Internet Strategies – Educate Them

Smart entrepreneurs have discovered that there are a lot of benefits from educating people online. This can occur on a number of levels from your website, and should often be a key element of your websites marketing strategy.

Firstly there is the opportunity to educate your potential client visitors. This increases your chance of a sale and reduces time spent selling by you personally or by your sales staff. Your website gives you the chance to answer the often asked questions before you interact with your customer on a personal level.

Other groups you can educate are your retailers, franchisees and suppliers. Ecowash Mobile for example have used the technology on their website to streamline their franchisee recruitment process by providing all the required information online. Prospective franchisees can log in and access data on their possible territory, statistics and more. Jim Cornish says “We estimate the educational functions of our website complete functions that would usually require two full time staff members.”

Xpresso Delight also use their website to educate their franchisees. They have a secure area which contains all of their manuals, and operating procedures, along with company literature, to help build the efficiency and sales techniques of their staff. They also operate a database where franchisees can enter their weekly reports, track performance and set future goals.

They also have a function where they record how many coffees are made by each machine. This info is then used to establish how much coffee, chocolate powder, take away cups etc. that they need to order. This save them time stocktacking and ordering, because it is done automatically.

These same ideas can be used to educate retailers too. New products, events, promotions and many other things can be available to your retailers at a low cost to your retailers through your website.

I know this series is drifting a bit away from the SEO, that we are famous for, but I think their is so much more to online marketing than the niche we operate in. So I am always interested to explore anything that will increase the value of a website.

The next post in this series will be about E-Mail marketing. I have been receiving more and more Email marketing lately, mostly in russian or some language from another planet. Thanks to the contact form on our website. So i will discuss the fun involved with that and on a more serious note, how to make money through responsible email marketing and newsletters.

Until then…enjoy your day.