Public Relations and Marketing Online | Businesses Need an Online Presence

I find it extremely surprising that in this day and age such an obvious piece of advice is necessary. But it is.

You are as you are perceived, and if you don’t have a website, you either won’t be perceived at all or potential customers will contact your competitors who make it easy for the world to find them on the Internet.

Most organizations, businesses, service providers, consultants and professionals such as doctors, lawyers and accountants do realize that having a website and a place of their own on the Internet is as important as having a phone number or a mailing address. But some don’t care or realize how detrimental and diminishing it is when potential customers search for them on the Internet and come up empty.

Three recent incidents drove this point home for me.

I’d been searching for a law firm specializing in elder care law. A social agency gave me the names of three firms it had vetted to confirm that each handled this specialty. Two firms had websites and one didn’t. And of those two, only one included elder law in its specialty list appearing on the site. That’s the firm I called first.
A relative needed a surgeon skilled in performing minimally invasive kidney procedures. In addition to not wanting to endure the pain and lengthy recuperative period associated with open surgery, she wanted a doctor with expertise in the latest surgical techniques. Even though she had the names of many surgeons and urologists, she only considered those with websites where she could determine each doctor’s surgical capabilities.
After a very successful commercial insurance broker who’d been in business for more than 35 years launched a basic website, he began receiving calls from potential customers who’d found him on the Internet. By perusing the broker’s site, each learned he was expert in insuring their particular business facilities. They were largely pre-sold by the website when they first called the broker.
When a friend learned his family physician no longer accepted payment from his company’s insurance carrier, he had to select a new doctor from a list provided by that carrier. This chore would have been even more hectic and time consuming and less informative without Internet access to each physician’s very informative website.
My friend’s sudden search for a new physician due to a change in his insurance carrier’s policies underscores the point that physicians, dentists, other medical professionals and businesses of all kinds can lose huge blocs of satisfied, loyal customers through no fault of their own.

Despite their loyalty and satisfaction, your customers may move on for reasons beyond their or your control; reasons such as management changes, mergers, business restructuring, an economic downturn or other outside influences.

In such cases, one company’s loss can become another’s new business opportunity. That’s why, even when you’re enjoying a solid business base, you must have a website to inform and attract potential customers.

You must have a website to instantly provide answers for qualified prospects.

Where do you start if you don’t have a website? Just enter “website designers” onto your Internet browser and sort through the choices.

There’s a saying in television news that states, “If it didn’t happen on camera, it didn’t happen.” These days, that statement’s Internet equivalent would be, “If your company doesn’t have a website, it doesn’t exist.”

Does your company exist?

Brian R. Salisbury, a writer and a public relations and communications consultant, combines a wealth of communications know-how with an engaging writing style to help his clients shape the most effective messages and deliver them with the greatest impact where they count most. Visit Brian’s website and subscribe to his free public relations newsletter and receive his free report “Ten Key Components of a Successful Public Relations Program.”

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Tags: business, marketing, Media, online, public relations