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Many small businesses work hard to attract clients and
customers. Having a website and covering the web design basics is just one way to attract new customers or market your business.
However small businesses marketing is often full of holes.
The biggest holes in small businesses' marketing efforts are
in lead generation.
For those that don't know it already,
identifying, attracting and building a steady stream of
prospects is the number one marketing task for growing a
service business.
You need to know who is interested in
your products and services in order to market to them,
again and again.
Every small business has some sort of lead generation
strategy, whether it's just handing out business cards,
sending out press releases, writing articles, asking for
referrals or, in more recent years, putting up a web site.
The problem is that many of these approaches are used
sporadically not systematically, and techniques aren't in
place to capture the contacts made. More on this in web design steps.
Interested prospects are missed, or if contact is made,
are pushed away by your materials, web site or phone
system. The result is that hundreds and thousands of
potential prospects fall through cracks in your marketing
and you can't profit from their business. If your lead
generation strategy and systems aren't generating
dozens or hundreds of new leads each week then your
marketing strategy has a big gap in it.
Four common holes in marketing are:
1. The Lack of Compelling Content
Whether it's the title of your web site and the description
shown in the search engines, or the title of your article
and the first paragraph, your content needs to pull in
prospects. Too often marketing materials are written from
the sellers' point of view instead of the prospects'.
Compelling content captures rospects' attention by
focusing on their problems. Without good copy rospects
won't be moved to become clients.
- Is your marketing content compelling from prospects'
perspective?
- Does it lead with information about prospects' problems
and concerns? Ask about our Web site Redesign services.
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2. Limited Reach
If you could contact all the people who need and want
your services, you might want to. Using advertising,
direct mail or cold calling to do this is in most cases
cost prohibitive. PR, writing articles and having a web
site are some low cost ways of getting attention. The
objective with any of these is to reach as many people
as possible in order to find qualified leads.
Despite effort put into creating marketing materials,
building web sites and writing articles, independent
professionals rarely get the visibility they want.
Articles are only read by a handful of people and
web sites are hard to find.
To leverage the time and money you put into your
marketing materials, articles, and web sites, you need
to do everything you can to help people find them.
Read more about website homepage.
This sounds obvious, but most service professionals
write an article and just post it on their web site
or send it to a few clients. With hundreds of online
ezines and offline publications looking for content,
you could be putting an article in front of tens of
thousands of people instead of just a few.
The same is true of search engine listings. Most people
can't even find their own sites in the search engines.
Help the search engines put your web site on the first
page or two for your keywords and you'll increase your
exposure and reach hundreds of new prospects each week.
Depending on your business, this is easier than most
people realize and will extend the reach of your
marketing dramatically.
12website has been achieving high ranking websites for
over 7 years. Get in Touch.
- How many people per week see the marketing copy or
articles that are meant to get them to make contact?
- What are you doing to increase this number?
3. Missing Motivators
Grabbing prospects' attention is the first step in lead
generation; moving them to make contact, visit your web
site or call your company and add themselves to your target
list is the next step. When you write an article or send
out a mailing, provide an incentive for prospects to take
action. Offer a workshop or free report.
- Does your marketing motivate prospects to come to you
and give you their contact information?
4. Malfunctioning or Non-Existent Systems
If your marketing is working, prospects will call your office
or stop by your web site. You want to make it is as easy as
possible for prospects to get in touch with you, and you
want to collect their contact information. Again, this sounds
obvious, but how many times have you been frustrated by
menu-driven answering systems that didn't list the item
you called about? (Or made you go through too many steps
to find it?) Or a web site with no name, email address or
phone number of a person who could answer your questions.
And many phone systems and web sites aren't set up to
capture visitors' contact information.
- Do you have automated systems that make it easy for
prospects to contact your company?
- Do you have automated systems that make it easy for
prospects to give you their contact information?
Marketing involves generating leads, converting them to
clients and reselling to clients. If you're not attracting
the number of customers and clients you want, make sure
your marketing strategy isn't full of holes.
Once you have your leads you move on to customer friendly web design.
Get in Touch
Below is a free domain search - to get you started.
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