How to increase my sales leads with marketing

[Cpt Chaos]

1. This is probably the most important of all - your website doesn't look trustworthy. I'm not quite sure why you chose Drupal for an online store, but since I'm talking frankly here, it's left a lot to be desired. The site looks more like a site built 5-10 years ago than one built in 2012. You are missing key credibility factors - You've got testimonials, which are great, but anybody can create fictitious testimonials. At a glance, I can't find information regarding shipping, refunds, warranties, etc. I don't see any trusted brands/names with whom I can associate Dynamic Support. I would not buy from a site whom I wouldn't trust to deliver on the goods and the after sales service.

I have to agree with you on this. Not only in the sense of taking a hit at my own business but when it comes to the aesthetics I wasn't very happy with myself we've been looking at the entire site as you've mentioned and saying what can we do to change it. Looking at your remarks I can see the issue re valuable information on shipping etc. The whole site has been in redevelopment for some time now and we are hoping to launch the new site early in the new year.

3. You are operating in a saturated industry. It is very, very difficult to succeed with an online store selling what you are selling. To succeed in a saturated industry, you need to be offering something that your competitors aren't. Whether it's a 3 month instant, no questions asked money-back guarantee, or whether it's a year worth of free consultation with every new PC, or whether you'll deliver every order for free, you need to do something differently.

Looking at our business from two sides we've got our Durban based offices where we mainly do retail sales of hardware, software, security sector equipment etc, where as with me in Cape Town we are a service driven entity that provides mainly I.T support in the form of computer support, telephonic and email support and one of our more popular services in Cape Town being cloud based solutions. The online store is an alternative for our clients to make purchases without having to contact us. Now having two branches that focus on different aspects how would you go about marketing the business? Would you suggest looking more at the service driven side of things or going with the retail service where we already as mentioned have a saturated market?

4. You mentioned you were paying somebody to do SEO. If they've been working for longer than a month, I suggest you fire them. Even your home page has zero optimization work done on it. No H1 headings, no meta description, not much of anything really. Your title tags are non-descriptive and vague and many of your internal links have no descriptive value. (e.g. dynamicsupport.co.za/node/242)

We have recently fired the seo company as I have been monitoring them and we could not see any progress even less so on page optimization being done as they have never used their account to login to our site. I am working through Dereks SEO course to do the basic optimization but would like a company specializing in the market to take over that job.

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If you work on the things I've mentioned above, I'm pretty darn sure the next time we talk you'll be doing a lot better, at which stage we can discuss how you can do even better. I do hope my being frank hasn't offended you, but I'd rather call it how I see it than dress things up and not have you see any success as a result.

Thanks for putting at as you see it Mark, I know you've been there too when you initially started up and you've grown tremendously since then. I'll definitely go through what you and the rest have said before making use of some valuable information.

[ians]

Selling the latest technology is one of the key factors in most companies today, if you are left behind with technology so will your company.

Latest technology doesnt always means new electronic gadgets, in my industry for example, it could be a dustless chasing system, or an LEM lamp which could save you lots of money.

Baffling people with bullshit is one thing, understanding your industry and offering the latest technology you are familiar with, is another. 50 years ago trying to sell people computers would have been quite a challenge, today people only want the latest and up to date systems.

[Blurock]

Now having two branches that focus on different aspects how would you go about marketing the business? Would you suggest looking more at the service driven side of things or going with the retail service where we already as mentioned have a saturated market?

The business of the branches are still related and can be marketed as different divisions of the same business e.g. Sales and Service. Or you can do what Richard Branson is known for: divide the business into two smaller entities. Being an SMME, I do not think the latter option would be feasible at this stage, though.

[Mark Atkinson]

You know Mark, there is one aspect of marketing that you touched on indirectly yet powerfully, namely; knowing your trade. The thing is, when we go to see a doctor and we ask for his opinion we assess his knowledge (rightfully or not; through the things that he says) - does he use lots of jargon and try to sell us the latest technology, does he waffle, what sort of picture does he paint, balanced, rosy etc. You mostly don't have the oppertunity to speak to his other patients...so how do you judge whether he will be able to do that knee replacement properly...you listen to what he says and hopefully your perceptions are balanced enough to make a reasonable assessment of his skills.

Ok, so what did I see in what you wrote: It is clear that YOU know YOUR trade. I don't have to see a website that you are involved with to be able to make a fair assessment that I could put my trust in you, why, because you cut to the chase and call it as you see it.

