Businesses have web sites for one reason, pure and simple, and that’s to generate more revenue. In some cases, such as when dealing with a simple or inexpensive products or services, this is accomplished by giving your visitors the ability to purchase through an ecommerce platform. In other cases, such as when dealing with complex or expensive products or services, or when your offering is highly relationship based, it’s accomplished by educating your visitors and converting them to clients over time.

In either case, one basic approach consistently delivers results. That’s keeping them on your web site longer and giving them a compelling reason to return in again, both of which are accomplished by providing the information and resources that your visitors will need in order to make an educated buying decision. The more information that you can provide in an easily navigable format, the greater chance you will have of converting your visitors into clients.

The easiest way to go about this is by blogging on a regular basis. The software you’ll need to run your blog is free and relatively easy to install and configure, and there are a number of free themes and plug-ins available. If you want your blog to match your web site, you can even hire a web design firm to modify and customize it to suit your needs. Once your blog is up and running, you can get started by publishing the sort of information that your visitors will be looking for. As the amount of information available increases, your web site will become stickier than the La Brea Tar Pits. After some time, you will begin to receive highly-targeted organic search traffic resulting in new visitors, while giving your existing visitors the answers they’re looking for. When speaking to prospects, be sure to take note of the questions they ask you about your products or services and if you see a trend, be sure to add that information to your web site. You should also ask them what information they feel would be useful to other visitors like themselves. Keep in mind, some people are just going to contact you and ask you all sorts of questions without looking at any information on your web site, but since they ARE contacting you, I’m pretty sure you’re ok with that.

Aside from adding fresh, relevant content on a regular basis there are some other things you can do to ensure that your visitors get the most from their visit, hang around as long as possible and come back often.

• Ensure that the search field is enabled. Some visitors know exactly what they’re looking for and want to find it as quickly as possible. If you make it difficult for them, they’ll simply visit your competitors.
• Ensure that categories are enabled. Other visitors might not know what they are looking for yet or may even have stumbled on your site as a result of a link or search engine. Give them the opportunity to dig around a bit and find what interests them.
• Ensure that RSS is enabled. This lets visitors who use feed readers view your new content without even opening a browser. The upside is that if a particular item grabs their attention, they may visit your web site even though they didn’t initially intend to.

If you’re trying to get up to speed on HTML in a hurry, a few hours on HTML playground will definitely help to get you there. It lets you learn by doing, and it’s also is a great reference source for those of you that already have the basics down pat.

If you’re like most business owners, you’re working hard at networking events and sales calls across the country each end every day, but you may not be getting the results that you deserve for the effort that you’ve put in. This is because in between the time you leave your prospect’s office and the time you call them back or stop by again, they have probably visited your web site to learn a little more about your company, and if they weren’t impressed, they didn’t give you another thought until you followed up with them. Since at least a few days have probably passed, much of the impact that you created may have already dissipated, leaving you to start all over again.

This is where a effective web site can make a tremendous difference in helping to convert your prospects into clients. Chances are that they aren’t going to look at your web site right away, instead, it will probably be some time after you’ve left and things have slowed down near the end of the day. Now, if you have an effective web site, what happens is that it will make a powerful impression on your prospect without any additional effort on your part. This means that you’ve now reached them two times with the same amount of effort as it used to take you to reach them once. By the time you call them back or stop by again, you will have reached your prospect three times – and that’s if they don’t visit your web site again or call you back first.

So how do you know if your web site is effective? Well, first of all, make sure it presents a professional image of your company. This includes proper grammar and spelling. You should also make sure that it doesn’t contain any broken links or images, and that it loads quickly.

Once these basic criteria are met, you can start by asking your existing clients or customers, as well as your prospects, what they feel is missing from it. In most cases, your visitors will be looking for your web site to be functional and informative. For example, if you sell industrial hardware, your web site should at the very least contain the specifications on your products as well as their prices. Most visitors want to have the necessary information to make a buying decision at their finger tips. Statements such as “call for pricing” will only frustrate them in most cases. Remember, a web site is all about leveraging your time and resources, so the more that you enable yours to do for you, the higher your sales and profit margins will be.

You should also provide multiple ways for visitors to contact you. Some may prefer email while others may want to call you and get an answer right now. Make it as easy as possible for them to reach you how they want to.

