To be the best you need to invest, even if the ROI on any one investment is difficult to calculate, each is part of the whole, and each contributes to your profitability
Leased Line
If your internet connection drops or becomes unusable at peak times it is probably because of the high contention ratio your broadband provider uses. Your business might be only one of fifty premises sharing that fibre connection. Fibre is fast, but it can’t handle fifty households or businesses with multiple users all trying to access video or social media content simultaneously.
Leased LineWeb hostingBrandingContent MarketingConclusion
A leased line has one user: You. Why doesn’t everyone have a leased line? It comes down to cost. You can justify the cost as an investment in your business, or just see it as a negative figure in your profit and loss account. If a top quality data connection is essential to the running of your operation, leased line cost is definitely an investment.
Web hosting
You get what you pay for in web hosting: And you don’t get much for £2 a month. A cup of tea in a hotel will cost you more than that! Yes, you can buy cheap web hosting, but it will be sharing a server with hundreds of other websites and your share of the CPU time will be inadequate to run a business website. But, it said, “Unlimited storage, bandwidth, and websites,” I hear you say. You have all those, but none of them matter; storage is as cheap as muck, bandwidth costs come down every day, and you only need one website anyway. You can compare cheap web hosting to a library with millions of books (unlimited storage), 20 automatic double doors (unlimited bandwidth), but even when the queue is out the door there is only one librarian who has to check each book you want to borrow for damage, and then stamp every book individually (Low CPU share). Use a hosting comparison site to get the big picture rather than the sales-driven sites of individual hosts. Look for a company that will allow you to upgrade your hosting without penalty as your requirements grow, and insist on 24/7/365 chat support as the minimum standard you are prepared to accept.
Branding
You are your brand. Nurture your brand, treat it like a newborn baby, give it your all, and your brand will grow legs and be strong enough to take on the world. Your branding should permeate every aspect of your company from personnel to website, from the way your employees answer the phone to the colours and models of your company vehicles. Design your brand to appeal to your target market, even if doing so alienates other groups because your target market needs to see you as distinctive and being different will always annoy some people. Consistency is everything in branding. Ensure your channels speak with a single voice by delegating responsibility for all your social channels to one employee, even if others share the load.
Content Marketing
You need a blog. This Forbes.com article gives twenty reasons why every business should have a blog as part of its website. Companies that invest in content see SEO benefits and appear higher in Google searches. Potential customers will see you as an expert when you share your knowledge, they may subscribe to receive emails from you, which gives you the opportunity to grow your relationship, to earn trust and eventually become a preferred service provider. Giving your best content away by writing as guest posts on industry blogs will earn you links. People follow links, so you get your company in front of others in your niche who see you as an expert because of the guest post that you gave away.
Conclusion
Faking it until you make it is not an advisable option in business because clients are expert at detecting fakes; they won’t come near you with a barge-pole. Invest in the essentials to run your business. A leased line, top-quality web hosting, appropriate branding, and content marketing are the four cornerstones your tech-based business is built on. Get these right and you immediately appear more professional and reputable in clients’ eyes.
