You’re just one person away from online success

I had a long meeting with a B2B client today.

They’re a really clever bunch of people with a very successful business.

The client is committed to building a new and solid website. They’re committed to investing in content and understand the long-term upsides of the investment.

They have some serious brains behind their departments, they get the whole mobile idea and they see online as an obvious channel to further their growth overseas.

Great, great and great.

What they don’t necessarily have commitment to, is keeping it up.

Once the project is done, the website is done.

Ouch.

 

Online is as important as your other channels

Nobody questions that the web is a key and central channel for customer/client acquisition and retention.

Nobody doubts that all of their customers/clients are online, all of the time. Nobody surely doubts how important a website is.

Indeed, nobody doubts that if they consistently fostered, nurtured and grew their online channel (website), the results would flow.

It’s just that many businesses – especially in B2B – don’t have the ability (or often foresight) to see that the important investment in their online strategy is not in building the website (and strategy), but in operating it.

Because whilst it might be true that websites stay on and flicker away, they need investment and nurturing, like any channel.

Correlating the investment in the channel with the return from the channel is actually not that hard.

The hard part is getting the investment in the first place.

And often, the challenge in getting investment (the dumb dollars and sense) in the ongoing website and strategy is not the principal issue; the issue is getting the broader business invested in the strategy generally.

Getting the broader business to buy into ‘online’.

 

Why invest

I could write for days on why a proper investment – medium and long-term – in an online strategy (and website) is a no-brainer.

A content strategy alone will hold positive and measurable upside in terms of website traffic, leads and brand perception.

It will see greater levels of engagement as a business invests in its website, its articles and videos.

eCommerce websites know how important custom product reviews, customer reviews, ratings, videos and blogs are; surely traditional businesses should see the same for their websites?

Investing in someone to ‘own’ your website; to add content, encourage content and build your presence should be a no-brainer, especially in the medium-term.

A dedicated resource working on your website will accelerate your commercial efforts; curate and protect your content; optimise and improve the website; and take the ad-hoc nature away from it all.

Traffic and leads improve.

Given that we know online is where it is at. Given we know the power of the channel.

Given the investment in websites today, investing in an online resource – an online editor – is the best investment you really can make.

You won’t look back.