Is Generating A FLOOD Of New Business And Dominating Your Marketplace Part Of Your Business Strategy? If So, You Need To Understand The Vital Importance Of Websites And Search Engine Marketing.

By Brian Offenberger

Here is a checklist of the 21 best reasons that your business needs to have a website if your primary goal is to generate new business and increase revenue and profit now and in the future.

Reason #1 - To be able to sell more products and services to prospects and customers – EVERYONE IS Online.
No matter if you sell to end users, suppliers, or distributors, these are your customers and the way they are going to look for you to buy from is on the internet. It doesn’t matter if your business is in one of America’s largest cities or small towns in the Midwest, your customers are online, and that is now how they search for almost everything they need. If you don’t have a website, you will miss a considerable piece of the pie.

Reason #2 - You are open for business 24/7, 365 days a year. Your website doesn’t call in sick, and prospects can learn about your business when it’s convenient for them, including nights, holidays, and weekends.
Do you ever look for a business during non-business hours? Of course, everyone does, and people often make their buying decisions during this time. If you don’t have a website, you aren’t even an option.

Reason #3 - Your website is your 21st Century marketing materials. No longer do you need to print expensive brochures and mailers to your audience, and it’s easy and inexpensive to change content at any time.
Direct mail and printing other marketing material is not only expensive, it’s often not targeted to exactly who is looking for your product or service. When someone lands on your website, they are looking for what you sell. This is your opportunity to engage them and establish contact with these prospects and turn them into clients and customers.

Reason # 4 - With a website, you can sell products and services directly to prospects and established customers.
Have you ever purchased something online? Ever requested more information from a company or to be contacted by one of their sales representatives? Of course you have! Your prospects and customers do too. With a website, you can make sales, generate leads and ring your register even when you are sleeping.

Reason # 5 - With a website, you can reach a GLOBAL audience.
People who may be moving into your area often use the internet to ‘scout’ providers for the services they will need in their new homes in your area. Vacationers often use the internet to find the very places they will spend their money while on vacation. If you sell a product that is used all over the world, there is no reason not to attract buyers from all over the globe. With a website set up to do eCommerce, people can buy your product in Japan as easily as in your hometown.

Reason # 6 - A website allows you to present a professional image.
A professional website is a sign of business credibility and reflects to the customer the image of a business.
Now that you understand that the internet is where a lot of your new customers are going to come from, the next thing you must do is establish credibility with your prospects. One of the great things about the internet is no matter how small a business you have, even if you run it out of your home, you can have a website and compete against the giants in any industry, and be a genuine player and competitor. There are no rules that prohibit you from competing with companies many times your size with huge marketing budgets and getting new business that in the past would have gone to them.

Cost no longer dictates the rules. If you have more creativity and marketing know how than the big boys, you will win a lot of business that years ago would have gone straight to them. The internet has leveled the playing field forever. Years ago if you needed office computers, you would have called IBM. Today, if you search office computers on the internet, there are hundreds of suppliers, some are small businesses that can and do effectively compete with big boys simply by having a well designed website.

Reason #7 – You can substantially lower your advertising costs spent on other marketing channels, especially print, radio and television.
The internet has made it possible for you to easily (and inexpensively) make and distribute your own audio and video commercial messages. In the old days, these were called “radio commercials” and “television commercials.” In the internet era they are called “podcasts” and “videocasts.” A car dealer, as an example, could make their own podcast, put it on their website each Saturday with an extremely aggressive price promotion and, after a period of time, will have conditioned their market to come to the website rather than turning to the radio or TV for the advertising information and value.

The point is that a website is a great holding place for audio, video and pictures and will continue to evolve as a message holder for audio and video ads.

Reason #8 - Your ability to gather information about your prospects and customers is greatly enhanced. Web analytics helps you determine needs, wants, and behavioral tendencies of the people you want to sell to.
There is so much information you can almost instantly view about the people who go to your website. The amount of business information you can get and use is historically unprecedented. For instance, just knowing what people who land on your website type into the search engine to find you is easily accessible and extremely important information you can use to increase sales and profit in online and offline channels.

Reason #9 - A website will become your sales force’s best friend.
They will be able to upload presentations, marketing collateral, and create online meetings. Best of all however, is that your website can be your lead generator if properly optimized, and can have your salespeople talking to people who have ‘raised their hand’ indicating they are interested in buying from you. This results in a much higher closing rate and lower turnover in your sales staff.

Reason #10 – A website can help you cut costs in your business and marketing budget.
A website enables customers and prospects to learn and interact with your company on their terms, and offers them an opportunity for answers without physically interacting with the personnel of your company. This reduced strain on resources enables you to operate more profitably and efficiently.

