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April 2005 — Vol. 83, No. 3

SMALL BUSINESS

Be where today’s buyers are: online

By Chris Amorosino

Freelance writer in Unionville

Wondering where to focus your marketing efforts? Your Web site may be the best place. There’s a major business spending shift away from more traditional marketing avenues toward Web sites, according to Del Merenda, CEO and chairman of i-Mark Inc., a sales-process automation firm in Hartford. Merenda served as the moderator and a speaker at a marketing conference sponsored by CBIA’s Small Business Advisory Council on Feb. 9.

Merenda called Web sites the new marketing force, saying they can effectively increase business, lower marketing costs and improve customer relationships.

Citing several statistics, he noted that some 94% of business buyers now use the Internet to find products, services and suppliers. And about 74% of buyers spend more than three hours a week on the Internet. In response to buyer trends like these, he said, many suppliers are increasing their Web spending and planning to redevelop their Web sites over the next 18 months.

But he and the four other conference speakers agreed that effective Internet marketing today is much more than creating a Web site. It’s using electronic technology to automate, speed and maximize the inquiry-to-order process.

Forget ‘blast-like’ marketing

Broad-based, blast-like marketing doesn’t work anymore, according to David Katz, vice president and managing director of Cronin Direct, a division of Cronin & Co. in Glastonbury. What does work, he said, is using the Web and new technology to generate leads, connect with customers, learn more about customers, and then make the sale easy to complete. Selling on the Web is made easy through self-service capabilities such as online catalogs and automatic sales quotes, as well as lead-management programs.

Katz urged conference attendees to use the Internet to identify individual customers, differentiate them according to their needs and their sales potential, and interact with them cost efficiently. Downloadable white papers, automatic e-mails and demo offers are three effective tools for evaluating a prospect’s quality. Someone who downloads a white paper shows a higher level of interest in your company than someone who simply visits the site and then leaves. Likewise, a person who downloads a demo offer is a better prospect than someone who merely asks for a white paper.

Katz also stressed the need to follow up on every sales lead until the prospect becomes ready to buy.

One billion daily online searches

Dan Weingrod, also a vice president with Cronin & Co., said more than one billion searches are conducted online every day. Four out of five Web users find Web sites by using search engines. To make your site as visible as possible to search engines, Weingrod advises including key words and phrases. Place the phrases potential customers are most likely to search for in the title tag and the source code, and throughout the Web site. Success hinges less upon compelling marketing copy, he says, than on the number of good key words.

Weingrod told conference attendees to convert Web visitors to buyers in small steps — or “microconversions,” as he calls them — rather than all at once.

First, raise company visibility in Web searches. Next, provide visitors with a useful learning experience on the Web site. Then get visitors to print out a page, download a white paper or submit a form. The visitors who have gone through these microconversions are much more likely to buy.

“Get them to come to your Web site; get them to stay; get them to raise their hands; then get them to come back,” Weingrod says.

Two believers

When Bruce Goldsmith, president of the 75-year-old Baronet Coffee Inc., joined the Hartford specialty-coffee company in 1988, the company did not even have a fax machine. But by using the Internet, the company has increased its sales reach from a 90-mile radius around Hartford to 23 states and beyond. Goldsmith now considers the company’s Web site its storefront. The Internet has also allowed Baronet to expand into business-to-consumer marketing.

Adrienne Barker, corporate vice president of Barker Specialty Co., a promotional products and premium merchandise company in Cheshire, also praises the Internet’s marketing capabilities. Several years ago she brought Web-site development inside the company. Today Barker Specialty provides its corporate clients with their own online stores and uses e-mail to send weekly special promotions to every customer in its database.

“The Internet is the best way to promote the Barker Specialty brand,” she says, “and the most cost-effective marketing choice.”

 

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