A recent study found that only about a third of businesses have a strategy for their online marketing.

What are the rest doing?

Sometimes, they're setting up a web site and hoping it does... whatever web sites are supposed to do. Sometimes, they're following the latest fads they read about: this week it's Twitter, next week it's MeetUp, last week -- well, nobody remembers last week.

Sometimes they're doing nothing at all.

Web marketing, like all marketing, requires a strategy. You wouldn't conduct your other marketing with random stabs, and you won't get the best results by conducting your web marketing that way, either. A good strategy based on data, a commitment to follow through on the strategy, and a plan for gathering the information you need to track results and fine-tune your plan -- these are the elements of a successful web marketing strategy.

At Onsharp, we meet with you to discuss your objectives. We develop a complete web marketing strategy for you. We collect data and report to you regularly on the progress your efforts achieve.

This is our 3-D process: 

• Discover
• Develop
• Deliver

Visit our process page to learn more about how we do it. Request your free 3-D glasses, too, so you can see the page in 3-D! Visit our resource center for more to read and watch about online marketing.

When you're ready to take action, contact us.  It's the first step toward a web marketing strategy that will make you stand out from the competition.

Where do your customers come from?

Increasingly, the answer is "from the Web."

Most Americans now go directly to the internet, rather than the phone book. 80% of people in their thirties and forties shop online, as do more than half of senior citizens. 25% of shoppers in a recent survey said they always begin their shopping online, even when they plan to finish the transaction in a brick and mortar store.

There are some inplications here for your business.

First, you must have a web presence. This is no longer optional for any business. If you don't have a web site, your business will be invisible to a large percentage of your prospective customers.

Second, your web site needs to be good. The days when a simple page put together by a hobbyist could compete online are past. Since all your competitors are on the Web with you, you need a professionally designed, well-optimized web site. 

Third -- and this one might be less obvious -- you won't always be able to recognize the leads from your web site. If you thought that you could guess who found you online, or that your online sales or emails were the way you could measure your web results, you'll need to change your mind.

How do your online leads reach you?

• They call you. Since most of us now use the internet the way we used to use a phone book, your online visitors will find your phone number and call you.
• They walk into your business. Using the internet instead of the phone book brings your Web leads to your door. Using the internet for comparison shopping also brings customers into your place of business -- as long as your web site is designed with that in mind.
• They e-mail you. When customers e-mail you, you probably recognize them as online visitors. However, if your customer base includes young shoppers, you should know that they are less likely to e-mail than people in their thirties or forties. If you cater to the teen or student crowd, your web site should offer alternate means of online contact, such as Twitter or instant messenger, as well as phone numbers.
• They buy online. E-commerce continues to grow, in spite of economic uncertainty. In fact, since consumers believe that they can get the best deals online, economic uncertainty encourages online shopping. If you currently have an information site without an e-commerce option, it might be time to change that. Offer free in-store pickup to encourage local sales and benefit from the e-commerce boom at the same time. 

What are your action steps? Make sure your web presence carries the message that strengthens your business. Make sure you're providing the range of contact options your current and potential customers and clients need. And don't discount the power of your web presence to grow your business.

Contact Onsharp  -- by phone, in person, or by e-mail -- to learn how our exclusive 3D process can increase your leads and empower your business. 

If you've been reading this series of blog posts, you've made some progress with your web marketing strategy. You have a web site. Your customers can find your web site. They have a reason to come and visit your website repeatedly. Now, harness the power of hyperlinks to help your site reach its full potential. Hyperlinks -- usually just called "links"-- are words or phrases like the ones underlined in the previous sentences, which you can click on in order to visit another site that's related to the subject you're reading about. In this case, our links are heading to Parts I and II of this series of blog posts on "Making the Most of Your Online Investment."

Links are the internet's energy source.  Search engines use them to decide which sites are most trustworthy and important, and even to confirm the subject of a site. Perhaps even more important, they can bring traffic to your web site. When another site links to your web site, visitors to that web site can click on the link and visit yours. And, since a web site that they've already chosen to visit has suggested to them that they should visit you, they're likely to do so.

How can you gain links?

The easiest way is just to ask for them. People who do business with you can often give or trade links with you. Your suppliers, your vendors, and your customers will often be glad to offer you a little space on their web sites. Be ready to explain how your web site can be interesting or useful to the people who visit their web sites. And you might want to add a links page or section to your web site, too, so you can include links that will be helpful to your visitors. That allows you to swap links with businesses which share your target market.

Sometimes you can create links yourself. Do you have an account with any social media or business network site? Most of them allow you to post links to your business web site.

Here are some to consider:

• Facebook
• MySpace
• LinkedIn
• ZoomInfo
• Twitter
• Care2
• CafeMom
• Multiply
• Ryze
• Spoke
• Yelp

The thing to remember about social network sites is that they're for relationship building. You probably can't really build strong relationships at all the possible social media sites -- at least not if you still have a business to run. Set up a profile at each, with a link to your website, but don't try to keep up with all of them. Choose one or two and spend time there and get to know people. This will give you the maximum traffic -- and it can be fun and useful for networking, too.

You can also add your website to local directories in your area. Go to your favorite search engine and type in the name of your town and “local business directory” to find the truly local ones. Also consider these national sites with local pages:

• Hotfrog.com
• ShowMeLocal.com
• MerchantCircle.com
• MyHuckleberry.com
• Brownbook.net

It's time-consuming to add all these links, but worthwhile to establish your web presence. Choose your most tech-savvy staff to take on the job. If you'd rather not divert staff from essential tasks, contact Onsharp to learn how easily you can have our specialists take care of it for you. 

Congratulations! You have a new website. Now what?

You want to make sure that your customers can find you. Americans are now more likely to turn to the internet than to a phone book when they want basic information about a business. It's essential that your customers -- current ones and the ones who don't yet know that they're your customers -- can find you when they look for you at Google, Yahoo, or their favorite search engine.

Here's how that works: your customer visits Google, for example, and types in the name of your company. Google quickly searches around the web, looking for the best match for the words the customer typed in. Google finds your website, and offers it to the customer. The happy customer clicks on the name of your website, and ends up there. Unfortunately, it doesn't always happen that way. Sometimes your customer is offered other websites instead, and clicks on those sites' names, and doesn't end up at your website at all. Your goal is simply to make sure that the search engines recognize that your website is the best choice for the customer's search. 

How can you accomplish this?

The first and most essential step is to have a well-optimized website. This means that your site is designed, written, and built in such a way that search engines can easily find it and understand it. Onsharp web designs are always well-optimized, so you don't have to worry about that.

The next thing is to call the search engines' attention to your website. While all the major search engines send "spiders" -- electronic searchers -- all over the web, the truth is that large parts of the information online aren't indexed, or visited by the search engines. You can make sure that your website is found simply by telling the search engines that you exist. Click on the links below and follow all the instructions carefully to be sure that the search engines know you're online now.

• Yahoo!
• Google
• MSN
• DMOZ
• GetListed

We'll give you more ways to make sure the search engines offer your website to your customers in Part II.

Still, we know that you have a business to run. We'd like you to know that if you find the process of web marketing too time consuming or confusing, Onsharp can do it for you. Contact us to find out how easy it is to improve your return on your online investment.