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Be prepared to spend a lot of time on a website with content, marketing and strategy. October 31, 2005 2 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Prepare to spend a lot of time on a website with content, marketing and strategy. You will need to decide how much time you have, and how you want to spend it. Find your niche early. Find out if you want to develop an enterprise business or a service business. There are many different service business models, but you need to have a specialized product or service to get your business started.

For a service business to succeed, you will need to build relationships with your existing clients and prospects who are tired of waiting for your service to be delivered. To do this, you will need a strong presence online. Having a strong presence online will come in handy as word gets around about what you offer. At the back end of the company, you will need to formulate a marketing strategy.

How much marketing is needed? Do you need to have an online presence but not invest too much time? Are you ready to dedicate a lot of time to running an online business?

What time constraints will you have? Ask these questions in advance of investing in a website and a database, and planning for the time commitment of marketing online.

If you have a small business, it is probably difficult to dedicate time to a website with online marketing, but if you have an enterprise level business, it is inevitable. Follow a strategy that meets your business needs. You might choose the functionality you need or the features of the website that are being used for a marketing function. If you offer financial services and want more people to read your information online, you may choose to keep your website the same size, or with some minor redesign changes. If you sell pest control products, marketing materials will not appear on your website. Find out what functions you need and how you can take a minimal time investment and maximize a customer experience.

Always think about how you will connect with people, and how they can easily access your information to get what they want. Always be ready to market yourself to people through your online presence. Be clear about what you sell, and how you will market yourself. In order to improve the online marketing and sales process, you need to know what you have to offer. The onus is on you to know what you have to offer in an email message and why it is valuable. Ask yourself this question when you add a new tagline to your newsletter or insert a new color-coded “shiny” icon in your website header.

A website never succeeds if you do not understand what you offer customers. Pay attention to the best ways to communicate with people and customers.

Do you need a time saver? Whatever it is, communicate with people and your clients in a creative, conversational way. Print out marketing documents, and give them to your customers. If you will have direct interaction with a customer, make sure your approach is a positive one and focused on the joy of learning more.

Provide answers to their questions in a friendly manner. If you will not be giving customer service, tailor the interaction to an environment where customers can be encouraged to test drive your products. Your job is to serve. Have a solid lead gen plan, and use it to nurture those leads and convert them into clients. You will improve the prospect mix and save time through automation. Automation can be a natural extension of lead gen activities.

You might begin your automated process as a potential lead. Then, as the desired user travels a journey down the funnel, he or she crosses over to a “verified lead” or a ” customer. ” The potential customer and the verified lead are very similar. The sales process usually begins with a common promise or attraction: to help our clients be better at what they do. Your journey begins by making sure that you have a set of compelling “things” to say, such as:

How my company can help a customer‘s business. What I can do for a client. The benefits and the value that I can deliver to our customer.

A set of “hmm” messages, that look at the benefits of the product or service. A set of action steps to improve the customer‘s business. Motivate your leads and clients to follow the sales process and eventually move down the funnel to a paying customer. Have a set of action steps in place at every point of the sales process, so that all your sales people use them. The sales process may end with you helping a customer make a purchase or offer a service. A system for tracking the success of your email newsletter and are the person you are speaking to.

Deliver real results with real resources in order to help turn that prospect into a customer. End your sales process with a great way to conclude what has been a positive experience for your customer.

One last tip, do you want your best lead to buy further? If you have a business built around answering and celebrating customer wins, then you are doing it right. There are plenty of great stages of the sales process for your leads to go through. You can follow the Smart Passive Income model of selling a service to the customer, a product or product and a collection of services.

In all three of these models, you take care of the big picture first and let the rest take care of itself.

Would your prospects prefer to buy from you now or later? Prospects don’t want to be sold to. Most of the time, a prospect wants to know what they are getting for their money. They won’t buy something based on a well-made “the fact that I sold them this now made me valuable” pitch. Successful sales relies on insight, not on force, information, and not just a catchy headline.

Content Engine is a State-of-the-Art Content Automation Platform that will craft clear, precise, and powerful Content Marketing for your business.

Ready to Turbo Charge Your Content Marketing and SEO? Request a Content Sample Today