Professional Web Services, Specializes in Internet Marketing, Online Advertising, SEO - Search Engine Optimization, and B2B & B2C Web Branding.

Is Your Online Marketing and Business Website Sales Oriented?

With much online talk about having information for the search engines to find, and information from a marketing and advertising standpoint, many times the overlooked area for Internet marketing are the call to action items or lack thereof.

Information is certainly one of the prerequisites for any website to have today. But, it is important to consider that while a web page can be an information provider, it should also have a call to sales oriented action item.

Call to action items as the name implies requires something for the reader to do. For example, having a web page and not giving a link to provide more information is leaving your reader hanging. If a visitor reads a page and finds it interesting, then provide a call to action that is creative, engaging, and highlights the topic at hand. Simply saying contact us is not the best way to do it. Having a hyper link to a contact page is good, but an even better solution is to engage the reader to interact with the page topic itself. If you are talking about your product or service then provide a colorful means of enticement to click a link. Consider using the words of the product or service in the call to action item.

If you are offering a free consultation then hyperlink the words free consultation.

With billions of web pages on the Internet, a business needs to get a little more creative in their marketing approach to Internet marketing. Engineers, buyers, and consumers are tired of the same approach. Give them something different, something that is of perceived value, and the contact conversions will occur much more frequently.

This also factors into another topic of online advertising. Online advertising in the form of Pay-per-click (PPC) and Pay-per-thousand views (PPM) are two of the more common types today. Each of these forms of advertising require some form of landing pages. Even banner ads, when clicked on take a web surfer to a landing page. If your landing pages are not sales oriented, it is likely that your business will not have very good sales conversions. Each click of the mouse is a step in a potential customer becoming a true customer. Don't leave them hanging on a page with them saying to themselves, "that's nice but now what?" Don't make them scroll to the top of the page in order to contact the sales department. This is especially true for the B2B Business to business buyer, because chances are they are ready to get more information if they clicked on your ad in the first place.

So, before you spend a ton of money on an online advertising campaign, make sure your website is properly set up with call to action items, with hyperlinks in the copy of the pages, and engaging text that is sales oriented.

For your B2B and B2C business solution, contact Professional Web Services for your free Internet marketing evaluation.

Labels: B2B, B2C, Business, Internet_Marketing, Marketing

  

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Strategic Marketing a B2B, Business to Business Company Involves Teamwork From The President Down

Getting everyone on the same page for B2B marketing strategies can sometimes be the toughest part of a president's job. As Internet marketing specialists, Professional Web Services needs to get the feedback from our business customers, concerning their customers through the sales and marketing personnel of what is happening with online advertising campaigns, website landing pages, information requests, referral leads, and current and future products or services. In addition to this direct information from sales and marketing, there is a need from the engineering department to provide the nuts and bolts information of what is being designed, manufactured, or fabricated for their business customers. All of this information must be taken into account when maintaining a website.

As technology changes, or improvements are made in the manufacturing processes, it is important to share the information in a way that does not directly divulge intellectual property rights of either the business being served, nor of the company processes themselves. Simply staying quiet is no longer an option for businesses today. B2B Businesses jump ship as quickly as they can do a search online for the next manufacturer, fabricator, or the technology expert that can solve a problem with a (Wow I didn't know I could do that!) new solution.

In addition to the competitive nature of just about every industry on the planet today, there is an international competitiveness, that the Internet has made our planet into a very small world indeed. China for one example has become a powerhouse. With their low overhead in labor rates, along with their relatively week adherence to pollution controls, companies in the developed sectors are having their products, OEM parts, and components built in China at a fraction of the cost of what any of the developed countries in the world can build them for.

Take for example, the PCB industry. As recently as ten years ago, the United States was king in the manufacturing of printed circuit boards. However, the Internet has made the United States a past performance item for PCB manufacturing. I have visited many printed circuit shops and can tell you that the United States can't build a circuit board at the prices that are quoted from China. The raw materials, laminate prices, copper costs, and carbide drills alone are more than what many of the boards can be built here in the USA.

