In the movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner hears a voice that tells him ‘if he builds it, they will come.’  It refers to a baseball field, and them refers to deceased baseball players.  It all works out pretty well in that Kevin Costner builds it and people do actually come.

If only this were true for your company’s website.  I work with so many clients that build an amazing web presence and very few people end of visiting the site.  One problem is a lack of marketing, both viral and paid.  But another one is the fact that you are competing for users time, which is dwindling each and every day.

If Field of Dreams II came out, perhaps Kevin Costner would build a big baseball field only to find out that the old baseball players would rather hang out in the local bar, or check out the latest technology rather than play baseball in his fresh, expensive baseball field.

People in the music industry have come to realize that they not only complete for fan’s time with other artists, they compete against every form of media.  A potential fan may not be listening to your new album because they are listening to the new Beyonce album instead.  Or, they could be playing a game on their new iPad.

As an entrepreneur or small business owner, you must figure out ways to get people to come to what you have just built.  Here are a few suggestions on how to do that for your business website:

• Create new content.  The search engines like to see new content on your pages.  The reason they like it is because users like new content.  If your law firm has had the same static (non-changing) page up for the past 5 years, don’t expect a lot of visitors.
  • The easiest ways to create fresh content are through blogs and twitter accounts.  If you write a blog, you can set it up to update on your home page that you have just written a blog.  You can do the same for twitter.  You can have a feed on your home page and every time you update your twitter account with a message or photo, it will show up on your home page.  Keep the blogs & tweets relevant to your business and traffic will start to trickle in.
• Do paid advertising.  And be creative with this.  Google Ads is not the only option out there.  You may be able to target better with Facebook ads.  Or, does your client visit a specific type of website?  Ask to place an ad on that website.
• Get out on the street.  I have one website client who ordered 500 business cards from me and needed to place a new order for cards within 2 weeks!  That’s because he went to every single local store aligned with his business and handed out the cards.  His website traffic from that alone was impressive.  If you create a business in your garage but never tell anyone about it, no one will know.  The same applies for your website – there must be face time behind your pretty website

As you can see, these may be expensive and time-consuming tasks.  But the reality is that people don’t come if you just build it.  You must evangelize, prod, encourage, entice, and answer questions.

We’d love to hear about what has worked for you in marketing your company online.  Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts.