Why you can’t afford not to invest in your website when times are tough

Credit crunch … recession … not nice words! Unfortunately, though, this is our current business climate and many companies (large and small) are struggling. Instinctively, many are cutting back. Often one of the first areas to be slashed is marketing, including any plans to develop or upgrade a website. Perhaps, though, rather than asking “Do we really need that new website?” or “Can we leave the update for another time?” we should be asking ourselves whether we can afford not to do these things.

Research has shown that businesses that invest in marketing during a recession come out of it stronger. They win customers from competitors who stop marketing or go under. Then, when the good times return, their higher profile positions them beautifully to make the most of them.

So we accept that we need to keep investing in marketing our businesses. But budgets are tight and every pound we spend needs to work hard for us. This is where a website really comes into its own.

These days, the internet is often the first port of call for people looking for a product or service. A presence on the web has become the expected norm, much as an office or shop front used to be. Not having a website makes potential customers question whether you actually exist as a ‘proper’ business.

A website is possibly your most flexible communication tool. Once it’s there, you can change and update it at minimal cost. Spot a new market opportunity – change the site to reflect it. Want to publish news – add it to your website.

So, step one: you need to have a website.  -  Click here to get started

There are lots of businesses on the internet, even businesses quite like yours. If people haven’t heard about you before or aren’t sure exactly what they need, they will use search engines to see what is out there.

Step two: people need to be able to find your website. – Learn How

Now you’ve driven traffic to your site, does what people find there make them want to take the next step? Does the website give them confidence in you and your ability to give them something of value?

People judge by appearances. You and your business may be fabulous and highly professional. If your website looks amateurish, that’s how people will see you. If people feel that it isn’t targeted at them, they won’t think that what you offer is for them.

People are busy and a little bit lazy. If it takes too long to work out what you are offering them or to find what they want from your website, they’ll give up and go somewhere else. It’s even easier than walking from one shop to another – you just click on.

Which gives us step three: your website needs to be ‘fit for purpose’ – professional, credible, clear and compelling.

So, what can you do to make the most of your investment in a presence on the web?

Buy in expertise

If you want a professional job that looks professional, use an expert. They have the experience and skills to know what works and to give you something that works for you. Get the foundations right and you will be able to take it from there yourself. Poor decisions at the start can be more costly, in time and money, in the long run.

Improve your visual identity

Are you creating the right impression? Clip art logos, generic images, DIY materials produced in Publisher make your communication look amateurish and like everyone else’s. What does it say about your service?

Move with the times

A website is more flexible than a printed brochure. It’s easy to update it. It makes sense to update it. Highlight new products, services, special offers, articles, news etc. Use a website to test a new market. The web is a level playing field for small and large businesses – get into the game!

Shout it from the rooftops

Is your message about what you offer and how good it is immediately clear from your website? Will the customers you want know that they have arrived at the right place? It’s worth taking the time and perhaps getting some help to define your key messages and put them across in clear and accurate words.

Move it on up

How well does your website rank in the search engines? There are simple ways to optimise your site and push it up the rankings. It will be easier with a niche service in a local market. A search engine optimisation package may not be an expensive as you think.

Blog, Twitter and Digg

Blogging (Twittering and Digg) is not a replacement for a website or a search engine optimisation strategy, but it can be a valuable part of your web strategy. If you have a way with words, it can help you to engage with your customers and move your name up the search engines. Bear in mind, though, that a badly written blog or one that is not updated regularly can do more harm than good.

GET A WEB FITNESS TEST

Be honest with yourself. Does your site really cut the mustard? If you’re unsure about how effective your website is, get in touch with us for a ‘health check’.

Catfish Web Design have partnered with Zero-21 Communication to offer a quick assessment of your website’s fitness for the purpose you want it to perform – marketing your business. Free of charge we’ll give you brief feedback on key aspects of your site:

• Visual appearance – branding, look and feel
• Messages and words – what it says and how it says it
• Functionality – how well it works
• Search Engine Optimisation – how easy it is to find.

If you’d like more detailed recommendations, we will make a small charge – that can be discounted against any project you choose to undertake with us.

A good website is invaluable. Don’t put off creating your own site and don’t waste money on an ineffective one. The question should not be ‘can I afford to spend money on a website’ it must be ‘can I afford not to’.

