Promoting Small Businesses Online: The New Way To Ensure Success

Charles Preston is a 21st century marketing professional that knows that you don’t just need a good-looking website and tons of internet traffic to ensure you succeed in business. Whether you are a large business or a small business you need more than just a great store front. That’s where many who look for online success go wrong---they think traffic is the answer to their problems.

Not all traffic will convert…

You can bring thousands of visitors to your site a day but unless you have the right web design, the right words on the webpage and a unique selling proposition, a good portion of your visitors will just browse and then click on by. To get a high conversion rate of visitors to customer, you need more.

The same principles apply to a store front. Just because you’re in a great neighbourhood and have a great window display does not guarantee you sales. People might come in and browse but they might just walk on by.

What do you need to do to transform visitors to customers?

Businesses today need to differentiate themselves from their competition and they need to do more than offer a pretty package. People are savvy shoppers and want value. Value is about more than just price. Perceived value is crucial in online business and if you can position your business product and / or service to appear to provide value that people aren’t going to find elsewhere, you can increase your rate of converting visitors to customers.

The value of a USP

Every business needs a unique selling proposition, or USP, that sets them apart from the masses. Whether you’re online, offline (or both) prospective customers have a lot of choices. You’ll attract more buyers if you create the desire to buy from you because of perceived value.

There was a time, in the not too distant past that if you built a website you’d expect to get traffic because not everyone in your industry was online. This happened in part because there might not have been a whole lot of competition. As the potential for traffic increased, so did the potential for competition. When someone searches for the thing your company does online, they’re going to be bombarded with offers of something that is trying to sound better than what you have to offer. The way you position yourself online is crucial!

A lot of search engine optimization companies just focus on getting you traffic but you need the right type of traffic otherwise you’re just paying to get visitors. More targeted traffic efforts will get you customers that are ready to buy. And, positioning your business the right way will make all the other efforts even more fruitful. Online success is about more than just traffic and aesthetics. Marketing has changed and the old ways are out. The new ways that are in are more effective, more cost effective and they can be more easily measured through data mining which works great for the entrepreneur because they can see what focus areas are working best and which demographics are converting well.

You need to do more than poise yourself to impress just the search engines if you want to succeed!

Charles Preston has more than a decade of experience in helping companies differentiate themselves from their competition online. He knows how to help you go after your target audience. He can work with you to help you figure out what your USP is and show you how to best create a solid online presence that will set you apart in the crowd.

Promoting your business online…effectively

Small businesses used to rely on their local community and on word of mouth. Unleashing the power of the internet can propel your small business to be a top contender in your own community as well as online. When you create a website for the purposes of making money in your online store or increasing exposure for your offline store (or both), you need to do more than get traffic to the page. You want that visitor to buy from you once, to buy from you repeatedly, and to tell their friends how great your product and / or service is.

Promoting your business online could:

• increase your sales,
• get you new customers,
• could increase brand recognition for you;
• and more.

To unleash the true potential of the web you need someone in your corner who knows how to get you ranked for the right “buying” keywords. You need to know how to design your site so that it’s friendly to search engine spiders and to human visitors. You need to know what advertising to take part in to get the most bang for your buck and you’ll need a plan for growth for your business as well. The services at CharlesPreston.com can help you develop and expand your business so that your company is more successful as well as more profitable.