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Many of you will remember the line from the movie Field of
Dreams, "If you build it, they will come." Many businesses apply
this methodology to their business model. I can't tell you how
many times I've come across this misnomer in dealing with
hosting and web design customers. They figure, "I've got a
website now. The customers will start to buy my stuff. I can
wait for the orders to start coming in." A few months later they
call to complain that it isn't working and it must be something
wrong. When I ask them what they have done to get customers, a
lot of times they don't know what to say because they never
thought of that approach. If we pause to think about the build
and wait approach for a moment, we will soon see the error in
this idea. Unlike a physical location, where you have customers
driving or walking by all the time, online businesses need some
way to attract traffic and customers to their website. In this
article we will discuss a few methods that can be employed to
bring customers to your website.
Search Engines
Getting listed in the search engines is usually a good place to
start. There are two ways to get listed in the search engines;
Pay-Per-Click placement, and organic search engine results.
Depending on the industry and online competition, PPC placement
can be a very inexpensive or very expensive way to attract
customers to your website. If the cost per click starts to get
high, be very careful, you could spend a lot of money and not be
able to recoup those costs in sales.
Getting into the search engines themselves is quite another
task, left for another article. There are many websites and
articles that detail the process needed.
Advertising
Doing some type of advertising is absolutely necessary to
gaining customers. Many times I hear ?I can?t afford to pay for
advertising.? My response is ?How can you afford not to?? Owning
a small business myself I know how intimidating advertising can
be. However, there are a few methods of advertising that require
little investment which I will discuss
-Direct Mail There are many companies that offer postcard
printing and mailing services at VERY affordable rates. Now the
goal is to only send mailings to your target audience and avoid
sending to those who wouldn?t be in interested. This will
maximize the success and minimize the cost of your mailing.
-Press Coverage Getting your local media outlet to do an article
on you can be a great way to get some local customers. Many
newspapers like covering these local stories. Prepare a press
release and follow up with a personal phone call to the reporter
that usually handles these types of stories.
-Build a Sales Team Now, the sales team I?m referring to isn?t
the one that sits in an office and cold calls people all day.
Get rid of that overhead and get your friends, acquaintances,
and family to ?Sell? your product for you. Offer a good
commission if they make a sale, and you?ll have others doing the
work for you. A good side effect of this is you?ve got lots of
people spreading the hype about your business.
-Message Boards Get out on the message boards and be active. Put
you web site link in you signature and make good posts. It is
much better if you are genuine in your postings, than if you
just post the get your signature listed.
Good Service
If you provide an excellent product with excellent service the
customers you?ve already gotten will help spread the word.
Remember, it can?t be just good service it needs to be
next-level service. Service they don?t usually receive. An
impressed customer is priceless.
To sum it all up Now the items discussed in this article are by
no means the only things will work, and won?t be a guaranteed
method. A concerted effort of these tactics will bring customers
to your site. If you work hard, keep focus and stay on the
cutting edge you can have an advantage over your competition and
be successful.
About the author:
Scott is the owner and chief designer for Smith-Concepts a
successful web development firm. Related Links:
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