It’s not going to go away. If you’re not already there, then you need to get your business online and position yourself as the expert in your field before your competitors get there first.
The trouble is that you probably haven’t a clue where to start and are fearful of making a mistake. You feel that the safest path to take at the moment is to do nothing, watch, wait and see.
You are not alone.
But the Internet is constantly changing. Small businesses are investing larger percentages of their marketing budgets than ever on the Internet. Small and startup businesses are being propelled by exponential growth from the Internet to become new market leaders, toppling the traditional players who fail to adapt to this new marketplace.
So what should you do?
The time to watch, wait and see is over. Here is a 7 step action plan to help get you moving in the right direction…
- Take Ownership.
Taking ownership and responsibility for the success of the website is a key part of controlling its purpose. If there is no-one in control, then the purpose will be lost. You must either take control or have control over the person managing your website.
There must be an information owner within your organisation that knows what is required and has measures to determine the quality of this information. When the results are collected, the quality of the information can then be assessed and decisions made where the improvements should be made.
That person responsible for the success of your website will probably be you. It is therefore essential that you have a strategy in place to control the success of your website.
Ultimately, the success of your website depends on how well it is integrated and accepted into the organisation and how well the management infrastructure has a control over the content.
To achieve a successful integration, your organisation must show coherence in the purpose and objectives of your website.
- Get Good at Marketing.
The size of your business, your growth rate, the markets you are involved in, the size of clients you deal with, are all held back by your marketing abilities. If you are slow to adapt to the Internet marketplace, how do you feel your business will fare?
Building a marketing strategy that works for your business on the Internet will be heavily dependent on your experiences of your traditional marketplace and on your confidence to marry this knowledge with the new marketing skills required to get it to work on the Internet.
Choosing the right partner to give you timely expert advice will be essential if you want to avoid the pitfalls and dead-ends that are all too easy to stumble across.
- Start to Measure Everything.
The secret to a successful website is by knowing how to effectively collect and utilise visitor log information in a way that makes key business decisions clear and obvious.
In order to make sense of this information, you need to determine what information is fundamental to the key decisions you need to make. Once you know what you’re looking for, you then need to determine how you are going to look after and nurture this information in order that the right decisions can be made.
The information is only important if it is relevant to the purpose of your website. If you know your purpose, then you need to assess what key performance indicators (KPI) you need to start measuring.
Your KPIs will be a set of measurements you take on a regular basis in order to track the performance over time. This data can be used to make performance predictions for changes in any of the measured data.
- Follow-Up all Leads.
When your customers ask questions, they are reflecting the changes in your marketplace. It is an opportunity for you to understand your marketplace and discover what products and services are being sought after.
You should relentlessly follow up all enquiries. When a customer has an enquiry, it will become part of your consultative process to help them find the solution. As part of this process, you should demonstrate impartiality and pursue with the genuine intention to help to the end even if they do not buy your product or service.
Enquiries from your website will more than likely be the first time a prospect has shown serious interest in your product or service. At this stage they will not have enough information to make a buying decision and will probably be evaluating other solutions from other companies.
To deal with website enquiries, you can implement a series of automatic email responses, called auto-responders. Using this technology, each enquiry will be automatically followed-up with personalised emails. Further emails can be sent at predetermined intervals in order to nurture the prospect by feeding them valuable and timely information.
- Develop a Content-Rich and Highly Relevant Site.
If you build your website based on becoming the expert, you can provide relevant information that is of great value to your visitors. The more relevant information you provide on your website, the more likely the search engines will find you first.
If you are aware of the search terms that your prospects use to find your business, then you can make sure that the information you provide is written to be as relevant as possible to these queries.
- Move to ecommerce.
If your website accepts transactions, you have a fully functional 24/7 sales tool that automatically generates income for your business. If you want to make full use of the Internet marketplace, then your goal should be to build a highly efficient automated ecommerce engine and then develop systems to sustain and grow the profits achieved through this tool.
No matter what type of business you operate, whether B2C or B2B, being able to take online transactions will become an essential tool for your business. With powerful billing engine systems, your website can create automatic regular invoices, create and process purchase orders and store historical customer information to make the financial aspects of your business much easier to manage.
- Collaborate with your Business Partners.
As your business begins to adopt the power of the Internet, online applications will enable your partner companies to collaborate with you by sharing information. This will create stronger and more powerful relationships with your existing partners and allow your business to work in larger environments and compete with larger organisations.