The Internet has also made it easy to transfer information at light speed from one end of the globe to the other. Computers process the data in a fraction of a second. Software programs are used in India to generate the circuit board data from Gerber files. Drill and rout programs can automatically be generated and then transferred to a Chinese manufacturing plant where labor rates are a fraction of anywhere else in the world.

Businesses have squeezed their suppliers so much, that many of them have simply gone out of business. Is there any doubt, in anyone's mind that we are living in a very competitive landscape? For this reason alone, it is important to maximize a business's exposure online.

The Online Landscape

But, that brings us back to the teamwork scenario. A B2B business has to work as a team from all facets, in order to maximize the marketing potential available through the online landscape. The online landscape is ripe for opportunities. To take advantage of the situation is like playing a baseball game. Everyone must work together in order for the team to be successful. Take for example of managing an online advertising campaign. Web metrics can only do so much. Sure a person can figure out the conversion from impressions to clicks, but can a person tell with Web metrics alone, how many of these clicks became actual customers? No way. Web metrics can give you an idea of what percentage of people that click on an online Ad go to a specific page, or sign up for a specific item, but Web metrics alone can not tell you for sure if they became a customer later on down the line. The only way to get exact details is to ask.

Why is the Concept of People Metrics so Foreign?

This goes to the first contact principal. When dealing with a customer for the first time, does anyone ask the simple question how they found your business? So, a person says they found your business on the Internet. Great, but did they click on an Ad, did they click on the website in the search results, did they come from an online directory, did they already know your name and search for your company using the search engines, or what was the keyword, keywords, or key phrases were typed into the search bar at Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft Live Search to find your company on the Internet?

The importance of feedback can not be overstated. Without feedback, a company has no way of knowing of how successful anything is. This requires the first or second contact person asking the simple question, and documenting that information for upper management, sales and marketing, and the person or group in charge of Internet marketing and online advertising campaigns.

With solid marketing information, the Internet marketing specialists can make adjustments to online advertising campaigns and improvements to the website design for better overall customer conversions.

Engineers Need To Tell Stories

Many of the businesses that are looking for solutions for manufacturing of their products, or technology solutions to a particular software or hardware issue, often converse with the resident engineers of many of the manufacturing, fabrication, or software technology companies in the world. How often are these stories being shared between what an engineer has talked about with a customer and the sales and marketing staff, or the Internet marketing team? If everyone is just doing their own job mode, your business is missing a wonderful sales and marketing opportunity.

Internet marketing experts do not magically know the inside scoop from each and every business in the world. Every market sector has its own unique set of keywords used. The only way online marketing personnel can learn about that information is for it to be shared with an individual or the Internet marketing team. Companies that supply technology services, or various OEM products to a wide variety of fields, will have a different communications language with the engineers from those market sectors. That is why, it is important to share that information with the team.

Teamwork is your B2B key to success.

Make Professional Web Services part of your marketing team and we will go above and beyond what your expectations are with Internet marketing services designed to produce results for your company. It's all a matter of Results Oriented Internet Marketing Services.

Labels: B2B, Business, Internet, Internet_Marketing, Marketing

  

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Website Information Is Required.

The number one thing required in a business to business website is to provide pertinent information for customers and future customers to find via the search engines online.

While e-commerce B2B websites must be focused on providing an easy means of order taking and checkout, and also secure shopping carts, there are large numbers of businesses that sell to other businesses in which true e-commerce is not a factor. These business websites that are structured for information, marketing, and advertising purposes, are really about how well the information is marketed online.

Are You A Good Story Teller?

Marketing a B2B business today, especially online, requires good story telling to bring a marketing message alive on the Internet. When marketing online, creativity is a must. Sure, it is wise to keep a message simple, but keeping a message simple from a search engine standpoint simply will not do. There are some things that can be done from a best practices approach for both the graphics presented and the website text copy that can help in this area.

