Making sense of Internet Marketing

Internet marketing covers everything from site-building and authorship to driving site visitation to converting visitors to sales or leads…but where do you begin?  What comes first, the plan or the site?  Definitely “the plan” comes first, and by that we mean the hard-work of figuring out what you want to accomplish with your online presence, who you’re trying to reach, what you’re going to say to them that is compelling and what action(s) you want them to take on your site.  You shouldn’t start building a site until “the plan” has been prepared.  Begin with the end in mind.  If the goal is sales, everything (both on site and off) needs to be designed with this goal in mind.  Identify the software and services that will help achieve this goal, cost it out and add these services to the plan.

Once the plan done, if you don’t already have a site, you’ll need to find affordable designers &/or developers.  Sometimes, but not always, these 2 skills are under the same roof.  Usually designers are not the best developers.  At the same time, developers most definitely are NOT the best designers.  You need to find a shop that combines the best of both worlds, or (alternatively) you need to contract with designers and developers separately, but you MUST make sure they work well and communicate well with each other…