closed for lunch.
"They apparently don't have enough of a call for online scheduling, but it will come," says Dzugan, president of Rapport Online, a St. Paul, Minn.-based Internet marketing firm.

In terms of information on a site, the goal should be to anticipate every question a Web searcher might ask and lead him or her to the proper answers in as streamlined a way as possible. That could be detailed information about the available products or services themselves, or in the case of a small tire retailer, an explanation of when to drop off a car, how long installation might take, and whether there's a shuttle vehicle available.

"You will have satiated potential buyers' intellectual hunger by showing thought leadership," Scott says. "You show them you're smart about your market category, you understand their problems, and you're providing this great stuff for free. I'm much more likely to do business with you than someone who sent me a direct-mail ad or who has a nice sign outside their building."

Some traffic-driving methods:

Search engine optimization. SEO experts often sell companies on making changes that "gunk up" their site, making it harder to read with little discernable improvement in search engine rankings. "SEO is most effective for businesses operating primarily in local or regional areas and those in niche markets," Dzugan says. "If you have a carpet-cleaning company in Stillwater, you can easily get to the top of the list for anyone who types in 'Stillwater carpet cleaners.'"
Cross-linking. Getting other Web sites to link to your own is not only a good SEO tool, but it also provides stamps of approval. "It's good to be proactive and get links on chamber sites, suppliers' pages, partner pages, directories, and publications that have some authority," Weaver says. "You want to get really relevant links from quality Web sites."

Pay-per-click. In bidding for paid-advertising spots on search engine pages, the highest costs per click are on keywords and phrases with the most competition. You can stretch your online-advertising budget by seeking out less costly words and phrases that your target audience will use. An online tool called WordTracker can help in that regard — you type in a common word or phrase and it gives you alternative words and phrases.

"Ultimately, you want to use Internet marketing to generate some amount of market research, to get a sense of where your customer base is going and where demand is trending," says Ward Hanson, policy forum director for the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and an Internet marketing professor at the university's graduate business school from 1996 to 2003.

"You can get early feedback on issues and problems, understand your most intense demanders, and break down your customer base into more detailed categories," Hanson says. "You'll learn more about the specifics of who and why people are buying your product — and that's invaluable information."