With a website you can also quickly and inexpensively make changes and see results in hours. Just a couple of years ago you might have spent weeks designing a direct mail piece, spend thousands on printing and postage, and had to wait a week before any results would show. With a website you can quickly and inexpensively make changes and see results in hours.

Most traditional form marketers see dramatically improved results with higher ROI through online marketing. Why? Because people turn to the internet for all aspects of their lives: news, information, shopping, research, entertainment, networking and more.

Reason #11 - Your website is the best place for you to test the viability of new products or services.
There is no cheaper and quicker way to test a new product or service than with your website. The feedback and measurements you can get will tell you in a very short time whether you have a winner on your hands or if you need to do more ‘tweaking’ to create a consistent seller.

Reason #12 - A website greatly enhances your ability to communicate with outside sales reps and dealer representatives.
You can easily create a ‘members only’ password protected section of your website with information, pricing charts, and other information for your sales force that is inaccessible to others. This enables your sales team to have immediate access to information from anywhere and is a highly efficient way for interaction with outside reps. Many companies incorporate a “employee access only” blog for a more intimate, frequent conversations and interactions with their team members.

Reason # 13 – Make your business information available to the public.
Your website becomes a valuable resource for the public, where you can display your business hours, key team members and managers, contact information, and even your annual report.

Reason # 14 - Websites help you be environmentally friendly.
Do you realize how much paper has been saved since most people only have electronic versions of documents and other information? Websites represent a true version of ‘green’ marketing, saving paper and other natural resources.

Reason # 15 - Your website is a place where you can release time sensitive material such as announcing a grand prize winner, a product recall, or maybe an outage of service.
The speed at which you can send ‘message to market’ is unprecedented and the website serves as the placeholder of such information.

Reason #16 -You can use your website to demonstrate your product or before and after photos of your service.
No matter what you sell, product or service, demonstrating it in use or “before and after” photos is helpful and persuasive. A carpet cleaner I know has dozens of “before and after” photos of carpeted rooms that show the dramatic transformation from filthy to brand new looking that are very persuasive and have had an equally dramatic result in the number of jobs booked on the internet. You can do this too.

Reason # 17 - Your website can have a great effect on improving customer service.
Do you find that customers who call your business frequently ask the same question? You can decrease those calls and enhance customer service with a ‘frequently asked questions’ area on your website. You can also provide customers access to marketing collateral and sales presentations, and even allow them schedule appointments for your sales or service departments.

Reason # 18 - A website is like passing out a business card to millions of people.
A website greatly enhances your ability to network and interact with you customers and prospects. It’s much like going to a networking meeting, you get to tell people what you do and this is how to reach me, but you can interact with thousands of people everyday instead of the same 10 or 20 once a week.

Reason #19 - Your website allows feedback from customers and prospects.
Unlike an advertisement in print, on radio or on television, your website ads allow your customers and prospects to provide feedback and analytics give us insights into user behavior. This is valuable marketing information that you can use to boost your business on many levels.

Reason # 20 - Your website can help you open new markets, either regionally, nationally, or internationally.
Your website acts as your interaction point in international markets so you don’t have to worry about mail, phone, and regulations systems in foreign countries. For companies with multiple overseas locations, a website presence allows offices to interact and spread knowledge, key events, and happenings. Want to open a new store in Peoria? Create related pages on your website, test them using paid search advertising to drive a consistent stream of traffic and watch results soar.

Reason # 21 - A website can provide 24 hour customer service.
You can see how all the fast food restaurants are offering extended hours and you can too without any added costs. Today, with businesses selling nationally or internationally, business is a 24/7 proposition, even though your office hours are not. People can interact with your website, generate leads and make purchases even when no one is in the office.

These are 21 great reasons you need to be represented with a website on the internet. There are probably more reasons as the internet and online marketing are an endlessly evolving process. You know you need to be there in order to compete now and in the future.

BizGrowth Search Engine Solutions can guide you through the process of establishing a website, or if you already have one, make it work harder for you and produce more revenue and profit than any other medium at your disposal.

Led by certified eMarketing professional Brian Offenberger from his Scottsdale, Arizona offices, he has shown companies big and small the benefits and tremendous ROI in using the internet to create leads and sales.

Tell BizGrowth Search Engine Solutions how we can help you.

Tags: web marketing, website capabilities, website marketing, websites, why have a website

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 8:26 am and is filed under Best Marketing Practices, Lead Generation, Search Engine Marketing, Web Design . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.