I have suffered from probably the biggest mistake in marketing - Failure to market.

It's been a good 3 months since I last wrote a blog post. I went from a position of habit where I posted every week day and then got caught up in the day-to-day dealings of business.

It happens slowly. At first you miss one day and say to yourself - "It's OK, I'll post tomorrow" but soon it's been a week with no posts. "No problem, I'll post on Monday"
This happens week on week until the habit of marketing has become the habit of ignoring. The biggest problem is that I have a daily reminder to write a post that pops up on my screen every morning and I've gotten so bad that I ignore it, daily.

This isn't specific to blogging but applies to all your marketing efforts. You get too busy into developing your widgets or performing your service that marketing takes a back seat. Before long, you end up starting from scratch as you have no success to build on anymore.

Don't leave your marketing to when you feel like it. Marketing is the most important aspect of business - without marketing, you have no business.

The approach you take for your website should be very different to the approach you take when designing your brochure. They serve very different purposes yet so many seem to think they're the same.

Brochures by definition are limited because they cost a lot to produce and are therefore limited in space.
The focus in a brochure is to provide as much information in as little space as possible.
Because of this, many topics get crammed in with the sparest of detail and a lot of visual imagery to support it.

On the Internet, everything is different.
It is almost free to add more information to your website and space is almost unlimited.
This doesn't mean that you should waffle on about everything, but there is no reason to be brief either.

When you have a visitor on your website, they are a potential customer. This person is in your area of influence and where the site either works or doesn't.

For this person to be on your website in the first place, they must want something. It's either information, an answer to a question. There are some other reasons but for now I'm focusing on websites for businesses selling goods or services.

You have a visitor and they are looking for something that hopefully you have the solution to. But how do you convey that to this visitor.

The only way to convince a visitor that you have the answer they're looking for is to have enough information.

Every visitor comes with a different problem, a different context or world view and different questions.
In a real-world context, you would have the opportunity to talk with this customer about their needs and desires. You would ask questions and provide the answers that show your expertise, product capabilities and assure the customer that you have the solution.
In a retail environment, the customer would be able to touch and feel the product, feel it's weight, see it's size and twist and turn it to get a good all round impression of what you're selling.
This is not possible on the Internet.

There is no way to touch, feel, weigh, twist and turn a product on the Internet. The only way to convince the customer is to provide information.

What information should you include on your website? All the information needed to answer each different set of questions...
...that's a little broad but here are some ideas:

• Full technical specifications such as weight, dimensions, colours etc.
  
  
• Reviews - What previous customers have said about the product will help the customer know that it has worked for other people.
  
  
• Photographs - Lots of photographs. Include pictures of various angles and allow those pictures to be enlarged - seriously enlarged. When the customer requests to see a bigger picture, fill up the screen.
  
  
• Comparisons - show how your product stacks up to similar or alternate solutions.
  
  
• Context - Show the product next to an identifiable object. A picture of a product on it's own will not portray size however, placing the product next to an identifiable object such as a coin will make all the difference.
  
  
• Frequently asked questions - As you answer questions about your product or service, note the common questions asked and include them on your website.
  
  
• Infrequently asked questions - Some questions are never asked by customers but they can help convince them in a sale. Think of the information you volunteer to people to close sales and include that information as well.

Don't wait for a customer to phone you before you provide the answers to their question. Even if your website's purpose is to generate leads, you still need to provide enough information to convince someone that it's worth the effort of making contact with you.

If you provide enough information, visitors are more likely to find what they're looking for on your website and not leave to look elsewhere.

When arriving on your website from a search engine, is the visitor finding what they're looking for, or are they getting frustrated and leaving to try another site?

There are two ways a new visitor is going to find your website, a search engine or following a link from another website.
When using a search engine, a visitor is looking for an answer to a question. The phrase typed into the search engine is that question and the websites returned are expected to contain the answer.
If your website is in those results but you don't immediately show the answer, you are going to lose that visitor as he continues to search.

It is extremely important that the page of your website that the visitor arrives on is relevant to the search and very quickly identifies the fact that the answer lies within the page.

In fact, it starts earlier than that. On the search results page, the user is presented with your page title and description. This is where you need to do your best selling. Convince the visitor that your site is the most relevant and you are more likely to get the visitor to click through to your website in the first place.

