How to Make the Web Work for Your Business in 5 Steps
I know everyone is looking for places where they can get more customers, so I’m going to tell a story. Let’s call this the tale of two friends.
I have one friend that I’ve known for quite a while, and a few years ago, I said to him, “Why don’t you have a small website for your business?” He runs a small business where his client base spends their money with him on a discretionary basis — that is, it’s for entertainment purposes.
They have to physically visit his business location to use his services, and even though he could sell merchandise online, it makes no sense because most vendors could beat his prices.
Looking around his office, he had some computer from the prehistoric era that had dial-up and nothing else. He would never, never really embrace the web like he needs to generate business from it.
Another friend of mine, Bob The Chiropractor, just started his business recently in the face of the recession. He runs a chiropractic business, but I met him previously at a marketing company, so he’s really a businessman that happens to be a chiropractor, instead of the other way around.
Because of the nature of his business, the customers also have to come in to use his services. And it’s extremely local. He’s really embraced the web, and it shows. In fact, I’m not even going to list the URL – just type in Bob The Chiropractor at Google.
How well is he doing?
Sometime next month he’s doubling the size of his office because he’s overbooked. End of story.
Not everyone should get a website, because like any marketing activity, to do it truly well you have to embrace it, and it does take some extra effort. But if you put in that effort and do it right, the rewards can be tremendous. Here’s the five step plan for making it happen.
Get a Decent Website
My friend and I spent the time to put together a decent website. It’s painfully easy to use, and the site has one goal: generate leads. The lead capture form has some required fields, but the main goal is to capture information in any form, so the only field we do true validation on is the email address: it has to be valid to go forward.
Ironically, the leads he does get come mostly complete. He generates one lead a day from the site, on average, which achieves 50 percent of his goal of 40 new patients a month.
But it takes work on his part: the reason the yellow pages is still around is because it’s easy for businesses to renew. Most businesses just write the check every month, and have no idea how many calls they are getting.
Bob spends the time to do a little keyword marketing and outreach, and it shows.
I’ll make it easy: a good website should cost at least what you’re paying for one to two years of yellow pages advertising. Find a decent web designer. Get a good copywriter. It makes a huge difference (or do you want a website that 1998 wants back?). And expect to spend at least what you’re spending on the yellow pages for your marketing, every month.
I’m a bit overqualified for this, but I did his website. It might not be the most attractive site in the world, but it’s designed for his audience, and it converts (roughly 20 percent of the users that visit call). It’s higher than the industry standard, but mainly because he’s got such a targeted audience: they’re looking for help right now.
Stick to the Message
He’s had a plan all along about his brand: Bob The Chiropractor, and we’ve kept the site pretty simple by focusing on that and Long Beach Chiropractic as keywords for search engine optimization. It took a while, but he’s number one and number two in Google results on each.
Bob has all kinds of trinkets, pens, breath mints, notepads and other swag, and every single one like clockwork has the logo, “Bob The Chiropractor”, the URL, and the phone number. He’s got a clever little logo that even looks like him.
Every single action reinforces his brand, even on a local level.
Embrace Keyword Advertising
Because of his previous knowledge in keyword advertising from the marketing company (the client was spending upwards of $3 million a year on the web), he knows that advertising “chiropractic” is a bad idea.
He picks less competitive keywords like “long beach chiropractic”, and that generates the traffic he needs. He spends about $100 a month, which means he’s spending about $2.50 per lead. He could probably spend a bit more, but he’s happy where he’s at.
In comparison, he’s spent some money with two local print publications, both free. His spend there has been over $1,000, and has generated exactly one lead.
He has tried a bunch of different marketing avenues, and sticks with what works.
Learn About Social Networking
My friend rarely uses the computer for more than fantasy baseball, however, he’s really embraced social networking to generate business and communicate with his customers. He has a Facebook page, and he regularly checks sites like yelp.com to make sure he’s getting good reviews.
For him, he does all the small things that small businesses do: he sponsors the local semi-pro baseball team (I think mainly to throw out the first pitch) and involves himself in local events.
Every single time, his name is listed on those event websites.
Track Your Results
He doesn’t have a separate phone number for the site as I would like, but he does a great job of tracking the results: he asks every patient where they came from, and notes it in his calendar. Bob’s not too computer savvy (I act as his IT department, which is a scary thought in itself), but we’ve put some open source tools in place to track results simply.
Because of this, he has a good idea of how much each costs, and can increase marketing costs appropriately for tests.
Have Fun With It
I talk with him about once or twice a month to see how he’s doing, and every month, he’s growing his appointment base. There’s always turnover, but he continues to do record months, even during slow times. He had a growth plan sketched out, and he’s actually ahead of schedule several months.
Most importantly, he’s having fun with it. He’s not any more technical than my first friend, but he’s put in the effort, and he thinks differently — a businessman who happens to have a specialist skillset. That makes all the difference in the world.
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Patrick is definitely correct about the need to embrace your web presence if you are going to have a website. Creating a site and letting it sit doesn’t accomplish anything. It’s a bit like nailing a business card to a tree by the interstate and hoping someone sees it.
Great story =] It’s very true about the printing thing, I know a person who spent about $300 on flyers and business cards which got him about 3 leads, I offered to create him a website for $250 and he declined saying it wouldn’t bring in enough business…
Oh, I’m first! So very nice article i learned something from it, thank you Patrick
what a great example!!! excellente article
great article for small businesses….thanks for writing this.
I think sticking to the message is the hardest part for many people, even those who already know how to do some basic SEO and are solid on social networks.
