Hello!

Welcome to the premiere issue of Scribbles!, a newsletter from Animai Web Design for business owners who want to learn more about marketing their products and services on the Web.

In This Issue

• Simple Web Marketing
• Telling Prospects And Customers About Your Site
  • Effective E-mail signatures
  • Your letterhead, envelopes and business cards
  • Your printed marketing materials
• Making Your Web Site Work For You 24 Hours A Day
  • Online, Downloadable Marketing Kit
  • Educate, Don't Sell
  • Contact!

Simple Web Marketing

You are a business powerhouse! You can produce, deliver, sell and charge for your products and services. Your current customers adore you, but course it's always nice to get new customers. And what's one of the easiest and yet most often overlooked ways to attract prospects and turn them into cutomers? Your web site, naturally!

Here are a few simple ways for driving more traffic to your site, and for turning those browsers into do-ers.

First, Tell Them About Your Site

• E-mail Signatures
  Every e-mail that you send out from your business e-mail program should at the very least contain your business name, address, phones and web site URL (the 'http://www...'). If you don't have a "sig" and would like to create one, click on the links below to see tutorials for the most popular e-mail programs out there.
  Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Thunderbird.
  
  
• Stationery
  We see business stationery everywhere - beautifully designed letterhead, envelopes and business cards with the business' and owner's name, title and contact information. But where's the address for their website? It's usually at the bottom of the letterhead or card, in miniscule type. The next time you order stationery include your web site's URL right under the logo.
  
  
• An URL in Every Ad
  Make sure your web site's address appears in every marketing piece you produce. Ads, brochure, signage and press releases should always include your URL.

Then, Make Your Site Work For You 24 Hours A Day

• Online Marketing Kit
  If you have brochures, tearsheets and print ads, make those materials available online in PDF format. Your prospects will be able to browse your site after business hours (or in a different time zone), see your marketing kit and download and print it out.
     Here's an example of a Marketing Kit download page that we did for Cellini Artistic Hardware Corp. Instead of putting together bundles of tearsheets and mailing them to every caller, Cellini's customers and prospects are asked to download the tearsheets that they are interested in. If you would like to put your Marketing Kit online, please click here for more information.
  
  
• Don't Sell, Educate
  Use your content pages as storytelling opportunities. Make case histories about the problem your customer was having and how your product or service addressed the issue. Then present the result as a desirable outcome. Including a testimonial from a customer is another powerful technique for creating interest and reducing your prospects' perceived risk.
  
  
• Contact!
  Sprinkle your contact information liberally throughout the site. Include a Contact Page with all of the ways a prospect can get in touch with you. Ask us about setting up a Contact Form for you, one that lets your prospect easily and quickly send a message to you. Once they hit that "Submit" button it's a good idea to make sure that your website has an auto-responder (an auto-responder is used to automatically let people know that you received their message and will get back to them in person).
  
  

Parting Thoughts

Nowadays you are expected to have an informative, useful, functional and well-designed web site if you are in business. Many prospects will start their search for your product or service on the web before they even pick up a phone. Have your site work for you by giving the customer plenty of information so that they get to know you and trust you before they even speak to you. Be sure your prospects have access to your marketing materials whenever they wish by making them available for download from your site. Finally, make it easy for a customer to get in touch with you via your web site.

Coming in February

• Simple Search Engine Optimization - Part 1
• Getting Search Engines To Notice Your Site
  • What do Search Engines "see"?
  • Making your search terms important.
• Getting Listed in Online Directories
  • What's the difference between search engines and directories?
  • Why should you get listed in an Online Directory?
  • Submitting your site to DMOZ and Yahoo!.

Best regards!
Ed Moore
www.animai.com