The worst place a visitor can arrive on a website is the home page. The home page is too general and generally provides no specific information at all.
The home page is typically full of general information about the business and an overview of the products or services.
If the visitor was searching for a red tie, it is unlikely that the home page will have the red tie information. In fact, it may not even mention ties at all.

The best place a visitor should arrive is on the specific product page.
If searching for a red tie, the visitor should go directly to the red tie page with all the information on the tie, photographs and an opportunity to buy.
This way the visitor is getting exactly what he wants. The page is immediately relevant and he is unlikely to leave as the question is now answered.

Where a lot of websites make the biggest mistake is not having specific product pages at all.

The Internet is very different to the real world in that visitors are able to arrive directly in the place they want to be. They don't have to arrive at the clothing store and look for a tie. They can arrive at the clothing store - in the tie department - standing in front of the red tie they wanted.

If you don't provide this level of relevance, visitors leave with their questions unanswered and you lose out on potential business.

The Internet is a great medium to use for marketing your business. Why? The following are my 5 top reasons.

1. You are marketing to qualified leads

Traditional marketing is based on the rule of numbers. Show your message to as many people as you can so that you have the highest chance of being seen by your prospective customer. This can be focused a little by advertising in relevant publications or at the appropriate time of day but in the end, the advert is shown-to-many, responded-by-view.

The Internet changes this.

Search engines allow people to find only what they are looking for, when they want to. The table turns and now you market to a lead. The visitor is already pre-qualified in that they are looking for an answer to a question. This is targeted marketing at it's best.

The market is no longer a demographic but a set of keywords. Identify the keywords that your prospect is using, answer that question and you are in the best position to convert that person into your customer.

2. This is probably the most cost-effective marketing medium

It costs almost nothing to create and host a website. You can market your business with a single page on a free hosting account if you need to - it doesn't get much cheaper than that.
Pay per click advertising is also cost-effective if done right. You are only paying for clicks so you can show your advert to as many people as needed until you find the person ready to click. That person is your prospect and you only pay for the prospect.

3. Everything you do can be measured and tested

Almost everything you or your visitors do on your website is measurable which gives you a huge advantage over the alternatives.
You can track where a visitor came from, where on the site they went, when they bought or when they left.
If used correctly, this information allows you to refine your marketing, constantly improve it and increase your profitability.
You can see what works and what doesn't. In traditional advertising this type of measurement is extremely difficult to obtain, if not impossible.

4. It never stops

Your business is always open. You are able to help the person looking whenever they are looking.
Your website can continue marketing while you sleep, improving your ability to service customers.
Best of all, you're helping them when they want to be helped.

5. You can reach anyone, anywhere (provided they're on the Internet)

Traditional marketing has always had a limitation of reach. The publication is only available in one area, province, state or country so you would have to limit yourself to that area or work with publications outside of your knowledge space. You might not know enough about the magazine and it would be more difficult to create effective marketing messages to unknown territories.
With the internet, you can reach people across the world and while you will still encounter language and cultural differences, it is easier than ever to get your message out there.

The Internet provides a medium for marketing which is fundamentally different from traditional media. In the same way, the approach to marketing on the Internet must be different.
The 5 points in this post have highlighted the reasons I believe that Internet marketing is highly effective. Let me know if you have other points I haven't covered here (or if you disagree).

Seth Godin writes about reaching the unreachable, discussing the past practise of interrupting people who didn't intend to hear from you. This is the old big-net-catch-all method of showing your message to everyone in the hope that your target market hears you.

In the last few years, this model is being replaced. Call it permission if you want, or turning the world into the Yellow Pages. The web is astonishingly bad at reaching the unreachable.

It is extremely difficult to use the Internet to market a new concept. If people are not looking for what you are offering, it is almost impossible for them to find you.

The Internet has changed things from reading what the local news editor decided you should read, or watching the local TV broadcast to going out and getting what you want. People are using the Internet to find what they want, when they want.

If you have a new idea, you will need to frame it around existing wants and needs or you are going to have to find creative ways to get people talking about it.

Instead of trying to brute force your idea, get talking in the spaces closely aligned to your idea and lead people through a path of discovery. From that point, make sure you have something that people want to share with their friends.

