Where do your customers find you?
Google is now the most important source of information for Australians searching for products or services and where to buy them. And if you are like me and own a smart phone there’s a good chance you are using it to search on the go.
Business Websites
Home based businesses or start up businesses providing a range of services to must now have a business website to be found.
Low budget advertising for your business
Yellow Pages advertising costs several hundred dollars for an ad that may or may not stand out. That’s an expensive way for a small business to advertise their services. Worse for a new business you may miss the deadline for inclusion in the upcoming edition.
Marketing is more than a website, if you can afford it
Don’t get me wrong – in marketing you need a range of advertising to help your business stand out – newspaper, Yellow Pages, local distribution, direct mail and more if you can afford it. But if you are short on cash then the alternative is a reasonable priced website you can easily update.
Spend your money wisely
In marketing I often see new start-up business people getting hung up on spending money on designs, brochures, expensive websites too early in their business. Often leaving little money for further advertising. Often their websites are hard to update and end up looking stale and outdated.
Think simple, but an effective websites for starting up your business
A simple site, that you own and manage yourself is the good way to start. Web hosting is available for about $70 a year or less, a good domain name for about $40, and a website you can add images, video, add new pages to and update immediately is available for very little. We use the basic wordpress themes which are free – meaning you only pay for our time and any artwork if needed. In doing this you can learn the tricks for helping your business come up on the search engines and see what works. You can check your own statistics to see how the pages are working and tweak them if need be.
If you are busy and have the money, by all means pay someone to do it all and work closely with you. Our 13th Beach Web caters for our larger clients.
Our small business customers only spend a few hundred dollars to get their first website up and running in a day or so. Then continue to add to their website and manage it themselves. You can do the same.
