From our HQ here in North East Hertfordshire we enjoy a rural outlook, green fields, trees, even a few sheep and cows! All very healthy and enjoyable, but there are times when having more people around would be better. As a small business in Herts we find that our customer base extends over a wide area, often taking us into neighbouring Essex or up the road into Cambridgeshire, and of course London is a short train hop away. Being in a rural area means having to travel to get to your customers, there’s only so many on your own doorstep. This is not too much of a problem for a digital company that mainly delivers its service online anyway, but much more difficult for an industry that needs to go to peoples homes or businesses to carry out its function.
Having an online presence such as a website means that people from much further away can find you and contact you, opening up much broader markets than simple local advertising can achieve. This comes at the slight cost of potentially having to do more travel, but growing a business needs customer growth, so ultimately it is a good thing. Maybe you can work with your staff to cover different areas to provide a regional presence as you expand. Maybe you need to look at what practices and processes can be moved online so that more can be done remotely. Of course for some businesses the customer travels to you, and for good businesses it seems customers are prepared to travel further and further.
Customers are ever-more savvy at researching companies online before they commit their hard earned cash to anything, and finding the right fit can mean having to go way beyond their own high street or local industrial unit. But they need to be able to find you, and they need to have all the info that will persuade them you are the one. They need to feel a confidence in you and your product or service, and a shoddy website is certainly not going to give them that! Make sure you consider how a customer will search for you, what they need to know, and what fears or apprehensions they may have and try to provide answers and evidence up front to as much as possible. Nothing will quite replace the value of face to face salesmanship, but you can’t be everywhere at the same time, so use your website as an extension and think like a customer.
Add an FAQ section that answers all the usual sorts of questions customers ask. List all your products with detailed info and pictures. If you’ve got great customer feedback ask if you can show a snippet on your website. In some cases it could be appropriate to show a detailed example case, a customer journey from their perspective with honest quotes on how it went – you could consider offering a customer a discount to take part. Each industry will be different in its needs, and each customer base different in what is appropriate, but maximising the use of your website can give your company the initial boost it needs.