Charlie sells business supplies. The web offers him the ability to sell to clients outside his normal geography of 50 miles around his distribution centre. His wholesale supplier can deliver directly to all of his new clients anywhere in the UK and Ireland with no real effort or cost. It’s perfect!
Nice pens, poor online marketing plan.
When Charlie got his web designers on the job, they created a fantastic online business-to-business outlet. They did everything right. The site looked great, the site was optimised and was perfectly formed for search.
After 6 months of no new customers Charlie started to blame the designers for the lack of sales. “How could they have got it so wrong?” claimed Charlie.
Charlie explained how his attention to customer service set him apart from the competition. However he never made it to the top 10 in Google searches and Charlie felt the web had let him down.
On examination, Charlie’s claim of offering better customer service was the same claim that all his competitors made. His competitors online included Viking Direct, Eurooffice, Staples and WH Smith. The competitors had spent millions on natural Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). His sale price for goods was nothing special either. On reflection Charlie admitted that he had no real differentiator and gave potential clients no compelling reason to switch to him.
Had Charlie set the goal of the website to, improve customer service with existing clients, create up-sell opportunities and increase average order size or increase advocacy (get his customers to talk about how good his business was) and get new customers that way, then his online goals would have been realistic.
Charlie can still get a great return on his online investment. He is now setting realistic goals and creating a multi-channel online marketing strategy to achieve those goals. He still feels a little cheated. He listened to the hype, the false promises of overnight success but with his realistic goals now in place he stands a much higher chance of winning.
