The Difficulties with Sales and Marketing on the Web for a Small Business
Cornerstone Article: This article is the first I wrote and really holds a lot of the core of why I started the business. I saw the pain that not knowing how to sell on the internet was causing business people and customers alike and wanted to make it my mission to improve that situation.
There are a lot of businesses that do not understand even Basic Marketing, Sales Process or how to get customers to want to do business with them. The business owners are understandably busy making products and keeping their heads above water but they forget that with the right approach acquiring and retaining customers can be made easier. While marketing is in its simplest sense quite easy it is in the implementation that I see things going rather wrong.
- Marketing that doesn’t clearly explain the product to the customer
- Information that is poorly presented, hard to follow or even absent
- Not answering the basic questions customers have
- Serving the business owner’s ego and not the customer’s needs
- Doesn’t ask for the business or lead the customer to the next step
These things reduce the customer’s desire to do business. A business needs to try to make themselves the easy and obvious answer to the customers who are a good fit for them – which is rarely everyone who might be in the market. This of course leads to businesses working too hard to find and sell to customers and finding growth a challenge.
There are 2 possible causes of these sales and marketing efforts that miss their mark and so have poor return on investment:
- Not caring
- Not having an understanding of how to do better
Now I have to assume that “not caring” is not the real reason (despite many traders basically using this excuse) as it is completely irrational. Why would any person deliberately set out to achieve a poor or mediocre result? That leaves “not having an understanding of how to do better” as the only real answer. When people use the I don’t care answer I think it is really a cover for not understanding and not having the courage to change. Not understanding how to do better is in theory easily fixed with two more possible answers:
- Learn how to do it yourself
- Pay someone else to do the job for you (outsource/staff)
Both of these answers are valid. However, each of these options above has strengths and weaknesses that need to be weighed up
I think learning how to do a thing yourself is the best solution, even if you ultimately choose to pay someone else to do the job for you, because if you don’t know at least the fundamentals of a thing then how do you know if what you are paying money for is actually a good solution?
Thankfully you can hire coaches and consultants who can help you to learn as well as handle some of the tasks themselves. While these people cost some dollars to hire the results should ultimately be far greater than sitting on your hands and feeling clever over the money you saved (whilst sales go elsewhere).
If you want me to work with your business then please visit BRM Web Consulting
