Digital Marketing

A recent Google survey highlighted just how important a business’ professional website is to its success.

Nearly 70 percent of survey respondents (adults ages 18 to 64) stated they were more likely to purchase products and services from a business with a website.

Yet, 36 percent of small businesses reported they don’t have even a basic website in place. Why is this?

Running a small business is hard work. In many cases, there simply isn’t extra time or knowledgeable personnel to get a website up and running.

But that lack can cost you customers you don’t even know you’re losing.

In this post, discover how easy it can be to get your own small-business website operating before another new year arrives!

Cost Is Not An Obstacle to Launching a Business Website

With a little extra time and some basic tech savvy, you too could be on your way to populating your own corner of the world wide web.

But how valuable would your website be, given that your area of business expertise likely lies elsewhere? “Not too valuable” is the honest answer.

We’re not talking about launching a placeholder website. We are talking about a bona fide professional business website – one that actively drives new customer prospects to you and generates a continual stream of useful data to help you turn those prospects into loyal repeat customers.

What if you could get a small-business website for your company for less than $85 per month? Would you consider it? Would you perhaps even jump at the chance?

Go From Break-Even to Profitable with an Affordable Business Website

It is one thing to look at the straight-up cost of launching a new business website. We totally get it: when you are running a new business on a shoestring, any added expenses can often look exorbitant on the front end.

But what makes the cost of launching your business website not just affordable but profitable is what happens next.

Remember, your website isn’t just a checkmark beside an item on your to-do list. It is your active marketing partner all day, every day.

While you are busy tending to your customers and marketing your business locally, your website is doing the same for you online.

A well-built, well-maintained, active business and marketing website is going to earn its keep and then some. No one would ever launch websites if they didn’t help business owners increase business!

So if you launch a business website and you don’t see an increase in site visits, new customer inquiries and prospect-to-customer conversions, something is wrong.

This is yet another reason why you need to put your best foot forward the moment you establish your business presence online. The goal is launching a well-designed, fast-loading, seamless, straightforward business website that greets customers like you would greet them if they walked in your door.

Do this right the first time and you won’t have to backtrack to repair your online reputation and attempt to recapture customers who were unimpressed with your company’s online presence.

If These Small Businesses Can Do It, You Can Do It Too

Here at OSM, we are a small business ourselves. We just happen to specialize in website design and hosting, SEO (search engine optimization) advertising and online marketing.

Of course, we built our own website, and it is doing a great job for us!

We have also built sites for many other local businesses that are seeing great results from our affordable yet deeply customized and rigorously tested website designs.

Here again, if our own website wasn’t holding up its end of the bargain, it wouldn’t still be operating, and neither would we. The same holds true for each of our customers and their websites.

We have helped businesses in all stages of growth and at all levels of operation, from libraries and hospitals to residential communities, HVAC companies, consulting firms and nonprofits.

While our customers stay busy growing their companies, we build websites that become essential marketing partners for their success.

An Affordable Website Bundle for Every Small Business

Our Websites Bundle Offer is tailor-made for new and emerging businesses as well as businesses at all stages of growth and expansion.

The Bundle Offer includes everything your business needs to begin seeing results from claiming your internet presence.

It costs a little less than $85 per month (or $999.99 in one lump payment). To consider what this might look like in terms of return on investment, think of your least expensive product or service offering.

Let’s say you sell heating equipment. If you sold one new maintenance plan from launching your website, that would be $150 back in your pocket and two months of website services paid for.

Or perhaps you sell consulting services and your hourly rate is $100. Just one new consultation and your website has already earned its keep!

But you don’t just get a website with our Business Bundle. You also get website hosting (including professional business email) and our introductory marketing package – it is all included!

We do this because we don’t want you to launch a website and then wonder why you did it. We want you to experience the power of a focused, targeted, customized website from day one.

With our Bundle Offer, you get all of this:

• Customized business template website design optimized for mobile and desktop.

• Introductory hosting plan with lead-capture, analytics, ads, shopping carts and more.

• Introductory marketing package with SEO optimization across Google, including business directly, analytics, traffic tracking and more

Get in Touch

Connect now to add effective online marketing to your business model!

