Marketing Strategy: Focusing Your Website Objective
One important part in marketing strategy is to set your website objective. There are basically two objectives to select from when deciding which one should be the primary focus;
- Getting found
- Making an impression
Let's use several examples to make the distinction clear. If you are a new or relatively unknown company and have a unique or unfamiliar product to sell, your objective will most likely be getting found. You can't sell your product until someone knows about it, so you need to attract potential customers to your website.
Similarly, if your company is established and well known locally but doesn't have a website that is search optimized to maintain awareness and build business, search optimization may be your most important objective.
In these examples you may choose to invest in optimizing your website for search rather than, for example, custom graphics or expensive animation.
In contrast, if your company already attracts significant inbound traffic and must maintain a high image profile, such as an ad agency, you may choose to invest in graphics and design rather than search. Your potential customers most likely know your name, and so you prefer to impress them rather than be found by them.
In reality, most companies will select elements of both objectives, and the objectives may change over time as the marketing objectives change. For example, you don't want a website that is not professionally designed and that alienates visitors.
In visual terms, think of your Web objective as a slider: one side of the scale is search optimized, the other side is image optimized.
For small businesses just beginning their Web programs or looking to refresh older websites, it will be advantageous to devote resources primarily to one objective and that objective will most likely be getting found.
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Mission: To help small and mid-size businesses capture the power of big-picture marketing.