At our February meeting, David Fischer spoke to us about “strategies and tools for an effective online presence”. David is the founder of Solutions for Growth LLC, a marketing company that provides online marketing services. The company has eight employees, and it has clients throughout the United States and in several other countries. David himself has over 25 years of marketing experience.
David geared his talk toward a small business owner, and he began with a discussion about websites. He pointed out that 47% of small businesses do not have websites, despite the fact that 97% of consumers search online for products and services! Further, “half of the existing websites are 15 years old and look like they were designed by a middle school student”. He concluded that a typical small business owner would improve sales by developing a website or improving an existing website.
Before starting development of a new website, David stressed that the owner should be clear about the goal of the website. “You should know your strategic plan; that will drive what you strive to make happen on the website.” In some businesses, the website is a direct online sales tool. In others, the website aims to collect email addresses that can function as leads for future sales. For still others, the website simply serves to provide professional credibility for an individual or a company. The owner should not start any website design without first being clear about the desired goal.
David reviewed the ways that owners can create websites, either by themselves or with the help of outside developers. An owner can utilize a preformed system, such as those offered by Squarespace.com or GoDaddy.com. Or the owner can spend more effort and develop a more customized website using tools such as WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla. All three of these tools are free, but most owners will need help to develop the site.
When a prospect looks at a website, he/she will “make a decision quickly about whether … to buy from a company, soon after starting to read the website.” He implied that the owner should treat website development seriously, because the website is typically a company’s primary marketing tool and therefore has a strong impact on sales.
David reviewed some general marketing background. The development of a new customer typically goes through five steps, in the order shown:
- Let the prospect know “that you are out there”.
- Begin some contact with the prospect by collecting information such as an email address.
- Communicate with the prospect.
- Convert the prospect to a customer, by selling something to this prospect.
- Keep the customer and sell to this customer again.
Small businesses “often fall down on the marketing”, either because they don’t understand the need for marketing or “they don’t find the time”. Larger businesses, such as McDonald’s, typically do understand the need for marketing and have dedicated marketing departments that spend time and money. Anticipating that we would ask why a company like McDonald’s “does so much advertising, even though they already have the awareness”, he said their marketing reminds their customers that McDonald’s is “still out there”. The point here is that a company needs to consistently remind the market that it exists; otherwise the market will forget about it, and competition will grab market share.
David provided a beginner’s guide for how to set up a website. You need three things, in order to have a website:
- A domain. This is the purchase of a particular url (such as https://www.mcdonalds.com).
- Your files. These computer files provide all words, photos, and details about how your website will be provided to a reader’s computer.
- A hosting company. You need to rent space on a server, where the files of your website are located. The hosting company provides 24/7 access to your files, and it provides many levels of security against outside attacks.
He pointed out that hosting companies vary in price, speed, and safety. As a website owner, consider the page load speed that a hosting company provides. He warned that you should have full ownership of your hosting, so that you can take your files elsewhere if you become dissatisfied with a particular hosting company. Very inexpensive hosting companies charge $5-10 per month; and hosting companies that provide better speed typically charge $20 per month.
The look of the website matters, and David made a few recommendations:
- “Responsive”. This means that the website design adjusts itself automatically to appear appropriately on various screen sizes such as a cell phone or a computer monitor.
- Not cluttered. David showed examples of cluttered webpages, so that we could see what to avoid.
- Call to action. The website should fulfill the owner’s goal, and this usually includes a call to action. Examples of calls to action, depending on the goal for the website, include: “Call us”, “Get an estimate”, “Like us on Facebook”, “Shop now”, “Call your members of congress”.
After a website is built and appears on the web, there is a need to encourage Google to display it high in the list of search results, or at least on the first page of search results. The effort of encouraging Google to do so is called “Search Engine Optimization (SEO)”. The SEO ranking is based on many factors, including relevance to users, spiders and index, content, tags, page titles, structure, and inbound links. David suggested the following steps that a website owner can take to improve SEO:
- Traffic. Encourage the public to visit your website. Google looks at traffic volume!
- Incoming links. Encourage other website owners to place links on their websites to your website.
- Keep adding stuff. Add blog comments or new articles or photos frequently. Google’s proprietary algorithm looks at the frequency of updates!
- Security certificate. Get an “SSL security certificate”, which will make the url appear as https rather than http. This improves security as well as SEO.
An owner can also run Google AdWords campaigns in order that Google will show a link to the website in certain searches. David warned that this can be expensive. This is the “world’s best way to waste money, if you don’t know what you are doing!” Using a professional marketing company is a wise approach.
After a website is developed, the owner needs to plan on continuing steps:
- Effectiveness Measurement. The owner should strive to measure the effectiveness of the website toward its goals. Google offers a service called Google Analytics that provides visitor tracking data.
- Continual improvements. The owner should strive to make the website better, so that it better meets its goals.
- Maintenance. Modern websites require continual maintenance, because website building blocks (such as plug-ins used with WordPress) are frequently revised to improve functionality or to better handle security threats. The webmaster can download new revisions for free, but effort is required to stay up-to-date.
David moved on to a discussion of social media. As he sees it, “for most companies, the primary reason for social media is to drive traffic to your website”. He suggested that a new owner should focus most effort on the website. As justification, he pointed out that Facebook “does not present all your posts in front of all your customers”.
To the extent that an owner participates in social media for the business, he suggested the following:
- Don’t limit your activity to just promoting your product.
- Be authentic.
- Share content.
- Be conversational.
- Include photos. Display a picture of a happy customer.
He suggested a tool, such as Hootsuite, to manage multiple social media accounts all at once.
David said that many businesses rely on email marketing, and this is based on a list of prospects’ email addresses. This list is very important, and marketing success depends on growing this list. There are email marketing services that can help small businesses. The services automatically send out professional-looking emails, sometimes at automatic intervals, as specified by the business owner. Two leading services are Constant Contact and MailChimp. An advantage of Constant Contact is that it provides human customer service; the advantage of MailChimp is that it is less expensive.
David uses Constant Contact for his email marketing consulting, and Solutions for Growth is “master certified” by Constant Contact.
Click here to download the presentation slides. (PDF)
David invited individuals to contact him at David.Fischer@solutionsforgrowthllc.com.