Everybody wants to be found on the web but there is only so much real estate on the first page of Google, or Yahoo, or the search engine of choice. So how in the world is your website going to be found? There are two courses of action you can take to improve your chances:

Organic search gets results by structuring websites to be friendly to the search algorithms used by Google and other search engines. Organic search takes time and expertise and is unpredictable. Organic search works best for local businesses and businesses that have narrowly defined niches. In general, organic search is improved with fresh content and careful tweaking of your website.

Paid Search - The most common form of paid search is “pay per click” where you pay a small fee every time someone clicks on a link to your website. A good example of this is Google Ads where Google places small ads for your product or service at the top or far right of search results. Each ad contains a link to your website. The advantage to paid search is that it gets immediate results, is predictable, can be tracked with a great deal of accuracy, and is relatively inexpensive. It is probably the only way to get significant results in large markets for common products or services.

This barely scratches the surface of search but we’ll continue to expand on the subject in future blogs and hopefully this gives you some food for thought.

“Let’s say you are a manufacturer. Your advertising isn’t working and your sales are going down. And everything depends on it. Your future depends on it, your family’s future depends on it, other people’s families depend on it. Now, what do you want out of me? Fine writing? Do you want masterpieces? Do you want glowing things that can be framed by copywriters? Or do you want to see the damned sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?”

That’s the kind of practical approach that I like. How do we keep the sales curve moving up?

It starts at the top. Yes, the top; CEO, President, Chairman, Owner or whatever you choose to call the person where the buck stops. In my opinion, every top dog should spend at least half his / her time selling, in front of prospects or on the phone, email as a last resort. Why? Because you can’t BS your way into an order. Because it is difficult to sell a product / service that you don’t believe in. Because it’s important to look your customer in the eyes. Because it forces you to listen. Because it sets the tone for the business.

Believe it or not, I can remember when using the telephone in sales efforts was a radically new concept. In those days, the heavy sales lifting was done by traveling salesmen (no women in those days) crisscrossing the country. Companies that adopted use of the telephone in the early years made small fortunes because they dramatically increased sales while substantially reducing sales costs.

Most established companies were slow to change sales and marketing methods because they had sales systems that had worked for years and were well entrenched. Many never adapted and sales costs slowly drove them out of business.

We are going through an even more disruptive change with the internet. We have seen early adopters, typically newer or less established companies, make obscene profits with less effort than traditional marketers.

The message: Don’t be left behind. Even in this difficult economy you must invest in internet marketing. At a minimum you should continually invest in your website and email marketing. Learn how to drive prospects to your website and learn how to convert them once they get there. Learn how to leverage the power of email.