Although this article was written for my fellow business owners in the wonderful state of Virginia, it applies to businesses around the world equally. In this article I will give you a few clear examples of the importance of having an online presence and how it will benefit you as a business owner. Allow me to share a quick story with you…
As I was driving down the road one day I couldn’t help but notice the growing number of businesses that were closing down. I pulled into a plaza and started walking from business to business investigating. I had asked each of the business owners why they were going out of business, and as if it had been rehearsed each of them said it was do to the current economic situation of the country. The majority of them didn’t even have a website, and the few that did have websites they weren’t even close to using them in the correct manor.
As I was leaving the plaza I began to reminisce about one of my clients who owned a beauty salon. She had hired me to help her take her shop online. We began tweaking her site and within six months her business had really taken off. Besides the basic SEO strategies I added an opt-in list of about two hundred clients. Whenever business was a little slow she would mail out a special offer to her list and the appointments would roll in.
There was another client who I must say was the most unique client that I had ever met in almost ten years. I will never forget our first time conversing on the phone, she had called and wanted me to help her generate traffic to her website. At this point in my career I had marketed everything from a cheese cake website to sites about potty training. I would have bet the farm that nothing could have surprised me as far as niches markets were concerned. Well… This client was selling custom made wedding gowns and tuxedos for little dogs.
She had already had a website up and running. It was a one page site with a little sales copy and a few pictures of dogs dressed in her custom pet fashion designs, and a PayPal button. She had her website up and running for about two years and she had designed it herself. The only “leads” that the site had generated was a few emails telling her how cute the photos were. I had advise her of some lucrative keywords and we added some new content and optimized the site for the search engines. In less than 48 hours she had received her first sale online. Over time we had become friends and I had grown accustom to her calling me at least once a month. Then one day she had called me and I could tell by the tone in her voice something was wrong. She proceeded to tell me that she could no longer use my services, because the number of orders that were coming in was to overwhelming. She said that she was so far behind that she had family members over around the clock to help her out.
I must admit that I didn’t see this one coming, when I asked her if everything was ok, she just began to chuckle. She then went on to explain that everything was fine, the only problem she was having is that she had received way to many orders and there was no way that she could possibly keep up. She felt it was best to temporarily shut down the site for a little while because it would take her at least a year or more to catch up.
Both of these little stories are proof that the Internet does play a major roll in aiding your business in todays “economic situation.” It really doesn’t matter what type of business you own, it’s more of a matter of learning to think outside of the box. The Internet pound for pound is the best method for lead generation on earth.
I don’t want anyone to read this and be mislead so let me make myself clear. The amount of time that it takes for a business to see a substantial result will vary from niche to niche. It all comes down to how competitive your market is. The stories that I have shared with you were what I consider to be unique and they were able to see awesome results in a short amount of time. Let me put it this way… There isn’t a business that I have seen yet that couldn’t benefit from having an online presence.
Whatever you do, don’t wait until your business has already began to sink and attempt to launch a website out of desperation. Make it apart of your marketing strategies soon as possible.
Let me leave you with this thought, “Procrastination is the number one killer of success. It is always better to take some sort of action be it right or wrong than to not take any action at all.” With that thought in mind I want you to go and take action right now.
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