Effective Internet Marketing

How much should a website cost

There was some debate on Twitter a few weeks ago around this topic which was sparked by Business Link saying that a company should spend at least 5% of their turnover to get the “look and feel” needed.

This figure has probably been calculated from the rough guide that a business should spend around 10% of their annual turnover on marketing and that as a website is important to the marketing of a business it should therefore cost 50% of the marketing budget.

This maybe the case, however spending 5% of your annual turnover to get the “look and feel” is not the right approach.

The right approach is to understand your target markets, decide on the key messages/propositions you want to present to those markets and which routes would be most effective in increasing sales.

More often than not, the major route to market will be via the web. If this is the case then it is important that these business propositions are in the forefront when designing & building the site. It is here that the “look and feel” is important to create an appropriate well designed site that entices the visitor to complete the desired “calls to action” such as contact the business, buy a product or book online…

The appropriate resources need to be put in place to market the site effectively. After all there is no point having a nice looking site if no-one visits to complete the call to action!

The effective marketing of the site would entail creating an Internet Marketing Strategy using tools such as SEO, Email Marketing, Social Media & Pay Per Click to drive the appropriate visitors to the site.

I think the question should be – “How much should a website and the effective marketing of it cost?”

The answer is still debatable. But a good guide would be if your business’ main route to market is via the web then you should invest appropriately and 5%-10% would seem reasonable if it brings in the sales.