 |
|
 |
|
Making the Internet Work For You
Written by Paul Holmes, July, 2003
Making the Internet Work For You
We’ve all heard about why we should have a website for our business, and most businesses either have one, or have plans to get one soon. Now the task is to make the website really work for you, and differentiate you from the competition.
E-Commerce
What do you sell? Does it make sense to sell it online? You might be surprised what sells online! There are reasonably inexpensive ways to get items for sale with complete, secure credit card processing. This is a serious option to consider.
Newsletter Strategies
How about another method to connect with your customers and potential customers? A very successful form of marketing on the Internet is to implement a newsletter.
Do you sell boats? Why not have a “sailing” newsletter every quarter, or every month? You can talk about the newest products you tried out, how they work, places your customers have gone in their boats, etc. You probably wrote somebody to tell them anyway, why not spend a little more time and tell all your customers about it?
This is effective for a few reasons:
- it differentiates you from the competition
- it personalizes your products
- it keeps you “top-of-mind” with customers.
When your customer thinks about their boat, they may think about a story you wrote in your newsletter. Next time they need to buy supplies, guess who they’ll be inclined to buy them from?
First, get e-mail addresses for all your current customers (that are willing to receive your newsletter). Consider offering a draw for a gift certificate, when people fill out to receive the newsletter. Second, add a simple sign-up form online (basically name and e-mail address – you can always find out more later if the person becomes a customer). People might be reluctant to buy a $400 part from your website, but they won’t be so reluctant to sign up for your “free” newsletter.
Post your newsletter online each time you e-mail it out. If it’s simply text, it shouldn’t take a typical website designer more than 15 minutes to update your site with the new text. For a little more money, you could add some unique pictures about your topic.
Two tips:
- use the BCC field in your e-mail, not the CC field – you don’t want to inadvertently send your mailing list out to all your customers, and
- add a disclaimer at the bottom with instructions on how to be removed from the list – this is the law, and following it is what separates your mail from “spam” mail.
Community Sponsorship
Does your product have an “online community”? Should it? If you sell widgets, and there are thousands of widget collectors around, perhaps there should be an “online widget community”? And guess who will be the founding sponsor, and the person kind enough to set it up on their website! There is free software available that will allow for a sophisticated discussion forum on your site. Your only cost is the custom layout, and other pages relating to the community. This is a fabulous way to build customer loyalty!
Search Engines
There are numerous strategies to place your website better in Search Engines. It is important not to overlook this important topic when you plan your website, or to promote your existing website. There would be nothing worse than to spend $5,000 on a fancy website that nobody ever sees! Budget some of money for search engine optimization (SEO).
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
