Can you hear your market?

Many business owners believe that their website is doing all it can. It attracts some visitors each month and generates one or two sales leads, but nothing much else happens.

I can’t help but agree with them. Unless website owners actually believe their site is a useful (and very cost-effective) marketing tool they’ll never truly hear what people are saying about them online.

If you’re one of these website owners, I’ve got some really bad news for you. The old way of marketing online is very dead. If you build it, people will not come. They’ll be far too busy looking at the 5000 websites competing with yours (these are the websites with owners who do actually get the new Web and invest time to make it work for them).

So before you spend a bunch of money on your annual redesign, you might want to consider how these 4 changes can help you get more from your online marketing effort:

1. Start a blog. Blogs are great tools for website owners. Not only can they function as content management systems, they are great ways to start a conversation. And believe it or not, people want to start conversations with companies ready to listen.
2. Get involved with social media. If you thought only your kids were using Facebook, you’d be wrong. Corporate social networking is growing fast. CEO’s are all over Facebook, Linkedin, Ning, Myspace and countless others. They don’t do it for fun. They do it because they know that they’re giving people more opportunities to speak their mind.
3. Have your content rewritten. When was the last time you actually read your website content? Do you think potential customers care about mission statements and bland product descriptions? They don’t. People want to see into the heart of your organization. They want to know exactly how you can help them. And they don’t have time to fish for information. When customers ask for information on your website and it doesn’t exist, ask why? If it could be useful, write about it.
4. Design in accordance with web standards. Web standards are great. You don’t need to know how HTML and CSS interact, but you do need to know that your website will perform more effectively if it’s accessible to all users on all platforms, and that search engines are happy to index it. The more people who can hear you, the more feedback you’ll get.

Other than time and a bit of money, these aren’t really monumental tasks. Commit to these ideas and you’ll be able to speak to people who care. And if you listen carefully you’ll hear plenty.

If you're new to thinkdave.com, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. That way, you'll get to know about all the good stuff as it happens!

Related articles

• 5 Internet marketing tools that will always work
• Fancy a free website optimisation report?
• Website management: Finding my direction after 18 months of searching
• Website planning 101
• Over 1100 backlink opportunities for website owners