Here is one question that is important to consider. How many businesses compete in your market sector; five, ten, fifteen, or more? How many of these businesses have websites that look like the others. Does your business website look like the competition? If the website looks like all the others, what will set it apart? More than likely, it will get lost in the search results.

Having a website online forces you to write down the key points about your business, and this is good. If you are going to have a web presence, then you should try to make it all it can be. Don't skimp on what is said. Don't dismiss the importance of a website either. The old ways of doing business with just advertising in the Yellow Pages, simply will not produce the same results that it did fifteen or twenty years ago. You must have a web presence to compete in most markets today.

Everyone is searching online. Businesses are no different than the rest of us. Engineers and buyers are using the Internet and specifically the search engines as the new B2B Exchanges. Tell me, why would any company want to be left out in the cold. Maybe you are thinking, "my business is such a specialty market, and everyone knows me throughout the whole market place, there is no need to have a web presence." These types of thoughts are not very logical today. Even if you are correct in your analysis (which I highly doubt), don't you think existing customers would want to find your phone number or email contact information online?

OK, now your thoughts say, "I am convinced that a website presence is required. Where do we start?" you might ask. Well, I'll bet that you probably have brochures or something in writing that talks about what it is that your company does. That certainly can be a good starting point for prompting you into writing some items down. Once these thoughts are written out, a good copywriter can come up with the essence of what to say in a website. Writing something down in an idea form has been some of the toughest hurdles to overcome for many businesses. Years ago, where "word of mouth" was everything for many businesses to promote themselves, will not necessarily work the same way as before. There is too much competition, from the local markets and the international markets in which price seems to have more of an impact today than ever before in all lines of business.

Having a website published is not the end. Don't make this mistake into thinking that you never have to update your website. Your competition will surely not sit idle with their websites, and more importantly their marketing efforts online. Evaluating the impact of every marketing strategy, will be important for the next move to be made. Just like in a chess game, where competitors are looking five or more moves ahead, so to must a business evaluate the next moves ahead.

It is important to note that many of the marketing moves online will not have an immediate impact on a businesses bottom-line. There are however a couple of things that can make an immediate impact. Search engine marketing, also known as online advertising is a quick way to get a business started. This is because keywords can be bid on through the search engines themselves. If you bid high enough for your keywords then you can get your ad to show up in the search results pages on the right or top side of many of the search engines. These results are paid for through this bidding action. The natural search results generally take more time and Internet marketing efforts to establish a website in the general population of search results. This is due to search algorithms making an automated calculation of the website's importance through a multitude of variables which each search engine keeps tight lipped about.

Search Engine Optimization, SEO is another one of those words that has many meanings, depending on who you talk to. The basic idea is to fine tune a website, optimizing the pages, to have the website rank better in the natural search results. Many individuals will say this is a one time process. I don't believe this to be correct. Search engine optimization must be ongoing. Much like an article written, there is usually more than one draft as time goes on. Even the simple things in a website much be updated annually. For example, copyright dates should be updated to reflect at least the attention to a website details. This can quite possibly make a bad first impression. A potential customer that comes to a website, with old copyright dates, tends to think that maybe the business does not pay particular attention to details. Even though they might not say it, the question is now in the back of their minds.

There are many other factors that also must be addressed for a business website on a regular basis. But, you need to take the initiative, and start today with a website presence if you do not have one, or develop and improve what you already have online.

Contact Professional Web Services today to find out how our Internet marketing services can make a difference in your business's bottom-line.

Labels: B2B, Business, Internet_Marketing

  

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Are Customers Finding Your Global Or Local Business Online?
By: Jim Warholic

Internet Marketing and Advertising on Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Search engines.

In the competitive business world we live in, a business must be proactive with 20/20 business vision when it comes to marketing their company online. Any business that is selling products or services to other businesses in the case of B2B, or selling to consumers in the case of B2C would not dream of going without hiring some good sales people. Many times these businesses will be paying top dollar to get the best sales person they can. But, some businesses will neglect what I would consider the most important salesman for their company, their corporate website.

