Obviously, you can always sell products on the Internet. But, what about selling a service?
A lot of people maintain websites in order to be a public face to services which they offer, whether offline or online. This is always great because the web can put your offering in front of the eyes of many people easily. More and more, people are turning to the Internet even to find local, offline business services. The yellow pages are so yesterday!
When you offer a service via your website, the most important advice I could provide would be to NOT have your website be little but a digital brochure. I see so many business websites out there that do nothing but say what they do and have a link to contact them. Boring! And it is even worse when they use some of the classic mistakes of marketing, like calling themselves #1 or using “they” when they are only a one-man show.
As I said earlier in this series, the era of doing business with big corporations is nearing an end. People do business with PEOPLE. They want real people.
Not only that, but you need to give people a reason to come to your website. Why would anybody come to it? The classic mistake of brochure style business sites is that people would only happen upon the site if they were looking specifically for that business. But, nobody is searching for your business name on Google!
So, some general advice (since this series is all about just hitting highpoints) for offering a service through your site is:
- Provide real VALUE on your business website. Start a blog and offer freely available content having to do with the area of your business. Offer free value to your potential clientele. Much of your clientele is going to discover you because they’re searching for an answer. So, give them the answer and then say “Oh, by the way, you can hire me for more personalized service.”. This is a much better way to market your service online then a brochure-style website.
- Don’t hesitate to hire somebody who knows what they’re doing to create your website for you if you don’t have the expertise. An amateur-looking website can have the exact opposite effect that you are looking for. If you look amateur, people will write you off as such. Remember, you have only a few seconds online to make a first impression once somebody arrives at your site.
- Use local search. A very high percentage of people who search locally for something are actively looking to hire somebody! For example, if I search for “tampa bay mechanics”, am I just looking for general info about my car? No, very likely I am looking for a mechanic to fix my car! So, make sure your site is geographically centric if your business is. Use the name of your city in your website and in your site’s title. And if you do any internet advertising, make sure you geo-target visitors specifically in your city.
Bonus Tip: Even if your business can cater to many cities, you can take advantage of local search. Create multiple landing pages to your site, all targeting different cities. Then let the search engines index these. Anybody searching for your product in those cities can then find you, even if you’re based elsewhere.
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