4 Steps To Effectively Market Your Business

Just in the last decade and even past year, we have been experiencing a drastic change in the way we communicate, interact and even do business. Ten years ago people were still looking for goods and services in the yellow pages. A print column ad could set you back $50 - $80 a month, but was well worth the investment. Today, 96% of the U.S. population is now using the Internet and search engines to find everything from cars, jobs, schools, books and even coaches. The yellow pages are even online! So what does this mean for coaching practices? It means you need to join the Internet Revolution in order to compete in this competitive market. There are multiple steps to consider when joining the online community. First, you need to get a website.

To build a website on your own, you need a web development software. I recommend using Dreamweaver, a web design and development application with a visual editor. A trick I learned is to create the homepage first and save this as a template to use for all other pages. This will ensure all pages have the same dimensions and help keep consistency. I also found that it is important to check your websites compatibility on all Internet servers; Google Chrome, all versions of Windows Internet Explorer, and Safari. I discovered that my website looked great on Safari, but had broken images and links on other servers.

If you’re not that tech-savvy and would rather spend your time on core-business, then I recommend using a template website service. Template services provide a selection of websites that are fully developed and ready to use. I recommend using CoachingWebsites, a template based website service that designs websites specifically for coaches and includes search engine optimization with their package. Having a website is one thing, but marketing it to the correct target market is another game. The less work you have to do, the better.

Having a website is the first step, but with 634 million websites, what’s the point if it can’t be found. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the heart of getting your website ranked high on search engines. With the Internet being the first place a person goes to for information, it is essential for business owners to have their practice easily found online and SEO is the process of improving volume and traffic to your site. Effectively optimizing websites is the process of structuring webpages so they can be easily found, read and attractive to search engines. This can be done by:

1. Networking through online directory listings: Online directories are online guides that organize websites by subject. Networking through directories allows search engines to recognize and trust your website and places your website in a higher page ranking.

2. Having effective title tags on all pages: Title tags are the main text that describes online content. They appear in the browser, on search result pages and on exte
al websites. Effective title tags on each page are essential for best search engine optimization practices.

3. Updating Content Regularly: Search engines look for sites that have new and fresh content. Letting your website sit on content that hasn’t been updated, suggests that the information is old and not accurate. A great way to update content is by adding links to articles and changing those links every month. This gives your website new content and serves as a great resource for clients.

4. Providing Quality Content: Often times we are focused on filling our website up, but it’s not always quality information. Search engines look for quality content and it could actually hurt your website it there is more focus on quantity than quality.

The beauty of having an effective website is that it offers infinite opportunities for practices 24/7. With 210 billion dollars being spent online each year, you can literally make money in your sleep. With the invention of online appointment scheduling, eNewsletters, online payment processing, and robust online resources, your clients have greater expectations than ever. The good news for practice owners is, meeting these expectations increases your bottom line and streamlines your marketing and administration costs. For instance, allowing your clients to schedule themselves online reduces your admin costs and also improves customer retention by 9.4%.

With 2.4 billio
Internet users worldwide, it is likely your clients are already looking online for coaching services. Get ahead of the competition and join the Internet Revolution today.