Finally, be sure to update your web site on a regular basis. If your prospects visit a few times and realize that your content is rarely updated, you can be sure that they will come back less frequently, and then eventually, stop visiting all together. Make an effort to add content to your web site at least once each week.

During the next 24 to 48 hours you may experience some difficulties navigating our web site because we are implementing our shiny new design – it even has that new web site smell! If you happen to run into something that doesn’t work properly, such as broken links, inoperable navigation or display issues, don’t worry, once all the updated files are moved over, it will be resolved.

We want to say thank you in advance for your patience while we work hard to give you a better experience on our web site.

Does it matter that your all-natural home cleaning product eliminates 5% more germs and bacteria than your competitors’ products with out any harsh chemicals? No, parents simply want to know that it will work just as well if not better without endangering their family. Home buyers don’t care if you’ve won the Real estate agent of the year award for your city seven years in a row, what matters to them is whether you’ll be able to sell their home quickly so that they can move into the dream home they found last week in a hot market. How important is it to auto enthusiasts that your company’s spark plugs produce a spark that is 30% larger than the standard spark plug? It’s not. The fact that they make their engine more efficient and reliable is important to them though.

You should still provide the features of your product or service for those prospects that are looking for that sort of information, but the benefits that they will enjoy by using your products or services are what will motivate them. Focus on that and your marketing will become significantly more effective.

So, I ask again, what matters most in YOUR marketing?

The day to day things that a successful person does are rarely much different that the day to day things an unsuccessful person does however over time, the differences, no matter how minuscule they may seem, can amount to a tremendous divide. Think about two people walking in a straight line, starting next to each other. If one of the people drifts just an inch away from the other over the course of ten feet they will still be standing pretty close to each other when they stop. On the other hand, if they continue past ten feet to a meager distance of one mile, they will be 44 feet apart! Think of how far apart they would be after a lifetime.

Marketing is very much the same. It’s easy to avoid making that extra phone call, put off that Internet marketing campaign or skip that networking event you had planned but it’s these little things that add up over the course of months, years and eventually over the life time of your business. If you could make just a few more phone calls each week, invest just a few thousand dollars more in your marketing, and get out there to meet just a few more potential clients, how different would your business be today? How about next month, next year or in ten years? The effort required to outperform your competitors may seem tremendous at first, but when you look at what it takes on a daily basis, it’s really pretty easy.

Are you going to do the little things or are you going to let your competitors do them?

Social networks, such as MySpace and LinkedIn started off with a small following of early adopters who used them as they were intended to be used, simply to connect with other users. As time went on many people began to use social networks in an attempt at marketing their companies. This isn’t isolated to social networks though. The same thing has happened with just about every technology you can think of. With the printing press came catalog. With the telephone came telemarketers. With the personal computer came desktop publishing. With the Internet came web sites and with email came email marketing.

When used properly and ethically, just about any form of technology can be used to increase the exposure you are able to generate for your company in a positive manner however it’s the few people who refuse to maintain any sense of decency that ruin it for the rest of us. These are the people that create dozens if not hundreds or thousands of fake profiles on various social network sites and then bombard you with useless bulletins, private messages and invites to push their products or services. Chances are that these also happen to be the same people that think SPAM email is perfectly acceptable as long as it makes them a few dollars.

Don’t let this scare you away from utilizing social networking in your marketing plan though. As long as you follow a few basic guidelines (mostly common sense) you can develop a new and useful marketing channel that requires no investment other than your own time.

1. Create an informative and honest profile that tells people what you do or what your company is about. You don’t need to replicate your entire company web site on your profile though. Just stick to the basics. You don’t have to use a photo, but under no circumstances should you use someone else’s picture ? even if it’s a stock photo that you’ve legally purchased. Keep in mind though, if you are in a relationship-based business such as real estate, investing or something of that nature, using a professional photo of yourself is a good idea.
2. Add other members to your network based on their relevance ? not a sexy photo. Simply having a large network will do little for your business if they have nothing to do with your industry. Like any other form of marketing, focus on quality over quantity. In most social networking web sites you can search for other members based on their interests or their industries. Develop a group of like minded people and you’ll all get a lot more out of the relationship.
3. Provide value. Are you one of the countless others that just created a profile and then adds everyone you find while providing little or no benefit to them? Don’t be. You could create an added value by offering the members of your network a promotional code that gives them a discount, give them early access to new products or even give them free information that would be useful to their business.
4. Don’t be annoying. If you have something to say, say it, but there is no need to post a bulletin or send a message every day. If you start down that path, not only will people start to ignore what you say, but they’ll likely remove you from their network. Think of it as a classic case of “less is more.”

