WILL THE BUYER VISIT YOUR WEB-SITE ?

How to attract potential buyers to your web-site

Well, you have spent thousands of rupees or tens of hours of your precious time in developing that killer web-site. You are reasonably sure that your company's web-site is capable of impressing customers and bring business and prestige to your company.

But, is it really accessible to people who count most - Your Buyers ?? Your buyers are looking for companies like yours and are very likely to reach your site if it is visible to him/her. However, in the absence of an effective web-promotion campaign, your site has as much visibility as a sand particle in sea beach. More quality people visits your web-site, better is the chance for striking business deal. Your web-site is like a shop in a bazaar or pavilion in trade show where more visitors generally translates to more business.

The million dollar question - how do you make your wonderful site visible to your target audience ?

Some of the popular web-promotion techniques are:

  • Direct mail
  • L Advertisement
  • ASearch engine submission
  • BBS/Discussion Forums
  • in-House e-zine
  • Reciprocal Link etc.

For an effective direct mail campaign, you need to collect information on interest areas and contact details of potential buyers from various sources, send individual mails to them focusing on their respective interest areas and how you can help them - gradually leading them to your web-site for 'better understanding of your products'.

The ideas is to develop relationship, not sale at first go. Remember, trust flows from relationship and trust is the basic building block in any business.

It makes little sense to send thousands of e-mails containing same message to e-mail addresses which are either 'harvested' (stolen is the better word) at random from web-sites or purchased from doubtful sources. Business development requires patience and hard work - there is no short cut.

Ensure that your communication is able to inspire confidence in buyer about your ability. Make it short, concise and to the point. Provide sufficient information/answer to buyers' inquiry, not just a 'we can do' statement. If you ask for more information, make sure you are also sharing necessary information about yourself.

If you have already exported to clients in buyer's country or has a 'Reference' list, do not hesitate to talk about it. If you are new to export, try to develop your References. It is very useful, specially for buyers in USA and Europe.

In short, develop an interest in the buyer to know more about your product and visit your web-site. Please do use a signature file with your contact details and web-site address (please see last week's FAIDA - 'Is your e-mail professional looking ?'

We shall discuss other web-promotion techniques with lots of tips, tricks and traps in forthcoming issues of FAIDA

Related Links:

Source: FAIDA - Newsletter on Business Opportunties from India and Abroad Vol II, Issue 3; June 13' 2001

Author : Dr. Amit K. Chatterjee
(Amit worked in blue-chip Indian and MNCs for 15 years in various capacities like Research and Information Analysis, Market Development, MIS, R&D Information Systems etc. before starting his e-commerce venture in 1997. The views expressed in this columns are of his own. He may be reached at amit@infobanc.com )


Copyright
� All Rights Reserved. Limited permission is granted to publish this article in a web-site or printed in a journal/ newspaper/ magazine provided the publisher takes prior permission from author, do not make any change in the article (i.e. keep it exactly same as displayed above) and cite the Source of this article as The Great Indian Bazaar with a link to this page.