One major mistake I see businesses making is not planning ahead. They look at the now and the coming month, but they are not looking ahead 6 months to year down the road. This is a major mistake and can end up costing you a lot of money.

Your Website

We see businesses all the time and some want a website and they want it for cheap! They want only what they need right now, but they don’t look down the road a bit to determine what they needs will be 6 months from that point. We always ask questions about the future because what a client needs later may completely change the platform we choose to build their website on.

Before you meet with a web design or web development company make sure that you write out what your current needs are and what you will need down the road. Include any possibilities as well. Example, if you know one year from now you will need client accounts then you need to let your web developer know. If you don’t let them know it could end up costing a lot more money than you anticipated down the road.

Create a list of your long term plans and possibilities and share it with your web designer, SEO and/or marketing team.

Your SEO, Internet Marketing and Social Media Marketing

If you have a need to show up in search engines, YouTube and social media outlets 6-12 months down the road for an event, an expansion or whatever else the time to plan starts right now (if not a few months back). Your SEO, Internet Marketing and Social Media Marketing team needs to research, create a plan and start implementing it months ahead of time. The more competition you have the more work needs to be done. Don’t want until the last second and assume your marketing team can make things work for you.

Conversion Optimization

This is another crucial area. People are very web savvy. They do their research, even if just for a minute, before they plan to buy or invest in a service. You need to plan ahead and prepare for all variables that could interfere with conversion! Creating a conversion plan ahead of time is so incredibly important and cannot succeed at the last minute.

Competitive Intelligence

Part of the research I mentioned before is Competitive Intelligence. Before creating an effective marketing plan and conversion plan we need to evaluate what your competitors have done in the past, what appeared to work for them and how much (or how little) they saturated the web.

Without Competitive Intelligence you cannot possibly create an effective plan. The time this research takes is not minimal and this is yet just one more reason why planning way ahead is crucial for your success.

Melissa Fach – SEO Aware