Every year, I have clients contact me asking about their site’s traffic, lack of leads, and general frustration with the performance of their website. I proceed to ask the following questions.
- How often do you look at your traffic numbers?
- How often do you promote your business on social media, other websites, at local Chamber of Commerce meetings, or in other ways?
- How often do you email existing clients with updates, special offers, general news, and other things?
- How often do you update the content on your website?
- When was the last time you added a story to your blog?
- How often do you post content to your social media channels?
- Do you have a subscription form on your website to capture leads?
I already know the answers to most/all these questions, but I ask them so the client can answer. 99% of the time, the only clients I hear from are the ones that don’t have an answer besides “No” and “Never” to at least five of my questions.
A website is like a garden. You’ll get nothing out of it if you put nothing into it. With a garden, you plant the seeds and hope they grow. Once they start growing, you have to water, fertilize, pull weeds, spray for weeds and bugs and harvest the food at the end of the season. That first season can be a great success if you do all those things. Now comes year two and beyond. The seeds don’t plant themselves. Watering, fertilizer, weeding, and bug control doesn’t just happen. You can’t expect much food to eat if you put nothing into it.
Websites are investments, ongoing investments, to be more precise. It is also the cheapest employee a business can have. It works 24/7/365 without health insurance, benefits, retirement, etc.
What would happen if these clients invested even 25% of the money it would take to hire another employee to promote their business online each year?
I already know the answer…