You’ve been in business for years and have been turning a profit without the help of a web presence. Now all you hear about is how important a website is for the success of a business, but you ask how so? Why do you need to spend money on a website when all of your marketing is done offline and you’re already successful?
This is a common question that businesses face when they’ve been around for many years and don’t see the value a website can bring to their already thriving business. What they don’t know is that there are a significant number of customer leads they could’ve maximized on if only they had the proper tools and channels.
Benefits to Having a Business Website
There are a multitude of benefits to having an online presence, but let’s focus on the top three.
- Maximize Exposure: A website provides exposure to your business at all hours of the day, every day of the year. A lady damages her heel while walking down the street and is in need of a cobbler to repair her broken heel. She does a quick search on Google for “shoe repair near me” and finds a list of different cobblers within the area. She peruses through the websites and chooses one of your competitors who has a professional looking website. This lady could’ve been a new lifelong customer of yours, but because you didn’t have a website you missed out on the opportunity.
- Communication: You have a special promotion going on for Black Friday, so you do what you do every year, send out mailers to the neighboring homes. As it gets closer to Black Friday you realize you forgot to include a few sale items in your mailer that your competitors included. You now have to decide if you want to spend more money on reprinting and resending these mailers or just hope what you did advertise is enough.If you had a website, you could put up a quick graphic on the homepage highlighting the missing sale items and then send out a quick email to all of your subscribers as a reminder. Both the financial cost and efficiency cost for the digital approach are significantly less than the traditional offline route.
- Online Sales: You have a small boutique with the hours of 10am to 8pm Mon-Sun. You’ve noticed that you aren’t receiving as much foot traffic in your store and are having a hard time paying for the overhead costs to keep the store open.With the rise in online shopping, it is important to maintain an updated ecommerce website that allows users to shop 24/7. This helps bring in sales for your business at all hours with minimal overhead costs.
Offline marketing is of importance for many businesses, but in today’s tech era, it is hard to compete without an online presence. A website boosts the efforts of your offline marketing and is an affordable way to expand your business reach.
