I’m always amazed that people still subscribe to the “if you build it, they will come” mentality when it comes to websites. Unfortunately, the hard truth is that unless you have a viable marketing plan to attract people to your website, odds are, they won’t be coming.

The first thing you should think about when you start creating your marketing plan is what types of people are most likely to buy your services? You might answer “everyone could potentially be my client.” That’s a great aspiration, but unless you have the marketing budget of say Coca Cola, which spends about $550 million on advertising a year, you aren’t going to reach everyone.

Instead, start with your current clients and prospects - who are they and what do they like to do? Where do they like to shop? What types of things do they think about before they make a purchasing decision? And what might you need to tell them to get them to buy your services? These people will become your target audience, and they’ll include anyone you need to tell about your service to be successful. Think in terms of the lowest hanging fruit - target those people who already have a need for your services and need just a little encouragement to buy from you, and then branch out to those who need a bit more information (and require you to spend more money reaching them), and so on.

So how do you reach them? Here are some ideas for marketing your website. Remember, different people have different needs and use the internet differently. Therefore, you want to use different types of communication channels to reach them consistently. Some examples include:

• Run banner ads on industry specific websites that your target audience is likely to visit
• Start a pay per click search engine advertising campaign through Google Adwords or Overture
• Give away lots of free information - perhaps a free guide or a collection of timely and relevant articles
• Make your site an information source - publish content regularly!
• Start a newsletter - Once people visit your website, ask them to subscribe to your newsletter to get them coming back
• Send out postcards - Announce new features and content through direct mailings
• Include your url on every correspondence you have with current clients and prospects - that includes business cards, stationary, brochures, direct mailings, letters, yellow page ads, and anything else you can think of

Once people are at your site, give them a reason to stay. Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes - if you randomly found this website, would you find it useful? Professional? Worthy of bookmarking? If not, start thinking about why!

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