In yesterday’s post, I argued that a business should have a website right from the start so that they look professional for the first potential client that they meet. There are more reasons that a business should have a site from the beginning, and all of them have to do with vision – a big vision of where you want your business to go is an essential part of achieving your goals. Therefore, your first steps should take into account where you want to be in a year, or two or three from now. Unless you have venture capital funding or a PhD (Papa has Dough), your business can grow, but this growth will be slow. (This is not necessarily bad, but we will discuss business growth rate in another article.) In these cases, you need to start acting now to achieve your goals later on down the line.
Here are three reasons that your business needs a website now:
- It takes time for the search engines to find you: Your site will not appear on the search engines the day after you launch it. The search engines have to find you first, and crawl your site. You can submit your site to the search engines to speed this process up, but even so it may still take them some time to pay attention to your site.
- A good website makes you look like the business you wish you were: You may work out of your storage room, but the world doesn’t need to know that. A professional website with useful content can influence the way potential clients perceive you, and whether they choose to do business with you. You don’t have to look like a storage-room business just because you are – dress your business up for success with an impressive corporate site.
- It takes time to spread the word about your site: Using your website on all marketing materials from the beginning is an effective way to increase the legitimacy of your business and spread the word. Marketing material does not only refer to expensive printed brochures and flyers; it also refers to any type of communication that leaves your office. This can include emails, invoices and bills, letters, blog and forum posts, and more. And of course this includes your handy, low-cost, most effective piece of marketing material you’ll ever own: your business card.
To build up your business, you need to have a long-term vision and always keep your sites on it. Yes, you may be a one man/woman show working out of your storage room today, but where do you want to be in a year? If you want to promote yourself from storage room to tiny rented office, take action now to work towards that goal, and let the world think that you already have that tiny rented office!