Your number one goal as a business owner is to attract customers and draw in the profits that they bring. Today, whether you like it or not, this means using the Internet. No business, whether they are particularly web-based or not, can survive in this current climate if they are not using online features to help get custom.
Three ways you can use the Internet to get customers can be found below.
- Embrace email to make your customer communication more coherent
Businesses always have, still do, and always will seek new ways to communicate with their customers in as clear and coherent a fashion as possible. The companies of yesteryear turned to the landline phone, and the organizations of today turn to the Internet.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to embrace the very latest forms of online communication, however. New services and up-to-date pieces of software aren’t the only things that make customer communication more coherent, as the humble email can still do a pretty good job in that department. In fact, it can do a better job than most. The trust email is always there, and it can always be depended on to help you reach your customers because, chances are, they all have an inbox that they check countless times a day.
If you’re looking to boost your customer communication in an as cost-effective manner as possible, then the email is pretty good in regards to that, too. This is because you don’t have to pay to sign up to the standard email providers, and because you don’t have to buy any fancy add-ons to make sure your messages are seen. All you do is sign up, send out your emails and respond to those that come back. What’s more, you can continue to do this for years without having to pay a single thing.
If you want to avoid the next flash in the pan form of communication, then stick with the humble email.
- Promote yourself using the Internet
Potential customers aren’t even going to know that your business exists if you don’t bring information about it to them. Today, this means promoting yourself in the channels and communities that they use, which means using different social media sites.
Depending on who your audience is and what kind of message you are trying to portray about your business, you need to be choosing your social media sites very carefully. If you want your online footprint to be judged as highly professional, then you should set yourself up with a LinkedIn page. You should do so because your potential customers will find value in you even having one in the first place, and because it’ll allow you to list all of your products, services, and accomplishments in a professional manner. If you want your business to seem far more approachable and open to casual conversation online, however, then you should be focusing your attention more towards the likes of Twitter and Facebook. When you do, just remember that what works on one site will not work on the other. They are both two different entities and, thus, two different marketing techniques need to be deployed upon them.
You can’t just create a social media site, or any other kind of site for that matter, and expect people to flock to them. What’s more, you can’t expect to turn clicks into customers naturally even if you do manage to attract some traffic. To attract visitors to your sites and to then turn them into customers, you need to be putting a sales funnel in place. You can learn more about such a sales technique at Trijour. However, the basics of it include drumming up awareness for your online footprint using SEO, triggering interest in your product by creating a well-designed landing page, pushing people towards a decision by placing well-designed calls-to-action on your site, and helping customers to take action by designing your site in a way that makes the important information easy to find.
- Use the web to offer flexibility
People are more likely to bring their custom to a business if it looks flexible enough to handle their demands and provide them with great service. Thankfully, you can use the Internet to help your business offer more flexibility.
In order to be truly flexible, your employees need to be able to perform the tasks that you set them come rain or shine, regardless of what location they find themselves in. For this reason, you have to be equipping them with the Internet-based tools and solutions that’ll allow them to work from anywhere, whether it’s in the office, at a customer’s house, in a hotel or anywhere else at all. It means providing them with company smartphones, laptops, and tablets that can all connect to the web, as this type of technology will induce seamless performance both off and on the move. Not only that, but you should also be using online technology to help your members of staff store the work that they do in a safe and collaborative space. It means using cloud technology.
In today’s climate, you have to be using the Internet as your biggest tool when it comes to the task of grabbing the attention of potential customers and drawing them to your business. If you don’t, then you can be sure that your competitors will, and that’ll only ever result in them taking all of your profits and leaving you with the little amounts gained from passing trade!
When you come to embrace the web and its many customer-drawing faucets, make to remember just how effective it can be as a communication tool. Also, remember to choose where you promote yourself wisely, as well as how to go about turning clicks into customers. Finally, make sure to squeeze all of the flexibility that you can get out of the Internet, as this will both make you look attractive to customers and help you to perform the tasks that they ask of you.
