ONE: Business Information is Available 24/7

You would be able to have all your important business information available all the time, 24/7 whether its phone number, fax number, address , hours of operation and special offers for the client. You will also be able to save a lot more time for yourself and the important things you have to do rather then spending it on the phone answering questions that could potentially be on your web site. A website can take a lot off your shoulders and still be making business for you anywhere, anytime.

TWO:  A Website Can Help You Generate a Professional Image

Being professional is the number one key and by creating a website and making it as professional as possible, it is the best way to put confidence in new customers and keep it or even increase it in old customers.  It will generate a sense of respectability with your service and or product.

THREE: Say Goodbye to the Yellow Pages

A lot of people don’t use yellow pages as much as you would think, instead of searching around the big yellow book they would rather easy and simple by just using they’re computer and going to Google and searching for whatever they need meaning if you have your website you’ll come up in the search and make it even more simple for you and the potential client making it better for you by making you more business and better for the client by not having them search around the yellow pages for a long time and making it that easy to find you.

FOUR: The Future Is Automation

You can highly automate some parts of your business online which in turn will free up other resources to other parts of your business. You could give your customers the option to pay their bills online and check account balances. You can automate deliveries to them. You can allow them to book appointments with your salon online or even make restaurant registrations at their favorite table. You can give customers the option to be notified that their dry cleaning is ready for pickup. It is only getting easier and more convenient for customers to shop at places that serve them around their lifestyle.

FIVE: Provide Research Information

Consumers spend hours of time researching potential businesses, products and services prior to making an educated purchase. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to give your customers and potential customers the information they want and need to make an educated purchase decision by foregoing a company website.

SIX: Creating a 24 Hour Service

Web pages serve the client, customer and partner 24 hours a day, seven days a week and you don’t even have to pay it overtime wages either. Consumers are increasingly becoming busier and busier every day and by providing information and services online you are able to attract the people who are simply just too busy to handle all their needs during their workday while working around your office hours.

SEVEN: Feedback from the Customer

Getting feedback from the customer is defiantly a great way to help you either become better or potential clients look at the feedback and generate more business for you and make them feel confident by reading what others have to say about your services or product.

EIGHT: Existence is Everything

Honestly, having a website is basically meaning your company exists to the average customer, not saying you aren’t already successful but if a customer were to search whatever they wanted in the search engine and click on the first couple links and everything on their site looks good to them, they are going to go with that business, if you don’t have a website and your business was close to a client they would never know because your business didn’t show up in the search engine.

NINE: Reach Desirable Demographic Markets

The World Wide Web is arguably the highest mass-market demographic available, Consisting of college educated or currently being college educated consumers making high salaries or soon to make high salaries. These demographics are the ones who will be going online to do product and service research, looking for general business information.

TEN: Inexpensive and Almost Risk Free

All the above benefits to having a website for your small business are great. When people first began to adopt the internet these benefits would have been very costly and out of reach of the average small business owner. However, while every other advertising medium has increased in price over the past decade, website development and hosting has decreased significantly.

For just a few hundred dollars a year, you can get all the benefits above and much more. There is virtually “no risk” in website marketing. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars and wonder if you should have bought a bigger yellow pages ad but can’t change it until the next year rolls around. You can easily customize your website and make changes at your convenience. You can do as much or as little as your business goals and budget allow.

I want to encourage each one of my clients, as well as anyone reading this post that NOW is the time to get your company out in front of your competition, and to make wise marketing decisions, because every dollar counts. Do you have a yellow page ad that is not bringing the results you thought it would? I’m not sure about you, but I don’t even have a phone book in my house, and nor have I in years. Little techy gadgets such as Apple’s iPhone and Search Engine Giant Google.com have revolutionized the way our new generation is going to find businesses. It’s no longer a future concept, but a present reality. A recent statistic shows that 90 Million Adults use the Internet every day. It’s almost like in today’s economy, you almost can’t afford to NOT to have a successful online marketing campaign.

About 2 years ago one of my clients was spending well over $250,000 on his Residential Electrical Company’s advertising cost. To some this may sound like quite a lot for a small business to spend, but in reality, the amount is pretty normal for a company of his size and the income that they generated. The problem I noticed with my client was that he was spending too much, and getting too little of a return on his investment to justify the cost. I began talking more closely with this client, and shared with him a concept that was almost “bizarre” to everything he knew about advertising, and the way he advertised for years. I told him I wanted to ditch the 2 full page ad’s he currently had running in the 2006 phonebook ($50,000/piece) and invest 1/3 of that advertising investment into an Online Advertising Budget that we established with the (3) major search engine companies: Google, Yahoo, & MSN.  Present day, 2008, this client has generated MORE results in two years than in ten years of running full page ad’s in the large metroplex phone books. 

