Business Ideas & Updates

It’s one thing to get your website up and running and quite another to get people visiting it. All the tricks you read about generating traffic through SEO subject headings, keywords, reciprocal links arrangements and even paying for a high ranking on search engines are fine – for attracting people already searching online.

Many people still don’t know how to search effectively or don’t want to go to the bother. That’s why, for the success of your ebusiness it pays to promote your website both online and offline. The more exposure your URL receives, the more traffic will come directly to your website.
 
Following is a list of places you can use to display your URL:

1. Your email, under your signature
2. Business stationery: business cards, letterhead, fax cover sheet, invoices and statements
3. Telephone answering machine message
4. Billboards
5. Windows and awnings of your premises
6. Catalogues
7. Flyers and brochures
8. Promotional giveaways: matchbooks, key chains, mugs, pens etc
9. Menus, placemats
10. T-shirts
11. Coupons and gift certificates
12. Yellow pages listing
13. Press releases
14. Company car: painted signs and promo plates
15. Trade association directories and trade journals
16. Word of mouth
17. Print magazine and newspaper advertisements
18. TV and radio ads
19. Local TV guide
20. Containers/packaging

On many occasions a website marketing budget can be spent just as effectively using offline methods, such as the ones above, as it can be using online methods.

If the telephone is the front line of business-to-business, customer-to-business, and business-to-customer interaction, then email might be described as the rearguard action.

There’s no point in winning the battle if you’re then clobbered from behind. Yet that’s just what many businesses are allowing to happen through their email dealings.

They’ve got face-to-face customer service down pat. They’ve trained their team members in customer-friendly telephone techniques. They’ve got a great product with wonderful after sales service – and atrocious email response times.

With the growth of mobile internet and wireless services, more people are sending emails and expecting replies in email, and their number is likely to grow exponentially within the next few years.

Yet many business owners still seem to treat the Internet and email as a kind of ‘exotic add-on’ to their business rather than as a vital part of everyday communication with customers.

Where a telephone response is usually immediate or at least forthcoming the same day, a response by email invariably takes well over 24 hours.

Having a website and email address means you’ve got to be ready to respond to customers and potential customers who contact your company through them. Belatedly responding to an emailed request for information or an emailed complaint, several days or weeks down the track, means a customer frustrated and possibly lost forever.

Net Happenings, a weekly newsletter for internet marketing professionals, declares that any business which hosts online email feedback “should be aware that customer emails deserve the same level of respect as incoming customer phone calls.”

They should receive a response within 24 hours, and not just an automated response.

Other tips for responding to emails include:

• Make sure you understand the customer’s problem or query, and be specific in your reply.
• Train your team members to respond to emails and create an environment where each team member takes responsibility for customers.
• If a customer is expressing frustration or anger, respond in an empathetic, not confrontational, manner. As with telephone calls, let people know you will do your best to help.
• If dealing with a problem, follow up by email or phone to make sure the customer’s concerns have been satisfactorily addressed.

Improving online response times needn’t be a big deal. It simply means seeing email as a vital part of everyday customer communication instead of an exotic add-on.