Our firm works with many start-up companies and organizations that are expanding product or service lines.  One  struggle we see when it comes to kicking off any new venture, line or product is the battle between performance of marketing efforts and perfection of the message and identity.

The choice is easy, take performance every time.

I have a new client in the commercial lending space who came to me wrestling with the naming of his firm, the picking of a internet domain name for the firm and concerns about his logo. You could really tell he was struggling to “get it right” or “hit one out of the park”.

I listened to his concerns, and we kicked around ideas. I showed him several websites that are stunning in appearance, have great domain names and still don’t perform because they are not selling sites constructed of the right key words, the right structure, the right marketing systems to push traffic to them and actually convert to sales.

The juxtaposed situation  we all face in business today is the low cost of entry into Internet marketing, yet the time it takes to attract the attention of buyers. Don’t confuse low cost with quick results. Internet marketing and true sales funnel building takes time and the important thing to do is start now. In the early days of your Internet presence you wont have instant traffic so you will have a period of time to get your identity and message just right. Here are gems of advice to get you started;

1. Start by doing a key word analysis for your product or service. Build a lexicon of words that are already being searched on and have traffic. Pick out the keywords that get you into the flow of Internet search traffic.
2. Build your website from CMS tools like Wordpress or Joomla. These tools allow you to change your site rapidly without a developer. You can change the look and feel on the fly as well as the content.
3. Submit your key word dominated site to the search engines and get you in the race for traffic.
4. Integrate your new site to social media giants like Facebook and Twitter. Jump into   the stream
5. Develop effective landing pages that sell and convert
6. Implement a CRM and marketing automation tool that allows you to track all of this, manage the flow and effectively follow up on the leads.
7. Start your outbound marketing efforts
8. Tweak your identity and gussy up your site. In the early days you wont have enough traffic to worry about missing the mark too bad.

I have over simplified this as there are very key actions to take but the truth is you will never “get it right” the first time. The most important thing to do is act now and begin the journey. Because you have selected the right tools, you will be able to be nimble, learn and adapt.

Stay connected but don’t go broke doing it.

Connect with you later.