Earlier today I was chatting with a business owner about their website.   This firm’s clients are restaurants and hotels.  Our conversation went something like this:

Me: You have a nice site.  We think there are some things you can do to drive more traffic to it and leverage it to increase conversions.

Nick [I've changed his name, not because he is innocent, but because he is embarrasingly guilty]: We don’t care about driving traffic to our website.  We’re an in person company.  The website is just a little something for our existing customers.

Me: Restaurant owners and managers use the web to find vendors as well.  If you expanded the purpose of your site to generate more leads, I think you’d see a very high ROI.

Nick: You don’t get it.  Restaurant owners already know who they’re going to buy from, and we already have relationships with ALL of them.  Using our website to find them would be pointless.

Me: Why don’t you let me conduct a free site analysis to show you just how big your online market is, and what you can do to tap into it.

Nick: Thanks for the offer, but I’m going to pass.

Yes, it’s easy to point fingers at people like Nick.  But many business owners make similar mistakes and are equally unapologetic.  Let’s walk through some of Nick’s incorrect assumptions:

Our customers don’t use the web to find vendors. In some situations there might be some truth to this.  When I’m hungry for fast food I don’t do a Google search for “hamburgers Phoenix.”  However, I have gone to fast food sites when a creative add campaign has taken me there.  Remember the videos where Burger King announced they had discontinued the Whopper?  So even if people don’t frequently search for your term, you still need an internet strategy.

Websites are impersonal. It’s clear that Nick is thinking about old school websites; the kind that function like brochures, but online.  We agree that it’s pointless to have this kind of website.  But today’s web 2.0 designs can be very personal.  They can tell you more about yourself (taken any quizzes on facebook recently?).  They can keep track of things for you.  They can allow you to express yourself.  They can even remember birthdays and anniversaries.   Try getting your sales force to do that!

We already know all of our potential customers. I’m sure this is statement is a mix of ego and false bravado, but Nick said it, so I’m going to tear it apart.  First, Nick has defined his target market very narrowly.  His particular product lends itself to distribution outside of his geographical area with very little operational tweaking.  Second, there are new entrants into this industry all the time.  People start new restaurants, and they will research suppliers on the internet before the grand opening is even announced.  Managers leave and new ones get hired.  Many of them will turn to the internet in hopes of finding new vendors to reduce costs or increase satisfaction.  These people are making decisions before they even get on Nick’s “in person only” radar.

I can’t use a free analysis to quantify my online market. I wasn’t asking Nick to take my word for it.  I offered to give him facts and figures to justify my confidence, which he turned down because he thought he already knew the answer.  Yes, when we perform a free website analysis it’ s to get more business.  But it’s to get more business based on real ROI projections.  We know we can really help entreprenuers.  Some of our analyses show increases of only hundreds of dollars per month.  Some show increases in the tens of thousands.  It gives  business owners a sense of what internet marketing would mean to them.  FYI I did some quick research on Nick’s industry: thousands of people look for companies like his every week.

The bottom line is that no matter who you are and no matter who your ideal customer is, the internet can help you find more of them.  We can help you quantify how many of them you’re missing, and what you need to do to bring them in.

Think you’re an exception to the rule?  Have an example of how you got surprising results via the web?  Chime in with a comment!