We wanted to share with you three really great ways to jump start using your website in your business.

Too often, when we talk with business owners, their frustration consistently comes back to “I built a website, paid a lot of money for it and it is doing nothing for me”.  Granted that is a valid concern….. you pay for something and it is doing nothing for you, however, once we ask a few questions the symptoms are a lot alike:

• They never took the time to establish what the goals were for the business or the website
• They want to try to do everything themselves
• And they fail to act on anything that could help put their website to work

They just fail to have a plan for their business and act on it.  In fairness, the concept of “start marketing your website” can be overwhelming, especially when you are busy with sales, production, hr, benefits, payroll, office supplies, etc., etc.  A business owner has a tough job and requires wearing a lot of different hats.

That said, there really isn’t a more important job than promoting your business to keep the lead pipeline full.  So, we decided to offer up a few tips that we have found helpful with our clients and in our own business.

SET YOUR GOALS

It is very important for everyone concerned to know what to expect and you can’t have that unless your goals have been clearly outlined.  We find it is helpful to get an understanding of…

• what your #1 goal is for the business and if possible translate that to a dollar figure
• figure out how much visibility you are going to need for your business to reach that goal, and this does include both online and offline visibility
• identify what you are going to do in order to get that amount of visibility

STOP TRYING TO GO IT ALONE

We can offer solutions to help just about any client with their marketing.  Big budget, small budget, no budget.  However, if there is small budget or no budget at all this is going to require some real effort on their part to get things moving, BUT what we cannot help is lazy.  If the business has no budget and are not willing to roll up their sleeves and dig in to start working towards their goals there is not really much anyone can do and the outcome will remain the same.  Albert Einstein was famous for saying:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

What you need to realize is that, as the business owner, you are not in this alone and you don’t have to do everything yourself.  There are a lot of agencies that can assist with setting up your plan and tons of free resources on the web.  You just need to find what works for you, get some help so that you can focus on your business and have someone help you build that action plan.

AND FOR GOSH SAKE, DO SOMETHING

Go left, go right but go somewhere.  The #1 reason we find that business owners struggle and are frustrated is that they just don’t take any action.  Even if they have set their goals, took a course or bought some resources, they just never find the time to put it into action.

The most important part of this whole process is creating a plan for your business and then acting on it.  This is going to require you to spend some money or some time, but if executed the results will be far more productive than doing NOTHING.  Just pick one thing to focus on and try to do it, and consistently.  This is going to help you get into the habit of working on your business and will put that website you purchased to use and positive results will come from it.

We love to see things start working for businesses and when they do, it’s easy to trace back to ACTION.

If you are interested in getting started with your plan for your business, hit up an agency in your area or take advantage of our “Online Marketing Accelerator” program.  It’s free and offers a 30 minute consultation to get things moving in the right direction.