IT COSTS A FRACTION OF WHAT YOU WOULD PAY FOR CONVENTIONAL ADVERTISING.
Say you want to take out a full page advertisement in a newspaper. If you have ever done this you know just how much that can cost. A full page in the Star Ledger for example will cost you $22,220 on weekdays and $29,607 on Sundays and that's for just one issue! Sure you can get a discount if you want to run an advertisement once a week but each advertisement will still cost you at least $10,883 weekdays and $16,165 on Sundays, and it's still all in BLACK AND WHITE!!!
With a web page you can have that self same advertisement for a lot less money, AND IT'S THERE ALL THE TIME!! It doesn’t go away with the next issue of the newspaper, consigned to the garbage or the bottom of the guinea pig cage.
WHAT DO YOU GET WITH A FULL PAGE NEWSPAPER ADVERTISEMENT?
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Limited space. - Well you get a full page, you can have pictures and text and a nice big heading. Still you can only get a certain amount of information on that page, if you want to tell your potential customers more you have to take out a bigger ad, and that costs a lot more.
¨ It's all in black and white - Sure in some papers you can have color but that will really cost you a lot.
¨ Once it's there you have to just hope that the customers will see it. If they are looking for you in particular they have to leaf through all that newspaper trying to find your advertisement, and that can be just too much bother especially on a Sunday.
WHAT DO YOU GET WITH A WEB PAGE?
A LOT MORE SPACE.
You can use the same kind of advertisement if you want but with all that space you can expand what you want to say. With all that extra space you can tell everyone in detail about the products and services that you offer, you can have a series of linked pages that make it easy for customers to find exactly what they want. If you sell a series of products you can describe each one in detail rather than having to cram a lot of small words onto that one newspaper page and hope that they customer’s eye will catch on the product that he or she is interested in.
YOU CAN USE FULL COLOR AND PHOTOGRAPHS.
Color always attracts, and because you can use photographs you can show pictures of your business, products or anything that you want. Web Site visitors like to see the products and services that are on offer and your sales will increase if they know what they are getting beforehand.
YOUR WEB PAGE NEVER GOES AWAY!
Unlike that newspaper the web page is there all the time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can reach your customers and potential customers at any time of their choosing. You don't have to worry that they missed the issue of the newspaper with your advertisement in it, or your radio or TV commercial, it's there any time they want it. If the desire to buy something comes upon them they can just go straight to their computer and find you NOW, no jumping in the car to go buy a newspaper and hope you have an advertisement in that issue. Going out of their way can often be too much bother so the idea passes and they don't buy the product. With a web page you are there to fill their need and capture that market when the thought inspires them. All those customers who may have been, but were not because it was too much trouble are now there for you to catch, just when the time is ripe!!
YOU’RE NOT RESTRICTED WITH WHAT YOU CAN SAY
You may take a newspaper advertisement to promote a sale, or a new product line, with a web page, you can do all that and a lot lot more. You are not limited by space and can give as much information as you like. You could:
¨ Tell customers where you are located.
¨ State your opening hours are
¨ Show what products you sell
¨ Announce sales and special promotions
¨ Create coupons that customers can print and bring in.
¨ Describe in detail what services you offer
¨ Provide full descriptions of your products
¨ Offer your sales brochures online in full color
¨ Plus anything that you can think of, the possibilities are limitless
YOU CAN SAVE MONEY FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Do you have customers calling you and asking for the same information time and time again? If you do, you might even have to hire someone just to deal with these calls and give out this information. If you are mailing out information you have to pay for printing and mailing. It takes time and money.
Put all that information on your web page. Many people will now check to see if the information they want is available to them online before they bother to call you. Think of how much time and money you could save if they can access that information without you having to do a thing.
If you find you are repeating something constantly, a question about how to use a product perhaps, create a section on your web page where these customers can find all the information that they now call you about. Place assembly instructions online for customers who have lost them, or what kind of batteries does the product use, everything that they need to know that will help you and them. It builds better customer relations and saves you time and money at the same time.
CUSTOMERS AND POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS APPRECIATE A GOOD WEB SITE.
