If You Build It, Will They Come?
By Jeanne Frazer
The thought of putting a baseball field in the middle of nowhere and having fans come, like in the movie Field of Dreams, is like it used to be with websites. Everyone was rushing to put their “brochure” online in the form of an informational website on the Internet. Fear of not having a site was palpable. New businesses popped up overnight and got rich creating sites for business owners who did not have the time or skills to do the work themselves.
It seems that with every new technology there is a groundswell of excitement—a feeling that we must do something because every other business is doing it. A few years ago, your competitors created a website so you had to have one; now they have a blog or are using social media, so you feel you must do it, too. Having an online presence or starting a blog is not enough. Just because you create a pretty website or blog does not mean that clients will come to it. Prospects must be able to find your site and it must provide value.
Technology has changed, making it easier to have an effective Internet presence. Many tools (some of them free) exist to measure and analyze results. And new advertising channels exist that have in most cases dramatically reduced the overall cost of marketing your firm. Today’s websites offer online chat features, intake forms and capture prospect information to be used for future marketing—these platforms are tools. Beware ‘cheap’ solutions, as back end add-ons and upgrades may end up costing you far more than a well planned, expandable platform.
But it’s not just the technology that has changed; the entire customer interaction has changed, too. What used to be a “push” format—a one sided message to the prospect—has, based on consumer demand, turned into a two-way conversation. This more interactive process has taken the most successful websites from static, seldom updated pages, to robust platforms that are constantly changing to provide value to customers and prospects and allow that conversation to take place. This new reality is frequently referred to as Web 2.0.
The Web is a tool and should be looked upon as an ongoing investment to promote and showcase your firm and capture leads. A 2009 Pew research study states that 81% of people research products on the web. Indeed, through common usage, “Google” (the most commonly used search engine) has become a verb—talk about great branding! Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising, behaviorally targeted advertising, news channel advertising, and social media (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) are all tools that when used effectively can drive prospects to your site. These tools require frequent attention and updates. Back-end marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) help round out the web tool arsenal to ignite results.
If you build it, will they come? Yes—as long as you remember that while the technology has changed, the basics of marketing have stayed the same: build your brand to uniquely represent you and be consistent, stay on-message, and use the available web tools to deliver relevant, valuable and vibrant content to customers and prospects.
Jeanne Frazer is president of vitalink®, a creative + strategic marketing think tank, and VLegal, a new division of vitalink developed to meet the needs of today’s lawyer. Jeanne may be reached at jeanne@vitalinkweb.com or 919.850.0605.
