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PM Forum - Toronto

Optimising your online business development opportunities

Those who attended the November 2009 meeting in Toronto were treated to a gem – a thorough and cohesive presentation on the values of search engine marketing by Simon Smith of Commune Media Inc.

Comparing most professional sites to the unassembled parts of a car, Smith demonstrated the value of assembling the parts in the right way to attract qualified leads, draw them closer and deliver sales results.

The ideal site in his view is very much like a fine automobile; all the parts carefully crafted and working together effortlessly with the capability to gather information on your ‘dashboard’ and vary the speed and change direction.

Three fundamental problems plague website success: the absence of a plan, reluctance to measure, and the lack of dedicated staff. The constantly changing web environment demands vigilance. Content to measure page hits, organizations miss the real unexploited value of their sites. Unable to prove value, those responsible for sites find their budgets cut while savvy competitors invest in a wide variety of web tools and take a market leadership position.

Smith offered that smart site managers do three fundamental things: analyze, strategize and implement, and then they do it all over again. Analysis should examine objectives, conversions and performance. The approach to strategy should be scientific and include measurement at every stage.

Our digital world overwhelms our ability to process information and this conundrum is perfectly addressed through properly designed and managed websites which can ‘attract’ through the creation of reputation. How to do that? By giving away free information which helps visitors solve their problems

Implementation is a matter of building awareness through search engine marketing and converting that awareness to interest. That is done by helping to solve a visitors issue by giving away a great deal of value which demonstrates thought leadership. By employing the right tools in a site it is possible to acquire larger and more important amounts of visitor information which in turn leads to a closer relationship.

While acknowledging that his methodologies were unproven in professional services, Smith still offered tactics and tools which can make every professional firm’s website more effective.

Brian Cope
Promarc Consulting Group Inc.

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