The Importance of Marketing Your Business

by Debbie Burgin - 

I recently did some research on the current marketing strategy/systems of a local company. What I found wasn’t what I’d call ‘disturbing’ per se, but it totally made me scratch my head.

In perusing their current social media accounts, I found what some might call ‘bare bones’ posts on both Twitter AND Instagram. By ‘bare bones’ I mean, only the information that a ‘layman’ might convey was there. So the simplest tools that someone who works in the marketing arena would use, weren’t being implemented.

In addition, on the company website, I there were some MAJOR red flags; things that one working in marketing would immediately notice, but more importantly, site visitors, would NOT. Meaning that those things that you want your site visitors to notice were not present on this website…AT ALL.

There was no way to provide content to bring in new customers, nor to bring current customers back to the business/website.

There was also no noticeable way to capture visitor information (if I didn’t go looking for it, I never would have seen it), etc. And when I did find it, it was tucked away in a corner of the company website.

Third red flag; the company’s current marketing strategy was simply concerned with marketing of their own product/service. There were no ‘niche’ extensions, meaning that anything else that their company could/would ‘touch’ wasn’t included in the sparse marketing that they were doing.

When we spoke, it sounded as though they were more concerned with the ‘design’ of their website (which was good) than anything else.

Now…don’t misunderstand me; this isn’t a small company.

I cringe thinking about it.

If you haven’t implemented ways to get prospective customers to your website, why are you so concerned about what it looks like? Worse, if a prospective customer ‘trips’ over your website by accident, there’s no way to get them to come back.

Shame.

There are approximately 140,000 new sites being added to the web each and every month. If you don’t create ways to bring new customers to your website/business, guess what? It’s highly likely that your potential customer isn’t going to have a clue that you and your business even exist. You know where those customers will go? They’ll go to the website of a business who provides them with the information that they’re looking for, either by way of content that brings them to the site (or some extension of the site, like a blog), or by reaching out with that information (email via newsletter, etc.).

So what's my point? 

Some companies let their marketing 'fall by the wayside', thinking that what matters is current projects/customers. But how do you think those customers will find you? The internet is an incredible marketing vehicle when used to even a fraction of it's potential.

Don’t let your new customers go to your competition, simply because you failed to see your business/website through their eyes.