Listen! Fact is, Yellow Pages, Yellow Book, Super Pages or whatever the printed directory is in your area just doesn’t cut it anymore. At least not for most of you. You need to get online – and you need to market your site and your business effectively.
You’ll see in upcoming articles, as well as presentations at IGA, NACE and others—that I’m not preaching to drop your phone book listings all together. But decreasing your phone book cost and moving some budget to your online efforts would be a great strategy.
Yes, a few of you have told me that the phone book delivers great value. But most have said just the opposite. You spend and spend and spend, but your return is poor, if existent at all. Some have told me stories of dropping their phone book costs in half without losing a dime of revenue.
But that’s enough of my online vs. phone book soapbox … at least for now. How do you make your website work for you?
First, you’ll want a modern design. It will do you well to pay a professional for this. There are plenty of web developers in your area, or that can be found on the web.
You know the difference between a cheap windshield and a quality one, right? It’s the same with websites. A cheap one might look okay, but it won’t sell jobs, and it surely won’t rank well in search engines.Don’t allow a developer to build your site with Frames, don’t permit use of iFrames for content, and don’t agree to a site built in Flash. Each of these elements will hinder your ability to show up in the free listings of Google, Yahoo! and other major engines.
8 comments:
I agree, phone books are the biggest waste of money and they are so inacurate, and these days there is 10 in each market, all from different companies. On the web page development I would caution folks from, budgeting more that $500 MAX on a web page, another good place to go to seek somone to design your web page and get multiple prices is www.rentacoder.com what this does is allow you to tell the people that code programs and web sites what YOU want to see. They will submit quotes.. Also on the local listing for google, look up your name, and your zip code, chances are you have already a free google local listing there will be a tab that you can click on to identify yourself as the business owner, then google will either call you or mail you postal mail to verify the information. This is a highly effective way for free to market yourself.
I want to Personally thank Scott for being a Big Boy and allowing people to post a comment, as I see the person with no face on their profile does not allow a post without him first approving it. What a shame. Scott high five bud!
Scott,
As a marketer, I have very strong opinions about where/how shops should spend their marketing $. There are many sales reps out there who will call on business owners with a "deal" or "special" for a one-time promotional offering. Shops run it (radio is a good example) and see nothing like the results they hope for. The best thing a shop can do is put together a marketing plan and budget and stick to it. Not every marketing tactic needs to cost a lot of money.
When you have a plan, it's much easier to tell a salesperson, "no, thank you." Even if the deal seems like a good one. (Or on the flip side, to give a "yes" because you know it fits your plan.)
If you want to dominate one market like saint louis auto glass, or auto glass 63366 , things like that a top 5 spot will be so easy! I can not wait for belrons web site safelite to pull in diamond, then their will be 2 open spots on #1 page, see you there PSAC hope I am on top ;)
"I would caution folks from, budgeting more that $500 MAX on a web page"
Do you mean you recommend not spending more than this? If you can find a quality website for $500 I applaud you. In web development you truly do get what you pay for. If you're looking for a budget site, and you don't mind cutting corners - by all means go for it. For some of you this will make sense, and you’ll probably do well enough with a cheap site, so why spend more.
But if you want a scalable website, built in a Content Management System (gives you control over the site), and one that is both search engine friendly and modifiable for a changing marketing plan (great comments Beth) – you’re simply going to pay more.
Mostly, it’s about knowing what you need and shopping around for the best site design and production to fit your plan. You might spend $500, or you may spend $20,000. The last development agency I worked for wouldn’t touch a website project for under $30,000, and our average web build was around $500,000. These were corporate 100 and 500 companies, so the sites were huge – but you get the idea. The more you want the site to do, the more it will cost.
So your trying to tell me you expect a auto glass retailer to fork over $10,000 to you? I say show me the money show me the #1 sites your have current marketed web sites right now.
Scott,
I think that nexozeon is rude. However what do you think is reasonable to spend? Considering the reduced profit margins shoved down our throats by TPA's? $500 is a ton of money for me. But I am not wealthy like some.
Nexozeon and Auto Glass Girl - Sorry, I was not intending to infer that everyone should plan on spending $10k.
In fact, you may be able to find a great deal for $500. I have a hard time believing that based on the quality and marketability of $500 sites I’ve seen. But if anyone can prove me wrong, I’m all ears! I’ve been working on a plan for a “cheap” web solution for my audience. I’m still working on it, I just haven’t figured out how to make it all work for pennies on the dollar yet.
Also, you can spend $1 million on a website and still not have it rank #1 on search engines. Web design and search friendly structure are two totally different skill sets. Most designers are skilled in color pallets, image layouts, and other such aesthetics – many critical to usability of a site. However, they will rarely know or understand why you need to avoid iFrames, trim down ViewState code, or use H1 text headers and in-line content hyperlinks. They are simply different sets of knowledge.
So why should it cost more than $500? Because you’ll usually need 2-3 different skilled workers on the project, and a quality website will likely take between 40 and 200 man hours to design, produce, and launch. On the general market, designers and coders charge between $50 and $200 per hour for their work.
But don’t get all balled up now – I’m not saying that’s what you’ll pay! I’m just trying to lay out what the web market looks like. What you’ll typically get for a cheap site is a template site with 3-5 pages, with locked images and limited ability to modify (or optimize) anything. So you have a website, but it’s too limited to do anything with. Maybe this is okay for now – but if you’re serious about the web, you’ll end up doing quite a bit more.
I think there are regulations that bar me from talking about specific prices on a public forum, so I must avoid that here – but no, I can’t imagine you would spend $10k or anywhere near it for a website. Just don’t limit yourself to $500!
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