Now more than ever your website has got to work for you. It can provide you with: a CRM strategy; a sales platform; brand building; function / seminar / event invitations; and new clients. What you need to decide is - what will benefit your company the most, and look at ways of achieving this cost effectively.



"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half". Oft quoted, and attributable to one John Wannamaker, who died in 1922 - things haven't changed much. One advantage of the suggestions below is that they are all traceable, so that you know if the money you're spending is having the right effect.

So, business is ok: creditors are extending the payment deadlines a little, (sign of the times), but generally all is well. You have several clients with whom you have established a good working relationship. And your company website is there in all its glory in the Ethernet. But is it working for you? Take a look at these three areas:

Your website: is it fresh, appealing and informative for your visitor? How many people visit? Which pages do they browse? Do you give visitors the opportunity of leaving their contact details (e.g. for information updates, regular newsletters, taxation document downloads, etc)?

SEO: the internet buzzword. Is your website as search engine friendly as it could be? How many links are coming in to the site? Are they coming in from good quality websites? What keywords are / should be featured strongly in your copy, and which ones are your competitors using?

E mail marketing: Are you keeping in touch with your customer base? Good online CRM strategies are an extremely cost efficient way of getting in more business - you know the old adage; it's 6 times more expensive to find new clients than it is to win business from an existing one. But none of us can afford to stand still. We all need new blood coming in to the business. Email campaigns, like direct mail, require reliable data, good customer targeting, and impactful copy. Unlike direct mail, there's no postage to pay?

Quality, visibility, pro-activity. They're pretty much the basics of getting your site to contribute more to your business. And you can prioritise and improve as and when your time and budget allow. Get some software to analyse visitor movement around your site - it gives you a good indication of what people outside your company think of your website. How quickly do they "bounce" off? Where is their attention concentrated?

If you want visibility on the net, you need to be high on the search engine rankings when prospects search for your product / service. And when your typical prospect searches in a search engine - what keywords do they punch in? And how do you improve your ranking for that keyword search?

There is always so much to do - but that's what it all comes down to in the end. No quick fix super solutions - just good old fashioned industrial endeavour. And don't think that this is all for big boys only - estrategy is just as necessary and beneficial for small companies as it is for large.