Summary and an Offer of Help

July 15, 2007 | Marketing, Opinion

This is the sixth of a six part series on how to get your small business website off the ground.

OK, the last five posts have walked you through the basics of getting your business website off the ground. I decided to write this series for one primary reason: I saw a need for it. I have seen a lot of business sites that are wastes of time. And at the same time, I have seen that there seems to be a sense of misunderstanding and confusion on how to get the ball rolling. To so many small business owners, the idea of running a website seems daunting. You are very busy and don’t really have the time to deal with all that geek talk out there on how to do it. So, you do the best you can with the knowledge you have and hope for the best. The end result is that you have a business site up there that is underperforming. It might bring in the occasional lead, but nothing like what you had in mind.

And the worse part is that it is easy to get lost in all the chatter. There are a lot of blogs like WebbyOnline that talk about how to promote your online business or make money on the net. However, at least in my opinion, it’s not often that somebody just sits down and lays out the basics. Instead they talk about the latest and greatest, and what’s new – leaving in the dust the majority of small business owners that just want a site that works without spending their entire lives making it happen.

You can take a perfectly talented, smart business owner and make him/her feel like a total newbie when they try to make their own website. I’ve seen it many times. I honor them for the valiant effort. I was there at one point. The difference is that I went the extra mile and decided to make it my business. Over the years, I’ve done some right things and some wrong things. I am STILL learning in this field and I always will be. But, having messed up so many times and seen one of my sites totally flop, I have learned some of what works and some of what doesn’t.

In Summary

To sum up this series, I will put it down as a series of clear steps:

Decide on an exact purpose for your business website.
Draw out a strategic sales funnel and how your website fits into it.
Create the website, paying attention to design, proper programming and copywriting – all designed to flow the visitor into your sales funnel and get them to DO something.
Put up a blog and start posting regularly. Post relevant content. This will get out lots of communication to the internet audience, increase your reality with them, and hence they will like you more. And the net result is more business and a website which is actually doing it’s job.
Expand your promotional strategy to include search engine optimization, your mailing list, and various social media websites.

If you do all of this, its practically guaranteed that your website will stand out from the crowd of competitors. The fact is that most small business websites are the standard issue, cookie cutter variety. If you go that extra mile and actually provide real VALUE to your site visitors (who are not even your customers at this point), you will pop out ahead of your competition – simply because your competition is slacking off and not doing these things.

Personalized Help

All this information is a great guide, but sometimes it can be a little different when you are trying to apply it to your specific business and your specific website. That’s where I can come in, if you want me to. WebbyOnline is my personal blog site where I aim to provide that helpful content I preach so much about. My business name is PC Media. I am in the web publishing business (obviously) and between this site and my largest (PC Mechanic), my sites command the intention of thousands of visitors every day.

As part of my business, I also provide client consulting. While this can (and often does) include various aspects of website setup (design, programming, etc), it also includes online marketing. One of the services I am just getting into is putting to work what I know and helping others get their sites off the ground. This comes in the form of my Internet Marketing Analysis (see below).

What this is is an individualized report, from me to you, of strategies and recommendations for your specific website. I will personally comb over your site, check out your competition, and lay down a series of “next steps” on how to put your site on the map. My aim is to take a widescreen look at your strategy and point you in the right direction. While we are doing this, you will also have one-on-one access to me. Since I am trying to make this service accessible, I will include up to an hour of phone consultation with you once the report is complete. Additional time will be billed over and above, like a standard consultant.

Here’s the deal, though. I know that most business owners don’t have the time nor the inclination to do all the research that is needed to get this rolling. This is a big subject. I have a good understanding of it because I have been doing it for awhile. And if I don’t know about something, I usually know where or to whom to go to get what is needed. I did not come into this business from a provider’s standpoint. I learned the ropes on my own, by trying to get my own sites off the ground. In many ways, WebbyOnline itself is part of that strategy. When I realized just how important a blog was to online marketing, I immediately began one using a domain I happened to own at the time. You are now reading that website. Through trial and error, and evaluating all this from the PRACTICAL standpoint, I am now at a point where I can apply myself and my ideas to most any website and get it off the ground.

So, that’s the background to my Internet Marketing Analysis service. I invite you to give it a go on your own. However, if you want some personalized assistance, I make myself available.

If you are interested, the price will be set at $219. This is a very low fee for personal consulting and it is very likely to go up. However, this is a new endeavor for me and I’d like to make it available and ease into it. I do not have a landing page set up just yet, so if you’re interested, feel free to shoot me a message using the contact form. You can also give me a shout via phone at 813-425-4558.

Others Part of This Series:

What’s the Point of Your Website?
Sales Funnel – Business Website And Your Strategy
Getting Your Business Website Online
How To Draw in Visitors and Make Them Like You
Essential Steps to Web Traffic to Your Business
Summary and an Offer of Help

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