Basic business principles are often shelved when the blind determination (and sometimes desperation) of those starting a new business, is allowed to override good old fashioned commonsense.
Often it is not the absence of a sound business proposition that cause the difficulties, but simply the absence of the right type of customers to make the proposition too.
Accepting this, sometimes startling, fact helps us to recognize the importance of a clear and well thought out marketing strategy that is designed to target the high value prospective customers only. Of all the essential and competing tasks that smaller businesses need to carry out, restricting marketing to the right type of customers only is, and will remain, the imperative for profitability and survival.
There are few businesses to which having sufficient sales revenue (enough paying customers to cover the wages bill and overheads) is not an imperative and constant area of concern.
This being the case; it is hard to understand why more emphasis is not concentrated on finding not just the required number of customers, but also ensuring they are the right type. The realisation that it is both quality and quantity that adds value is central to sound marketing. The downside of prospecting for high value customers is they tend to be more successful, discerning and are often less forgiving!
Because of this, if you are thinking of cutting your marketing budget, you can be forgiven for considering the updating cost of your website an attractive place to start. After all, it could be weeks before anyone of any consequence notices it.
However, before you make such a decision think carefully about how you would feel, when you go to a website full of hope, high expectation and ambition and find not the fully refreshed and up-to-date images that you were expecting from a would be supplier, but a stale and out-of date brochure type site that you cannot wait to jettison.
Although it only takes a split second to get rid of the offending images, the disappointment associated with the experience may well, literally, last a lifetime. If that happens what are the true costs to the business?
The need for smaller businesses is ‘critical mass’ the result of a poorly constructed web page may be a critical mess!
