Envisioning Success

Is Your Website an Effective Marketing Tool?

Posted by Chris Shockley under General, Marketing, Usability, Web Design

Everyone has a website these days. We’ve all been to the same marketing seminar that says you need one.

That’s a good start, but don’t stop there. Your website can be one of the most effective marketing tools you have. It is by far one of the best values as well.

In the past, if you wanted to do business you’d get a yellow pages ad, for thousands of dollars, and then you took out ads in the paper also, maybe canvasing and area with fliers or something. You knew you had to spend the money because that is how you were found. You put it in the budget and organized your business around it.

But for some reason people approach things without the same business commitment. People seem to think that spending as little as possible is somehow going to achieve a satisfactory result. Read more…

Build Customer Loyalty-Utilizing Your Website – Part III

Posted by Chris Shockley under Marketing, Web Design

Review

Ok, so you’ve started giving your customers little nuggets, maybe some insider information or extra articles that you don’t just give away to everyone. Perfect.

Getting More Meaningful

Your customers are just like you; They have opinions they’ll happily share with others.  They might even want to get involved with various charitable causes.

While this next suggestion is not intended to be a direct selling tool (meaning that you do this for the purpose of selling in some artificial way) it may increase sales.

This is more about showing your company to be honestly interested in your customers and the community. Read more…

Build Customer Loyalty-Utilizing Your Website – Part II

Posted by Chris Shockley under Marketing, Web Design

Review

You’ll remember last time we covered a couple basic uses of your website and one slightly more advanced one (specials and coupons). We even talked about creating a way for your customers to get even more special offers by opting in to receive your marketing materials.

Take it further

Along with have specials or coupons, you have something that might be even more valuable to your customers: Your expertize.

You may not feel like an expert, and I can totally relate, but have you ever been talking with someone about your industry, business, interests and found that you knew far more than they did? That is what I am talking about. Don’t assume that expert means that you know everything there is to know about a subject. The fact that you know more than your customers can and should be exploited. Read more…

Build Customer Loyalty-Utilizing Your Website – Part I

Posted by Chris Shockley under General, Marketing, Web Design

Many of you reading this have a website for your business already. It may even be a pretty nice site, matching your company branding (so important, seriously). Professional looking, clean and easy to use.

Job done, right?

Maybe.

Your website is one of the most powerful marketing/selling  tools you own. For the money there is no better way to accomplish the task(s) you set for it. Once in place, it never sleeps, takes a break or complains. It performs the task perfectly every time, never day-dreaming about being out on the open road. Read more…

Make Your Marketing Consistent

Posted by Chris Shockley under Marketing

We are all very aware that to successfully accomplish a goal takes a certain amount of vision and planning. We look ahead, think about where we want to be, what we want to achieve and then we work backward from that point until we reach our starting point. We do this whether we realize it or not.

Some are better at this than others and some are more organized about it than others. Lots of us find ourselves getting off track half way through the process because we either get stuck on some detail or we start moving forward before the process is completed because we just want to get going. Read more…