Lead Optimize Outsourced Marketing

Believe it or not there are still numerous small companies that do not have a website - at all. Many of the small (and medium) businesses that create a website often fall short somewhere along the way to having a great website that is effectively integrated with the company’s marketing and branding efforts. This is something of a New Website Marketing 101 for small companies.

Good Site! Follow Through

Let’s say your company has recently created a new website - maybe even your first website. It is beautiful, has great content, excellent contact forms, and even draws some decent leads. Now! Follow through with your site branding! Your domain name should be everywhere and I do mean everywhere - on everything you print, send out, give away, ship, sell, use, pass along, email, or leave behind. Every customer, vendor, or partner touch point should have your domain name prominently displayed on it. Site branding is about attaching your domain name to your products, your services your messages, and yourself.
Site Branding Blitz

Get the domain name to your customers and tell them visit the website. Tell them why they should visit it - to save money, better quality, first of it’s kind, free stuff, or new products.

Small companies cannot typically afford major media advertising but should do something more for site branding than just hoping for the best. Depending on the geographic size of your market, choose the most cost effective way to get your name out to as many prospective customers as possible. If your company serves a fairly small market, try a local radio station if there is one whose demographic matches your target audience. Try local magazines, newsletters, newspapers, or flyers.

Postcard Site Branding

Postcards are an excellent and inexpensive method of off-line site branding to get your name out to a lot of people for pretty cheap. I use Postcardmania when I do mailings for small businesses because they have excellent service (a dedicated rep), great card and image quality, and manage my postcard campaigns from end-to-end. I basically just send them the list of addresses and fill out their questionnaires. They design the cards, ask me to give the ok, and voila! Little specks of branding fairy dust are scattered to prospects across the lands.

Effective postcards work. You can see it in sales and in the above-normal site traffic that follows a mailing.

I like postcards for two main things - to educate and revive. Postcards are good for cheaply putting your website (site branding) and company on the radar of prospects who are not actively looking for vendors but who are receptive to learning about them. If you can get people to a lead optimized website a profitable percentage will buy and others will keep you in mind for later or tell someone about the site. Postcards also revive old customers by reminding them you are still out there and ready for their next order.
That’s enough about getting the word (and website) out - on to following through with the message.

Customers Should Hear What They See

Here is the front side of following through. Make sure everyone in the company is tuned in to the latest marketing efforts and knows about your website. You can use posters, emails, speeches, or pep-rallies to inform your employees but when prospects respond to your marketing the person they speak to should have an idea of why they might be calling - and what you are offering.

This is a usually a bigger concern if you are pushing special promotions or overstock items or the newest and latest products but a mixed message sends a powerful message to someone with money in his hand and it sounds something like, “return your money to your wallet and back away slowly.”
Sometimes this happens in small ways, too. Does your receptionist know your products well? Does he/she know what you do? What do you think you would hear if you asked? I have talked to receptionists who sounded like a spring morning on the phone but didn’t seem to know where they worked.
One method I like to use to make employees familiar with a website is to make the website a tool for everyone.
Ed Roach at Small Business Branding helps reinforce the idea of branding consistently and how expensive and wasteful it can be to NOT consider all of your brand stakeholders.

Keep Working on Site Branding

Site branding is not a one-time up-front task. Use email campaigns and newsletters, mailing lists, postcards, word of mouth, t-shirts, decals, a blog, and give-aways. Your website should be effectively pushed at all times by every method you can imagine. Get creative. Put your domain name in places you have never seen anyone write something (ok, don’t get carried away).

Your website is the only 24/7 salesperson you have. Tell everyone about him every chance you get.