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Articles

Your WebSite - Your Marketing HUB

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A website should be the center of all your marketing efforts.

Articles

By Kirk Lowe, President
Freedomarketing

Yes, all roads should lead to wwwdot. Why? Your website is a dynamic sales and marketing tool. Prospects, clients and referrals can read more about you and your services as well as interact with you and your site.

What a Website Will Do For You

A website is not a stand-alone brochure. It should be the center or HUB of all of your marketing efforts and lead your prospects, clients and referrals to other sales initiatives that further develop relationships with them. It helps focus your marketing efforts and bring it all together.

Your site should clearly define whom you work with (target market), how you help people, and what sets you apart. It can introduce and manage an email newsletter, provide details and registration for upcoming events such as seminars and client appreciation events, archive past newsletter articles, encourage referrals and highlight testimonials from other clients. It should personify your professionalism, what it's like to be your client and your commitment to building strong, long lasting relationships.

You can also use your website to refer people to your FREE eBook. eBooks can be a great way to build instant credibility with your prospects and clients.

CD Business Cards also present a great way to drive traffic to your website. You can introduce you and your service, how you are different and what sets you apart from others. You can then provide links back to your web site to encourage them to take the next step towards being a client or at least a referror.

What a Website Will Not Do For You

Alone, it will not convert referrals and prospects into clients. Your website will not generate calls from prospects and referrals asking to be clients.

A website is an important initial step in the sales process. Referrals and prospects don't always want to commit to a meeting without learning more about you. They want an opportunity to think about it and see if you and your services are indeed something they need. If your only alternative for them is a meeting, you're more likely to lose an opportunity than gain a new client. If you can take them step-by-step, through a process that helps build a relationship without feelings of obligation or pressure, you're more likely to keep many people in the pipeline. In time, they'll be comfortable with you and will understand what you can help them with. This relationship building fosters an appreciation for your commitment to helping them, not pushing them to commit to a meeting.

Your website should be integrated with other technology initiatives including an eNewsletter, eBooks, CD Business Cards, eCards and eReferral Campaign. Equally important is its integration with traditional marketing. Alone, eMarketing and technology (web, eNews...) will not lead you to success. Alone, traditional marketing will not lead you to success. You need a combination of both to successfully compete in this industry.

Remember, the integration of technology with traditional marketing is not only effective but cost and time efficient. Instead of approaching this as a leading edge marketing strategy, perhaps it is best to think of it as simply an effective and efficient means of communicating with clients and prospects. It is not meant to replace one-on-one communication but to supplement it where you don't have the time or resources to do so. Fact is, as others (your competitors) implement it, they will in effect be building stronger relationships with their clients and possibly yours not just because they can more easily communicate with clients and prospects but also because they now have more time away from marketing and communicating to spend with their clients and your clients.

Consider this - a simple print newsletter, used by many and commonly accepted as a great relationship building tool - if the same campaign could be run for 50-75% less cost, saved you time developing, managing, writing and mailing, was more professional looking, could be measured and reported on it's success, could be integrated with your website (24 hour access) and increased referrals - would you say this is about technology or just good business sense? Don't get caught up in the hype - using the Internet to build your business is a sound business decision, simple as that.

Kirk Lowe is President of Freedomarketing, a marketing consulting firm that specializes in helping financial services professionals build their businesses through integrating technology with traditional marketing and communications. He can be reached at (888) 677-8946 or kirk@freedomarketing.ca.