Imagine that you’re a new business owner looking at the prospect of building a Web site for your company. If you already are a new business owner, well, imagine you’ve also got a Tweety Bird Pez dispenser on your lap.

Your first impulse might be, “I have to get a Web site built.” After all, everyone else has a Web site, right? So you need one too in order to not be left behind.

Maybe you really do need a site. But maybe not. Always remember, the last two words of a dying marketing program are, “Me too.”

Wait a minute, what’s this? A Web firm suggesting that you might not need a Web site? Inconceivable!

First Things First

We’d suggest instead that your best first step is to determine two things about your business:

1. Where are we now?
2. Where do we want to end up?

Every conversation we have with a potential client begins with those two questions. Without these two answers well defined, any internet marketing effort you put out will not be focused, and it won’t yield whatever results you’re hoping for. Building a Web site with no strategy behind it is like setting off for the Pacific from Missouri with no compass: you have nothing to tell you if you’re on course or not.

Only after we’ve established those two waypoints do we start to look at how we might use the internet to get the client to their destination. Sometimes, the answer is that they don’t really need a Web site after all. That doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.

Your Turn

Where is your business in its life cycle? If you’re new to the game and don’t know what to do about your online marketing, consider finding answers to the two questions above before you do anything else. If you’ve been running your business for a while, take a moment to reflect on how well your Web site is performing for you. If it’s not being all that it can be, maybe you too should take stock of those two questions.

This post kicks off a series on Web strategy from the ground up. Next week we’ll dive into the dialogue that happens after we determine that you do need a site after all.

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