Presidents And CEOs

The buck stops here, with the president and CEO of a company. I am going straight to the top on this one. These are the people that are the ultimate decision makers. They provide the guiding force and direction for a company. While a president and CEO does not have to be a marketing genius, they do have to understand the marketing basics, at a fundamental level, for the health and well being of an organization. In essence a good president and CEO knows the importance of hiring the right people for the job. They know that good marketing is key for business success.

Many of the presidents and CEOs know hiring good people is key to corporate growth, but have not really grasped the importance of the Internet search engines, Internet marketing, and online advertising. They themselves use the Internet on a regular basis for searching all sorts of things but there is a disconnect between the searches they personally do and other people searching for what their business does. Small business company owners seem to be especially guilty of this Internet shortsightedness. Simply put, they are not seeing 20/20 business vision, and sadly they don't even recognize their poor business vision and the need for good business glasses. They have the misplaced idea that a website is just something you are forced to have in business, instead of wrapping their arms around it, promoting it, and realizing that the website is, or should be, one of their most important assets a company can have. This business mentality is not strictly limited to small businesses. Corporate America has a certain segment group that is just as guilty as their small business counterparts. They have gotten fat and happy doing business the old way and have not adapted to the changes taking place online.

Embracing Internet Marketing

Grasping the potential the Internet has for your business is absolutely paramount to focusing a fair amount of your marketing and advertising dollars online. A salesman can not be available 24x7 but the website can operate round-the-clock, and be accessible to customers that are looking for those frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the products or services your company provides. In addition, detailed information can be available to your customers at their browsing finger tips. Information such as application notes, drawings, manuals, material properties, and type specifications can be made available to customers.

The website is so powerful that it can do most of the work of all your sales force combined. This allows your sales force more time to concentrate on closing sales and building better customer relations. The fact of the matter is the website can help support the structure of the company and provide excellent tools for the sales department to use. Simply having the information at both the customer's and your sales department's fingertips will make everyone's job much easier and will result in more sales. Email's written can then be linked back to the specific information being requested. Customers will come to rely on your company's website as being a good source of information. This helps promote your brand and keeps the customer's focus on you, instead of the competition.

B2B, Business-to-business customers are becoming much more demanding in what they want from a source provider. They demand the information now. If you don't provide that information, it is just a matter of time before they go somewhere else. Maybe you have worked hard to build up customer relationships in your business. But in today's business climate, where the weather changes quickly, and customers are likely to get blown off course quickly by the competition, it is imperative to set aside a marketing and advertising budget and focus this toward providing a solid online presence.

Forget the smoke and mirrors approach with the website design. You must have substance, and that substance involves work, time, effort, and a fair amount of financial investment. To be sure, the website is really only the starting point from an Internet marketing perspective. The website must be promoted in the form of quality link building, continued website development in the form of new content and regular site maintenance updates, along with regular detailed evaluations and analysis. With billions of pages online, not to mention the online directories with sometimes hundreds of competitors lined up and down the pages there has to be marketing focus with ongoing keyword development and targeting of new market segments to really standout online.

The businesses that standout on the Internet, and standout first online with the search engines for their specific industries' keywords, will be in a position to capture those early sales leads and new customers.

As the owner, president, or CEO of your organization, you can do only so much yourself. Start today, set aside an Internet marketing and online advertising budget to promote your business on the Internet.

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Labels: Advertising, B2B, B2C, Business, Consumers, Internet, Internet_Marketing, Marketing, Online, Online Advertising, Search Engines, Web, Websites

  

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Understanding The Online Web
The Internet is becoming much more interesting in our Life and Times as time goes on. Staying up to date with the latest technologies available is most important for the B2B - Business to business, B2C - Business to consumer, and the C2C - Consumer to consumer world. Most Small Businesses today are not taking advantage of even a fraction of the power available through the Internet. The Web has created a solid foundation for marketing, advertising, and sales for all types of Small Businesses.

