Perhaps you've experienced the following...your company has
just launched a brand new corporate website which cost $50,000.
It looks great, has some snappy flash animations and strong
messaging. Your organization does $10 million in gross revenues
per year, and your website is expected to generate at least
10% of that...or $1 million in sales. Piece of cake to meet
quota, right?
Many businesses fail to grasp that website development is
only the first step to making online sales. Just because
your developer created an excellent website according to
your specifications does not mean that your site will rank
in the top group of search results for any keywords relevant
to your goods and services (other than perhaps your corporate
name). Without search engine visibility, your prospects will
have little chance of finding your website and your company
will see, at best, a minimal boost in its Internet sales
volume.
Fortunately, your corporate website need not keep its anonymity.
For minimal additional cost, your company can transform the
site from online deadweight to search engine heavyweight.
The following two-tiered approach will work wonders:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the science of naturally
achieving top rankings in the search engines for revenue-generating
keywords. "Organic" website creation rarely creates any of
the components necessary for search engine success. So, to
bring your website to the top of the engines, an SEO campaign
would need to do the following:
Provide optimum keyword density for your targeted keywords.
Trade links with many other webmasters that run relevant
websites (extremely important). Make sure that other aspects
of SEO (i.e. page length, title tags) match up with accepted
standards for search engine success. Note that search engine
optimization success does not happen overnight...it might
take 2-3 months before your company sees results from your
SEO efforts.
However, your business need not wait that long to generate
online revenue...you can implement a Pay-Per-Click advertising
campaign and make sales immediately. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
is the ability to bid your company to the top of the search
engines for your targeted keywords. The two major vendors
of Pay-Per-Click ads are Google AdWords and Overture. If
you have accounts with both, you will be better positioned
to reach potential customers in all the major search engines.
When creating a PPC campaign, you need to address the following
issues:
Keyword selection. If you don't select keywords broadly
enough, you won't reach all potential prospects. If you select
keywords too broadly, you will be spending money without
making sales.
Keyword bidding. In every keyword list, some are overpriced
and some are bargains. Also, it is a myth that you need to
be the high bidder to generate the most revenue...frequently,
ROI is better when you bid less. Ad Copy. Does your ad copy
contain your targeted keyword? If not, you are probably not
getting an optimum click-thru rate.
Landing pages. If you are sending all your prospects to
your website home page, you are not maximizing sales conversion.
Top performing PPC campaigns create special landing pages
that reflect the particular keywords selected. Without search
engine marketing, a corporate website has minimal ability
to generate revenue. Effective SEO and PPC campaigns not
only allow companies to make sales quotas, but have tremendous
ROI and the cost per lead for search engine marketing, according
to a recent report by U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, is far
lower than any other sales lead generation method.
Cube
Management provides sales acceleration services to
emerging growth and mid-market companies in the technology,
manufacturing, healthcare and business service sectors.
The experts at Cube Management work across the entire spectrum
of marketing, sales and business development to provide
customized solutions that drive revenue and profit growth.
Cube Management combines Strategy, Process & People
to produce winning results.
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