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Stop Flushing Your Online Marketing Dollars Down the Toilet

by Jennifer Beever

ToiletWhat’s the point of spending money to drive traffic to your web site… …if you’re not getting a return on your investment? Several of our new B2B clients came to us with this very frustration. After years of hearing about the benefits of search engine optimization and/or pay per click advertising, business owners finally bit the bullet and invested in these tactics. So why are their online marketing dollars not turning into sales revenue?

There are two main reasons your spend on online marketing can be like flushing money down a toilet.

1. SEO Has Changed

First, search engine optimization techniques have drastically changed in the last three to four years. Some SEO companies keep doing the same old tactics – and you’re expecting but not getting great results. The old tactics (metatags, alt tags, keywords, links) have some value, but what’s more important is strategic and relevant content on your web site and on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. You need to crank out content that your prospects will find of value and that puts your company, product and services at the top of the list for the searches your prospects are doing. In all of this you also need to get your prospects, colleagues and customers buzzing about and “liking” you and your content.

2. Your Web Site Isn’t Sticky

What happens when a visitor comes to your site? Do they leave? Scratch their heads (or something else) and then leave? Do they read the one article they landed on because they searched for “chartreuse widgets” and then leave?

Your web site must be designed with your target visitor – not you – in mind! Then, your web site needs to be measured against objectives and tweaked or modified if you are not getting the results you expect.

Put together a great marketing plan to add relevant and strategic content to your online presence in 2011. Make sure that your web site is attractive and compelling to your target audience. Only then can you stop flushing precious marketing dollars down the toilet!

Photo from Flickr, Attribution Some rights reserved by Mai Le

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