Is Your Company Website Attracting and Keeping Customers?

Does this scenario sound familiar? One of your church council members is a marketing and web design professional and for several months he pushed for the council to vote for some real funds to be set aside to hire a firm to create a website for your 850 member church. The rest of the church council members continued to drag their heels and the money was never budgeted for a real marketing campaign. Instead, this same council member with marketing experience settled on purchasing a software package that was easy to implement and volunteered his time to attempt to get a couple of the church office staff on board with keeping the website updated. The site, however, never really made it beyond a glorified calendar with occasional pictures of youth events. Now, three years later the council is discussing the ineffectiveness of the website and wonders what to do.
Maybe this time around the council will decide to hire an outside marketing and B2B staff to improve the church’s branding, develop and maintain a website and help with special events management.
Many companies large and small, profit and not for profit, waste valuable time and work hours trying to copmplete tasks that they are not trained for. Marketing and special events management is one of those areas. Rather than trying to create and implement growth strategies in house with a pieced together committee or task force, why not hire a website designer connected with an entire marketing staff? By contracting with a public relations firm that also offers professional marketing services, your business can improve its brand marketing techniques, internet presence and special events management strategy all at once.
PR companies, that also offer web design company expertise, will provide staff who are dedicated to clients. They offer valuable industry experience and strategic thinking training and implementation. Though it may seem shallow, 48% of people cited a website?s design as the top factor in deciding the credibility of a business. Who would you rather have creating this internet presence for your company? An untrained staff member who is doing this work during extra time, or a professional staff trained in marketing, public relations, branding and event management?
As much as $1.1 trillion in sales were web-influenced in the year 2011. How can your business not afford to hire professionals to help create and maintain your internet presence? When you realize that 88% of website visitors are less likely to return if they have a bad user experience, you understand the importance of making a great first impression.