Now I’m passionate about what I do, and when it comes to small business web marketing, I see many basic mistakes that because they are so easy to fix, get me more worked up than they should!
I was chatting with a friend recently who runs a Gold Coast IT Support firm, and (happily for my sanity) I found I’m not the only one with this passion. What am I talking about?
Domain Names
Let’s take this scenario: you run a small business, spending a tidy sum on advertising your business in Yellow Pages, the local classifieds, and maybe even some online advertising. You might even have a nice website for people to come and look at, and your car or van has one of those one-way-view stickers across the back screen.
Sounds good so far? Problem is, on all of that brand promotion, your email address looks like this:
yourbusinessname@hotmail.com
And your potential customer sees this: UNPROFESSIONAL.
Harsh I know, but this is your brand, your image, your professionalism you are representing. And by using a free email address or one supplied by your internet provider, your business looks as professional as a Saturday sausage sizzle.
There is of course another reason to get your own domain name: when the day comes that you want or need to change your internet provider (and it does happen!), that address and all the sometime clients that may have used it in the past?
Good luck with that…
So if that’s you in the scenario above, please get a domain name! It’ll set you back a couple of cups of coffee, and if you need help picking and setting up the right one (yes, it still matters!), I’ll be covering this in future post.
