Check out the this viral marketing campaign for the upcoming summer “Dark Knight” movie.

I believe in Harvey Dent

I worked with a sales rep who told prospects if they would take the time to listen to his presentation and were not interested in what his company was offering, he would give them $20.00 for their time and never bother them again. A high commission from every sale and a solid four out of ten closing rate made it profitable for him to spend the $120.00 out of pocket expense for the seven people that didn’t buy. Since the biggest barrier to a sale was largely in the ability to get uninterrupted time in front of a prospect, it’s safe to say his $20.00 marketing ploy was a good investment.

Before you spend a penny exposing people to your website, make sure it’s a good investment.

Think of your web site as a sales presentation and Google’s AdWords (or any other paide SEM or SEO tactic) as the vehicle that drives qualified prospects to that presentation. If your AdWords campaign is effective, it will work like the $20.00 offered by my coworker. The success of that monthly investment hinges on the effectiveness of your web site. If your web site does the job of closing the sale, capturing the lead or whatever it is that’s worth paying for traffic, you can expect a profitable return. If not, the money you spent out will be gone forever.

The cost of even a modest AdWords camapaign can add up over time. And chances are those visitors won’t take the time to come back a second time. Why not invest your search engine marketing budget into developing a site that aids in the conversion of prospects into customers? Once the site is optimized around your goals the money you spend to dive qualified traffic to your site will generate a profitable return.

One of the biggest benefits of online marketing is that it allows for far greater accountability. Unlike other forms of marketing, the internet provides easy ways to instantly measure how much value your marketing activities create. The answers to the true value of your web site in it’s current form can be a bitter pill to swallow. Which is why most companies -after spending so much time and energy developing their web sites- don’t want to know.

Any advertiser worth a dime will tell you: the more you advertise a bad product, the less it sells. The same is true when it comes to marketing your web site. The more people who visit a bad web site, the more likely they are to click the back seconds after they hit the landing page. Major search egines like Google actually tracks how long a visitor stays on a site before the back button is clicked. The more “click backs” your site has, the lower the site will place in Google’s search rankings.

Here are some things to keep in mind to develop an effective site:

• Make sure your web site has measurable conversion goals. With all the amazing (and often free) analytics tools available to monitor people who visit your site, there is no excuse not to.

• Put the needs of your users first. Too many websites read like an “About Us” page. Most people don’t care how long you’ve been in business, how much experience your staff has between them or how much you love your products or industry. The only thing visitors to your site care about is what’s in it for them. Your site should focus on the value of your offering. Such as: convenience, security, status, etc. In other words your site should clearly state the direct benefits of doing business with you.

• Know your audience. Good web sites put the needs of their market first. You can’t put your prospects first if you don’t know who your prospect is. Your markets age, gender, economic status, occupation, etc. are important things to consider when communicating with them on and off line. These demographics will do more than just help you to write effective copy, they will tell you how to construct your site so this group of people can easily and effectively navigate it.

• Your site must have clear navigation, consistent branding and a strong call to action. If visitors to your site have to think about where they are, what to do next or simply cannot find the information they expected to find, your site will fail to convert. Make sure you have a clear hierarchy of information and easy navigation. If your site’s conversion goal is for visitors to contact you, sign up for something or buy a product or service, make sure it’s obvious how to do so and consider prominently placing that information on every page of your site.

I don’t know how many presentations my coworker in sales had to give or how much training it took before he was able to close a solid four out of every ten people. Fortunately, the internet provides ways to test and refine your web site so that it converts visitors without spending a dime. Plus the web is offers near instant results and can be far less nerve racking than attempting to the same thing in person.When you combine the right tools and techniques with a little knowledge about your market, the long term profitability of your web site can be astronomical.

My friend certainly would not have given out a penny if he did’t know exactly how much he would get back in advance.

Without a diverse marketing plan, your vast flow of new customers can quickly become a slow drip. If you rely heavily on any one marketing tactic, when it slows or stops, your entire business will slow or stop.

While the crux of your marketing message should almost always be the same, using different vehicles to deliver that message is a must. With so many different ways to deliver your marketing message, taking the time to research and develop a multi-pronged approach can pay huge dividends.

Google rankings for example, (organic or paid) are often the main and in some cases, the only way many of the businesses we talk to find new customers. Kinder Start, a parenting resources company I read about recently is no exception. They relied on Google as one of it’s only marketing funnels for new customers. And I might add it worked great. That is until Google dropped KinderStart.coms page ranking to zero. This lead to a 70% drop in traffic to their site, which now gets only .01% of it’s referrals from Google.

Because Kinder Start had no other marketing irons in the fire, they decided to sue Google (an 80 billion dollar company) in an attempt to regain their former positioning. Needless to say, this case was promptly thrown out of court and, in my opinion, for good reason: Any company that relies so heavily on one channel to attract clients is placing it’s livelihood in the hands of that lone channel.

I fully understand that for most businesses, it can be difficult to stick with a well-rounded marketing plan when they often get faster, more impressive results just focusing on only one or two marketing tactics (like Googles Adwords). However, in the long run, ongoing, conventional marketing tactics (like direct mail) can have an even bigger pay-off in addition to helping you reach new audiences.

The key is to look at everything in your marketing plan over a given period of time. Since some tactics (like direct mail) often require more time than others, measure everything for about a year before completely cutting one marketing channel in favor of another. Too often companies will write off a marketing tactic too soon because of no or poor results.

This is a huge mistake. Your marketing investment may require time and patience before they yield a profitable return. Pull out too soon and you risk losing everything you have invested in that channel so far.

This is not to say that if you’ve tried a variety of marketing tactics and received little or no return in the investment over a given period of time that you should keep funding those channels. Sticking with what works is the obvious thing to do. That said, successful marketing campaigns are often successful as a result of the message being sent, and not the vehicle that delivers it. The more vehicles delivering that message, the less likely you are to get stuck on the side of the road.

If the marketing you are engaged in now is working, your competition will eventually catch on and it’s effectiveness may begin to thin. If market conditions change, (like they did on 9/11) then you may need to find alternative ways to reach new customers. The companies that already have multiple ongoing marketing strategies will be in the best position to deal with any sudden changes in their market.