Does my business look BIG in This?

Using Internet technology to create a bigger and better image for your company

Intro

When you are starting up, or a small company looking to grow, it’s easy to spend all your time doing your particular thing – whether it is designing gardens or leasing cars. It can be difficult to take a step back to see if there are any business tricks you are missing that could make your life easier, growing your business more quickly or giving your customers a better experience when dealing with you.

Internet and Internet technology is one of those areas where you can make a big difference to how your organisation is perceived – with little or no cost.

Activator UK is an Internet based company. We depend upon the access the internet gives us to the technology, applications and services that we have built our company and products upon. The Internet and the technology it has spawned is our ‘particular thing’ and we would like to share some ideas and good practices that will help your business.

This article looks at some very cost effective changes you can make now! That will enhance your Internet image.

Internet as the great Leveller

People buy from People, so it was and so it always will be – the internet hasn’t changed that. What the Internet has done is broken down some barriers, making it easier to make that person-to-person contact - but you need to be smart about how you use the technology.

What the Internet has done is make it much easier to get the company message out there – company size is not as important as it used to be , because it has created a whole host of technologies and business models that make it possible for small companies to act like, and come across as far larger, established organisations. There are now so called ‘hosted’ services, which mean instead of buying expensive equipment or software, you can rent access to it, or even in some cases get it for free.

These technologies can allow smaller companies to establish that person-to-person connection, before they are asked, “So how big is your company”, if it even comes up.

What can the Internet do to Inflate your business? We are not just talking about the website – the Internet gives you cheaper access to BIG Business Features!

What do you want to look like to a Prospect?

· Professional?

· Quick to respond?

· Bigger?

Once you have met the person you can create a business relationship, but the initial electronic contact is critical. You need to set the right sort of image for your company, and when you are talking about the Internet, we are talking about your electronic image.

How do you set the Right Internet Image

Web Presence

We’re not just talking website but your electronic identity. The website is a shop window for your company and what you do, but it’s only a small part of your interfacing with a prospect or customer. There are other elements that say a lot more about you and your company

· Email – the quickest way to build your credibility with your electronic audience and the quickest way to prompt, “How big is your company?” – is your plain old email address. Get your own domain name, nothing says small better than an ISP email, and nothing says time waster faster than steve457@freedodgyemail.com. It costs less than £10 per year to get a domain name, and there loads of help to get your PC picking up mail. Okay, you might not be able to get exactly the domain you want @thegreengreengrassofhome.co.uk might already be gone but @GreenGrassofEailing.co.uk is better than ISPname.com!

· Create a signature block for your emails, you can do it with outlook, if you don’t want to pay use something like Thunderbird from Mozilla – all of them allow you to create a block of information at the bottom of every email with your contact details, logo and a legal statement. Nothing says ‘corporate organisation’ as quickly as a legal disclaimer. Just look at the email you get and put something together.

Moving from no web presence to a basic three-page website that tells the world a little bit about what you do and your contact details will make a bigger difference to your company than any web marketing or web development company ever will - You’ve got to be in it to win it! I almost guarantee people will not easily find your services via Google but that’s not the point here, you need your website for the people who have already found you. They’ve got an email from you, or your business card, or through word of mouth – now they want to know “is this person worth my time?”

It can literally cost less than £50 to get a domain name, email account and a minimal website at one of the high volume hosting companies, with just about enough information and support to get it up and working.

Connectivity

Your company needs to be online, all the time.

If you are taking your company seriously, you need to think:

• Broadband, you get what you pay for – there’s No such thing as a free lunch so the cheap as chip broadband service is fine to keep the costs down, but if it goes wrong how easy do you think it’s going to be to get it fixed. Also, look out for a premium rate support line associated with an ISP account, if the ISP is getting paid for supporting you where is the drive to get it fixed quickly?
• Ask about the Fair Usage policy, even on most ‘Unlimited’ download packages there is a limit to what the ISP is prepared to accept as reasonable usage. If you don’t get the right sort of package that matches your requirements, it could end up costing you money!
• Get a router with a Stateful inspection firewall, it doesn’t matter that you don’t know what it does, by default it will give you some basic protection from the nasty types lurking on the Internet
• Buy Business broadband, why? Because the ISP (Internet Service Provider) has developed this service for the demands businesses put upon it, that should mean their support is easy to get when you need it, and designed to get you back working as a priority
• The options for business connectivity is changing faster than ever, sign up with an organisation who will keep you up to date, for instance, did you know the 3G broadband (using the mobile phone network) can give you more connectivity than a fixed broadband line – depending on how your business works, a fully mobile virtual company might work better for you and your customers.

Telephony

We’ve all had this experience, you call a company to enquire about something, and you get an automated announcement “Welcome to Megacorp, please press 1 for sales, 2 for customer support...” you press 2, and what happens? You get to speak to a real person, who is human, who wants to help! It does happen! So, what is the assumption you make about this company:

• It’s a large established company who is interested in your business

What doesn’t say “Big Company” is a scratchy analogue answering machine, an engaged tone on your single telephone line, BT Call minder or “Dad it’s for you!”

In these days of Internet telephony, you could have:

· multiple telephone connections over your single home office broadband

· a professional voicemail which cuts in if you are on the phone then emails you the message

· the ability to automatically forward calls to a mobile, landline or even an answering service

For the ‘Big Company’ it could well be that if you press 1, 3,4 or 5 you get the same person, someone working from home or a call centre in Asia – whatever is more effective for the business, and now the small company can take advantage of this not only to look bigger but also to save money. It’s all about Voice over broadband and the Internet.

Skype – Voice of the Internet

Skype is the exception that proves the free lunch rule. It’s a free service that uses the ‘free Internet’ to make Voice calls between two PC’s. It’s revolutionised talking to Aunty Betty in Australia and given many an international telephony provider sleepless nights.

Skype is the perfect service for communicating with people you are happy to let down! Why? Because the one thing that is predictable with the ‘free internet’ is that, it is unpredictable – that is to say, you cannot guarantee the next call you make will be perfect or totally unusable. Therefore, Aunty Betty can live with that – she’s family, but your latest client won’t.

However, it is a good idea, if only there was a predictable alternative.

VoIP – business Voice over broadband

Voice over IP (VoIP) uses the same concept as Skype, but it is standards based so different handset vendors can interwork with different service providers. That makes it much simpler for businesses to purchase handsets and move between VoIP service providers as new services are launched or prices change – giving power back to the business!

Most of the internet based service providers (so called Hosted VoIP providers) offer the same sort of interactive voice response (“Welcome to Megacorp..”) as the large business systems. They charge a monthly fee, for the service and each operational handset, thereby reducing the capital cost of the service and allowing customers to vary their service month by month, as they take on or reduce personnel.

More than that, the VoIP systems can implement smart call forwarding that means your calls can follow you to a different office, your mobile or even your home phone – without the caller ever knowing. You never need to miss a customer call again.

For not much more than the cost of a couple of telephone lines, you can create that bigger business image

So what do I need to do next?

Well, we have given you the start – we’ve let some interesting cats out of the bag, Google away or give us a call to talk about how we could help you Re-Activate your company’s Web personality.