Online Marketing Takes More Than a Web Site
A web site that I looked at recently featured some products that a doctor was promoting for staying in shape as we get older with age 40 being that critical milestone. I found a couple of books to purchase, a one-year subscription offering for fitness and nutrition, personal information about the doctor, an article page that lays out a training program for runners, links to a national sporting goods chain where more of the doctor’s products can be purchased, another article page related to a second training program for runners that also contains links to videos and an e-book, a link to the doctor’s blog and an email capture form. There was probably more but I think you get the picture. The site is confusing.
Not only that, the domain name for the site is the doctor’s name. How many searches do you think are being done on that keyword? Any?
It’s sad to think how many web sites have been built for unsuspecting owners of small to medium size businesses that are never going to generate sales of their products. The site described above is a beautiful looking site but it lacks focus, it will never rank for keyword searches and is basically useless for online marketing to anyone except those who already know about this doctor.
There are a number of potential options that could be pursued to provide this site owner with much better opportunities to market their products. They need to be sure that their business profile is completed and claimed on the Google, Bing and Yahoo search engine sites as well as the appropriate local directories where people would be looking for their core business offering.
They have two hardcopy books that could possibly be turned into e-books and along with the one existing e-book be marketed through an affiliate channel such as ClickBank. The books could also be converted and loaded onto Amazon as Kindle books.
There is excellent material available from the site to utilize on landing and squeeze pages. I mentioned above that it contains an email capture form, however, it can’t be seen without scrolling down the home page to bring it into view. In addition, I entered my name and email information but I never received a confirmation email from their auto-responder. This is certainly a missed opportunity to market to me over time. Several products on the site could be marketed through a set of individualized landing or squeeze pages. This would provide a focused message that would enhance conversion rates. In some cases, the same product could be packaged differently for distinct markets. Again, landing and squeeze pages would be good tools to provide specific marketing messages to increase conversion rates.
If you think about the issues that are inherent in this site and the possible opportunities to improve its marketability, you may discover that some of these apply to your site as well. In today’s competitive online marketplace, it’s not enough to just have a website. You must look for methods to be more easily found and to capture the attention of the marketplace. The basis of accomplishing this is to make sure that your marketing plan includes your approach to online marketing.