How to raise the profile of your business using the Web
Internet use increased dramatically during the 1990s. Creative businesses anticipated its growth and established a web presence because they knew their clients expected them to do so. Today, avante-garde and establishment organisations alike recognise that a web presence is essential for business success. If you want to raise the profile of your business, you should know how you can make the Web work for you. If you don't know, you can be sure your competitors will...
1. Use the Web to establish a presence.
No matter what your business is, you can't afford to ignore nearly 200 million people out there with access to the World Wide Web. To be part of that cyberspace community and to show that you are available to service their needs, you'll need to be on the Web. You can bet your competitors will be. Indeed, the Web will be the equivalent of today's business card in your organisation, a vital 21st Century networking tool.
2. Use the Web to keep people informed.
‘This is what we do, here's how we can help you, and here's how you can contact us.’ Whether you're a large corporation, a public service organisation, or a small business, you can tell this to potential and existing clients and customers, or the general public, anywhere in the world, simply, inexpensively, and 24 hours a day on the Web. The world can have immediate access to information about your business.
Use the Web imaginatively:
- to heighten public interest
- to publicly release time-sensitive material (e.g. press releases, prize winners, merger news, quarterly earnings statements) any time, at your discretion, without embargo
- to answer frequently asked questions about your organisation
- to make changes instantly and inexpensively to public company data, prices, information etc.
- to reach the media, the most wired profession today, with up-to-date information and images, quickly, cheaply and easily.
3. Use the Web to serve clients and customers.
Making business information available is an important component of customer service, but creative use of your website will also allow customers to, for example, complete forms to pre-qualify for a loan, track down that hard-to-locate jazz CD or book, inquire after the sizes and colours of coats available through your store, check on houses for sale in the northern suburbs, seek your latest DIY gardening hints, and so on.
By building an e-mail response into your website, you can ask for instant client or customer feedback about your services or products, without the cost and lack of response often experienced through traditional business reply mail.