Large corporations for years have been using the Internet as a means of having their websites be a supplement and in some cases the main tools for bringing products and services to the market place. Large corporations have worked hard to establish their brand with the consumer or in the case of B2B; other businesses. For the Small Biz community however, many have not even thought about how they can establish their brand online through Web traffic on the local Internet markets.

Consumers are still buying things locally and are still using stores and services from their local communities. However, marketing and advertising in the past was through a Yellow Page Ad or the local newspaper. Things have changed. Now there is also a need to market and advertise a local business using the Internet. Consumers and Businesses are pushing the big Yellow Page Books off to the side. In fact, if you haven't looked at a recent Yellow Pages; the publishers are trying to reduce the costs to print these books by making the text type so small that you need a magnifying glass in order to read it. I have become most disgusted with our local Yellow Pages for this very reason. I am now much more inclined to go to Google Search and do a local search in my community rather than pull out the fine print.

Millions of consumers are using the Internet daily to search out small biz. These figures are growing, especially as High Speed Internet has become more popular. Local directories are sprouting up all the time. These directories are becoming a way of providing a link to your B2B or B2C website that can support your business. Having information related to the specifics of your business can be an excellent way of being able to market and advertise 24 x 7 x 365 days a year. See information about various small biz strategies and expanding market reach online.

We have heard the story from some businesses having had a website for years that, "no one ever comes to our website." In their mind they have written off the Web and their website as being, "a waste of time and money." These business owners have placed very little effort into marketing their business online through good search engine marketing strategies or what is known as SEO, Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is actually a misnomer. The term SEO or Search Engine Optimization and another term often used is SEM or Search Engine Marketing are actually terms used to describe optimizing a website for the particular keywords and keyword phrases to be found in the search engine searches for industry specific keywords related to particular fields of business. The search results pages for keyword queries can be a boom for sales on all types of products, services, organizations, and brands if a company starts being displayed in the search results pages. The SEO and SEM needs to be much more than just an optimizer of the company website. There are hundreds of onsite variables that affect the ranking of a website. Additionally there are countless other offsite variables that directly affect a website showing up in the results pages. For example from a Search Engine Algorithm, the quality of, and the topics of other websites that link directly to another Web site is a key variable. Certainly as Search Algorithms have been improved over the years has had a direct impact on the value of links from other sites. See: Search Engine Optimization Question

The process of marketing and advertising online is in a state of flux for B2B, B2C, and C2C. But, that is no different than having to battle the competition in other media outlets for any business. The Search Engine Companies are looking for the best results possible. Search Engine competition is good for the consumer. If there was only one search engine on the horizon, with one group of search engine results, and only one online advertising model, then they would have a monopoly online. The search engine company could make it so no other website could ever get into the natural or organic search results. A monopoly search engine company could force everyone to start paying for online advertising. This however, would be very foolish indeed. Consumers and businesses are free to use Google, Yahoo, MSN or any number of other smaller search engines that are starting up.

Trust is the key. Without trust and another all to often forgotten concept, Internet ethics, consumers could very easily migrate to other search services. Search as we know it is quite new. In just the past ten years we have seen Search develop into what has become an Internet marketing facilitator. The whole process of search can be summed up for the business world as a Marketing Middleman. The industry for business is about connecting buyers to sellers; matching up the needs of some with the products and services of others, and focusing on the transfer of information from one entity to another. If everything was Black and White it would surely make for a very dull colored world. That is why we will continue to see innovations, new technologies, and powerful online programs that will provide a great benefit to all business in the world.

The future of Search is limitless. I suspect in another ten years that we will be blown away at the power at our fingertips. Consumers and businesses will continue to embrace the Internet for eCommerce, research, and a host of other solutions that have not even been invented yet. The only question is; will you be on the forefront of the solution and embracing the Internet for your business?

To get your business found online contact Professional Web Services today. With powerful solutions for your B2B, B2C, or C2C business through Internet marketing services, Online advertising strategies, and Web branding solutions. Get the Business Solution today.

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Labels: B2B, B2C, Business, Consumers, Ethics, Internet, Internet_Marketing, Marketing, Online, Search, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, SEO, Web, Websites

  

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