Websites Under Your Control Blog

A common question from new clients... why should they bother with a blog, email marketing, Facebook, Twitter, etc.? 

If the new client has teenagers at home, this is usually accompanied with "I don't care to tell everyone when I go to the bathroom!"

If your business never changes, and if your customers (and their friends) know perfectly well what you offer and think about your business frequently, then ... well, enough with fairy tales.

In reality, your business does change (or it dies),  your past and potential customers don't know about those changes, and they don't always think about how your business can help them.

In fact, your best prospects for future sales are those who already know you. But why would they go back to your website, if they think they already know who you are and what you offer?

What to do?  Maybe try this idea:

1. Write a brief newsletter article about a topic of interest to your likely customers or referral sources, and send to your email list. (What to write about? Something that will benefit the reader. New services you offer, a special offering, the answer to a frequent question, changes in your field, etc.)
2. Publish the message, reformatted as necessary, on your blog. (Of course, the article should be published on your blog on your website, so the reader will be already in position to click around your site.)
3. Post a "teaser" about the article on your business (not personal) page on Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In. (The teaser should mention a customer need, and article should address that need -- "hype" will backfire.)
4. Repeat this process frequently.

This isn't hard.  If you are an Online Business Partner client, you can use your built-in tools for #1 and #2. 

Don't have time, or just don't want to mess with it? If you are our client, we can have one of our ghostwriters develop the initial draft of the newsletter article, and we can do the rest as well - or any portion you want us to handle.  (If you are not our client, then your web professional will be able to help you.)

You finally have a well-designed, professional website that really showcases the capabilities of your business. The business blog on your site is full of interesting, informative material. You are getting a lot of traffic and people are spending time looking around. But all of this isn't generating quite the results you hoped for.

What's missing? It's the follow-up.

After everything you have done to get the website the way you want it, and to get people to visit your site, the last thing you want is for them to leave without some way for you to keep in touch with them.

If they took the time to find and look at your website, they have an interest in what you have to offer — but it's pretty common that people do their research in advance, before they are ready to spend their money.

So even if they decide then and there to do business with you when the time comes, unless they remember your website address, they may never find their way back to you.

The solution? Follow up with them.

Collect their email address, and stay in touch by providing more of what they found interesting on your website, so they remember you.

Of course, most people won't just give you their email address merely because you ask. Offer them something of value in return. Perhaps an email newsletter with important information they need, money-saving coupons, or special offers. All they need to do to receive this money saving information is enter their name and e-mail.

Once a visitor leaves your website, they're gone, often forever. Capturing the visitor's name and email address lets you turn these anonymous visitors into contacts, and then you can follow up to turn those contacts into customers.

When you follow-up, monitor which of your visitors click on which links, and what actions they take on your website, so you can see which visitors are the most likely prospects (and also fine-tune the messages you send).

If you are using our standard Online Business Partner^® service, this is all built in to your service.