Having an Internet advantage Your business can reach a worldwide audience 24 hours a day; 365 days a year through the Internet. This can offer your business tremendous opportunities, but it needs to be carefully planned and managed in order to be used as an effective method of achieving your business goals. contact Zarr to discuss your requirements.
Defining your Internet strategy Your Internet strategy should be implemented alongside all other parts of your business in order to achieve your business goals. It should therefore form part of your business plan rather than being developed in isolation.
Understand your customer’s online behaviour Through the Internet you can offer a superior level of customer service. In order to achieve this you need to find out how your customers use the Internet. People use the Internet at different frequencies and for different reasons. Some never access the Internet; others are online virtually the whole time.
The better you understand your customer’s needs the more closely you can offer your customers what they want. Their Internet usage will change over time and so it must be closely monitored on an ongoing basis.
Your business type Most small businesses fit into one of the three following categories:
Personal services e.g. counselors, beauty therapy. Customer behaviour is characterised by repeat purchases that are similar and occur on a reliable schedule. It takes years to build such a business because personal service customers are loyal and only rarely switch. It is very important to maintain consistency and so by introducing the Internet do not remove elements of your business which are important to your customers. Instead offer Internet enhancements alongside traditional methods. For example add an online appointment system but continue to use existing methods to take bookings.
Big decision makers e.g. user car dealers. These are infrequent purchasers so you must develop an operation that immediately converts prospects into buyers when they are in your physical premises. You should aim to close the sale on the first visit and therefore your website should help educate your customer before they arrive in your store. If it is not possible to close the sale during the first visit, use the Internet to keep in touch with prospects; use personal emails and newsletters to keep your name before them and become their personal assistant as they work through the sales process. As you are an expert in your industry you can offer tips and new ideas for their consideration. Become your customer’s trusted advisor.
Shopping destinations e.g. dress shop. People enjoy the shopping experience and so aim to enhance it through the Internet. Get customers to sign up for your email newsletter and then send regular announcements inviting them to visit your website to see your latest designs. Tell them about the colours, sizes, materials you have in stock and the accessories you have to match. This allows you to create an online store front.
Your business website If you make the substantial investment in a printed brochure it would be out of date before the ink dried.
Internet marketing To reach users of the Internet, companies need to have information of value and content that will not only educate, but also be insightful, interactive and fun. A well-designed, visually engaging and user-friendly website is also key to drawing traffic. Driving visitors to your site can be accomplished online as well as through traditional methods.
The frequency is very important. Too often and you will irritate customers and too seldom and you miss sales opportunities. It depends on the market you are in and how fast moving it is? Is there frequent news/updates that you can tell people about?
Piggyback email marketing This involves renting space on someone else’s newsletter for people interested in related products. This is a very cost effective way of reaching prospects.
Knowledge is power The Internet allows you to find out more about your customers. You can track how many visitors come to your website, and how long they spend in each part of your website. You can build in questionnaires and ask your customers for information about themselves and the services they require. You can use this information to develop your service and product offering.
Establish your Internet Code of Practice The Internet should enhance your business. It should add value to your customers’ experience and anything that will irritate customers or potential customers should be avoided. Build measures into your business to ensure any potential negative outcomes are covered e.g. allow people to unsubscribe from your email newsletter if their interests change.
Are you committed? Using the Internet in your business does require some sort of commitment from you. This ranges from checking and responding to emails every day through to updating your website content once a month. If you are aiming to generate enquiries from the Internet ensure you have the mechanisms in place to deal with these enquiries. Work out what commitment is necessary to make your business’ use of the Internet a real success and then schedule the time necessary to achieve this.
Moving Forwards To conclude, the Internet is a very versatile medium which you can utilize to develop your business. Visit your website as if you are a potential customer and work out how it can be improved. Constantly think of ways in which the Internet can be used to improve your customers’ experience and build these into your business operations. Contact Zarr to discuss how you can work with Zarr to discuss how you can maximise your Internet Advantage.
