The stream of consciousness ramblings of a young entrepreneur…

This post is the first in a 3-part series about making your small business appear larger than it’s true size.  Much has been written on the subject of making your small business look larger, too bad most of it isn’t practical.  The New York Times even wrote an article about a woman and her success in real estate because of this very phenomenon.  It’s a fact of entrepreneurship that you’re always (excluding the rare exception) going to be competing with the big boys in your pursuits of being self-employed.  The problem is, most advice given is expensive or as mentioned earlier, impractical.  Now, obviously expensive is a relative thing, but when you are starting a business on your own and with the cost of living increasing at a record pace, every dollar can make a tremendous difference.  So simply put, your goal is to get the most growth for your dollar.  Here’s a few things I’ve picked up along my way to really give your business a much larger appearance to your potential customers…

The first thing that dollar for dollar will give you the best return on your investment in growth potential is a quality website.  No other advertising or marketing will present your company as though you know what you’re talking about or to a larger audience better than a quality website.  When someone visits your website, there’s a good chance they’re there on purpose - they’re interested in your products or services.  This isn’t the case with direct-mail, cold-calling and other old-school methods of marketing.  A professional looking website with quality content will tell your visitors much more about your organization.  Remember - just because you have a professional website doesn’t mean you have to lose your personal touch!  These days more people want to do business with an organization run by humans; not corporate robots.

You’ll never see a large company with a horrid website and while you don’t have the $100,000 budget of Coca-Cola®, thankfully, you don’t need it.  With the evolution of technology,  prices have drastically dropped; making it even more irresponsible for serious business owners NOT to have a good website!  In 1999 a relatively simple website could cost you $10,000.  That same website could cost around $1000 today.  A lot of people will tell you to avoid template-based websites, however, if you hire a local company who agrees to use and modify a pre-fab template rather than a custom design, you’ll often see SIGNIFICANT savings and still get a quality result!  Take a look over at TemplateMonster.com or Google “Website Templates” for some ideas; you might not find the perfect website, but you can find “80% - good enough” for a tenth of the cost of a custom design.  Take that extra money and hire a copywriter to make sure the content of your website is top quality or invest it on some the options I’ll discuss in parts 2 and 3.

One important warning though; stay away from “free” templates, website builders, and companies offering bottom-dollar services.  Although there’s the potential for a very rare exception, you’re not going to get a Lexus® for the price of a Kia®.  Your goal is to make your business appear professional, top-notch and larger than reality.  A bad website is often worse than no website at all!  Make sure the company you’re looking at hiring has a diverse, high quality portfolio and is interested in least a semi-consultative role in the process and will include you as necessary during the design phase.

In my web design days, all my new clients completed a website profile form - requesting basic inputs on their goals, color preferences, or perhaps an overriding theme that represented their business.  I built the cost into my packages for 30-60 minutes to select a few templates (typically 5 to 10) that I felt were appropriate for the client.  We then spent 30-60 minutes reviewing my selections, picking one, and discussing if any changes needed to be made.  If more ideas or designs were desired, more time was offered at the hourly rate noted in the original proposal.  Ask the company you’re considering if they’d be interested in offering this type of service and if they offer a discount if you’ve pre-selected the template you want to start with.

A good website is the first component of quality informational marketing.  The day when you stop pursuing business opportunities and they start chasing you is the day you realize your small business has finally become successful!  You’ll never forget the day you run into the problem of needing to hire additional resources becuase you’ve outgrown yourself…

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