The
Art of Business
Small Business and the Internet
Every business whether service or product based, regardless of size
or industry, can capitalize on the Internet in at least one of three
areas: marketing, sales or operation, if not all of them. In each case
the Internet can provide the small business low cost tools that can
dramatically improve the effectiveness and productivity of marketing,
sales and daily operations, translating to a bottom line showing increased
revenues and reduced costs.
Marketing
Marketing is the building of awareness of your company in the mind of
the customer and generating specific interest in your products or services.
E-mail, coupled with a company Web site has tremendous potential as
an effective and low cost marketing tool, but only if they provide value.
So what’s value? Knowledge! Here’s a quick how to.
First, secure a domain or dot com and get a Web site up and running.
Include as much information about your company—its products, services
and people as possible—but more importantly, include educational
information. Educate your Web visitor about your field, industry and
recent events as they relate to the customer. Make your Web site a resource
for the customers, not just an online brochure. Attorneys educate about
the law; real estate agents about selling and buying a home; real estate
appraisers about increasing the value of a home; insurance agents about
reducing premiums by reducing risk. The objective is to create a valuable
resource for the customer, which will build awareness and goodwill.
The next step is to make people aware of your Web site as a resource
and to get them there. Have your Web address on anything and everything
your company produces—promotional material, invoices, purchase
orders, letterhead and e-mails. Especially e-mails. If someone is reading
an e-mail, they are a short step from being at your Web site. If your
Web site is www.company.com then your e-mail should be me@company.com.
Also include a signature line with all your contact info and Web address
on all e-mails so getting to the Web site is only a click away.
Once you have this in place the next educational/marketing tool is a
newsletter. Rarely does a small business have the resource to produce
a newsletter from scratch. So don’t. It’s what we in the trade
call “content” and an entire industry has spawned to purchase
content. In some cases you can purchase a ready to go newsletter at
a fraction of the cost of doing it yourself. Just put on your company
name, logo, and off it goes. You can also get content from trade associates,
suppliers and authors in the field who write articles just for this
purpose.
The most effective e-mail newsletters are those that include only the
first paragraph or two of an article in the e-mail, followed by a link
to the complete article on your Web site. This way you get the reader
to the Web site and hopefully they will look around after completing
the article.
Sales
Sales converts the interest generated by your marketing into completed
sales. You have a lead; the goal is converting it into a completed sale
as effortlessly and quickly as possible. Your Web site can be your 24/7
sales force. Anything a potential customer needs to make a buying decision
should be there. Any question they might ask should be answered, so
include a FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions page for each product or
service. Many times sales are lost simply because a competitor was faster
in answering all the questions first.
Any information on your Web site should be packaged into an easy to
e-mail file. This way, should they call and talk to you on the phone,
you can instantly send them the complete package via e-mail. PDF or
Portable Document Files are ideal for this; they allow the sending and
viewing of high quality materials independent of the program used to
generate them or the computer used to view them. See www.adobe.com
for more info on generating PDF documents.
Operations
Operations includes everything to produce and deliver your product or
service to the customer. You have made the sale, now you have to produce
and deliver your product or service. There is a growing trend known
as the Application Service Provider or ASP that offers the small business
a powerful and low cost tool, set to do just that. Previously, when
needing a software application, you purchased a diskette or CD-ROM and
loaded this on your computer. ASPs are Web sites that offer an application
for a small monthly fee or for free if you don’t mind a few advertisements.
The most notable is Quickbooks.com,
the popular accounting package for small businesses. Instead of buying
the software, you can now subscribe to it for far less. Another example
is Intranets.com, which offers a complete suite of group productivity
and communication tools ideal for doing collaboration between team members.
Instead of paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for a software package
that you might use once or twice, you now can subscribe for however
long you need it and at a far lower cost.
The most common misconception, which is shared by retail and non-retail
businesses alike, is the belief that they cannot benefit from the Internet
because of their inability to sell a specific product online. That is
not so; all businesses can benefit from using the Internet if they can
just see the possibilities.
—Ron Phillips
Ron Phillips is President of Dept-One, a full-service information
technology solutions company based in Poughkeepsie, NY. Dept-One serves
small businesses—serving as their client’s technology department—and
providing complete solutions to help small businesses grow. For more
information, call Ron at 485-2675; e-mail him at rphillips@dept-one.com
or www.dept-one.com.
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