Contact us online or give us a call at 613-969-0626.

If you have ever found yourself eyeing your competitor’s busy website with envy or wondering how you can bring in new customers without adding anything else to your already packed schedule, what you are really asking yourself is: “Does my website need professional marketing?”

The answer, by the way, is YES.

This can be a daunting realization, especially when you might be an expert in your field, but you have to be honest and admit you aren’t even totally sure what “website marketing” means.

In this post, find out the answer to that question. Also discover why your website needs professional marketing and how it can help you generate new business without adding yet another hat on top of the existing stack precariously balanced on your head.

What Is Website Marketing?

Website marketing is one of many terms used nearly interchangeably to describe the process of seeking new customers in the online marketplace. This is because there are many types of marketing you can do on the internet to reach new customers.

Let’s take an example most small-business owners know well – local marketing.

When you launched your company, you probably already had an idea of where you could go and what you could do to tell potential customers about your company’s products or services.

You printed up business cards, flyers or postcards with coupons. You handed them out to friends, left stacks of them at the library and coffeeshop, took them to business networking meetings and neighborhood association meetings. Slowly but surely, word got out and customers started calling and visiting to hire you.

It is not that different to market your products and services online. But instead of walking or driving around in person to hand out your information, you are finding out where your customers hang out online and distributing your business information there.

Common places where business owners find new customers online include social media platforms, blog feeds, podcasts and vodcasts, email list groups, chat rooms, organic/paid browser searches and more. But you can’t visit these places in person – only your website can do that.

So website marketing is effectively using the information on your website to intersect with customers in the places online where they are most likely to go so you can bring them to your website to hire you!

When Do You Need Professional Website Marketing?

One of the keys to longevity in the small-business marketplace is knowing when to outsource certain critical functions. Unless your primary business is website marketing, at some point in time, you will likely want to outsource your website marketing function.

Of course, you may be thinking, “Well, I built my business from scratch and generated my customer base on my own, hoofing it and working hard. How hard could website marketing really be?”

Pretty darned hard, especially if you are starting from scratch to learn how it works. Sure, you are smart and you could learn how to do it. But is that really the best use of your time?

Here, the right question is to ask yourself is always, “What is an hour of my time worth?”

Think about all the hats you already wear and how much you would pay someone else to do any of the things you excel at. Would you rather outsource those functions or something you don’t (for the moment at least) know how to do yourself?

If you want and need to generate new business but don't have time to learn a new skill, the smart move is to hire experts who can help.

How Does Professional Website Marketing Work?

Every aspect of professional website marketing revolves around two key concepts: consistency and keywords.

Consistency

By “consistency,” we mean your online (website) marketing presence needs to look the same from one social platform to the next and sound the same from one blog post or article to the next. This is how you build trust with prospective customers and turn them into new, loyal repeat customers.

The reason is that your online customers can’t see you. They can’t shake your hand, read your nonverbal body language cues, look into your eyes, get a gut sense of who you are and how you operate.

What they can do is notice that your brand identity (color, logo, URL, slogan/motto, voice) matches up everywhere they see you online.

This doesn’t mean your message has to be exactly the same on every platform – in fact, here, customization is critical to success. But it does mean that no matter where your online prospective customer encounters you, everything about the experience makes it clear to them that it is you.

Keywords

When we say “keywords,” what we really mean is SEO (search engine optimization). SEO is the primary reason you really don’t want to tackle website marketing as a newbie with a busy business to run.

SEO is complicated! You have to pick the right keywords in the right combinations optimized for where your customers are most likely to encounter them online. You have to read reams of analytics (data streams) and adjust your keyword marketing strategy according to emerging trends.

If that doesn’t sound like fun, you definitely want to hire someone who already knows the ropes to do it for you.

Why You Need Professional Website Marketing Now

When you spend your website marketing dollars wisely, they will start making you money in short order.

The best way to achieve this goal is to bring in an experienced website marketing team who does what they do just as well as you do what you do!

Get in Touch

Are you ready to take your website marketing game to the next level?

Contact us online or give us a call at 613-969-0626.