Your Customers Are On Line So You’d Better Be As Well

The internet offers fantastic opportunities for business development to those businesses who take the trouble to get fully involved with it.

Get Clear On What The Purpose Of Your Website Is

You have to be clear what you want your web site to achieve otherwise it can just end up a confusing mess. Too many businesses have web sites just because they feel they should have one but without a clear idea of what they want from it. Is the purpose of your website to grow your business, to provide information or maybe to develop relationships? It’s up to you – but get clear from the start.

Your Website Should Not Be About You

While your website is a key element in your small business marketing, the truth is your prospective clients and customers aren’t that interested in you. They’re interested in what you can do for them. There’s a fundamental difference. Sure, you can have an ‘About us’ section and your website certainly needs to convey your pre-eminence in your field. But beyond that it should all be about your prospective clients. Step into their shoes. Meet their needs. Address their fears and concerns. Above all, give them solutions and solve some of their problems. Then you’ll have a website that people will want to visit.

Give People Free Stuff

In most circumstances business and business development is about relationships. Your web site gives you the opportunity to start doing that before you have even met the prospective customer. If you give visitors to your site useful information you are already positioning yourself as an expert who can help them.

Email Addresses

Email is a vital weapon in your small business marketing. Now you’ve heard this a thousand times before, but would you believe that most businesses still do not collect the email addresses of everyone who contacts them. You may as well take a huge bucket of cash, go to the top of your building and throw it out of the window. Every time a business fails to capture someone’s email address they’re turning down the opportunity to contact them for FREE, for weeks, months and years ahead. You should view your web site as a key business development tool and a means of building a database of prospects who are interested in your product.

Once You Have Email Addresses – Use Them!

Of the businesses that are good at collecting email addresses, hardly any of them follow up by communicating regularly with their customers and clients in an effective way. You don’t just have to use email to sell stuff. You can use email to thank people for their business, make them a special offer, give them a free article or report, send a newsletter, recommend a product or service they may be interested in, ask for referrals, share some news, ask why they’ve not done business with you. The list goes on and on. The point is this: Email marketing can help you grow your business significantly and is a key part of your small business marketing armoury.

Automate Your Emails With Autoresponders

One of the reasons that Email Marketing is so powerful is because if you set it up properly, your entire email operation can be automated. Using autoresponders you can decide who gets which emails and when they get them. You can even create a system where people who purchase a particular product or service receive a series of emails leading them to further purchases. And the entire process is automated – which means that you can lie on the beach while the profits roll in.

Test Pay Per Click Advertising

How would you like your business to be at the very top of all the search engines without spending months on search engine optimization that may not work anyway. You can do this simply and rapidly with pay per click advertising. This enables you to get to the top of the search engines but you only pay when someone clicks to go to your website. So unlike most internet advertising, you only pay when someone visits your site. How much you pay will depend on how much competition there is amongst other advertisers in your category.As with all marketing, the golden rule is to TEST and measure the results.

Use Video On Your Website

The internet now offers the opportunity for you (or a professional voice over) to speak directly to your customers and clients. Adding video to your website can be very powerful and is not expensive.

Consider Testing Internet Advertising

The collapse of internet advertising after the dot com boom gave advertising on the web a bad name. But for many businesses, it’s become a key part of their marketing mix. Consider testing internet advertising on a small scale – if it’s successful and you are able to roll it out, it can be a superb way to reach large numbers of potential customers and clients very rapidly.

Remember The Internet Is Dynamic And Constantly Changing

The internet changes constantly. New sites are continuously appearing or being amended. Google is always changing its search algorithms. Having created your site, make sure you keep it regularly updated. Put new stuff up on it regularly. The worst thing you can do is just let it sit untended and unloved. If you do, potential customers will also leave it unvisited and unloved.

So if you need some help with your internet marketing, call us today.