Are you one of those business owners who’s not tracking your business activity, tracking your marketing or recording how you spend your time each day working on your business?
If you are – you’re certainly not alone. Very few small business owners are measuring their business activity these days – especially on the internet. And even fewer – way fewer – have an established system for tracking and evaluating the effectiveness of each of the most important parts of their business.
If you have a small business website it should serve one purpose – generating sales.
Sure, it should inform your visitors of your offers and give them social proof of your abilities through testimonials. Without a doubt, your website should generate and capture leads. And most importantly your business website should move your visitors toward buying your offers.
While there’s nearly infinite ways to do generate sales, a few necessary pieces need to be in place on your business website in order to generate more sales effectively. Most of this is really common sense. Yet after the more than 20 Business Website Assessments I’ve done in the past month, these basic elements are consistently being missed on small business websites.
Yet, these basic elements are so fundamental that you want to be sure you’re not missing them on your website.
With small businesses one fact is true today, your business website should be a central hub for your business.
Your business website should effectively represent your brand while providing ways for your leads to easily engage you. All roads in your business should lead back to your website, making it the pivot point for all your marketing. And you want to treat your website that way.
Furthermore, having a website opens the possibility to not just market to your leads, but to create a powerful touch point for engaging your audience in conversation and building relationships with your prospects and clients.
So if you want a successful business, and I believe you do, it only make sense to create a website that fuels the growth of your business.
Most of the the small business owners I work focus an abundant of time on their marketing. They put tons of effort into crafting their marketing message, polishing their marketing funnel and fine-tuning how they generate leads. And often, they do so before any of this produces new clients.
Marketing your business is a really good idea, don’t get me wrong. However you choose to do it, marketing is a vital part of your business. As a matter of fact, marketing your services is something I teach my clients to do more effectively every day.
Yet I find that there’s a hole in the thinking that “all you need to do is effectively market your business.”
Susan is a life coach. She’s been working with clients ever since she received her certification. First with a few friends and later with the referrals her friends sent her. Of course one of those referrals taught her about marketing and helped her get a website up. Everything seemed to be going great.
Now, three years later, she’s struggling to get enough clients. She seems to get just enough clients to keep afloat. However she’s not fully replaced what she made at her day job.
Yet, she’s self-employed. She runs her own business. Or does she?
Let’s face it, our economy here in the U.S. is in trouble. As a nation, and as individuals, we’ve out-spent our means and overextended our lives while saving less than ever before in history. And after decades of being inflated, it appears our economy is entering a readjustment period. This isn’t, necessarily, a bad thing. Yes, people will lose jobs, companies will go under and house will foreclose.
Yet if you run a small, independent business, the economy has far less impact on your business than you think. So you’re likely not facing the doomsday that’s being talked about with every newscast and editorial.
Unless you believe you are. But remember, as a service provider, you have much more opportunity in these times than corporations do.
Yesterday I had an interesting, but short, conversation on Twitter where I said, “The key to a successful small business – find a highly specific, targeted niche and dominate it!” And I meant every word.
I work with business owners all the time who aren’t sure about what they want, what they’re doing or where they’re going. Nothing wrong with that at all. After all, unless your expertise is in small business development or marketing, there’s little reason to think you’d have a solid understanding of how to structure and grow a business.
Yet one thing that thatseems to set successful small business owners apart from those who aren’t is their mindset.
Hi. I'm Dawud Miracle, welcome to dmiracle.com. Here you'll find articles and resources all with two goals - helping you grow your service-based business and greatly increase your profits. And yes, I can help you.
By joining my list you'll be updated on all my free teleclasses, webinars and other events along with getting priority on a number of my paid events. And, a couple of times a month I send out articles that will help you with your business.
My name is Dawud Miracle and I'm a business growth advisor.
Since 2003 I've been in the trenches with business owners; teaching them how to increase revenue while creating more free time. If you'd like to find out how you can reach your business and financial goals, contact me.
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