Every business, large and small, has an interest in building a presence on the Web. They all want a Web site or even have a Web site, but what I see is a vast lack of understanding in the marketplace of how to use the Web to achieve their goals. I have been successful and enjoy consulting my customers and prospects on non-technical concepts that make the Internet work for their business or organization. I have a glossary that works for prospects with little or no knowledge of computers or the Internet. Below I share this approach with you.

When I get a prospect, I stress the importance of a .com name. There are still many .com names available; they should reserve one immediately. Often times I have reserved the name with them on the first call making Soundpages the administrative contact and Interland the DNS contact. This accomplishes two goals: 1. The client has a .com they can start to market. 2. Soundpages and Interland are in the loop until the project gets started and hopefully completed with us.

To further explain the importance of creating and locking in an effective domain name, I use the following analogy. If I could go to a football stadium with 50,000 people in the crowd, and I was allowed to say only one thing to the crowd over the microphone, what would it be? My personal name would be worthless because in Atlanta, there are 100 Mike Stewarts. They would never find me. My phone number is ok, but who could remember a phone number from hearing it one time. But if I said, "Soundpages.com, web pages with sound". Just with that much, they could find out anything that I wanted them to know and they could make contact with me. Hopefully more would remember that than any other verbiage.

The Web really is like a television. It is really broadcast. If you sell it as broadcast and market it as broadcast, you will be more successful with prospects, because they understand television. They don't quite understand the Internet...yet.

Here are a few of the glossary terms I use to present:

• Domain Name, URL- TV channel
• Monitor- TV set
• Web site- TV Station
• Web Traffic- Viewing audience
• Hits- People tuning in
• Content- Programming, shows, what's on right now
• E-commerce- Internet cash register
• Search Engines- Yellow Pages
• Marketing- Get more viewers anyway you can

Never bring up any Internet or computer jargon such as bandwidth, ISP, Java, HTML, Cold Fusion, and the thousands of other terms they don't know or care about. All Web site owners really want is viewers watching their programs, and then making a decision to buy or contact them as a result of what they learned via the Web site.

In consulting my clients on marketing their Web site, I like to teach, "getting viewers to tune into their Internet TV station," I find large and small advertisers alike, advertising their Internet presence in print and broadcast media with just, "Visit our Web site at www.AfraidYouMightTuneUsIn.com." They spend advertising dollars on so many short-term messages and mention very little about their Web site. How ridiculous! Advertising a Web site is a long-term advertising message! That is like a TV station displaying billboards that read, " Watch Us, Channel 5." They will advertise something to the effect, "For the best in News, Sports and Weather, Watch Channel 11 at 6 pm and 11 pm, your Eyewitness News station." That ad is good last year and for the next year. You can do the same exact thing with a website in your marketing! Be sure to use your Web site as a means of keeping viewers up-to-date on company information and events.

From the book, "Sound Ideas for Marketing a Small Business Web Site" 
 co-authored by Mike Stewart. Get it as a free download here. 
You can contact Mike at Mike@soundpages.com