Another area of huge misunderstanding is what Businesses believe that their prospect clients are looking for. Lets be real, if your client knows your name, they can probably find your site, just by typing in the name of your business. Not a great challenge there, or is it?Have you checked? Well if not do it now.

Its also interesting how many business have a domain name (look at terms to know if you don’t understand this). that is not their business name. It costs about $10 per annum to own your name, why would you not have it. You can have 10 different domain names pointed at your site, again we will cover this in detail later.

So you know how someone who knows you business can find you, its a bit of a no brainer. But how does someone who is looking for your services or products find you? Thats the real power of the internet. You can place your company in front of your prospect market, 24 hours a day. The impact of this is huge, if you can harness it correctly for your business.

Look back at traditional lead generation through advertising. Its all impact. You do an advert on a newspaper or magazine its impact advertising, that is you want to get a reaction NOW. We use call to actions like , special offer, 20% off, was $999 now $497. All of these tactics are to elicit an immediate response. The problem is we can not control who the advert gets in front of. I like to call this grenade  marketing, let me explain the different marketing terms I use.,

Lets say you are a hunter, as a business man you are always hunting leads. You have a number of choices on how to get your prey, I know this is not the nicest of examples and as a guy who could not hunt any animal, it goes slightly against my beliefs. However I do believe it is the best analogy that I can give you, so bear with it.

Grenade marketing: With this model you sit outside the forest and you throw grenades up in the air, here them land and explode. You hope that they landed on your prey so you get a result. This is any advertising or marketing you do, that is not targeted at all. So you are hoping to hit some prospects, in the hope they will deal with you. For example, putting an advert in the local paper, without knowing the demographics of your customers, or the demographics of the readers of the papers. For a ridiculous example, adverting chain saws in a lingerie magazine. Online twitter falls into this area.

Machine Gun Marketing: You stand close to the edge of the woods and you let loose with your machine gun. Spraying bullets in a 180% circle until the gun runs empty.  Then you say, well I hope something ran into that. An example of this is sending out flyers and have them drooped into areas where again you do not know the demographics of the area. Or not addressing the flyer to the name and address of the person who lives in the house. Online using pay per click adverting without planning your result, or driving people to a website, where you have no call to action. So you get them to

Sniper Marketing: So you go to the water hole and bambis mum turns up and you know the rest. But as a marketer this produces the best results. Target marketing. Offline this is sending a loyalty card to your clients, or promoting to people who bought or contacted your business. Online emailing offers to your clients. Getting them to go to specific offers, having special web sites just to answer one question.

I know you might be thinking where are we going here, but its simple. Most business build a web site from the companies point of view, not what the prospective client is looking for.

You need to focus on this, what is ‘google it?’. What do you do, you google it. But what does that actually mean, well in most cases you ask a question you want answered. Think about it, we all ask google and the all knowing wizard gives us the answer to our question.

So the question for you is, do you really understand what your prospect is searching for. Do you know exactly how they ask the question. In the numerous businesses I have helped over the past few years the answer always is well NO. In keywords we will go through examples of this in detail, but for now, understand this. Most businesses when they create they site its about the services or products they offer. Not the answer their prospects are actually looking for.

In the offline model, ask any sales person, worth their salt, this simple question. Do you sell services or products? Their answer should be neither our customers buy benefits. You see no one wants to be sold, everyone wants to buy. You don’t buy a service or a product, you buy the result or the benefit.

The internet now gives your prospect the ability to go through the shopping experience, without being hassled by a salesman. The problem with that from the business owners point of view is simple. You don’t have anyone to tell them the benefits, or the WHY. Why should they deal with you, how will your service or product benefit and enhance their life.

Now take a look at your site if you have one and ask honestly is it designed for you or your clients. Because the down side of the internet is a thing called ‘bounce rate’ . What this is how long they stay on your site, before they decide that you are not answering their question. It can be as fast a 3.48 seconds. It takes you longer to change channel. Because understand this, if you are not willing to answer their question, they have no reason to stay on your site.

Another mistake that people make ids trying to achieve all with their site. So if you do multiple products you need to be very careful, because if you don’t make it crystal clear when I hit your front page, them you know what happens, they will bounce to someone who will answer they question. Also if you don’t make the answer simple to find, as in right there on the front page, more than likely they will bounce.

One looking at your site you also need to consider these points as well. Who is looking at it and what do they want. Let me explain this, if you are a business that operates in different market spheres. As in you deal with professionals and the general public, then one site may not do. As the questions these different market segments ask will probably completely different. The professional will want to get an idea of the professionalism of teh business and the portfoilio of work that you have completed. Where as the public will want to know how you can solve there problem. The professional will more than likely spend some time on your site to explore it. The public unless they cann see straight away that you have the answer they are looking for will bounce.

So you need to consider
Who is looking for you site?
Are they professional (as in business to business or the general public)
How they will find it?
Do you send them to your site, by giving out business cards, networking etc. Or do you want them to find you online
What do you want them to do when they find you.
Ring your phone, email me, send an enquiry or buy something online.

You may be in the position that you want to achieve all of the above, if thats the case. One site will probably not get you a result and land up confusing both your market segments. One final thought to consider, online give you the ability to create amazing sites, but just because you can make it does not mean you should. The main point is ALWAYS know your audience and answer their questions.