Make Your Business Open For Customers

Make sure your business is visible online
and exciting for customers to visit and feel welcome.

It's a source of astonishment to me that so many business owners have not twigged to the fact that their website not being highly visible online and well laid out, means their business is not highly visible and easy for customers to spend money with them.

That was my comment on a recent Smartcompany article that makes the point that your website is your business. 

Let's start at the beginning. We know that businesses have websites now. We can guess that most business owners and managers probably know that a business needs a website. Some may not really believe it ('We only have local customers so it isn't really something we need'.). Some like the idea of having a jazzy website with lots of Flash animation and sound track that blares when you load the page or maybe even a groovy animated video where someone "walks out" and tells you about the business. Unfortunately the reality of this is often that the fancier the website - the less useful it is. The more fancy the website the less visible it may be. The old saying has never been more true than it is for websites. Looks can be deceiving. 

First Job A Website Should Do For Your Business

Your website is effectively your business online. It represents you just the way a shopfront store welcomes customers to your business. 

So the first thing your website should do ... is be visible to customers who might have a need or a want for what you supply. Just like you decorate your shop windows, advertise where you are and what your specials are, your website should do that too. 

Search engine optimization is the way that you set up how your website is configured to allow the best possible positioning that can be achieved in search. To do this requires understand the current ways that search engines work and working within the guidelines to achieve the best result you can, and be as find-able as possible when someone is looking for a business to buy from. This is especially important for local businesses and there are ways to make this more effective. 

Social Media Should Do This For Your Business. 

While search engine optimization is important to get the best result you can on search, the other way that people find your business now is through comments and recommendations and following on Social Media platforms, like Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook and some other specialty sites. 

While you might think your business is not a fit to be on Facebook, that may not be the case. In any event there may be more appropriate sites to use for your business. You won't know what they are unless you are very much involved in social media in order to understand how this works. 

Social media has other benefits over and above getting your business in front of your target market and it is vital to understand the complexities of this new medium and to devise a strategy that lets you harness the advantages that this will give your business. 

Actions:
At the most basic level and before anything else is considered, 

• Ask friends to look for your business online - NOT using your business name. 
• Implement a plan to get your business visible for the right things. 
• Set up alerts to monitor what is being said about your business online

Related
Develop A Strategy For Social Marketing
Check Your Website For Roadworthiness
Think Social Media Is No Use For Your Business? Think Again.
How To Get Your Local Business Noticed Online
Purpose Then Strategy - Case Study Starting Your Website
  Quick And Dirty Business Review



  

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How Your Business Just Became An Online Publisher And Why It Is A Productivity Issue

Like It Or Not - Your Business Is Now In Publishing.  

The channel you create to engage with people who can be your customer is the new face of what circulation numbers once were for the newspapers.

Content is King on search engines and now you can add to that Context. Well, it should always have been part of the equation, but now it is official.

 “Without relevant content, how will our customers trust that we know how to solve their issues?  They won’t and we know that.  As marketers, we must facilitate discussions that add value and build trust over time.”  Dominic Pontrelli, Sr. VP of Marketing at Ricoh America

Kevin Jorgensen describes Context in marketing in this way -

“Context marketing is a set of best practices designed to amplify the value of your content to your prospects and customers. More specifically it’s about using known qualities of your prospect to either present your content in a frame of reference so that its presence makes it natural, noteworthy and useful or to juxtapose your content so that it creates dissonance." 

Cognitive dissonance is that feeling you get when you see something that is 'just not right' with the picture in front of you.

So what does this mean to you in your business? Well it means that you cannot think that your advertising and pushing promotions is the way to use social media and promote your business to customers any more.

It means you need some things you may have but never used before. Here are just some of the new jobs that need to be happening in your business...

Identifying and understanding of your ideal customer demographic and psychographic profile.  It might seem that we know all we need to know about customers but the reality is there is rarely a business that has objectively analyzed their customers to determine their characteristics in detail.

Stories. You need stories and a way to tell your stories in a way that prospective customers will find valuable.

Honesty. Your customers don’t want to be lied to and they can find out very fast if you have misled them and treated them like mugs.  Don’t be That Guy.

A Publishing Space.  You want to get your message out then you need to build a following of people who are prepared to receive information from you and your business.  Search can help people find your products but your publishing will help them to find you.  Those who find you, you want to be able to continue to engage with and have them return to you and be open to your information over time. Building your following is a new job to be done.

Content. Creating packages of your stories and information means getting the stories out in different formats and different ways to gain attention and retention of your message.

Context. Tying your stories to real situations that your target prospects can easily relate to in their lives and that helps them join the dots from their problem to your solution.

Think of this as building your own personal channel to present to people who are or will be able to be your customer.  

This can become your business’s media hub and interface to engage and communicate with customers. So important is this that it could be the only interaction that you have with some customers who may choose to buy from you without ever meeting you in person.  It may be your source of new employees, new joint venture partners, new suppliers and new business partners, or even a buyer for your business as well as new customers. This could be your major source of new business in the years to come.

This can look like a lot of work that doesn’t relate to what your core business is about. 

If you are thinking that, you’re wrong. 

This is directly related to your core business and your ability to generate sales. Your ability to create your own channel through which you can be visible, credible and accessible as you engage with your customer segment is what will show your business to be relevant and important to those who will become your customers, and give confirmation to your existing customers that they made a good choice and your business is worth buying from. 

This is a business productivity issue. Your business needs to get this right. So you have to make it happen.

And there is no more time to waste.

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 Lindy Asimus Website
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