You may already be aware that there are literally scores of people searching for your swimming pool on the World wide web – the problem is how to get them to discover you! This post can only provide a brief introduction – but with any luck it will be a handy starting point.
If you’ve got a site, then you’re away to a flying start. All you need to do is to promote it better, and you’ll acquire more visitors and more customers than you have now. If you don’t have a site yet, or you believe it’s time for a replacement, then you have several choices. You could create it yourself from scratch, get an company to produce one for you, or use one of the online services that can make it really easy to create a website: Homestead, Yola.com, or Google Sites are a few of many solutions available.
Make sure you remember to install a tracking/analytics system on your site. There are lots available, some totally free, and some paid for (the free ones are more than adequate for most people).
Once you’ve built your site and added analytics, the next step is to build in-bound links by persuading other web pages to link to it. One of the simplest ways to begin is using general directories like Best of the Web (which is paid), and DMOZ (free). There are literally 1000s of website directories – and it’s worthwhile submitting your website to several of the better known ones. It’s not worth submitting to 1000s of directories, but if you’re thinking of doing a hundred or so, there are specialists which will post your website for you, very cheaply.
In addition to the general directories, it’s normally good practice to submit your site to any specialist directories (ie those that deal specifically with your market) that you can locate. They generally get better results than general directories. Sadly, almost all of these charge money for listings, but it’s occasionally possible to discover free ones. By way of example http://www.ClickSwimmingPools.co.uk/ is a great site to submit information about your swimming pool to, and it’s totally free as well. They do demand in depth information and photos, but that will help you drive more visitors to your website, so it’s worth doing. Try to find any other free sites like that, and submit to those too – it all helps!
When you want to get customers to your swimming pool website immediately, then you’ll need to check out PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. As the name implies PPC is a means of advertising on the internet but only paying when someone clicks through to your web site. The largest PPC system currently around is Google Adwords. This allows you to appear on Google itself – right next to the search results. You can make sure that your ads are only shown in a certain country (eg the UK) if you want – and of course choose how much you’re in a position to spend for every click.
Now that visitors are arriving at your website – make sure to ask for their email address, so you can email them information, news and offers – or merely remind them to keep coming back to your site and see what’s new. Email services like Constant Contact make it simple to capture email addresses and send emails to your prospects.
Hopefully this article has given you a valuable overview of Web Marketing as it applies to your swimming pool. There’s lots more to study – but the most crucial thing is to begin – build a simple web site (you can always enhance it later), and start acquiring new customers from the internet. Have fun.
