Everyone wants to find the right marketing tools for the right job and nobody wants to throw money away on ineffective gimmicks! There are many different types of marketing tools and lead generators out there and most of them fall into one of two major categories: “active” marketing and “passive” marketing.
An “active” marketing approach means that you are actively putting yourself in front of and approaching customers. For example, when you are walking door to door to introduce yourself or sending email newsletters to prospective customers, you are actively advertising your services. “Active” approaches definitely require more work on your part! You need to approach people who may or may not be interested in your services and you are then responsible for convincing them that you are such a good person for the job that they should remember you when they are ready. This sort of mass marketing allows you to interact with large numbers of potential customers but limits the successfulness of your campaign as a majority of your contacts are not interested in your services.
A “passive” marketing approach means that customers are taking the initiative to find you. For example, you have a website on the internet or an ad in the newspaper that provides information and resources related to your product or services. Customers that are interested in your business can look through your information and contact you if they like what you have to offer. “Passive” approaches may limit the number of customers that find you (only the interested ones go looking for you) but your success rate jumps dramatically as the people who are contacting you are already interested.
OK, you want to go with the “passive” approach and you have got some great information to share but how can you make sure that people are going to find it?
If you are on the internet, you need to make sure that your website can be found. If a customer types in something like “Las Vegas MLS” or "Las Vegas Wedding" then your website needs to be displayed in the Top 10 results (customers are not going to look much past the first 10 listings).
Well, you know that your website needs to have Top 10 rankings or it will not be found but how do you do this?
Most importantly, your website needs to be designed from scratch according to all of the search engine guidelines, it must be submitted to the appropriate search engines (not all of the search engines accept submissions and some penalize you if you submit incorrectly or multiple times so be careful), and it must be constantly updated because the search engines are always changing their rules and requirements.
It is important to keep in mind that not all search engines work the same way. You can submit your site for review and approval to search engines like MSN or Inktomi and typically be found in 4 to 6 weeks but for other engines like Google and Yahoo the indexing process usually takes 2 to 4 months (there is no way around this). What will help your ranking on any search engine is having a website that follows all of the rules so that when it is found it is ranked high.
For the most effective internet presence, you want to have a site that has multiple pages that can be found on many different search engines. The more ways that customers can find you, the more times you will be found!