If you run a web site, it’s easy to sit back and shut your eyes as we start the long downward roller coaster ride. But there are some things you can do to recession-proof your internet marketing:

1.Make every customer happy. It’s easier to keep a customer than it is to get a new one. If something goes wrong, or if someone’s blasting you via e-mail, think before you respond. Of course, you should always do this, but maybe think a little harder this time.

2.Focus on content. Go back over your site. Is every single page a perfect sales letter? If not, go over it again. Edit and re-edit. Post your edits each time. This is an iterative proces. But constant improvement will mean better conversion and better search rankings. 
 
3.Think search engine optimization. Pay attention to the basic principles of search engine optimization. Have great content. Make sure your site is easily ‘crawled’ by the search engines. Don’t engage in any tricky stuff that might get you banned.

4.Measure everything. If you’re spending money on advertising, measure every ad for effectiveness. If it’s not converting sales, dump it. No sense spending money that doesn’t generate a return. Just keep in mind the latency of your customers: If it takes 4 weeks for someone to make a buying decision, don’t delete the ad after 2 weeks.

5.Go back to fundamentals. Some marketing methods have worked for decades: Honesty. Clarity. Research. Don’t get cute – stick to the fundamentals.

6.Find safety in numbers. Seek out your favorite competitors and work with them. Sounds nuts, but think about it. Find the customers you don’t want, but they do. Have them do the same. Refer them back-and-forth. Even do some co-marketing. You’ll both make more money that way.

7.Go wild. This is not a time to get conservative. Your competitors probably will. This is a good time to stand out, not by being silly or overspending, but by making sure you have a particularly effective message, and that you carry that message everywhere. Remember, internet marketing is always cheaper than other media. So expand, don’t shrink, what you’re doing online. OK, I’m biased on this one. But you don’t have to hire me. Just go do it.

8.Expand lines of communication. If you aren’t blogging yet, start. It’s access to ’soft dollar’ marketing that only costs you time. And it gets you access to an entire world of social media. Then get yourself an account on one or more social networks (Facebook, 9Rules, MySpace, etc.). Don’t spam. Just make friends. If something exciting happens in your business, communicate it there. If you have 100 friends, and they each have 100 friends, that’s 10,000 potential listeners.

9.Go deep. Deliver more information than ever on your web site. Be sure that visitors can learn every detail of your product or service online. That means fewer phone calls, and less of your time. Time costs money, so this saves you money in a time when money’s a bigger concern.

10.Be careful about price cuts. All of your competitors are going to cut prices. You may have to – I’m not an idiot – but try talking about value first. Does your product save money in the long run? Talk about that before you slash prices. Or, offer discounts for bigger purchases. Give customers ways to save money that help you earn more, not less.

11.Panic calmly. Trust me, the word ‘recession’ scares the bejesus out of me, too. I’m a small business owner with a family, and I’m the sole wage-earner. But panicking – laying off staff, reducing marketing, shutting down distribution channels – will do irrevocable damage that costs far more to repair than it saves in the short term. So do what I do: Panic, but panic calmly.

The internet has become the great equalizer for many companies and marketers. Without spending a fortune, small companies and entrepreneurs can earn a great deal of money online right alongside multi-national companies. With plenty of affordable and free advertising options, companies or individuals with smaller budgets can still turn huge profits. However, to be able to take advantage of this medium, companies or entrepreneurs must have a web presence. Having a web presence allows greater reach into ones’ market and gets ones’ product or service in front of millions of people. Today’s economy also demands it. With high gas prices and job cutbacks, many people are looking to cut fuel costs by staying at home and making purchases.

Why Your Business Must Have A Web Presence :

The Economy Demands It:
With a struggling United States’ economy, the internet provides an opportunity to get a company’s products and goods in front of citizens from other countries. With online language conversion software, it is possible to reach millions of consumers even those that do not speak your country’s particular language.

You Dramatically Increase Your Reach:
The Internet allows business owners to dramatically increase their reach. No longer are owners relegated to the people in their neighborhood or city. Instead, they can reach persons in other parts of the country and even outside of it.

Society Is More Technology Driven:
Society has obviously becoming more technologically more driven. More people then ever use the internet and carry phones with online capabilities. Individuals spend hours on the internet looking for information and to make purchases.

