“Most salespeople try to take a horse to water and make him drink. Your job is to try to make the horse thirsty”
Gabriel M. Siegel
As with any business you need to create demand for your services and “make your horse thirsty.” Most consultants have a website and not a web presence. Being familiar with online tools to grow your business is a necessity for your consulting practice. A website creates an image for your company and helps save on marketing costs by providing online access for your clients to view your services and capability. But it is much more than just a website you need to create, you need to develop, an online presence.
Before you Begin
Have a specific, clearly defined set of objectives in mind
Why do you want to have a website? What are your motivating factors? Other than gaining a corporate website for your consulting firm, what is its primary purpose going to be?
How will it compliment your practices’ branding strategy?
Who am I trying to target and what do they want? As a consultant you are in the best position to answer this. This will vary by your consulting expertise and the industry or industries where you will focus your attention.
What specifically do you expect to gain from it?
How will you measure the success of your Website? Without a set of verifiable criteria for measuring success, satisfaction isn't ever really possible. You know this as a consultant!!!
Some of the things you may want to consider are:
-Number of hits to your site
-Product sales
-Page ranking
-Increased number of clients
You expect your clients to plan and so should you. Here are some things you should consider. The more prepared you are, the more likely it is you will be successful at reaching your goals.
Evaluating you Competition
Perform a google search for the term “consultants, small business consultants, consultants to small businesses”, to see how your competitors are positioning their site and services. Also search locally for consultants to see what your direct competitors are doing. Print off and bookmark sites that you really like.
As you go through sites, ask yourself these questions:
What site is visually appealing?
What site has the type of information that I will be offering?
What site best described their consulting services?
What types of products are offered on some of the consulting sites?
What site looked the most professional?
What color scheme did you like the best?
What did you like best about some of the sites? What did you like least?
What headlines are they using on the site?
What type of content is offered on the home page? Is it static or does it seem to be changing i.e. newsletter, articles or blogs?
Another website you should look at is www.templatemonster.com you are able to search for website templates and they allow you to do a category search which includes consulting sites.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
With 
