Why You Should Be Branding and Marketing Online
It is unnerving to hear, “My company gets business from referrals, not our website. I don’t care about online branding or online marketing.”
It’s a shame that some business owners and executives do not understand the effect online branding has on their company’s bottom line, especially when it comes to referrals and prospective clients.
Online branding is about far more than your company’s website or your company’s social media presence. Your online brand includes what your employees and most of all, your company’s “experts” say online. It also includes things that you cannot control, such as online reviews.
While professional service companies are not as vulnerable as consumer product based companies to the inconsistency of online reviews, you still can’t discount the effects websites like Yelp have on recruiting and business development efforts.
Today, most people turn to the web for research, regardless of what we’re buying or where they are going. We validate every purchase decision and referral online. So don’t dismiss modern buying habits when thinking about how potential buyers find and engage your business.
Sure, a construction company may not sell a building online like Amazon sells clothes, but prospective clients will shortlist companies purely based on their impression of a website. The scariest part about the virtual shortlist is that you do not know you’ve been ruled out.
So saying you don’t get business from your website may mean you are leaving a lot of money on the table. You may have already missed out on prime opportunities because you never made it to the shortlist. If you improve your online presence, you could possibly double the number of customers and referrals you receive.