Shout It Loud

The value of the internet as a sales and promotional tool is often overlooked by small businesses. They mistakenly think that the world wide web is only for businesses with a global reach. The internet, however, is for all kinds of businesses, both large and small.

To demonstrate the point, we’ll make a hypothetical example of a small picket fence manufacturer. We’ll call the business ‘Stan’s Picket Fences.’ Stan has a small factory in a big city. He manufactures custom made picket fences and installs them within a fifty mile range of his premises. He had no desire to expand his range beyond that distance because going out on the road was already a time consuming chore and he only sold to about 25% of his leads.

He and his handful of employees got together for a brainstorming session one day and one of them offered to make a website for him. Stan agreed to give it a try, so the employee went around and took photos of some of the fences they had built, of the factory and of the manufacturing process. The website he made was just a simple one, kind of an online scrapbook album. It was simple, but it was very effective.

Within a couple of months, Stan found that he was getting far more sales from his initial visits to people’s homes because they already knew what he had to offer before he went to their homes. The first time they called, Stan told them they could see his portfolio online and if that was the sort of work they wanted, he would come out and see them. His website was already a huge timesaver for him.

Stan was so impressed with the website that he asked his employee if he had any ideas to make it even better. The employee suggested doing link exchanges with other local businesses.

In the business district near his factory, there was a small home decor accents shop that had a website. They happily agreed to do a link exchange because they catered to a similar clientele. To his amazement, Stan started getting a lot more leads. His profits increased by 10 percent, thanks to that one exchange and his website was still only costing him pennies per day.

Stan was thrilled with that, but it just got better. He found a housing developer who was doing a new property launch for a nearly completed project that had over a hundred new homes. Everyone who went to the developers website saw a link to ‘Stan’s Picket Fences.’ When they purchased their home, many of them wanted to add a fence and Stan was the first business they thought of.

Stan never made any big changes to his website, but it continued to pay off for him. His business doubled in size and profitability. That’s how the internet can help even small businesses!