Using Internet to grow your business
As an independent professional, a self employed freelancer or a small business owner one of the most challenging tasks is marketing. You know how to do what it is you do really well, you know you can offer value to people, you just don’t know how to locate people (prospects) and convince them to use your services or products (become customers).
Using Internet to grow your
business
As an independent professional, a self employed freelancer or a small business
owner one of the most challenging tasks is marketing. You know how to do what
it is you do really well, you know you can offer value to people, you just don’t
know how to locate people (prospects) and convince them to use your services
or products (become customers).
One of the most powerful techniques in marketing is to step into the shoes of
your ideal client and brainstorm how they would find your business. This helps
you to refine who exactly your target market are and what would be the best
marketing methods to communicate your message to them.
I bet right now if you used this technique on your business one of the first things
you would think of is the yellow pages. Most people automatically go to the
yellow pages because that’s how people find businesses. Coaches, counsellors,
plumbers, bookkeepers, financial advisors, consultants - any need can be met by
‘letting your fingers do the walking’.
The Internet Search Revolution
The Internet is fundamentally changing how people find things. The physical
Yellow Pages, the big yellow book, is becoming superseded by web search.
People use websites like Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search to find answers, buy
products, and locate professional service providers. Not to be left behind, the
Yellow Pages have reacted to the shift and have worked hard to make a web
version of their directory available. It’s quite clear that the future is online and you
can’t risk being left behind.
Thankfully it’s early days and most small business are reacting slowly or badly,
either not bothering to have a web presence at all or not thinking things through.
It’s very common for a small business to slap a poorly conceived website online,
hoping that somehow people will find it and become new clients. This is an
opportunity for individuals that take their time and use smart tactics to create a
purposeful website focusing on a specific niche.
I would hazard a claim that for many small businesses, including yours, the web
could become the only marketing tool needed to acquire more clients than ever
before more clients than you can handle on your own.
Why am I so confident? Because right now I use the web to generate all my
business and I know of many others that do the same. For example, my mother
is a counsellor and she uses the Internet to get nearly 100% of her new clients.
She focuses on the Brisbane, Australia marketplace and faces almost no online
competition. Hence whenever anyone searches for a Brisbane counsellor her
website is in the first page of search results. I could tell you a similar story about
a bookkeeper and a mortgage broker that both dominate a geographic
demographic and face little competition online.
It’s Not Too Late To Get Into Online Marketing
There is no good excuse for not initiating some form of online marketing. Even
simply having a website listing your contact details is a start and should be
leveraged using other marketing methods, such as including your web address
on business cards, letter heads and brochures. The real power comes when you
use the web as a marketing process to help generate a constant stream of eager
clients just dying to purchase from you. While this is not a straight forward
process the principles behind it are quite easy to follow and merely draw from the
skills you already have.
The important thing to understand is that right now is the best time to start
building an online marketing system. As mentioned already, many online markets
are not crowded and it is easy to find a niche you can dominate. We guarantee
there are people out there searching the web for what you offer.
The Internet rewards people who maintain a web presence for a long time with
regular updates. This means that over time as competitors come into your
marketplace you can remain the leader because you have first mover advantage.
You established your website first and enjoy the constant flow of traffic that
comes from having a long standing web presence.
Let’s Make Things Easy
If all this sounds a little confusing and abstract don’t worry, I’ll be explaining all
the main principles to make the Internet work for you as a marketing tool. This is
the first article in a seven part series aimed to teach independent professionals
and small business owners the process of establishing a website that sells and
how to build a client base using just online marketing.
Yaro Starak
Small Business Marketing & Branding
