We often get approached by potential clients who want a great web design so they can impress their customers and potential clients.
We then go on to ask them if they would also like to invest in the other elements such email subscriber acquisition strategies or optimizing their website for search engines so that when people type the key words or phrases into Google or Bing that their potential clients would use to find their product or service they will appear on the first page of Google (by the way if you don’t appear on the first page of a search engine, 90% of prospects will not find you. For more information read ”10 Reasons Why It Is Important to rank on the First Page Of Google“).
Quite often the answer is the following. 
“No, I just want a great looking website“.
The reality is that if you cannot be found online easily (and I will use an analogy here).
“it is like designing the best printed brochure in the world at enormous expense then printing 100,000 copies and then hiding them in your store room”
Now that is stupid!
I have a cycling blog that I have developed, published and it is on the web and I have not optimized it in any shape or form (road cycling is a hobby of mine by the way not a source of income) due to work and my personal blog, jeffbullas.com being my focus.
I have not done any SEO (Search Engine Optimization), I have not promoted it and guesss what, when I checked the Google analytics the other day I found that it has no traffic and no one knows it exists.
I am not surprised.
Rule of thumb is if you have a website or blog you are using to drive inquiry and leads and sell products or services online then you need to spend the same amount promoting and optimizing it.
Then you need to keep on investing on an ongoing basis in digital marketing to maintain your lead over your competitors and that would typically be a budget of approxiamtely 20% of the website value per annum to get you started, just to stand still.
Clients of ours that are doing this are seeing their sales increase by 50% per annum and more.
We live in a digital age so you need to start thinking digital or your competitors are going to run you out of town.
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Great article! I couldn’t agree more. The same could be said about an off-line business that does no advertising or marketing- unless it just happens to have a hot product and a terrific location. But I still see businesses that do nothing but waste money on yellow page ads (printed version) or use outdated advertising tactics (advertising in print publications or direct mail with no strong headline to grab and hold attention, no clear focus, no call to action, no strong offer, no way to follow up or measure effectiveness). These same businesses are struggling but still refuse to spend money on digital marketing or on a good consultant that can help them improve what advertising/marketing they are doing.