Want to improve your online marketing? Watch The Jetsons!

When I was eight I used to rush home from school each day to watch the cartoon show the Jetsons.

I loved their future world and their silly jokes. But each time I tried to watch the cartoon, my Mom would immediately ask the dreaded question – “Have you done your chores yet?” At which point I would groan, leave the TV and head upstairs to do my daily house duties.

I remember wishing my chores could be handled like Elroy Jetson’s – all he had to do was push a button and his automated world would do it for him. (But he would still groan when his Mom told him to do it, just like I did).

I remember thinking each day I went to clean my room how great it would be to have that kind of automation in my life.

So what does all this have to do with your internet marketing?

Your internet marketing has needed ‘chores’ that must be completed if you are going to keep things running smooth and at peak performance.

Below are some of the marketing ‘chores’ you need to do to have a healthy internet marketing program. And a great thing about these ‘chores’ is that they will not only optimize your internet marketing performance – most of them can be easily automated.

Almost as easy as Elroy’s world…

1. Drive traffic to your website

Make sure you have people coming to your website on a continuous basis. Be proactive. Don’t wait for them to come to you. Go and find them and drive them to your site. You can do this by optimizing your site for the search engines by using keywords throughout your site or by creating online ads.

But! Don’t neglect offline marketing strategies to drive traffic online too. These are great tools because few businesses use them. Tactics like mailing out sales letters or postcards to drive people to your site works really well to increase the number of your visitors.

When you have a website – you NEED to have traffic.

2. Track the people who come to your site

Most web providers have some kind of a ’stats’ interface that lets you know how many unique visitors come to your site each day, each week or each month. It’s important that you have an idea how many people come to your site because that holds the key to how successful it is.

This is the number that tells you how you are doing with the ‘attraction factor’ of your site.

But your analytics also tell you other important things… like where people go on your site. And what they do when they get there. Not to mention, how long they stay once they’re there. This is all important information because it let’s you know what you’re doing right when it comes to your website design.

Don’t create a website without tracking how many people visit and what they do when they get there.

3. Separate your prospects from your visitors

Traffic is good, but it’s not as important as identifying those visitors who are potential customers.

Many of the people who come to your site will not be a perfect fit for your services. And that’s OK. But you should be attracting and identifying all of the possible prospects from all your visitors.

One of the best ways to do this is to offer them valuable information like Free Reports, Newsletters, or Tip sheets from the main page of your website. But be sure to make it relevant. Keep your reports focused on their common needs or pain points.

4. Build an online email list

Attracting prospects is crucial.

But attracting is no good unless you keep track of them. You need to collect the names and contact information of the prospects who visit your site.

Why is this so important? Because this is your only connection to them in the future! This will be how you talk to them and let them know that you understand their problems. And it is a key way that you will communicate to them, so that you can help them.

5. Always ask for permission

Many designers think that because you have someone’s email address you can email them newsletters or other types of helpful information.

But you can’t.

Non-requested email is spam. And spam can leave a bad first impression in the mind of your prospects (not to mention get you into legal trouble in certain areas). This can ruin any chance of ever doing work with them in the future. Never make the mistake of just adding someone to your list without permission.

Always get them to “opt-in” to your email marketing.

6. Automate your follow up messages

Your email connection is critical to getting new clients. But managing it can be quite the job.

Lucky for you there are many services out there that can handle email marketing for you. They can make contacting your email list as easy as a click of a button (Not quite as simple as Elroy had it – but pretty close).

The best thing about these services is that some of them allow full control over both auto-responders and email blasts so you can create the best plan for follow up and contact with your good prospects in the future. Without any additional work to you each time you have a new prospect join your list.

Remember to do your email marketing ‘chores’ and automate them as much as possible. It will mean a healthy a steady stream

of prospects created online and the end result will be a healthy benefit to you off-line. Meaning more new clients for you and your business.

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Michael Huggins is the publisher of ForGraphicDesignersOnly.com – a popular ezine and Podcast that focuses on practical strategies for growing a design business.