Sticking to the message actually helps with SEO, and it has the benefit of being easily digestible by people who visit (without which no amount of SEO will get you valuable traffic).
Great post!
Great article and example! Thank you for sharing this!
I thought the website was quite well done. I think something I would appreciate, and many others might as well, is for you to do a post on how to find and choose a web designer. I am getting close to having to hire a designer for a product I will sell online and to be candid, I do not know what questions to ask. I know what I want but besides checking their other sites, figuring out who to hire is difficult.
Do you have them design it from scratch? Do you find a template and have them modify it? Do you host it on a yahoo or amazon small business program or self host? How do you decide on the check out software?
Great post though. I think in many respects, just to prove you are a real business you need a website these days. I have gone to many restaurants based on what I saw on their website, and if I look for a restaurant and find no website, I tend to avoid it. Silly I know but I like to see what I am getting myself into.
Great article. I would agree with the two above that sticking with the goal is probably the hardest, especially when clients get excited and loose track/focus on a blossoming project. I think that goal is primarily the designer/consultants role in keeping central…
@chris – if you are looking for a designer, check us out http://www.shireinteractive.com. We are a small studio specialized in video, web, print, branding and a few other services. We offer small town charm with high quality for your budget. We work with you to see how much you can spend monthly, yearly, etc and work out a plan to reach that target.
email me jonathan@shireinteractive.com
Patrick, nice. I recently wrote a news item for my site about this very topic. I have several clients who have skyrocketed up in natural results, mostly because they are tightly focused on those goals. One of them just told me she has no idea why she is advertising in the yellow pages.
Creux Salon’ site is only 6 months old but it’s made it to page 2 in a Google search – http://impress-design.com/Performance-That-Pays
Thanks! Great article. I always like to hear and learn from different case studies like this.
I just had a meeting with a chiropractor this morning about some adjustments to his site (oh! No pun intended!). How funny that this article goes up today.
You made some great points, Patrick, that business owners don’t have to know a lot about the web or computers to have a great site that serves their business well. I think many people feel they need all the answers before consulting a creative professional to create things for them. Not so! The creative person is there to help the business owner figure all that stuff out. That’s a fun part of the job, to me at least!
Thanks for the comments.
One of the comments I made recently during a conversation with a client is that sometimes the best looking websites aren’t the one’s that are the best for the business. We intentionally designed the site so it was busy and a bit like a local weekly advertiser ad. Because of this, it resonates well with the client base (they’re expecting a home town business that is more about promotion and building a relationship, and that it doesn’t feel too expensive). That’s what the site is (www.bobthechiropractor.com).
I always thought my site is just to simple, but its so easy to do simple look changes to it with out reworking and its easy to navigate. I really hate over done site and then theres little to no updates/ content.
I need to work on my metacode a bit more
I like Bobs site, simple, good layout, fun and gets the message across. I also like what you say about adwords and using more random keywords. As someone looking to start on the freelance trail with a new website, you put it clearly and made me see the benefit of signing up.
Thanks a lot for the advice.
Roy
I usually don’t subscribe to RSS feeds on the first page view, but I really liked your post and your website design. Very elegant yet simple.
Great article, thank you for the time that you put into it. The major takeaways are the emphasis on the fact that the owner must embrace the shift to Internet marketing and the suggestion that they spend their yellow pages budget monthly. So many owners seem to think that just having a website is what it takes to create new customers.
The reason the site is fun is you really have to know Bob (great sense of humor). But it’s also about providing a comfort level to the users who they visit, they’ll get treated well. His customer service is off the charts, and it shows in his return business.
Great points Patrick.
It seems though that it would be fairly easy to optimize Bob’s site for “long beach chiropractic” to rank him in the organic listing, and thus do away with costly Pay per Click advertising.
Also, he could consider going for a more popular term, for example “los angeles chiropractic”, which is searched about 4,000 times a month, versus 700 times a month for “long beach chiropractic”.
Good points to consider here. A big one that you mentioned is learn about Social Networking. That is very important nowadays.
We do work on the organic for optimization occasionally but it becomes a ROI issue i.e. he’s spending $100 a month. The question becomes: is it going to cost more in time to do the organic work than just do the ad spend?
I say yes, because for most good web designers and SEO folks, $100 is between 1 to 2 hours of time, and most aren’t going to want to be bothered with that per month.
Reading this article and the comments, I get some memories about a client I had. He wanted a website, tried 2 different developers before I meet him. We talked and between the lines I asked for the budget. It was way too low. When he asked what would the website cost and I told him the price, he said: oh, but I don’t have that kind of money. After a week he called me to sign the contract.
After a month or so the website was online. It was beginning of November. In December, he already had enough clients to have very busy days at the office. One day, a competitor business manager paid him a visit and asked how business was going complaining that he didn’t had a client for 2 months by the time they were speaking. That man didn’t even thought web could bring that kind of business.
The morale of this? Well, what I’ve learned is that when I talk to a potential client, it’s better to let him know that I’m building his online business rather than a simple website. Anyway, good article, makes me think of the things I still need to do.
Great article.
It’s definitely important for “offline” businesses too that they have a web presence.
As Tony Robbins says: “The value of everything is purely dependent upon technology”. Yes, even the value of a Chiropractor’s business.
awesome article very good information on marketing and branding strategy here, I try to implement these myself for certain clients and it seems to work out well.
Insightful and thoroughly detailed article — great!
On the simple front for old fashioned folks, a person doesn’t even have to do such an intense job as Bob the Chiropractor; any web presence at all is important, even if it is just a single page with contact information and an explanation of products and services. These days people search for everything online, if a business has zero online presence, they are definitely missing tons of potential customers and clients.