Essential sales and marketing for small businesses
Most small businesses offer something that larger companies can't - it might be a more personal approach, or a niche product, but it is different to the mass market appeal of larger organisations. The problem is, how to communicate your product to the masses - tv and radio advertising are generally out of reach, national newspaper advertising is very expensive and local advertising is just that, local.
For many small companies, the internet provides the ideal solution - a national or even global audience for your product or service; relatively low start-up and ongoing costs and the ability to easily change your site as your company develops.
So what's the best approach?
Whether you're selling physical products or advertising your services (professional or entertainment), there are essentially three parts to a successful life on the internet and at qclGroup, we believe that they've got to come as a package, or you're never going to realise the full potential of the internet.
Web design
This is the look and feel of your site - it needs to communicate the brand, values and 'feel' of your business - it's possible to buy a website 'design' for very little money, just google 'website design' too see what we mean, but all you're going to get is something that follows today's design trend, not something that matches all that is unique about your business - you wouldn't expect to see a bold, bright and animated website advertising the services of an undertaker would you. Your website is often the first thing a potential customer sees of your business, so use it to make the right impression.
Search Engine Optimisation
Look at it this way, you wouldn't be too happy to pay for an advert in the yellow pages only to find out they wouldn't actually be delivering the book to peoples homes. But by paying for an un-optimised site, you're doing exactly the same thing. Going into the detail of how search engines work is for another day, but keep this in mind - if you just 'put' a website onto a server with text that you've written yourself, at best it will take google about 3-6 months just to list your site - but you will only find it if you type the address of your website!! Clearly, this is no help to your business; if you have to know it's there to be able to find it, the only people who are going to look at it already know you, and this is the reason that we don't just build websites, we support you through the whole process of getting your website to the top of the search engines for your target search terms.
Internet marketing
A relatively new phenomenon, internet marketing is linked with website optimisation, but they are two distinct things. Optimisation is about getting people who want your type of product to find your website first, internet marketing is about getting people who don't want your type of product to want your type of product! Internet marketing techniques vary a great deal, from banner advertising to pay per click links, to social networking promotion - they all have their place depending on what type of business you run.
The qclGroup approach
You'll hopefully now understand why we don't believe in just 'designing a website', but rather in developing your business on the internet - please have a look through the links below to find out exactly what we do and should you have any questions or would like to discuss what we can do for your business, please get in touch.
