Mistakes To Avoid When Your Small Business Goes Online

Common Small Business Mistakes

Taking a small business from brick-and-mortar to cyberspace involves plenty of pitfalls, but having someone along the way who’s been there before and knows the path can become an incredibly valuable asset. We’ve gathered up some expert wisdom about mistakes to avoid when putting your small business onto the World Wide Web.

Not Having a Free Offer.

Do you know how many people visit your website each month? How many of them call or email you? How many buy? What happens to all those other people? How about those people you meet at events – the ones you don’t have time (or desire) to follow-up with? What if you had a way to automatically engage and keep in touch with these people? Start by creating something of value – a coupon, video series, e-book – that you can give away (electronically) in exchange for an email address. Put a sign-up box on your website and shift your focus from selling your product to “selling” your free giveaway. Now, “touch” these people on a regular basis …

Not Sending Regular Emails to Everyone in Your Database.

(Or doing it the WRONG way) It’s so much easier to sell to existing customers. This is the low hanging fruit – marketing to your existing database helps with referrals and repeat business by keeping you “top of mind”. It’s also a good way to sell other products that you or an affiliate company may offer. The key here is to have good, helpful, interesting content, and send it out with the right frequency.

Making it Hard for People to Contact You.

Why would you go out of your way to hide your phone number and address on your website? I can’t tell you how many websites I’ve visited where this information was either hard to find or was only in a picture (where Google can’t find it). Your phone number should be large at the top right of the page and your address should be at the bottom of every page, along with a general email address.

Not Knowing Your Main Keywords.

Just about anything you do online gets indexed by Google. The way to get found online is by understanding and using the proper keywords in your website pages, Linkedin profiles, Facebook pages, etc. Many people focus on optimizing their site for keywords without truly knowing what keywords to optimize for. How can you bait a hook if you don’t know what the fish will bite at? Ask your customers, friends, and try googling different words yourself and see if your competition shows up. Set up Google analytics (free) on your site and get REAL scientific data on what words people are using.

via videoactivepro.com

How Local Businesses Throw Away Profit

There are some mistakes that are silly time wasters and then other mistakes that could potentially cost you a significant amount of money. If you want to earn more profit – and hold on to what you already have – then take the mistakes below into account.

Not Able to Create Digital Content for Generating Leads

Rapid creation of social media content is critical to any business success.

The traditional model of creating digital content is either by hiring agencies or using a dedicated in-house resource.

This requires time and money making it difficult to create professional looking content rapidly for digital campaigns.
By investing dollars in creating content either by using design templates or hiring an agency, businesses can consistently attract customers via social media, organic search and paid media activities.

If a business focuses on developing content, then they are on their way to generating consistent leads online.

Not Getting Referrals from Your Community

Are you dealing with the same set of clients for more than six months?

Your mistake is that you’re not interacting with customers or spreading the word in the community to get more referrals.

You need to do some manual work here. Send emails in your circle asking for referrals for your business.

You can do the same with indirect marketing on social media. Another good way to get referrals is to offer a discount to your customers when they refer a friend. This way your business will get some attention and credibility.

Not Able to be Discovered Online

So you have a website, but are you getting found by the right people?

Optimizing your website, content titles, descriptions, images are ongoing. As a business you need to actively participate in online communities, build your Google+ page and create relevant content to attract the right people to your website.

The mantra is to optimize your digital presence.

via Small Business Trends

Have you discovered any major mistakes or pitfalls along your journey that you think other businesses should know about when they start out online?