I love technology, I love innovation, I love disruption. I don’t like seeing good things fail, because of too much attention spent on things that aren’t as important as other things.
In my opinion, too many conversations in business start with “What happened to XYZ company?”
And the answer usually sounds like, “yeah, that company (or idea) was cool (great or useful) but they had no sales.”
Don’t be one of these stories. Technology, ideas and innovation are an important part of a business, but they don’t mean anything unless you convert visitors or users into revenue. Revenue comes from meeting strategic goals, which comes from having your business in order.
Here are some ways to jumpstart your business on the web so you can fight another day
- Develop a great website: Know the attributes of your brand, know your goals, know your audience and develop a website that is congruent with the brand. If you do not know the top three — research the hell out of it until you do know.
- Be comfortable with your value: My friend, Francine Hardaway told me early on always to be comfortable with the value you bring to the table — then charge accordingly. (Sounds simple, but there are usually some psychological barriers to overcome. Deal with it.
- Marketing before more innovation: This is a tough one. Too many times I speak to companies who have some amazing technology or seem to be a great organization (at least it appears to be great from the outside) that has forgotten to allocate a budget for marketing. This is a bad move. If you market your product (or service) before getting finalizing the development of a product two things can happen: 1) you will create a community or buzz for early adopter, which if handled correctly will turn into revenue and 2) the market will tell you what they want from your product or service and you can develop or iterate accordingly. There is nothing worse than exhausting your run rate with a product that no one cares about. (Here’s a great example of this situation)
- Fuel your funnel: Invest some of your marketing budget in SEO, SEM and content marketing. Once people are coming to your site, bring them somewhere logical where they can convert. Have the proper forms setup onpage and make sure your Call To Actions are strong.
- Test everything: Test, test, test — review, refine, repeat. [Need I say more.]
This is a great place to start. If you tackle 75% of the above items you are in better shape than many other companies.
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