Many years ago I was walking past a book shop, which some of you will know, I find almost impossible to do. So in typical fashion I stopped and thumbed my way through some of the books on the table. Standing there with the hot sun beating down on my shinny, now red, head I read a short poem that has had an enormous effect on my life and I'd like to share it with you;

A man said to the universe:

"Sir, I exist!"

"However," replied the universe,

"The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation."

                             Stephen Crane 1871-1900

What struck me first was the sheer sense of frustration and when I discovered that Stephen died at age 28, I could share that frustration.

However that was not the only reason I found the poem so profound. I'm sure I am not alone, when I say, that I often think "I deserve ‘X' " what ever it is at the time. This is especially true if I have worked particularly hard on a project or had a great idea that I put a lot of effort into. And today I think it especially applies to web site owners.

In the real world the universe owes no one anything. The old adage that if you build a better mouse trap the world will beat a path to your door was probably never true but in an era when so many people are actively building better mouse traps, it has even less relevance.

Having a good web site is important (I suppose you could call it an online mouse trap) but what does that mean and who is to be the judge? If you had a 1000 visitors and asked each one to rate your site from 1 to 5 (where 5 is fantastic and 1 is poor) I guarantee you will always get a spread of votes in each category no matter how often you change it.

My point is that you can and should constantly tweak your web site to try and raise the "percentage" of higher scores and you should ask your visitors what they think, not just a few friends and associates. A poll is a great way to do this if you are wondering how. They are fun and quick to use and the voter gets something too, they get to see how their opinion stacks up verses the other voters.

Building a Better mouse trap is not the Answer

I must reiterate a warning that I always tell our prospects and clients; the most beautiful web site in the world will become boring when you have seen it 2, 3, 4, or 5 times. The only thing that keeps your visitors coming back often is great content. But that is a topic for another day.

More important than spending all your time trying to create the perfect web site is promoting it.

I believe there must be a ratio, I don't know what it is but it is probably 1:10 or even higher, which represents the amount of money you should spend on creating a web site to promoting it.

Yes that means that for every $1,000 you spent on web creation you should spend another $10,000 on promotion. Wait! Before you cry "he's mad" and leave, let me explain.

The world is not waiting for you to create another web site

                                    and they are not looking for you.

I'm not saying you need to pay someone else $20,000 or $30,000 but you do need to realise that just publishing your web site buys you no special credits in the scheme of things. At that point you just "exist" as Stephen Crane so remorsefully lamented. You are one of millions if not billions of web pages so how are people supposed to know you "exist"?

If you just said "Google will find me for them" try this little exercise; Google the key word people might use to search for you. On the top tool bar you will see how many pages Google has listed (see example below for the term  A Better Mouse Trap) 

(and they never said they had listed all the web - in fact many web pages are not listed). You will be lucky if the number is in the hundreds of thousands, more often than not, it is over a million. Now remember that only ten of them will make page 1, thirty will be within the first 3 pages after which you can forget it.

That's why most web sites experience the same fate as Stephen Crane, an early demise which in web terms means descending to page 50 or 500 in Google. (Actually at page 4, you are already at the gates of Internet Valhalla).

Once your web site is up you cannot only rely on the search engines to do your marketing for you, you need to invest some money and definately some time in promoting it. You've probably heard the saying "Time is Money" so every hour spent on your web promotion has a cost. At the very least it is what you pay yourself per hour or more accurately what you could have earned if you had put that time into another part of your business or it is what you pay someone else to do the job.

Using the simplest measure, your hourly rate, one way to budget and keep track of your marketing is to allocate a weekly budget to promotion.

Lets say your web site cost $2,600 so you decide to invest $26,000 in year one to marketing. This works out to $500 per week ($26,000 divided by 52). You could allocate $50 to buying Google Adwords and $450 in your time. If you earn $100 per hour then that equates to 4.5 hours per week. 

Calculating your marketing efforts by dollar value also allows you to measure your results and track if they are returning you a profit. Of course if you are marketing for leads or subscribers to your newsletter, you will need to assign a value to each one. Let's say that out of every 5 leads you make one sale and that is worth $500, then a lead is worth $100. Thus if you spend $500 per week (in time or buying Adwords or any other promotion) and get 6 leads you have made a profit of $100.

Invest too little into marketing and you are wasting your initial investment. Invest too much and you are over investing. The great thing about the internet is that it is eminently trackable, so as you start earning more from your efforts you can allocate more resources towards it.

So why don't most web site owners invest more or anything (in a lot of cases) in promoting their web site?

There are many reasons but some that I come across regularly are:

• People have no faith that their investment in time or money will bring results.
• They have tried and failed and don't want to fail again or waste more resources.
• People feel their web site is not ready.
• No Time!
• No Money!
• No idea how!

There are more but these are the main ones that I see. If you know of any others that you would like to add or if you would like to add a comment on this topic please go to the forum on Web Promotion and add your comments.

In part two of this article I will address each of the points above and discuss some of the best ways to allocate that marketing budget you've just created.

Ric Vatner