Leverage your marketing efforts online.
By Ken Mocabee, President of Interactive Marketing

The concept for Leverage Marketing is really quite simple - spend a small amount of money on conventional marketing such as advertising, mailings, etc., and drive them to your site where the incremental costs are virtually zero. Everyone does this already, don't they? At the bottom of nearly every advertisement you'll see that company's Web address with an inadequate "Visit Our Web Site" plea. If I'm really interested in that company's product or service, I might.

Recently I visited a site I saw listed in an advertisement for a company I was interested in doing business with. I got to their site, and all I found was a copy of their advertisement! What was the point? I already had that information, why did they think that after I went to the trouble of going to their site that the same information would be interesting? I felt cheated.

To really leverage the effectiveness of your current advertising, mailings, etc., you must give them a reason to come to your site. And when they get there, you'd better have some real content to keep them interested. Here are a few ideas:

• Are you an expert in your industry? Then how about a newsletter that shows you know your stuff.
• Can you provide some content online that your customers will find valuable? It doesn't have to be sexy, just useful. Material safety data sheets, an industry-specific bulletin board or an online support forum could all be effective.
• Multimedia is powerful. Maybe you can't afford to send out 20 page, full-color brochures to thousands of prospects. And maybe a full-page advertisement is out of the question. But a small ad that gets them to come to see a Flash presentation of your product or service would give you far more bang for the buck.

Bottom line
Don't treat your Web site like a lazy uncle. Put it to work by integrating it with your current marketing efforts. You'll see results every time.