Even in the best of times, real estate is a challenging industry. Aside from fickle buyers you also have to contend with a fluctuating market and competing agents, some of whom may not be as honest and ethical as you are. In a slow market though, real estate can seem as as bleak and hopeless as Death Valley in August.

Keep your head up though, because armed with the right tactics, you’ll find yourself gaining a serious advantage over competing agents by developing a steady flow of new prospects.

1. Keep an ample supply of business cards with you at all times. Obviously, you need a small stack in your pocket, but keep a back-up stack in your wallet or purse as well as an extra box in your car and your office. That way, you will always have enough cards no matter where you go. Then, make sure you actually hand them out. Give a few to each person you meet. Leave one on the table when you leave a restaurant. Place one in each bill you pay by mail. Slip one in a few books at the bookstore. Your options are unlimited, and since business cards are so inexpensive, you should take advantage of every opportunity to distribute them.
2. Network in a non work related organization. There are probably more than a hundred other real estate agents in your local chamber of commerce so your chances of finding any prospects there are slim to none. On the other hand, your local church may have only a few, or even none, so you have a much better chance of finding new prospects there, but if that’s the only reason you go, be on the lookout for random lightning strikes. You can also network in the VFW, Rotary Club or any number of other organizations.
3. Develop a reputation as an expert by writing articles for newspapers, trade publications, magazines and real estate related web sites as well as participating in real estate related forums. This keeps your name fresh in prospects minds and gives them a feel for your personality and level of expertise. While you’re at it, make sure you’re blogging on a regular basis. Aside from helping establish your expertise, it also encourages the search engines to crawl your site more frequently and potentially increase your natural search traffic.
4. Take advantage of technology to make your work more effective and efficient. Software is available today that makes it easier than ever to stay in contact with your prospects and existing clients, such as ACT, GoldMine or Sugar CRM. There are also companies that provide hosted email marketing services, such as Constant Contact or Bronto which allow you to build a mailing list and maintain TOMA (Top Of Mind Awareness) with your prospects.
5. Establish relationships with related professionals. Accountants, lawyers and business consultants are all in regular contact with people who are likely to need to either purchase or sell real estate and by establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with these professionals you can ensure a steady stream of referrals to keep you busy.

There has been a lot of buzz these days about Web 2.0. Most people don’t really understand what it is, how it can help them or?how they can utilize it to grow their own company. Like the dot com bubble of the 1990s, Web 2.0 is not the end all be all answer to overnight riches, rather, it is simply a paradigm shift in how the internet is used.

There was a time when all you needed to do was slap a web site up on the internet, tell a few people about it and you would be light years ahead of your competition. Once pretty much everyone had a web site, the novelty factor wore off and you had to take it a step further by introducing something new and different. Many companies did this by adding a multitude of garish animated gifs, and shortly thereafter, flash intros. Since neither of these did anything to add to the user’s experience, they had little to no positive effect on business. Eventually, smart company began to implement ways for their visitors to interact with each other, such as forums or chat rooms. This took web sites from simply being a static source of information to being a dynamic form of communication between an unlimited number of people with a wide variety of points of view. As the success of this phenomenon caught on, other companies began to follow suit, and online communities sprung up all over the world. New ways to connect began to develop, such as blogging, social networking and bookmarks, and a new internet revolution was well on its way.

This just means that you have more tools available?than ever before to promote and market your company.?From social networking web sites like MySpace or LinkedIn?where you can create?your own?profile and then search and connect with other members?that fit your target market, to social bookmarking web sites like Digg or del.icio.us?where users can decide what they feel is important and let others know about it. Even your blog can have an impact by giving your visitors a taste of your knowledge, skills and corporate culture while allowing them to post comments if you allow that feature. Using Web 2.0 to grow your company is simply a matter of finding out what you visitors need, and?using technology, give them a way to get it not just from you, but from others, especially their peers. Remember, it’s all about the relationships.