No business can flourish without a robust clientele base. That explains the need for a good marketing team in every business organisation. It is usually the duty of the marketing personnel to initiate and employ strategies which would increase and sustain a company‘s level of patronage by the public.
Experts would tell you that businesses need every customer they can call theirs. This is even more so for the small business enterprise.
However, the paucity of funds can become a stumbling block and this is readily understandable. With so many other things begging for attention, it will not be economically wise to ask an SME to invest heavily into marketing.
This, experts say, is not for the lack of the need for it. Rather, they suggest that the entrepreneur gets more innovative by making use of the available technologies to expand the company‘s clientele base.
One of such opportunities is offered by the Internet. In his article titled, “Use the Internet to reach new customers”, published in, www.theglobeandmail.com, Brett Williams says that the Internet has evolved to a point where it is suited to the entrepreneur.
He notes, ”There has never been a better time to be a small business. Courtesy of the Internet, new low-cost business infrastructure such as free web-based email and telephone services are allowing smaller firms to create products, compete in markets, and delight customers in ways that only large corporations could manage in the past.
According to him, there are many simple steps small businesses can take to grow their customer base. For instance, for almost all of these businesses, he says that it is good sense to use local online listing services to get started.
”Today customers are online and search for almost everything. Local listings give the company a higher profile in the community,” he adds.
Building a website, he says, is an easy and affordable way to let potential customers know a business exists.
”Your website acts as a virtual storefront and can showcase the services or products you sell. But it can also do much more. You can use your site to give your customers practical information and build goodwill by producing original content specific to your products or industry. If you are a butcher, for example, you could use YouTube to embed a video on your site showing the keys for success in barbequing a steak,” Williams suggests.
Speaking in a similar vein, the President, Nigeria Internet Group, Mr. Lanre Ajayi, says that there are various ways by which the SMEs can reach new customers using the Internet.
According to him, the most important step is for the SME to set up a website, which highligihts its products and services. The next step is to drive traffic to the website.
”It is no use to have a website which no one visits,” he adds.
How then can the entrepreneur drive his company‘s website traffic?
Williams says that the first step is to measure and track how your customers interact with the website.
He explains, ”There are many tools available to do this. Google provides a free one called Analytics. It shows you where visitors to your site came from, which keywords they searched for, how long they stayed on your site and which pages they viewed. You can use these numbers to determine how you can improve your site and increase traffic.
In the spirit of today‘s more flexible Internet, make your site interactive. Ask your customers how you can help them learn more about you and what you offer. It often makes good marketing sense to let customers connect with one another and share their experiences with your product. In many cases this can be done at very little cost or for free.”
Also highlighting on the several ways of driving traffic to a website, Ajayi says, ”These include advertising the website on popular web portals that your potential customers visit.”
He notes, ”In Nigeria such portals include Yahoo, Facebook, Google and the Nigerian online news portal like The Punch and others. The SME can also do a link exchange with other website owners. You can request a website owner to add your link on his website in exchange, you will also add his website link on your own website. In addition to all these, the tradition of including the website address on letterheads, and business cards is equally important. To keep visitors coming to your website, the website should not be static.
“It should be regularly updated with new information and it should project your organisation in a positive way to achieve the desired goal. The websites should be made interactive by including features like blog, forum, chat and others,” Ajayi adds.
Source:http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art201010251433246
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