Offer your customers a good well designed informative web site and they will appreciate you more. They can find the information that they want when they want it. They don't have to wait for your business to open in the morning when they want the information at 2am. A well designed web site can increase your customer appreciation and build your business faster and more effectively than any other form of advertising.
BE WARNED........A badly designed web site which offers nothing of use to the customer other than a wait to see your logo and a picture of the company president can be damaging to your business. Today time is money and no one wants to waste it. Creating a waste of time web site which offers the customer nothing but a trumpet of ‘we are here’ and nothing of use, will turn customers away from you and towards others who do offer good useful information on their sites.
CREATE A NEW CUSTOMER BASE.
Many people who use the internet do so instead of reading the newspapers, so having a good web site will promote business that you may not have had otherwise. Many office workers now have access to the internet from their desks so they can look up your site at work, while they can't read a newspaper. You will be reaching a whole new set of people as well as those that you reach now using your normal advertising methods. New customers are always welcome in any business.
YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR PAGE ANY TIME YOU WANT.
With a newspaper advertisement to get a discounted rate you have to run the same advertisement all the time. Otherwise you need to run a series. With a web page you can change the content at any time you want to reflect new products or services, advertise a sale, show a new menu for your restaurant ANYTHING, and still for much less than that newspaper add.
YOU CAN BUILD YOUR WEB PAGE INTO A WEB SITE.
You don't have to delete the information that you already have on your page if you want to say something else. If you add a new product to your line, or a new store to your chain, you can add a new page to your web site. You can start small if you wish and work up to big just like your business grew, your web page can grow right along with you. As your product base grows you can add more pages, and more information. You don't have to focus on just one aspect of your business at a time like a newspaper advertisement you can do it all at once, and still for a fraction of the cost of conventional advertising. Of course if you want to start with a big site, you can do that too.
YOU CAN REACH MORE PEOPLE IN A MUCH WIDER AREA.
Advertise in the local newspaper, it will cost you a bit. Advertise in the State wide newspaper it will cost you a bundle. Still the people who see your advertisement is limited to the people who have access to that newspaper. Maybe that is enough for you but why settle for the small stuff when you can have the world. LITERALLY. With a web site. YOU DON'T JUST HAVE ACCESS TO THE PEOPLE IN YOUR AREA, YOU HAVE ACCESS TO EVERYONE IN THE COUNTRY, HEY EVERYONE IN THE WORLD!!!!!!
A WEB SITE ADDS PRESTIGE TO YOUR BUSINESS.
You can add your web address to your business cards, advertisements, sales cards, letters, in the window of your store. It shows people you are serious about your business and your prestige increases. Just make sure it's a GOOD web page.
PEOPLE ARE BEGINNING TO EXPECT BUSINESSES TO HAVE WEB PAGES.
One of the first places many people look for information about you your products or services these days is on the internet. Not the Yellow pages, not the newspaper, but the internet. A 1997 study by International Data corp. showed that over 50.2 MILLION people used the internet that year, and this figure is expected to rise to 175 MILLION by the year 2000!!!
Only when they can't find you there do they turn to older more conventional methods.
MORE STRENGTH TO YOUR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN
A web site can augment the advertising program you already use. In your advertisements you can list your web site address to point customers and potential customers to more information than you can provide in your newspaper advertisement or radio/TV commercial.
IF YOU ADVERTISE AT ALL THEN YOU REALLY SHOULD HAVE A WEB PAGE.
It costs a fraction of what you would pay for a newspaper run, and it's there all the time for anyone in the world to find. Even if you only want to tell people what you do, where you are and when you are open, it's still important to be where the new wave of customers are looking for information. You don't have to have a big fancy web page if you don't want one, but it’s like many things in today’s world, photocopiers, answering machines, microwaves, post-it notes. When you got your first one you wondered what on earth you were going to do with it, then as time went by you found more and more uses for it, until now you are using it all the time, maybe you even have more than one, and your books are festooned with little yellow stickers and now you wonder how on earth you ever managed before. Web pages are like that.
