For the small business owner today, it’s hard to know where to start when it comes to digital marketing. With a vast array of digital platforms – from Facebook to Jumia fighting for their attention, small business owners need to make the decision of how to prioritize their marketing efforts and spend.
As such, being an effective salesperson today requires much more than just selling – it requires becoming their go-to digital advisor. And to effectively help SMBs understand where to prioritize their efforts, salespeople need to ask the right questions in order to make a sale. We’ve put together a quick guide on the best questions to ask when selling websites:
#1 Do you have a website?
This one may seem obvious, but some business owners seem to think websites are a thing of the past, and they can simply do business through WhatsApp, Facebook, and other social media profiles. The truth is that websites are the only truly owned media where a small business can decide 100% how their brand is represented when changes occur to that media and provide in-depth information on their products, solutions, and services. Websites are the foundation of any business’ digital platform and play an all-important authoritative role within the digital landscape.
#2 Is your website optimized for the latest digital standards?
Assuming the business has a website, there are still plenty of questions to ask in order to identify ways to improve and ‘steal’ their website business. Digital marketing standards are constantly evolving, and many small business websites do not meet the latest requirements. For years, Google has enforced a ‘mobilegeddon’ to ensure that websites are mobile friendly. But new standards are pushing the limits for digital even farther, requiring websites to be secure (maintain an SSL certificate), accessible, support Progressive Web Apps, and continuously address optimizations for page speed. If a website isn’t on top of all new optimization trends, it stands to lose visibility in search results quickly.
#3 Is your website up-to-date?
Websites of the past were often a “build-and-publish” ordeal and acted more as static digital business cards. Today, they’re a dynamic piece of real estate, where business owners can and need to win over the trust of their visitors and provide relevant and personalized information to existing customers. This requires fresh content, a modern look-and-feel that matches the brand, and showcasing expertise through, for example, reviews and blog posts.
#4 Does your website leverage structured data?
Data – the biggest buzzword of the century. The world today (including its technology) is driven by data, and modern websites are no different. New technologies like artificial intelligence and voice search are driven by reading data, and the more structured that data is, the better and quicker results can be found. Implementing structured data on SMB websites has never been more important to ensure that small businesses appear in search results, Google Knowledge Panels, voice search queries and more, as it makes it easy for search engines to read and understand website content.
#5 Is your digital presence engaging?
With more and more business information directly available in search results, consumers visiting SMB websites are likely much further down the purchase path and more likely to be searching for a way to engage. Optimizing the SMB website for engagement is key to maximize the return-on-investment, and collecting visitor data and leveraging it to present relevant information to the visitor creates a more personalized experience.
Download our guide
There are plenty of other questions salespeople can and should be asking when trying to win over the website business. Mono Solutions has made an easy-to-use infographic guide on ‘Selling Modern Websites’. Download it now.
Learn more
This post was contributed by Mono Solutions – a SaaS-based digital marketing platform for SMBs based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Get in touch with Mono Solutions to learn more about how to drive online success for your SMB clients. This guest post is part of a series designed to offer tactical content to help the BigFive community succeed in its mission to deliver value to small business undergoing digital transformation in Africa and the Middle East.
Interested in contributing to the BigFive blog? Send us a note to info@bigfivedigital.org and share your ideas for a guest post.