A Radical Way of Viewing Your Website

(A.k.a, What Did the Greeks Ever Do For Us?)

Here’s a crazy thought…

Imagine you build a 5–star hotel in the middle of a beautiful forest complete with spa, gym and Michelin star restaurant.  Now imagine forgetting to build a road to it, or any signs or doing any advertising whatsoever.  It wouldn’t be a huge surprise when, on the opening day, no one turns up.

No one in their right mind would ever do this (except perhaps one or two of The Apprentice candidates) and yet it happens on the Internet all the time.

In my role as an Internet marketing consultant I regularly come into contact with businesses which set up their website and then (rather strangely) do nothing to promote it.

I think this is partly because most people view websites as a form of marketing in their own right.  However, websites are unusual in that they need the support of other marketing methods to generate and sustain traffic to them. 

A very famous marketing expert called Jay Abrahams suggested that successful organisations are structured like the Parthenon in Greece with the roofline being the business and numerous marketing methods being the pillars supporting it.  He suggested that any business which relies entirely on one marketing tactic (or pillar) would be at best precariously balanced and at worst heading for disaster should that marketing stream dried up.

So, the most effective way to support any business is to have several pillars of marketing supporting it.  In classical terms each pillar could be; direct mail, leaflets, advertising, website, word–of–mouth, etc.  In that way you are communicating and testing multiple approaches which will inevitably have greater success than being solely reliant on one.

It's my belief that the same logic applies to your website.  In order for the website is to be successful it to must have multiple pillars of marketing supporting it.  Even if you have the best website on the Internet it will remain the Internet's best kept secret if few visitors are attracted to it. 

There are many ways in which you can market your website.  For example, search engine optimisation, Google AdWords, joint ventures, affiliation with other organisations, blogging, engaging in forums, optimising your off–line marketing, using social marketing and so forth.

The trick is to make sure that you are testing at the least five or six different traffic generating methods.  Research has shown that, on average, one–third will fail, one–third will be ‘okay’ (providing you with bread–and–butter traffic) and the final third will create exceptional results.  Unfortunately, there is no rule which states which method works best in your organisation – you can only find this out through experimentation.

Research has also shown that there is a direct relationship between the number of pillars of marketing supporting a website and how successful that website is.  Remember, the more communications channels you open up more potential traffic you attract to your website.