I am really trying to make two points through this posting:
1. Frankly, I don't really care whether a company has a website or not, what I do care about is being able to get knowledge / experience based clear, concise and honest answers to my questions and solutions to my problems. Once I establish that I can trust the person / company then its easy for them to get all my business.
2. One day soon when my wallet has put on a bit of weight then I'll commission you to sort out my websites.

Thanks very much for your kind words, Adrian. It's nice to know that that sort of thing is noticed. What you've said is absolutely true though - it's generally very easy to pick out the person who knows his stuff. As an illustration, I found my financial advisor through MyBroadband. There was a debate regarding retirement annuities and it was blindingly obvious that the guy knew what he was talking about.

Looking at our business from two sides we've got our Durban based offices where we mainly do retail sales of hardware, software, security sector equipment etc, where as with me in Cape Town we are a service driven entity that provides mainly I.T support in the form of computer support, telephonic and email support and one of our more popular services in Cape Town being cloud based solutions. The online store is an alternative for our clients to make purchases without having to contact us. Now having two branches that focus on different aspects how would you go about marketing the business? Would you suggest looking more at the service driven side of things or going with the retail service where we already as mentioned have a saturated market?

You've got to remember that once you're on the Internet it's very difficult to isolate parts of your business. You're selling to SA as a whole now, rather than just Durban or just CT. Do your branches only offer the services/products you mentioned to only those areas? If so, you need to make sure you are stating this very clearly.

If that is the case, what I would look to do - from a website point of view - is optimise the site more for local terms rather than general terms. So "Cloud Storage Solutions in Cape Town" rather than "Cloud Storage Solutions". (This is a very simplistic example) For your Durban offices, it would be something along the lines of "Buy Hardware in Durban". If you have two physical office locations, claim them both in Google's local listings and make sure that you only list the services that are applicable to that branch.

If you can win with the local terms, you can move onto the broader terms eventually.

Either way, I wouldn't discount either branch's offerings. There is just a different way of marketing each one. Hardware sales, for example, are very specific. The product has a certain name, appeals to certain people and costs a certain amount. Service-based offerings are variable in price, much less specific and they also appeal to a wider range of people. You need to make sure that you're optimising your website accordingly for each.

I would make sure I've got landing pages for each of my key services and then I would define goals. The goals for my landing pages detailing services would be to get the visitor to request a free quotation, or maybe sign up for a newsletter.

The goal for retail sales is generally to either drive them through the sales process or to get them to consent to further marketing from you so that they may buy from you in future. (It may even be to get them to like you on Facebook.)

Track your conversion rates for each goal and work constantly on improving them. Just always bear in mind that the sales funnel is usually different for a service-based entity than it is for a retail-based entity.

We have recently fired the seo company as I have been monitoring them and we could not see any progress even less so on page optimization being done as they have never used their account to login to our site. I am working through Dereks SEO course to do the basic optimization but would like a company specializing in the market to take over that job.

That's half of your problem. It's great that you're working through an SEO course to familiarise yourself with the basics - that's something I always encourage my clients to do. I've recently written a blog post which compiles some of the best beginner resources that I've found on the net. If you'd like to give it a read, you can find it here: SEO Beginners - 11 Resources to Take You from Buggerall to Badass

Regarding optimisation - If you email me with your budget and goals I can quote you for an SEO audit and on-site optimisation. I only take on one client per industry, so we won't be able to perform a full online marketing service for you. (This actually depends on your products, but I think it may conflict with a current client's offerings)
I'm also happy to consult if you're in Durbs, or via Skype.

We also deal closely with another online marketing company in Durban who I'm happy to refer you to for online marketing work if you're more comfortable with them. They happen to be very clued up and I even outsource some of my own Adwords work to them when I'm over capacity.

Whoever you work with, be sure to ask for real references who you can actually contact. With SEO, if you're paying next to nothing, you're probably getting next to nothing in return. (As it is with most things in life)

[Cpt Chaos]

Thanks for the remarks Mark,

We service the whole of South Africa. We have a network of companies we outsource our work to. Although we found that our client market here in Cape Town is more of a service driven target market we also do the entire retail side of the business. I believe that if you go into the trade where you deal with hardware breakages etc its always a good idea to have the retail service too.

I must say Mark you do give quite a bit of insight into the things I've been pondering on. Let me work through what you've said and I'll definitely have a read through your SEO resource blog as well. At the moment its the busy time of the year where I don't spend much time in the office. But I will definitely be in touch soon whether it will be this year or the new year I can't say.