So you got one of these newfangled website things for your business. The site looks great, has a ton of info about your business but there is a problem. You have only been getting a couple of visits a day.

A common misnomer concerning websites is that all you have to do is put one out there on the Internet and new customers will come flowing in. Unfortunately it isn’t that easy.

Your website is just another tool in your marketing cadre, and it is a powerful one at that. In other formats you are limited in the amount of information that you can squeeze into the space you have. Yellowpages ads are only so big. That is especially true with business cards. But a website gives you the ability to put a whole lot of info into a very small about of space (it is virtual space after all). A link to your site on your business card suddenly gives potential customers the ability to find as much information about your business as you care to share. Same with your Yellopages ad, so make sure you get the website link on it when you renew next year.

You will also have a new email account with your website. Make sure to use a signature in your correspondence now. That way you can have your name, address, phone, fax and website link automatically added to the bottom of your emails. In Outlook you go to Tools - Options - Mail Format and then click on signatures. In Outlook Express it is Tools - Options - Signatures.

So after you’ve gotten new business cards, updated your advertising material and all that, what next? Tell people about your site. Make sure you give the url (website address) to all your prospective clients (email address too). Get your business friends to link their site to yours and vice versa (this really helps with your search engine page ranking - more on that in a later post).

So here is your to do list now that you have a website:

To do

• Order new business cards
• Order new letterhead
• Update your Yellowpages ad
• Set up an email signature
• Tell everyone about your new site
• Find business partners/suppliers/friends to link to your site from theres’
• Re-align your marketing pitch to send people to your site for more info
• Add your site’s url to any and all marketing campaigns

Getting a website isn’t a free ride to success. But with a little planning it can be a great item to have in your marketing toolbox.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 16th, 2006 at 9:05 pm by Jeremy and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.