What should your website do for you?

If you’ve been thinking about the purpose of your website as a result of the previous post, there is one thing that you need to consider carefully.

Is your website helping you to build your business?

It should. This is one of the most important purposes your website serves. There is one very particular way in which you need to ensure your website does this for you.

It’s your list that matters.

Your website must help you to build your list of people and organisations interested in knowing more about you and your work. This list will become one of your most important business assets.

This list is different from lists you might buy or the list of people who have done business with your organisation. This is a list of people who are choosing to get in touch with you and to keep in touch with you.

They are already in your customer pipeline. They are already moving towards doing business with you.

How can you get people to choose to join your list?

You need to entice them to sign up for your e-newsletter.

I use the word “entice” deliberately. You are asking visitors to your site to part with valuable information: their names and their e-mail addresses.

You are also asking them to part with something else. That is their permission to allow you to contact them on an on-going basis.

You need to offer something of value in return for this. One way to do this is to produce an e-newsletter that employers will value. The question is how to make your newsletter of interest to employers.

What have you got that employers want?

When you start to think about the value you can offer to an employer, don’t immediately think about your training programmes, qualifications and short courses.

It’s much too early in the relationship to even think about selling something, but it isn’t too early to think about offering useful advice to employers about the issues that concern them.

The offer to supply a newsletter is an offer to send useful hints and tips to employers. It is not an offer to send information about the provider organisation, which learners have gained NVQ or who has been appointed to your organisation’s staff. It is not an offer to send sales messages to people on a regular basis.

You will want your readers to come to think of you as people who have the answers to difficult questions. You want your readers to come to think of you as problem solvers and people worth knowing.

This means the content of your newsletter must cover what employers want to hear about – the issues facing their organisations and how to deal with them.

Why is this important?

Client attraction marketing is all about getting business to come to you.

People seek out organisations which they think can help them to solve their problems. They seek out organisations that they already know, like and trust when they come to make purchases.

Through your newsletter you can help employers to get to know you. You can help them to be confident that you can help them. You can also start to cultivate and nurture a relationship.

How does this help you to grow your business?

Many of your new customers will come from your newsletter subscribers. Many of your existing customers will decide to work with you again because you are keeping in touch with them via your newsletter.

Producing such a newsletter will take time, effort and commitment. However, a good newsletter could become an important component of your marketing. That’s why it’s worth doing well.

What sort of an e-newsletter should you produce?

People often say they struggle to get a newsletter out regularly. They produce a publication once every three months or so and they struggle to find material to go into it. You need to adopt a different approach if your newsletter is going to succeed in its task of bringing in business and helping you to gain repeat business.

You must get your name and your expertise in problem-solving in front of your employers at least every four weeks, if you are going to be remembered. You must send out a newsletter at least monthly, more often if you can manage it, if your employers are going to think of you as people who can help them when they need help.

You must also spend time and effort on making employers believe that your newsletter is really worth reading.

Does your e-newsletter add value to the employer?

• Are there interesting pieces of information in the newsletter that employers will want to read?
• Does your newsletter contain the sort of information that an employer will want to pass on to others?
• Is your newsletter so interesting that employers will forward your newsletter to other people?

It should be. You will get new subscribers, if it is. You will get new customers, if it is. You will get more business coming to you, if it is.

And the result?

If the long run you will attract more business.

Thus, in the modern era of electronic communications and social media, one of the most important things your website can do for you is to get people to sign up for your e-newsletter.

You can go here to sign up for our e-newsletter.

This is the fifth post in a series of ten about client attraction basics.

See also:

Are you turning business away?
Will they remember you?

What sort of a first impression do you want to make?

First impressions last, and a poor first impression takes a long time to live down.

These days we tend to encounter new organisations by looking at their website, so our first impressions are shaped by what we see such a website.

So, a major challenge in the world of client attraction is all to do with your website.

What sort of first impression will your website make?

Is your website written with employers in mind?

Our mystery shoppers, business people who look at FE from a business perspective, regularly say that if they were not being paid to look at a learning provider’s website, they would click away very quickly.

Their main complaints are about the target audience.

“It’s written for youngsters."
“It’s not written for employers.”
“You can only make sense of it if you’re seventeen.”

Look at your home page.

• Does your home page speak directly to employers?
• Do you have some guidance for employers on that page?
• Do you take employers away from the pages dealing with your mainstream provision quickly?
• Do you have dedicated pages for employers?Do you have a micro-site for employers?

If you do, so far, so good.

What do you fill your web pages with?

If your web pages for employers are lists of courses and qualifications, how long do you think employers stay on your site? How likely do you think they are to come back to your site?

Put yourself into the employer’s shoes.

