One of the biggest mistakes that many small business owners make when trying to find new ways to market their business is to put all of their eggs in one basket. They will stop one, or worse, all forms of marketing in order to pursue another. A popular trend right now is to stop all print, radio and direct mail marketing to pursue a website and online presence.
For most small businesses, this is a very dangerous mistake.
Don’t get me wrong, having a website is unquestionably one of the most important marketing tools you can have for your business. However, with the options available out there, creating a website should never come at the complete and total financial sacrifice of all of your other marketing efforts. All marketing is a building block process – think Jenga – you remove a supporting block and the whole thing will come crashing down, leaving you to pick up the pieces and start again. Sound extreme? Several years ago a milk company decided that they were on top of the world and that they no longer needed to advertise, so they stopped. Twelve months later their sales were plummeting at a shocking speed. They immediately started to advertise again, but it was too late and it took eighteen months of advertising for them to recover and get their revenues back to where they were before they stopped advertising.
“Ok, I get that, but I’m not ‘stopping’ my advertising, I’m just changing how I’m advertising by getting a website setup.”
Really?
- How long is it going to take your website to be live and fully functional?
- How long is it going to take your website to show up in search engines?
- How long is it going to take to establish a network of back links?
- How long is it going to take for consumers that are in your market area to find out you have a website and to start using it?
- How are you going to let your market area consumers know that you have a website?
- What is the purpose of your website? (To attract new customers, to provide existing customers with better service, to be a more detailed online brochure, to expand your business beyond your local market…)
Yes, a website is important and I personally believe it is important to every single business in existence. BUT, the needs of each individual business are different and more importantly, the needs of each businesses’ customers are different. If your business primarily caters to the more “non-technically inclined” customers and it requires personal appointments, chances are you don’t need a big fancy online store for your customers to “shop online”. On the other hand, if your business caters to a more technologically savvy group you’d best have more than your address, contact information, hours and some photos, or you’ll lose ‘em in 30 seconds or less.
So it is very important that you understand who your customer’s are and what their needs are. If people ask you questions about your business/services/products in any form, your website should have the answers. If you exclude information from your website because you’re afraid your competition will get their hands on it, then chances are your competition already has your share of the market (or is well on its way to getting it). If you’re afraid to post information on your website because it might scare away your customers, you need to rethink what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and how you’re doing it.
You need to invest a lot of thought and planning into your website before you take the big jump to get one put together for you. If you don’t, then your journey of getting a website setup runs the very serious risk of being a hugely disappointing experience. But even worse than that, if you’ve also pulled all of your other advertising, your business is going to suffer, I can guarantee it.
Never lose sight of the goal – to increase sales and more importantly, to increase your bottom line. Marketing is your only “constant” in enabling that to happen. Cross-marketing regularly and consistently is the most effective means of reaching your goal.
Plan, Plan, Plan – this is absolutely key.
- Figure out your timeline,
- decide on your marketing budget,
- choose your marketing methods (the more the better, IF you can sustain them financially and in your timetable),
- line up your marketing to get the maximum coverage and exposure for the best possible dollars based on these decisions,
- create, or get created, your chosen marketing materials – make sure they are interconnected into a “campaign”,
- track the success of your campaign, track the origins of your customers on a general scale and profile your customers continuously.
Test, Measure, Repeat.
Remember: Failing to plan is planning to fail.
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