Did you know that your website holds the first client meeting?
There are no drinks or dinner or flashy presentations.
Your website will introduce everything a business wants its clients and prospects to know. Your first client meeting is online and you’re not present, your website is handling it solo.
When someone Googles you or your business, the command performance begins without you, or your office, or your team or your sales staff.
Is Your Website Client-Meeting Ready?
A client no longer comes to your office for the first “kick the tires meeting.” Your prospective clients have already visited your website.
The meeting may have been short and sweet or it may have been long and extensive. Regardless, the meeting happened and you weren’t personally there. You’ll know how it went because you should have gotten a phone call or an e-mail from the prospective clients.
If your prospect was pleased you spoke to them or they ordered something from you, or maybe both. You should be confident in how you presented yourself and certain the website sold you, your product, team and capabilities. Your website should advertise your business for you 24-7.
Your website success is measured in the phone calls, orders, e-mails and new business. If your website isn’t driving business, you’re missing out on revenue and your competition is thriving. Everyone is doing business online, what’s your excuse?
3 Things to Ensure Traffic
- Original content
- Ongoing original content
- More content
Websites should have a wide range of content: Video, pictures, copy, social media, clear headlines, smooth functioning speedy page loads. All of this is large budget as the No. 1 marketing piece for a business today. The amount invested in the website will directly correlate to the amount a business can expect to generate. If you’ve got a $350 budget you’re going to receive $350 in clients, new business.
Start with a strong foundation so that even if there are few pages, those pages strategically share your story and engage your visitors.
Budget
If you think that someone will give you a free advertising campaign and present your business with all the bells and whistles for free, you’re wrong. Sure you can get a free website. But it will not advertise your business nor will it drive traffic. A website build should cost several thousand dollars and then have a minimum of $1,000 monthly to generate traffic for your business.
Show & Sizzle
When TV advertising was king, :30 TV spots cost a lot to produce and ad agencies worked hard to create messages and images reflective of your business to connect with your target to sell you, your brand and your message. Why would websites be any different? If you’re not paying for a website agency to manage your website you’re not going to get business from the site. Traffic-driving activities are handled by trained, skilled computer scientists who know how to make search engines pick your website out of the billions of choices available to Googlers. The key to online success is your content: how it’s written, what’s said and how often it appears.
Advertising
Websites should be created by advertising agencies with expertise in how to present your message, product, brand or service. If you’re still doing it yourself, you’re directly responsible for your results. How’s that going for you?
Turn your website and its advertising over to the experts. You turn to doctors to care for your health. You pay plumbers to fix your sink. You hire electricians to do what you don’t know how. Just because you can use a computer and write an e-mail doesn’t mean you know how to build a website and make it successfully drive traffic.
Your measure of website success should be in phone calls, orders and your bottom line.
How Many Clients Have You Lost?
You’ll never know how many clients you didn’t get because your first meeting online went poorly. There were no doughnuts and coffee, PowerPoints, introductions or presentations. It was quiet, intense and may have only been a few minutes long. But it happened online and you weren’t even there.
Your prospective client went to your website. They looked around, clicked here, looked there and if the website got your attention, they’re calling you or buying from you now. If they didn’t like what was there, you’re to blame. It’s your website and you are 100% accountable for what’s on your website.
A client no longer comes to your office for the first meeting. You can try, but you can’t stop people from Googling you.
Gone are the days of the big first meeting. You know the one where you introduce your team. You show them your best presentation. They ask questions. You give them answers. You present a spread of food and you’ve planned and prepared and gone through your presentation again and again.
First Introductions Today Are Done Via Google
Your first introduction today is more likely to occur online than in person. If someone gives you a referral you know the first thing that you do is Google that business. You look at their website to gather your information and first impressions.
First Impressions Happen Once
Whatever you put on your website had better be good. It better introduce you. Tell your story. And you’d better be found on the search engines.
It should be easy to navigate. Move quickly and fluidly from page to page. Have no broken links, slow loading pictures or video because those issues and problems online imply that you will provide the same kind of services.
Did Your Website Sell You or Sink You?
When your website tells your story, explains you and your team, your services clearly and with an interesting angle, the prospective client can be impressed. Your website should keep clients intrigued and clicking. Your website needs new content, relevant stories about what’s new in your industry. A good website will sell you.
But if your website has a broken link, a typo, a video that can’t be seen in all devices and browsers or a picture that won’t show up it says that you didn’t pay attention and that you didn’t follow through on the little details. Details matter.
You have to care enough to check a website post, videos and pictures. And that lack of attention to detail speaks volumes about you, your product and services.
Relevant Content and Visuals
Your website should share advice and insights, your business expertise. It should provide a “why buy:” the reason clients should work with you, buy your product or your service. It’s the first image that most people will get about you.
Your image is everything and it should be shared on your website so that your first meeting is successful and sells your prospect on doing business with you.
Find out what The Marketing Square suggests you do with your website with a consultation online or in-person.