If an employer has already decided to do business with you and knows which programmes are right for his or her organisation, then lists of programmes are fine. However, the majority of employers will not know which programmes they want when they first visit your site. They may also need to be convinced that training is right for them.

Look at your site. Ignore anything that is written about courses and qualifications, and review what’s left.

• Do you have interesting copy on your site? – That is, would an employer find it interesting?
• Do you have valuable information? – That is, would an employer think the information was of value?
• Do you entice employers to want to work with you?
• Do you speak directly to employers about why they should work with you?
• Do you talk about the benefits employers will gain if they enter into partnership with you?

In the majority of cases, there is very little to encourage employers to start to build a relationship with a provider on the website.

This should lead you to a very important question.

Why do you have a website?

• Do you know why you have a website?
• Do you know where your website fits into your approach to communicating with employers?
• Do you know what purpose your website serves?
• Do you know if anyone visits it?
• Do you know how people use it?

Most importantly have you worked out what you want people to do as a result of visiting your website?

• If they are first time visitors, do you want them to come back again? If you do, how will you entice them to return?

• If they are returning visitors, what do you want to do to reward them for visiting again? How are you going to encourage them to come back to your site again and again?

If you haven’t thought about these things and taken action on them then you’re not making your website work hard enough for you.

It’s time to ask the question: What sort of a first impression does your website make?

It’s also time to make sure it’s a positive impression.

This is the fourth post is a series of ten about client attraction basics.

See also:

Will they remember you?

Will they remember you?

You probably give out and receive lots of business cards during a year. Is this a worthwhile activity?

Does your business card really help employers to remember you?

It needs to.

The first stage in the client attraction journey is to be remembered. If people buy from people, and if people buy from those they know, like and trust, then the first strage in the process towards gaining more business is to be remembered.

How are you doing?

What else could you do to be memorable – in a positive way?

Well, one thing you could do is to make your business card work a lot harder for you.
I use a virtual business card to help me to do this.

Virtual promotion

To start with, when I meet people in a business context I give them a business card. My card sets out the usual details: name, business details, telephone, website, e-mail and so on.
However, I work in more than one market segment, so I am immediately presented with a problem. Do I need business cards for each market segment? Do I have to differentiate my off-line work from my on-line work and so on?

My answer is to have a website that I only promote via my business card. Thus, the people who tend to visit that site have already met me. This website has one page only. I consider it to be my virtual business card.

So what do I need on my virtual business card?

Well, most obviously I need a photograph, so that people who have met me, but may not remember me, have the opportunity to see my face again.

I list my other websites and my blogs, too. This means that I don’t make any secret of the fact that I work in two sectors. I actually use that to build business in both market segments.
Using a website in this way is inexpensive. It’s practical and it’s a good way of building a web presence, too. This website is the bedrock of my business’s promotional activities.

Here’s the link.

Does it work?

Yes, it does. People do remember me so when we next meet, or when we next speak on the telephone, we are already moving towards doing business.

This is the third post is a series of ten about client attraction basics.

Are you turning business away?

Whenever I start to work with provider organisations I always ask this question.

Most people are sure they are not.

I start to relate horror stories, only to be told that I’m behind the times and that FE – all of it – has changed.

Here is a modern horror story. It’s true. It happened to me less than a month ago.

Nobody at home

I tried ringing a provider about an enquiry they had made with me. I called at about 9.45 am on a Thursday morning.

I was greeted by an answerphone message which said every one in that office was on holiday and that I should ring the organisation’s main number.

I did just that at ten to ten in the morning.

I was greeted by an answerphone message telling me that the organisation was open between the hours of 9am and 4 30 pm, Monday to Friday. Outside those times, the recording told me, I could leave a message.

I drew breath to leave a message, and the line disconnected.

I rang again, just in case there had been a problem with the telephone system. The same thing happened. I called again later in the day, when the same thing happened and again the next day when the telephone disconnected once more before allowing me to leave a message.

Had I been an employer would I have persevered?
I think not.

Will the organisation ever know how it is turning employers away?
In this case it will, because I told the senior managers about my experience.

However, is this sort of thing happening in your organisation?

Are employers able to get through to someone?
Are employers able to leave messages?
Are employers’ enquiries followed up?

It’s worth checking out if the systems are working. Don’t assume that my experience is out of the ordinary.

I have another example from this week.

We don't want to know

After dialling into a provider organisation and pressing four when instructed to do so, and then pressing one at the next instruction, listening to some music and waiting, I was told my call would be disconnected because the message box was full.

If it’s happening to me, it’s happening to employers, too.

If you have employers who are interested enough in what you do to ring you up, they have already gone a long way towards doing business with you.

Don’t turn them away. It’s a basic rule of doing business.

This is the second post is a series of ten about client attraction basics.

Can you attract more business now?

