SOME TRUTHS ABOUT THE WEB

Contrary to what you might have heard:

In many ways, the Web is not that different from any other marketplace. The novelty is wearing off. You can't get away with poor business conduct here any more than you can anywhere else.

THE SECRET TO SUCCESS

There's only one secret to succeeding on the Web. You carve out a place for yourself and then you fight tooth and nail to keep it.

The operative word is FIGHT.

You can't sit on your laurels and wait for customers to flock to you. Go out and get them. Scrounge them up by becoming a contributing part of the Web community. Network. Steal them from your competitors. Cultivate your customers. Offer them incentives to come to your site. And most important, give them a reason to stay. You have to build opportunities into your site that will help you build relationships with potential customers.

The Web is developing into a long-term resource and a serious marketing tool for business. It's not just a place for immediate gratification anymore.

FROM THE GROUND UP

At The Write Edge, we build promotional opportunities into every site that we design, but we can also redirect and optimize an existing site for better online success. We help our clients to assess their business strengths and translate that evaluation into a core package of "keywords" or concepts. These keywords can then be underscored with graphics and themes that are used throughout the site, and repeated continuously to promote the highest possible rankings with the top search engines.

We use these keyword/concept packages to create site content (incentives) that will bring your potential core customers to you, and we use these keyword/concept packages to narrow your focus so that your advertising budget will stretch farther.

SEARCH ENGINE SUCCESS

Search engines do count. They are the most common source of "transient" leads and since those referrals cost you nothing, it is worth ensuring yourself a strategic position within the first pages of at least one of the major search engines -- the Internet equivalent to the Yellow Pages. And here's another truth: you don't have to submit to 1000 search engines, or even 200 search engines, to be successful. To bring a steady stream of visitors to your site, you only need to attain one or two good positions in one of the eleven major search engines within one of the "right" keyword categories. The trick is in defining "right."

Even a steady stream of visitors won't guarantee success.

THE RIGHT TRAFFIC

No matter how many visitors you bring to your site, if what you have to sell isn't what that visitor is likely to buy, you will have achieved exactly nothing. Even if you get the right "match" of visitors to the product that you are selling, you have to convince them not only that they need what you are offering, but that what you are offering is the best solution to their needs.

Targeted traffic isn't necessarily difficult to achieve. You must identify the core group of customers that you will be selling to, and then provide content that will help them to find your site and bookmark your site as worth a return visit.

The Internet was built around the free exchange of information and ideas. Providing free information on your site is a win/win solution that works for you in several ways. First, it provides you with the opportunity to concentrate keywords in ways that the search engines will best rank them; that brings you more visitors. Second, it gives you the opportunity to demonstrate what you know to people who cannot see you face to face to form an opinion of your credibility. And third, it affords you the opportunity to develop an ongoing relationship with your potential customers. In short, providing free content to your visitors can help you -- your business and your business image -- to become a part of their business vocabulary.

Hyperlink collections are a favorite form of "free content" -- and one in which you actually provide little except the referral to other sites that you believe will be helpful. We can save you hours of effort by creating "resource" pages that your customers will find useful enough to visit routinely.

We can also generate your marketing copy, coordinate your email promotions, and provide daily, weekly, or monthly incentive content from informational articles to free giveaways and contests. We can create chat rooms and forums, mailing lists and resource databases.

We'll help you bring visitors to your site, but we will make certain that they are the right visitors -- and we can use new technology to help you follow up on those visitors to get the most value for your money by giving you a second chance to sell. And we don't stop there.

MAKING THE MOST OF TRAFFIC

By examining who is coming to your site, and what they are looking at when they get there, we can help you narrow the focus of your site over time, building breadth and depth into the key core areas that are generating revenue for you and phasing out the dead weight. The result is a leaner, more productive site with less maintenance cost and overhead, and more cost-efficient results.

YOUR NAME, YOUR IDENTITY

Corporate or business branding is another essential part of the online promotional formula. Selecting the right logo, the right placement of that logo, and the right colors, text, and graphics styles is important. What works offline will not necessarily translate well to a computer screen. And once you have a successful identity, to make the most of it, you have to make your customer imprint it. That can best be achieved through interactivity and repetition.

That often includes the obvious. By helping you to obtain a domain name, we can help your current customers find you even if they don't know your address. We never charge extra for completing the Internic forms or for processing them. If your company's name is already in use by someone else, we can help you to find a suitable substitute so that your existing customers can find you easily. Or, in some cases, we can help you to negotiate to get your name returned.

ONLINE ADVERTISING
WITH ON-TARGET RESULTS

We submit your site to the major search engines, and we help you to establish a schedule for keeping track of your rankings. Or we can keep track of the rankings for you and send you a report as often as you like letting you know where you stand compared to your competition. If you need to make adjustments, we can help you to make them.

We can also help new customers to find you by handling your traditional, targeted online advertising techniques such as banner ads, email newsletters, and free links on related Web sites. Internet advertising does work. Used in conjunction with a well-planned identity branding program, banner advertising can increase sales as well as traffic. And "click-throughs" -- the number of users who actually click on a banner ad and use it to come to your site -- are not the only measure of a banner ad's success.

A recent Millward Brown study demonstrated that exposure to certain ad banners increased brand awareness from 12% to 200%. In the same study, a single exposure to a Web banner generated greater awareness than a single exposure to a television or print ad.

While not all online advertising will be this effective, experts agree that the ads that succeed are those that are carefully targeted. We can set you up to advertise in the places where your budget will stretch the farthest and your results will be the most productive. We will connect you with the brokers that will get you in the places where your customers go, and help you decide whether your strategy is working right.

OFFLINE BUT NOT OFF BASE

We can also integrate your site with your offline advertising campaign or promotional material. From the cups and napkins that you use in your restaurant to the shopping bags that you give to your customers, everything should let your customers know where to find you on the Web.

AN EDGE ON SOLID OPPORTUNITY

You'll notice that there is very little hype on this page. We don't give you glittering promises about achieving the top position in a search engine or hitting some arbitrary milestone for weekly visitors. Every business is different. The needs of every business are different. Your business is as unique as you are, and in order to know what we can promise you, we must first understand who you are and what you want to achieve on the World Wide Web. Then we devote our energy and expertise toward helping you to get there.