John Jantsch writes an excellent post on the fact that the Internet is not a business .

too many small business owners look at the Internet as some sort of disconnected form of business - disconnected that is from the rest of their business.

I've said it before, The Internet is not a silver bullet, it is simply a medium for reaching and dealing with customers.

You still need a good product that people want or need

You still need to effectively communicate the benefits

You still need to grow relationships and;

You still need to provide service if you want to increase the profitability of each customer.

The Internet provides different ways of marketing and a number of ways of improving your business efficiency but you still need to include business fundamentals

I know there are lots of folks out there that will tell you ... that you can throw anything on the web and call it a business, but I'm telling you, it's not so, never has been, never will be.

Have you considered what you actually want from your website. I hear a number of people complain that their website is not doing anything but they have set no clear objective for their website.

Once again, having a website is not enough. It is not a given that a website will bring you business. Simply putting a website on the internet does not mean people will see it, and if they do, buy from it.

There are a number of things you could expect from your website:

• Brand yourself or your company
• Sell goods or services directly
• Provide service and support
• Provide information
• Build a community
• Reduce paperwork
• Reduce printing and/or mailing costs
• Generate leads
• Recruit new employees
• Generate advertising and/or affiliate revenue

Each one of these is a different result and requires a different approach.

You cannot expect your website to simply do stuff for you. You need to carefully consider what you want out of your website and then design and promote it accordingly. Only then will you be able to see a return on that investment.

The most common website I see these days is the four page website with the following pages: Home, Products/Services, About us and Contact us. This is the most basic of business websites and is often referred to as an online brochure.

I have recently spoken to a number of business owners with similar websites and they are wondering why they are not getting much activity from their websites. They have generally created their website because they where told that they "should have a website" and this is where they end up - On the internet but with nothing happening. The problem is that a website with this little information provides no insights into the business, no answers to searchers questions and generally no substance.

Brochures are short documents that give a quick overview of what a business does with some short anecdotes and contact details. Brochures are usually handed out after some form of initial contact with a person, such as at a show booth or for customers to pass on to their friends. This is great because the brochure backs up an experience with a real person who has hopefully provided more detailed information, answered questions or maybe even provided the experience needed to convince the prospect that the business is what he needs. In other words, the selling has been done in person and the brochure is used to back that up.

The other reasons brochures are so short is because printing costs money. Brochures are usually full of colour and on glossy paper which makes them even more expensive. These costs need to be taken into account and the result is that the brochure is short and to the point. These are all good factors considering the medium.

The Internet is different. There is no previous contact with the user and there is absolutely no reason to be brief. If you have met with a person and hand out your website address as a brochure, you are better off actually printing brochures as it will have far more impact. Even a well designed business card is worth more. When a user goes to the internet, he expects more information.

Putting information on the internet is extremely cheap and there is no excuse for limiting the amount of information you provide.

What information should I provide? - All of it!

A little tongue in cheek, but I'm serious, here are some ideas on the information you could provide:

• Think through the questions that customers commonly ask you and provide those answers
• Write articles on your industry, experience and insights
• Put your help manuals online
• Provide tips and tricks around your products or services
• Provide full information around your products including technical detail

The Internet is a cheap medium and is centred around information. Change your website to one that provides answers to all your potential and current customer questions, so that they can satisfy themselves about your business as they need, in their time. This will free you up from having to personally deal with all the queries and will improve your website's ability to be found on search engines as well.

At the core, the Internet is all about information. While it has been successfully commercialised, this has been particularly successful in the context of information.

People primarily turn to the Internet for information. They are looking for answers to their questions. Sometimes the question is a specific product but often is just a solution to a problem.

Search engines are the starting point for finding this information and they too operate exclusively on information. A search engine takes a page off the internet and looks at the text on that page to determine what the page is about. Other factors such as the context of other websites linking to the document are taken into account, but the content on the page itself is of extreme importance.

How is your website going to be found on the Internet if it does not have information?

The fact that people are generally looking for information and search engines won't know what your website is about without that information, you really need to get some information on your website.

This really sounds overly simple, because it is. Far too many websites exist with the most basic of facts and nothing of substance leaving them with no way to survive in this market.

You are competing with millions of other websites and you need to do something to stand out from the crowd. Good, quality content that provides the answers to the questions is where you start.