by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
Revised March 2, 2005, originally written December 12, 1996
Real estate brokers tell us of three important factors in
appraising a particular piece of property. They are, in this
order: location, location, location. Translate to marketing your
business on the Web and these become content, content, content. For
business Web sites, it usually means information.
Pocket Change
Benjamin Riggnor wants to move his small coin collecting shop
(don't bother looking this up, you won't find it) to the Web, so
he can reach a global audience, rather than just people in McLean
Co., Illinois. On a limited budget he hires a web designer
and ends up with three webpages:
Welcome page which also tells about his business
A list of 60 coins he feels would be of wider interest
An order form
He advertises his website to the basic search engines, and
after a few weeks, if he searches hard, he can find Riggnor Coins
under the words "coin collector".
He gets a few hits, sells a few coins. But mainly he wonders:
What's wrong? The answer is found in a word: Content.
To differentiate yourself from the hundreds, perhaps thousands
of competitors, you somehow need to develop compelling content
-- information -- which will draw the coin collectors of the world
to your website. There are several options, most of which could
be adapted to your particular business, and all of which take
some work.
Developing Content One Page at a Time
Benjamin, why don't you develop a photo gallery of rare coins with a brief history of each specimen.
Why don't you call it "100 Rare Coins of the World
for Serious Collecting." What a mouthful, you say. Purposely.
Web search engines will index on words in a title as well as other
words on a page. What words might someone type in to a search
engine
to find coins? Rare, coins, collecting. You get the idea.
If you don't have 100 yet, do what you can and tell people you
are working toward your goal of 100 by next summer, and then keep
at it.
Now you begin to develop this one webpage for each coin. Make
sure your web designer creates a template page you can use
to create new, similar pages yourself with an HTML editor such
as Microsoft FrontPage.
One hundred Web pages is a lot, you protest. Yes,
but it increases dramatically your chance being seen
on Google under "coin collecting." It becomes an increasingly valuable resource which is both visual
and written. While you're doing this, why don't you begin a free
e-mail newsletter your Web visitors can sign up for. Each week or two you
include the text of your latest Rare Coins, plus a
list of coins for sale. Now your work is doing double
duty: it is will increase your sales as well
as attracting new coin collectors to your site.
Riggnor is giving too much away, you say. Yes, but he's attracting a growing stream of people who never would have noticed him before, people who have a strong interest in what he is selling.
This kind of plan takes a while to execute, but once you develop
some momentum, you find that more and
more people come to visit. There's a great line about patience
in the classic film "Casablanca" where Humphrey Bogart
says to Ingrid Bergman: "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow,
but soon, and for the rest of your life." That's the way
you have to look at building content. You may not see the results
today or tomorrow, but ....
Create a Center
Years ago
Richard Soos created the "Electronic Money Tree," a marketing e-zine created entirely from free articles written by marketers who get exposure for their services on his site. Mention in Yahoo Magazine and others brings lots of traffic -- and people return to read the next issues, since he renewed content monthly and reminded former visitors via e-mail.
Nancy Bargine,
President of Impressa, targeted business people who are also
do-it-yourself webpage developers. She has assembled a variety of tools and information
for promoting a website.
Articles she had written
Links to websites offering related software tools
Lists of linking sites on the Web
A new, reasonably-priced software tool which enables small
business people to do ongoing website promotion from their desktop.
Her carefully-built "center" attracted increasing
numbers of visitors. Note that she gave a lot away.
That is what brings visitors. She also sold a product related to
the content which she was giving away, but adding to it.
What should you offer in your center? First, define demographically
who are the best customers for your products or services. Then
ask yourself, what do these people enjoy? What do they do with
their spare time? What do they need which I could provide them?
The better handle you have on your prospective customers, the better
you can design content to attract them. Note:
content does not have to be closely related to your product, but to your prospective customers' needs and desires.
Why don't
you set a goal to build a "center" designed
to attract increasing numbers to your website. Hey! If it can
work for Benjamin Riggnor, it can work for you.
