Picture the scene. A harried homeowner needs a drain unstopped. Or a septic tank pumped. A few years ago, she might have pulled out the local Yellow Pages and turned to the appropriate category.
Today, she is just as likely to open a laptop computer on the kitchen table, go to a favorite search engine, and type in the words to describe what she’s looking for. When that happens, will you be where she can find you?
More and more consumers are turning to the World Wide Web when they want everything from the latest news, to ideas on where to eat on Saturday night, to sources for any of a number of basic services. Those include the business you’re in.
If you aren’t on the web these days, you’re almost certainly missing an important segment of your potential customer base. People in their 20s and early 30s especially rely on the Internet as their primary medium of communication, and just because they get older doesn’t mean they’re going to change that habit.
Changing the landscape
This trend is upending the media generally and advertising especially. But here’s the good news: this is one trend you can easily turn to your own favor. Joe Vragolic did a couple of years ago. Vragolic operates MarGo Plumbing in Cedar Grove, N.J. He set up the company web site, www.margoplumbing.com, after recognizing that “people are going on the computer to find a plumber.”
He has no regrets. “Whenever anybody calls us we always ask, ‘How did you find out about us?’” Vragolic says. Lots of people are previous customers or have been referred by others who are. But among those who cold-call his business, “probably 80 percent of the people are getting us from the Internet.”
In Mechanicsville, Md., where Wendy and Jimmy Gates operate Copsey’s Septic Service Inc., a nearby military base means a significant chunk of the population only stays around for a short time. “We’re in such a transitional area,” Wendy Gates says. She sees a connection between that demographic fact and people’s use of the Internet. “People are getting their information from the web versus phone books,” she says.
So a year ago Copsey’s set up its web site at www.copseysseptic.com. Gates has counted several calls a week from people who learned about the business on the web.
Find out more
Brian Cook, whose business, Fred A. Cook Jr. Inc. in Montrose, N.J., has had its web site at www.fredcook. com for eight years, particularly likes the way the site allows customers to find out more about what he does.
“A lot of times people don’t understand our business,” he says. “They don’t understand the Vactor business or the video inspection business. “On the web, you can actually walk a customer right through your services.”
Vragolic agrees. All the company’s marketing prominently urges viewers and potential customers to “check us out,” he says — and they do. “If they look at a picture or read some words on the site, they’re doing it on their own time, and they can actually see how we conduct business,” Vragolic says.
Bob Garfield, who writes for the marketing magazine Advertising Age, said in a recent essay that what Vragolic reports represents the future of the advertising business. Consumers really don’t like advertising, Garfield wrote, because it interrupts their news or entertainment.
But they’re hungry for information, and they like using the Internet to go hunting for it. They’ll gladly take any information they find useful. He predicted they will go first to marketers themselves for the knowledge they seek. That means you.
Promote your site
A web site doesn’t operate in a vacuum — or to say it differently, if you build it, they may not come. You need to make sure people know about your site. So put your web address on your trucks, on your letterhead and invoices, on the refrigerator magnets you hand out, and, of course, in your advertising, whether in the Yellow Pages, in newspapers or on radio or TV.
“We pretty much put our web site in everything we do,” Vragolic says.
A web site also can be a way for customers to contact you directly, either with links to your company e-mail address or on a form that people can fill out in a few clicks in order to get a service call. Anything that makes it easier for customers to contact you is important, but don’t expect everyone to use those features.
“Some people do use that,” says Cook, “but I’ve found that most people still like a personal contact. They find you on the Internet, then call to make direct contact.”
How much does it cost? The business owners who spoke for this column said it cost them about $500 to $1,000 to get the basic web site designed and built, and then a few hundred dollars a year — roughly $20 a month — to have it hosted. There are additional costs, primarily paying for advertising on the web that directs people to your site. That advertising is usually linked to search engines, and the cost can range from under $100 a month to as much as $300 or more a month.
Build with care
Search engine advertising needs to be carefully designed so that it remains focused on your geographic territory. But the big search engine companies like Google know how to do that, and the site operators we talked to said they’ve been satisfied. “We’re not getting calls from California for people looking for a plumber,” says Vragolic from his New Jersey office.
And even those costs represent a significant discount from Yellow Pages advertising. “A full-page ad can cost you $1,500 in the New Jersey area,” Vragolic says. “Our Yellow Pages will cover two towns. So you do three or four books to cover a whole county, and you’re talking about a lot of money there.”
Vragolic and Gates say they’re looking at cutting back on some Yellow Pages advertising in the future, and Cook says he’s already done so, although he adds he’s not yet ready to drop the phone book ads altogether.
There is one key piece of advice on setting up a site: Don’t do it yourself. There are plenty of skilled and reputable businesses who know how to set up and run a good web site. But be sure to screen potential vendors carefully.
Vragolic lost $200 to a swindler who misrepresented himself as affiliated with a trade group, cashed his check and never delivered. Still, he didn’t let that unhappy start sour him on the web. Today, neither he nor the other business owners who spoke with us could imagine going back to the pre-web world.
Brian Cook puts it simply: “The Internet is a tool that my business couldn’t live without.”