It’s a good question to raise, given the economic climate and the funding issues facing the sector.

However, the answer is relatively straightforward.

• If you think you can attract more business, there are things you can do to help to build your success.
• If you convince yourself you can’t bring in more business, then you will struggle to do so, because you won’t be looking for opportunities, and you’ll be less likely to pick them up when they present themselves.

So, let’s assume that you know you can attract more business. The important things to think about are:

How can I do this?
How can I do this most easily?
How can I do this at least cost?

How can I do this?
The easy way forward is to think about the following:

Who’s buying training?
What sort of training are they buying?
What sort of training would they like to buy (if only they could)?

Taking time to find out the answers to these questions will help you to become more market-focused. The answers will tell you more about the current state of the market. They will tell you about demand and unmet demand. This is vital market information.

You always want to know most about unmet demand because this is the easiest place to start selling.

Action:
If your LMI doesn’t tell you about demand and trends in demand, you should change your specification for LMI collection.

How can I do this most easily?
The easiest way of bringing in more business is to get in touch with your existing customers and start to build your relationship with them. It costs a lot more to get a new customer than it costs to get a second or subsequent piece of business with an existing customer. Some statistics say the cost is three times as great. Others say it can cost eight times as much to get that new customer.

Whatever is the right ratio, making sure you stay in touch with your existing client base is good business.

Action:
Work out how often you contact your existing customers. Then work out how often you contact them when you’re not trying to sell them anything.

Make a point of keeping in touch more often without that sales pitch.

How can I do this at least cost?
If you want to keep your costs down, you’d better start building strong relationships with your big customers.

Who are your biggest customers by volume and value?
Who are your most influential partners?

If you’re already working with an organisation, look out for additional opportunities to work with them. Ensure your staff not only keep in touch but look beyond their own specialisms to find those new pieces of work. Remember that engineers can spot opportunities in customer service and administration. All assessors can be on the look out for problems and issues that an employer could address via your training solutions.

Action
Start to build up your understanding of where the opportunities lie in your existing client base. Start this process with the biggest customers.

A Note about Opportunities
Most entrepreneurs will tell you that opportunities abound.

The big problem is finding the time to take them up.

That’s true, but there is sometimes another problem, and that is being alert to the potential in your existing marketplace, and spotting the opportunities in the first place.

However, the answer to the question is:

“Yes, you can attract more business now.”

That’s good news for every one working in employer engagement.

And the next part of the set up process . . .

I've now put an RSS feed on this blog.

This means you can sign up to receive the blog via one of the many news readers available.

It's a way of allowing people to receive each post when it is posted without having to visit the blog.

You can also achieve the same effect by becoming a follower of the blog.

For people who like a simpler approach I've also set up a process whereby the blog can be received by e-mail. This is a very popular way of keeping up to date with blogs.

All of these services are free so they can be added any blog.

They are also iimportant parts of the business-building process.

Attracting more business – where do you begin?

Take the situation that this new blog finds itself in.

At present there is no readership.

At present there is no following.

At present I don’t know what sort of posts and information will be popular.

That’s the present, but that will change.

From the start of this blog’s life I am measuring results – and interest.

Anyone looking to attract more business and to build a business needs to do this.

To help me with this task I have installed a counter on the blog which keeps me posted about the numbers of visitors to this site and lets me know whether the visitors are new visitors, or returning visitors.

This is going to help me to monitor the traffic that comes to: Attract more business – the blog.

It’s important for all businesses to gather statistics about what they do. It’s also very easy to gather information about the things you do on the internet.

I’ve set this monitoring system up now, so that I will be able to keep in touch with what is happening from the time I start posting material which, of course, is next week.

I’ve also made the counter visible, so you can see how many visitors there are to this site.

Attract more business - the blog

People are already starting to ask me what sort of subjects this blog will cover.

The answer is very straightforward.

We have a systematic approach to helping colleges and work-based learning providers to increase the volume and value of work they undertake with employers. I’ll be offering insights into how you can use these approaches, too.

Key themes that I’ll be covering in this blog are:

Understanding your market – because if you don’t, you won’t make many sales, and those you do make you will have to work hard for
Bringing in the business – because that’s what’s needed todayBuilding your business with employers – because smart organisations look to build long-term relationships with their customers
Making the most of your website – because your website is crucial to your success, whether you already know this or not
Communicating with employers – because you need to be clear about the messages you are sending out, the messages that are being received by employers and how effectively you are managing incoming communications from employers.

Our customers already know that these are the principal headings under which we add value.

Come September, I’ll be sharing some of that value with a larger audience via this blog.

Coming Soon

Getting more business from employers is one of the main reasons why providers seek to gain the TQS.

This blog will review some of the broader issues around employer engagement.

Starting in September I'll be writing about how to attract more business.