10 Mistakes Business Owners Make Online - Part 2

Mistake 6 – No Pay Per Click Advertising

The sixth mistake ties in with the fifth mistake, and that’s a lack of pay-per-click advertising. And what’s pay-per-click advertising? Well, if you go to Google and you do a search on anything, you’ll see on the right-hand side there are ads. They look like little boxes. You actually pay for when anybody clicks on your ads.

Now, if you're a local advertiser, you can get very cheap ads by just advertising locally in Google, and it’s very easy to set up. So, you should really concentrate on whether you're in Toorak in Melbourne or you’re on the Gold Coast or in a country town such as Coffs Harbour, Albury - Wodonga Pakenham, anywhere like that.

You could actually do local search engine, pay-per-click search engine advertising very cheap, and you can also pick up national and international traffic as well. So, pay attention to having a pay-per-click advertising either through Yahoo or Google. They're the two main ones and they reach about 90% of the search engine traffic.

Mistake 7 – No Merging Online with Offline

The seventh mistake is a lack of merging online with the offline. And what I mean by that is there’s very little thought about advertising your website offline, in terms of classified ads, because if you're running Google ads like the previous strategy, you can do split testing quite easy and you’ll find out which ad works best.

Now, if that ad works the best online, the wording’s also going to work offline. So, simply get that ad that works the best on the Internet and use it in classified ads. The other thing I would add in there is a phone number when advertising offline.

So, really advertise your website offline. Work out systems to collect an email offline to bring online, and bring your online offline as well. And there are many ways of doing that, but you really must put these systems into place to really get a lot more success on the Internet.

Work out systems that your sales people can use to follow up leads from your website. Does each sales person have their own unique page? Do they have their photo and welcome audio? These things really help to connect with your clients or customers.

Mistake 8 – Tactics Vs Strategy

Another mistake is really big as well. It’s tactical versus strategical. Most businesses are very tactical. They’ll go out and they’ll do one tactic at a time. A tactic might be submitting articles or getting links so you can get more traffic, but what’s your strategy?

The strategy of the entire site and how that fits into the strategic business is much more important. We must think about: how your business is set up; what sort of staff can handle the orders’ what can they do; what’s your strategy for merging your whole business into the website?

Because the business is the big part, the website is only one marketing tool and one aspect of your business, but it’s a very powerful aspect because you don’t need as big ads to sell. You just need your offline ads to go back to your website and let the website do the selling.

But what’s your strategy for doing that? And if you're concentrating on tactics, you may be too haphazard. You need actual strategy and structure and systems that fit into building website success. Find out what fits into your business strategy, and work your website backwards from there. Do you have procedure manuals/ documents in place that tie in with your website?

Mistake 9 – No Immediate Action

The ninth mistake I see that business owners make is a lack of incentive to take immediate action by the end user. And there’s very little on the Internet, very little reason to call now or to ring you now or to email now. So, you must think of incentives.

Now, an incentive could be a free report (like this one), a free DVD, a free quote, a free audio. So, all these things can be available on the Internet.

Now, for example, if you're a hairdresser you could put, “Hairdressing tips to sign up for a newsletter.” Simply these days “Sign up for our free newsletter” is not enough. You must give incentive for people to leave their name and email. You almost have to sell the fact of people submitting their name and email to you, so really think of the incentives, what’s the bonus.

I like to see a starburst on the website saying, “Free audio valued at $250 shows you the 7 mistakes of termite pest control people,” whatever your business is, “the 7 real estate mistake,” or “How to increase your turnover using accounting, tax reduction,” anything. Whatever your business is, there’s always something you can educate your end users and clients with, because people like to be educated; they don’t like to be sold, because when you educate, it actually sells itself naturally, which creates excellent systems.

So, think of ways to get people taking action. It might be in your voice on the website asking them to pick up the phone and call you now, or directing people to leave email, leave their name and you’ll get back to them within 24 hours. Or it could be a video of yourself talking on the Internet as well.

Mistake 10 – No Modern Technology

Which leads us to the tenth mistake, and it’s a lack of use of modern technology such as video and audio on the Internet.

Ten years ago, product demonstration videos for business were very, very popular. And they still are popular, but to use them on the website to show you your best use of products is very powerful. So, if you’ve got a product that can be demonstrated, put it on the Internet as a video.

If you’ve got a service that can be sold by showing, using pictures and words, put that on the website as well. You can use video to connect with your end clients and you can also get traffic.

If you can educate people, for example, you can actually go to UTube.com or Google video and put your videos up. That will also get you search engine traffic. Put an audio on your website, educate people about the uses of your business, or you can use it for the marketing, like I said earlier.

So, think of modern uses, because if you incorporate audio, for example, there’s a term called podcasting. Podcasting is you can go and talk about anything that you like and anything that ties with your business. You do that once or twice a week, you’ll get a lot of followers, a lot of listeners coming to your website. And you can suck in a lot of traffic using podcasting and video, when done correctly. So, use modern technology and don’t be scared of it.

Now, if you’ve got a TV commercial, put it on your website. Don’t be afraid to put it on your website, because if it’s sitting there, what’s the point? If you have to pay for it every time it gets aired at a television station; and I used to work in television, I know about this; it’s dead time.

But if you'll put it on your website, you can make full use of your commercial and it doesn’t cost you any extra money when they play your commercial on your website. Same for your radio ad, put it online too.

You are welcome to pass this report on to other Australian business owners who may get benefits from the information presented.