Written on January 20th, 2010 by mmitchellno shouts
This following article appeared on the HubSpot Blog on 1/20/2010. View original article here,
Your website may very well be the most powerful tool in your marketing kit. Not only is it the place prospects and clients go to learn more about you and your services, but it has a huge impact on their ultimate purchase decision. In fact, only 3% of the 200 buyers surveyed – from companies of all sizes – say a provider’s website has no influence whatsoever over their purchase decision.
The survey was conducted by RainToday.com and included more than 200 buyers responsible for more than $1.7 billion in professional services purchased, such as accounting and financial consulting; architecture, engineering, and construction services; human resources consulting; IT consulting and services; legal services; management consulting; marketing, advertising, and public relations; and training services.
The influence of professional services websites on purchasing decisions has increased significantly over the past four years. According to the survey, 74% of buyers report the service provider’s website holds at least “some influence” over their ultimate decision to buy services from the provider. This is 23 percentage points higher than in 2005 and represents a significant increase in the importance of websites.
It’s clear that professional services firms must take advantage of this power. With well-designed websites they can:
- Establish that they are professional: through professional design, writing, and arrangement of content.
- Establish that they are worthy of consideration: through an overview of their services, their client list, biographies of their professionals, and case studies that show how they helped clients and delivered what they promised.
- Establish themselves as an authority: through blog posts, publications, videos, and other resources to help build credibility, reliability, and trust-all essential elements necessary to win clients
How important is your website to growing your business?
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Written on December 28th, 2009 by mmitchellno shouts
Shoeshoeing with my husband/partner and daughter in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Photo by Norm Vance of Pagosa.com
Being a web designer for the past 14 years has taught me a lot about flexibility…technology continues to evolve and when it does, your web strategy needs to transform as well. Over the past 6 months, I have been teaching my clients that their web sites need to have a greater purpose than being an online brochure. In addition, the owners also need to continually re-focus and stay grounded in what is working and what needs tweaking.
As the world of social media, SEO and lead generation continue to merge with Web 2.0, it is essential that a company’s websites start becoming more interactive and customer-response focused. So, how do you do that? Here are a few starting tips:
1. Embrace the world of blogging and add a blog into your existing hosting account. In order for your new blog traffic to help the SEO of your existing website, make sure the blog is installed on your hosting account and that you link back and forth from your website to your blog. This will require you to have a separate blog strategy and outline. For example, your blog could highlight the “personality” of your company, your vision and your employees. Engage the staff and find out why they love your company…use customer testimonials in your blog and start a dialog with other customers, etc…
2. Make sure all of your advertising activities tie into specific landing pages on your site with calls to action. Don’t just measure web visitors…measure the conversion rates of each advertising vehicle as well. What may have worked in early 2009 may not work now…
3. Track everything! Are you monitoring your web traffic, most popular pages, keywords, and geographic information on your visitors on a monthly basis?
4. Make sure your website and blog both have links to your Twitter and Facebook pages as well as any other company social media pages, such as YouTube or Flickr.
Feeling overwhelmed yet? I know I do…that is why I also take time to get outdoors, look at our incredible San Juan Mountains, breathe in deep and make sure I remember my top priorities. Sometimes I realize that I really need to hire someone to do something that is taking too much of my time away from my strengths and other times I realize that a certain advertising channel is not very productive.
In 2010, MTECH is here to help you uplevel your existing web sites or just provide guidance!
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