Where Does Your Marketing Stop?

So you have taken your Internet marketing to a new level.  You are SEMing, SEOing, facebooking, stumbling, digging, plurking, blogging, commenting.  You have spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars optimizing your site.  You have labored for hours producing keyword rich content getting quality backlinks.  You have positioned yourself perfectly in the PPC standings.  Tested your landing page to produce the exact results that you desire.

Here is your chance…  Across the country your perfect potential customer has just sat down at their computer.  They search Google for the exact keyword that you have so diligently optimized your site for.  As they scan the results… it happens…

They see your listing and … CLICK.

They land on your page and are taken in by your use of colors and images.  They are impressed by your knowledge that you have so expertly expressed in your content.  They follow the path you have laid out before them and have arrived on your Contact page.  They spy your toll free number and pick up the phone to dial…

ring… ring… ring…

“No one is available to take your call right now.  Please feel free to ….”  CLICK … DIAL TONE

Awww…  That was close.  You almost had a new customer.

The problem here was that the marketing was done well but failed to go far enough.  When you didn’t answer the phone they went back to the Google search results and clicked on your competition.  (I wonder if they answered the phone?)  Your marketing stopped too soon.  Marketing means showing the customer why they should be doing business with you… from start to finish.  (And if you ask me there is no finish.)  And why should they do business with you if you are not going to be there when they call?  It goes back to developing trust online, people wanting instant gratification, and just good ol’ fashioned customer service.  Your marketing has to take all of these things into consideration and it doesn’t stop just because your potential customer is moving from one marketing tool (your website) to another (your phone system).

If you know anything about us, you know that we have built a very successful business marketing our services using only Internet marketing techniques.  However, our marketing never truly stops on the Internet because if the potential customer picks up the phone to contact us, we are there to answer.  With the increased use of virtual PBX systems many SOHO’s are becoming too reliant on the automated attendant and voicemail.  (Or worse yet a standard answering machine or cell phone voicemail.)  They allow the automated attendant to answer, screen and then send their callers to voicemail.  While an automated attendant and voicemail definitely have their place (professional image, sound bigger, increased efficiency in routing calls, etc.), the feature that they should be taking the most advantage of is the follow-me call forwarding feature.  This feature allows you to forward your calls to you wherever you are.  This way regardless of your location (home office, brick and mortar, out to lunch, on the beach, at the gym, or wherever else you spend your time) when all your hard work and money spent pays off and your potential customer lands on your site, and they like what they see, and they want to contact you to seal the deal, your marketing can continue and you will be there to answer the call.

I am a firm believer in using a virtual PBX for your business.  After all, it is a service that we offer and we use one ourselves for our own business.  However if you are not answering your customer’s calls when they come in on your virtual pbx, or any other phone system that you are using, you are wasting a ton of time and money on all of that marketing.  If the customer is going to take their time to do the search, look over your site, hit the contact page, and pick up the phone to call you - wow you can’t get a much more qualified lead than that and you are flushing it down the drain if you don’t take their call.

Reader Comments

Business Entrepreneur says...August 20th, 2008

We work with small business owners who could really benefit from this article (I will be sharing it for sure) and the inherent wisdom in “answering the phones”. I see so many small business owners neglect this simple step. We just set up Ring Central for one of our clients but would be happy to learn more about your services.

-Jeff

Mahavir says...August 20th, 2008

Well written article, really appreciate the way you took the internet marketing. I am gonna try this on my website called http://www.erp-softwares-india.com

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