How Northern Neck Marinas can Weather the Storm with Awesome Websites
Posted by Jason Hughes on Thu, Aug 12, 2010 @ 09:50 PM
Owning and operating a m
arina, or any small business today is no easy task. Discretionary income is down, credit is hard to come by, and consumers are slow to spend. However, some companies are managing to weather the storm by generating leads and making sales at disproportionate rates compared to their competition. How?
Through an awesome web site!
Whether your marina generates revenue through boat sales, parts and service, slip rentals, or all of the above, one thing’s for sure in this day and age:
The one who has the best website often wins.
The problem is that most small businesses, especially marinas in the Northern Neck, don’t fully comprehend how much an awesome web site can impact their bottom line.
Let’s take a second to define what I mean by an “awesome” web site.
An awesome website is one that ultimately does two things:
1. Generates traffic to the site
2. Converts that traffic to sales
If a website can do these two things, it can be deemed effective. Let’s take a look at how to achieve these two objectives:
Generating Traffic to Your Marina's Website
There are basically two ways to drive traffic to your website: the expensive way or the free way.
When you type a phrase into Google, results are broken down into two categories.
Organic search results which appear on the left side of the page, and the sponsored links which appear on the right.
The sponsored links on the right side of the page are ads placed by companies that pay every time someone clicks on their link. This is known as Pay-Per-Click or PPC advertising. You can drive traffic to your site through a PPC campaign by setting up an Adwords account with Google and bidding dollar amounts on specific keywords. This is an effective way to target specific markets, but only about 25% of all internet users even look to the right side of the page. Plus marketing via PPC can be very expensive.
On the left side of the page you have what’s known as organic results. When your webpage appears on the left side of Google’s search results and someone clicks on it, it’s FREE! Google wants to keep their clients happy by returning results that best answer their questions. This means you can drive tons of traffic to your marinas website by simply producing content that answers the questions of your customers.
Producing quality content is the key to free website traffic. The nerd-term for focusing on ways to get this traffic is Search Engine Optimization or SEO. You can Optimize your marina's website by generating content focusing on specific keywords people type into Google. You can deliver this content through pages on your website, blog articles, or even videos posted on your site.
Converting Traffic on Your Marina’s Website to Sales
Once you get the traffic, you need to take advantage of it by giving viewers opportunities to fall in love with you and your products. Generating quality content alone will lend tons of credibility to your business and garner trust from visitors to your site. This will indirectly make the sales process much more fluid and increase closing rates on new and used boats and PWC’s, as well as increase parts counter and service department numbers.
But a good website is one that not only provides education to the visitor, but transforms them from visitor to lead, and ultimately to a sale. This is accomplished by engaging the visitor with calls-to-action, compelling offers, and pages on the site dedicated to capturing their information. These offers could be a Free Boat Buyer’s Guide, an offer to receive 10% off a PWC purchase, discounts on service packages, or any other offer that would transform a static viewer of the site into someone who’s willing to take the next step in the buying process.
If you own a marina in the Northern Neck or surrounding area ask yourself the following three questions:
1. Do I receive tons of free leads from my website?
2. Does my website engage visitors in a way that compels them to take action?
3. Is my website an integral part of my sales process?
If you’ve answered “No” to any of these, we can help.
At BizBuffs, we are dedicated to helping companies such as marinas, home builders, and restaurants throughout the Northern Neck and surrounding areas embrace the power of the internet. We would love the opportunity to provide your company with a free website analysis and see how the principles and methods discussed in this article can be applied to your business.
Comment and questions welcome as always.