  If you’re considering a change in your company’s advertising & marketing plans, please give us a call. We’d be more than happy to answer any and all questions that you may have, and would love to come out to your businesses to meet with you personally. We have the professionals in our company who will be able to push your business out ahead of your competitors, EVEN in a slower economy! Together let’s start cutting your advertising cost and increasing your return on investment. Call our office today: 972-325-1850

“Search Engine Marketing, or (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, SEM methods include: search engine optimization (or SEO), paid placement. Other sources, including theNew York Times, define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings.” Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_marketing 

 Search Engine Marketing is become a lot more attractive to the everday businessman, with it’s amazing cost efficiency and it’s high yield for return on investment, as opposed to older and more traditional forms of advertising such as the YellowPages.

ORGANIC Search Engine Optimization is a service that we offer here at IDS, and that many other companies offer throughout the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. It’s a service that, if done right, will boost your links to the top of the search engines when customers type in certain keywords or phrases that match to your sites content. If done right, this service will considerably increase your web site’s traffic and will ultimately land you a lot more business. (What Does Organic Mean? Take a look at our screenshot to see the difference in Organic and Pay-Per-Click advertising.)

 What’s amazing to me is that many companies offer this service and have absolutely NO idea what they are doing… I find that more and more people are being discouraged from companies claiming to put them #1 on Google, Yahoo, & MSN all in a matter of a month, just to find out that they never get there placement which was promised.What is the difference in our SEO service than a lot of the other companies in the Metroplex? Well, I’d like to think it’s that we actually have researched the means to do this service effectively, have attended the conferences for the National Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, and have a large customer base of satisfied clients that we’ve succesfully marketed on Google, Yahoo, & MSN. I’ll let my readers decide who’s ultimately the truth teller, just remember to give us a call with any questions you may have concerning this service. It’s a definite must-have if you’re in the service industry and are a smaller to medium sized company.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising is another service that we offer here at Integrity Design Solutions. There are two things you pay for with Pay-Per-Click advertising. 1.) You determine a budget that you’d like to pay to Google, Yahoo, or MSN to list your site on their search engine. 2.) You pay us a monthly fee to manage your account for you, and to report all data to you such as how many hits, from where the customer found your site, etc.

 So we begin this service by first setting up your Google, Yahoo, or MSN account. Usually we do this at your office, together, so that we can determine what kind of budget you are wanting to spend each month on your new online advertising campaign. We offer a monthly based plan, where we monitor your position, track hits and other helpful statistics, and then at the end of the month meet with you to review over all the data, and to compare how much you spend with Google, and how much you made from customers calling FROM online / your web page.

What is the Difference Between the Two Services? SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a one time payment which puts you up onto the top rankings of the search engines and will continue to keep you there over the years as your site is maintained by our company. Search Engine Pay-Per-Click is a small monthly fee with our company, as well as a month-to-month or daily budget with the search engine company.

In Your Opinion, Which Service is More Effective? Even though we earn more sales dollars for Search Engine Optimization, I’m not going to tell you that it’s always better. Search Engine Optimization will eventually save you the cost of your cost-per-click advertising campaign, but takes about a month to get rooted into the search engines, and gain momentum up the ladder into the top positions. Organic Search Engines are just that, a living, breathing, constantly changing environment where competition is tough, and getting to the top is tougher. Sites constantly are going up and down on the organic search engines, and it’s our job to secure your position into the top with our unique marketing strategies and coding abilities. I would tell you that your best FIRST option would be to go with the Pay-Per-Click Ad Campaign first, since this is usually the best option as it’s immediate gratification; meaning the day you sign up for an account with the search engine company, your listing will appear and you more than likely start receiving site traffic and calls the very same day. Eventually I would incorporate, if not already signed up for, the Organic Search Engine Optimization service — once your listing has reached a top position, this will enable you to lower your already high Pay-Per-Click advertising budget, and yet still maintain just as high call volume.

Whose the Best Search Engine? Google.com — Sorry, but it’s a fact… All you other search engines.  Don’t kill the messenger. (Please still keep us in your listings though! We love you all.)

 So I hope this has cleared up any questions that you may have had with Search Engine Optimization vs Pay-Per-Click Advertising. Remember, you may always give us a call at your convenience to discuss any of our other services, or any questions you may have had about this article.

As Always, Thanks for Reading, Bookmark our Blog to Receive Up-To-Date Information on the Latest and Greatest of the Web Marketing World.

 I’m your Host, Johnathan Tebeau, CEO of Integrity Design Solutions, Dallas’ Favorite Web Developing Company

Integrity Design Solutions’ New Web Site for the new year. Be sure to look around and check out our new portfolio section! Be sure to subscribe to our RSS Feed for our BLOG — we will be sure to fill this blog with useful and helpful web and marketing information for all of our clients and prospective clients to view. ]]> http://idstx.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1