Can Customers Find You?

How do our kids and grandchildren look for products and services today?  Do they open the phone book?  Yeah, that thick publication with white and yellow pages that's probably in your closet, collecting dust until the next one arrives on your door step.  Chances are that you rarely open it anymore either.  Let's face it, everybody's looking on the WEB...for pizza, plumbers, accountants, attorneys, and yes...insurance.   

Try doing a "Google" search on your business.  Does it appear?  Do you have a web-site?  Does it come up?  Where on the list?  The lizard's there!  So are the cupped hands, the cartoon dog, and too many others to mention.  But where are you?  Can prospective customers find you on-line?

Most companies say that their web marketing efforts have been mixed at best.  The truth, however, is that prospective customers aren't finding them in the first place.  Worse still, the inquiries that are being made by customers aren't being responded to.   Whose responsibility is it in your office to review, accept, or decline an inquiry?  They're finding your competition though, and direct marketers receive high marks for their response time.    

Marketing your business on the internet doesn't mean that you put up a web-site and sit back and wait for the business to come flowing in.  By itself, just like your phone book advertisement, you won't become a marketing machine.  It is, however, the wave of the present for all of the largest carriers soliciting business from the general public.  Can you afford not to have a presence?  

So what do you do?  When is the last time your web-site was updated?  You're web-master should be looking at and modifying content not less than once per month and the more frequently the better.  How about your carrier web-sites?  You've most likely provided your vendors with web-site and e-mail addresses, but how often are they updating them.  Take a look at your vendor sites and see if the data is current and accurate.  Make sure that the information they're posting about you on their sites is accurate so that customers can find you.   

The posting of forms for prospective customers to complete on your site is probably not the way you want to go, and depending upon the level of security of your site, may put their personal information in jeopardy. 

What about overall branding?  Your web-site is simply a necessary extension of your company's overall marketing plan and it's not going to cover all of the bases.  We've all see the commercials featuring a wide array of characters promoting the competition.  Does your company belong to a trade association, be it local, national or both?  What are the trade associations doing collectively to promote you?  Have you seen a commercial?  If branding to the general public by your trade association isn't important, what is?  A possible topic you can bring up at your next association committee or board meeting? 

There are fool-proof answers as to how you market your business on the Internet, but it seems that choosing not to have a presence will undoubtedly guarantee that prospective customers won't find you.  The Internet is here to stay, are you?