This is relevant to just about all web marketing. So we have to look at updating our modus operandi. We all know it’s vital that all commercial organisations are on the web. But that’s not the answer to the problem. Your clients need to know where you are.

Look at it this way – imagine a retail enterprise with new premises: Stock has been bought, and the overhead is high. The staff are all poised – And discover they’re in a tiny backstreet, 3 miles out of the city centre on the 4th floor, and the road outside is closed due to a diversion. Worse still, no thought has gone into promoting where they are. Can you see a fundamental flaw? And so it is for most websites.

The World Wide Web has caused a paradigm shift in marketing. Around the time of the millennium, it was thought that having a website was everything. Vast amounts of money were spent on all singing/dancing web sites. This trend was cheerfully encouraged by on-line design companies, who relished the business! But just the existence of the site didn’t bring in the customers. They’d thought that simply having a site on the web meant customers could see them. In fact, this wasn’t the case at all.

Web marketing needs a whole new approach. Traditional marketers would say your site is an advertisement of your products or services. And so to get people to visit the site, they’ll promote it in the press and media, and on TV and radio. Basically keeping it within their frame of reference. They produce the pretty brochure and then market every possible avenue to generate enquiries to send that brochure to. However, this process illustrates an absolute misunderstanding of website marketing.

This process only utilises the web as viewing gallery, which is quite wrong. It allows us to search and research – to discuss ideas and interact with others. It’s completely interactive, bringing massive choice to billions of people. We can find the sites we’re looking for because Google, Bing and Yahoo etc. have formulated huge site directories to simplify the task. Can you imagine trying to find something in Yellow Pages if there wasn’t an order and an index? We’d be forever frustrated and disappointed.

The Search Engines solve this dilemma. And so marketing is forced to move on. If you want customers to find you on the internet, indexation by Google etc. is paramount. Yet if you only show up a few pages in, you might as well forget it. By the time you get to page 5, you can forget it, unless you’ve got a very detail-oriented and persistent customer!

So to bring in more profit and give all sites a chance to be top dog, the SE’s gave businesses an ingenious paid facility to promote themselves. It’s known as PPC, or Pay per Click, because you’re only charged when a user opts for your link. It was revolutionary. Fundamentally, you were now only charged when an interested party looked at what you had to offer. Pay per Click is a very well targeted method of marketing. With the right knowledge it can produce a good return.

Unfortunately, PPC advertising has now become literally swamped with adverts in most fields. New online marketers have forced up the price per click, largely through over-the-top bidding. So it’s often the case now that many are priced out of the market. In particular, where a sale requires a large number of clicks. Consequently we’re seeing a renewed interest in SEO. This means websites are optimised in ways that naturally push them up the search pages.

Do this small task – Enter some service or product keywords (relevant to your business) on Bing or Google. Then check through as far as page three. Can you find your website? Probably not. Consequently, like the situation we described earlier, you’ve got no visibility! Maybe it is there. But is it listed for terms that clients are actually using?

It’s possible you’ve already done some advertising in the paid listings – and maybe you’ve had some results. Are you managing your campaign well though? Are the returns you’re getting good enough? Do you know what the most successful areas are – with accurate statistics to track and measure the quality of your campaigns? With PPC, testing and diagnostics are critical. You’ll never get the best results without correct figures.

Sales statistics are now clearly showing that both UK and worldwide commerce is undergoing a paradigm shift towards online sales and marketing. Companies must acknowledge this, to survive and flourish in today’s economy.

(C) Jason Kendall SEM. Pop to EvolveSEM.co.uk for logical business tips on SEM Experts.