It’s Where The Buyers Are:
Buyers are logging onto the internet in droves to make purchases. The internet is convenient, shopping can be done quickly and online merchants often offer cheaper merchandise due to reduced overhead.

People Aren’t Afraid To Make Purchases Online:
For many people, the use of the internet to make purchases is fairly new. However, for younger generations, this is all that they know. Purchasing goods online is simply what you do. Companies, whether brick and mortar or online must position them selves to benefit financially from this. Having a professional, web presence is the only way to accomplish this.

Expensive Fuel Costs:
With fuel costs rising and no reasonable expectation of them dropping, more and more individuals are shopping online. They can purchase the same goods that they would normally drive to the store to get to save fuel costs. When these individuals get online to make purchases don’t you want to be able to secure those dollars?

Cheap Expansion:
If your business is in Dallas, Texas and you want to advertise to customers in California, the only way that you can accomplish this would be through an expensive direct marketing campaign, telemarketing, commercials, news paper advertisements or billboards. All of these advertising methods cost a lot of money. To reach these same persons online would be much cheaper. You could use pay-per-click marketing, social networking websites, press releases, articles and even free classified websites and save a ton of money. However, you need somewhere to send them to. You will need a professional looking webpage to convert visitors into buyers. It is much cheaper and simpler to have a web page designed then it is to build a new store in California or whatever area you are looking to target.

Online Marketing is becoming an essential marketing medium for a successful business.  If a business can successfully marketing their product or service online they open many new doors to potential customers and sales leads.  A well structured and organised SEO consultant will suggest two avenues for online marketing, Search Engine Optimization and Paid Online Marketing (like Pay Per Click).  Ideally you would be able to afford both paid and unpaid marketing campaigns but if you are like most businesses you are on a budget and need the proof that online marketing actually works.

The most common phrase I hear is “But everyone knows who we are and what we do” in relation to their business.  This is just not true otherwise every potential customer would already be beating down your door wouldn’t they?  There is always room for growth and if you sell a product or service then there is always online marketing potential.

So, let’s explore why SEO is far superior to paid online marketing.

1. SEO is a long term strategy for your online marketing.  Should you implement pay per click or other paid online marketing then as soon as you stop paying your bills to the advertiser the traffic to your website will stop.  Although you pay for setting up an SEO campaign with a reputable agency often their other client’s results are so impressive it is almost compelling to go with SEO instead.  With SEO, should you stop paying for the refinements a reputable firm might charge at an ongoing rate, you might only see a slight leveling off of website traffic.

2. With pay per click marketing you pay for every visitor delivered to your website whether they like your service or not.  With Search Engine Optimization your website will hopefully appear high in the free search results and this will mean you do not pay for a click through to your website – effectively once your SEO is setup every click or visitor to your website is free.

3. False or fake click throughs.  In a study released in August 2007 it was determined that 18% of click throughs on pay per click links on Google were false.  In other words this could be competitors clicking through to your website just trying to cost you money in advertising.

4. The psychology of clicking on sponsored links.  If you appear in both the paid and unpaid search results then you would see about 80% of your website traffic come from the unpaid free SEO website links.  There is a psychology associated with consumers clicking on paid advertising links especially if they are labeled as such, like in Google “Sponsored Links”.  Searchers see straight through this and know it is a paid advertising link.  Consumer preference is placed on the freely generated results and links at a rate of 4 to 1.

5. Over the period of one year the cost of setting up the initial SEO campaign will have more than bettered the underlying website traffic that an equivalent costing pay per click campaign will have achieved.  From my client examples there is about a 4 times website traffic factor weighted for SEO against pay per click.  I was amazed myself!!

In a recent newspaper article in Melbourne, Australia, it was shown that holding a position in the top 3 spots in the search engine results pages for a competitive term is worth an estimated $1.5 million.  It was also shown that holding the top spot generates 3.5 times the traffic that the number two spot generates.

When it boils down to it a well executed Search Engine Optimization campaign will get your website massive amounts of website traffic.  Of course selling the product or service is then the responsibility of the actual website so make sure you couple your SEO with good design, clear and prevalent calls to action and correct marketing principles like colour schemes and layouts.  In my opinion it is vital to get this SEO campaign mix correct so talk to a reputable SEO firm and gain some information on how they can help you.