Archives for May 2007

You may have a beautiful website sporting lots of flash and such, but if no one in your target market can find it, it’s not a very sound investment. A fully optimized web presence is designed from the ground up with keywords and tags strategically placed in the overall site structure to achieve specific lead generation goals. Once this foundation is firmly in place, you can augment your SEO (search engine optimization) efforts with a variety of practical and inexpensive ways that drive qualified prospects to your website.

Search engine optimization (SEO) – Online marketing is not as difficult or expensive as you would imagine. Just determine a niche you can dominate. Many online markets are not crowded. And it’s a safe bet that there are qualified prospects out there searching for the technology product, service or information resources you offer. So, to optimize your site, you don’t need to hire an SEO expert – just make sure your web developers plan ahead to get your site highly ranked on Google, Yahoo and other search engines.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising – Depending on your particular technology product or service niche, Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing offers instant, targeted and cost effective lead generation and outstanding ROI. The beauty of buying PPC adwords, is that you can set your budget for the number of clicks you want, and sit back and test the results. You can start with a budget as low as $200 a month. Plus, your PPC adwords will also help you build traffic which also helps your build your search engine rankings.

Online Newsletter Sponsored Links – Whatever niche your technology company serves, it’s likely that there are dozens of online newsletters with very high volumes of opt-in subscribers that may be looking for your product or service. These are not cheap, but produce high quality leads.

Banner Advertising – Let’s say your search engine analytics tell you that many of the qualified prospects that visit your site come from a particular website that offers banner advertising space. Running and testing a banner advertising campaign on a website with proven results makes sense.

Do you ever notice that some software companies show a software box on their website, and some don’t. Why is this? If it’s B2B software, it’s likely that is will never be seen on shelves at a retailer near you. Seems relatively useless doesn’t it?

Well, it’s not as dumb as you might think. Showing a box shot simply implies that your software product is an out of the box solution that is easy to install, use and maintain. It implies that you don’t need expensive consultants to integrate it into you infrastructure. So if your company sells software, particularly online, it’s easy to make the case for showing a box.

Do you ever notice that some software companies show a software box on their website, and some don’t. Why is this? If it’s B2B software, it’s likely that is will never be seen on shelves at a retailer near you. Seems relatively useless doesn’t it?

Well, it’s not as dumb as you might think. Showing a box shot simply implies that your software product is an out of the box solution that is easy to install, use and maintain. It implies that you don’t need expensive consultants to integrate it into you infrastructure. So if your company sells software, particularly online, it’s easy to make the case for showing a box.