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Making Your Company's Next Step - The Net StepB.J. Hoffpauir
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Good Morning, and welcome to our portion of the 1998 AFMS Measurement Short Course. My name is Bryan Hoffpauir, and with me today are Jimmy Blanco, Casey Deshotels, and Chris Llewellyn. We represent Net Step Internet Services, and the focus of our short course is using the web for measurement. We are here today to show you how you can make your Company's next step the Net Step. The Internet offers firms in the oil and gas industries an opportunity to reach their customers in innovative ways, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every month of every year, on a global scale. It offers firms that take advantage of its tremendous communication potential unprecedented economic opportunities. So the question then becomes how does one harness all the opportunities offered by the Internet into a means that will not only work in conjunction with your company's business plan, but add value to that plan at the same time. Like all other endeavors you company may undertake, it should be based upon a well-planned and focused course of action. Fortunately, we have developed a three step plan that simplifies this task, helping you to make your company's next step - the Net Step. Basically, it works like this :
Create an informative Corporate Internet Presence :Develop Company ProfileThis becomes your online business card, but given the capabilities of the World Wide Web, you can include more information than you might think. As such, this should be the method by which you provide this information to the general public :
Develop Corporate Image This becomes the method by which you provide information to your potential clients There are two basic concepts you should embrace while developing your on-line corporate image Enhance brand awareness: A web site can deliver a richer brand identity than other advertising media. You can enhance your traditional text and graphic marketing approaches with more engaging multimedia, including animation, audio, and video. Web technology helps you develop more individualized relationships with your clients, generating a brand awareness that has a higher level of personal meaning to each customer. If you could keep your customer informed of EVERY reason why they should do business with you, don't you think could do more business? Supplement traditional marketing approaches: Image building is an important part of any business's overall marketingeffort. Your web-site should function as a natural extension of yourtraditional marketing efforts. It provides your company an inexpensive means of quickly adapting your corporate image to new developments and changing needs of your clients in the oil and gas industry. You can stay up-to-date and keep pace with the times without spending a fortune to redesign your entire marketing campaign. You can also use your site as a platform to test potential new directions in your marketing plan that can later be integrated with your traditional marketing efforts, saving both time and money. Integrate your Internet Presence in to your traditional
marketing efforts. Include your world wide web address on: Even if prospects don't initially discover you on the Internet, many will use it to learn more about your company's products and services. When your site is consistent with the image you present in other materials, it helps build a credible impression in your prospect's minds, strengthening your total marketing plan. Link to similar internet resources One of the best ways to maximize your corporate internet presence's visibility is to establish links between other related sites on the net and your own home page. Links serve as interactive pointers to your home page and your company's products and services that function to pull business to you. The key concept here is community building, a concept more commonly referred to as networking. By linking to related sites on the web, you can increase the number visits to your site, and at the same time forge the ties between your company and other organizations in your sector of the oil and gas industry that form your on line community. Community building allows all members of the network to share and coordinate the specialized on line expertise and resources of each member, which increases profits for EACH COMPANY IN THE NETWORK. Contributing articles or other publications to a network partner's site allows you free advertising, while you add value to your partner's sites. The return on this minimal investment is immense. Anything added to an individual site adds value to the rest of the community. Fortunately, you are in luck. As members of the Acadiana Flow Measurement Society, you are already part of a unique on line community. Net Step Internet Services has created the official AFMS Website, located at www.afms.org. As developers and webmasters of the site we would like to make you a special offer. We will link to your site form our library of web sites of interest. Also, we are in the process of compiling a complete electronic library of every short course presented here at the AFMS Measurement Short Course over the last few years. As we develop this electronic database, we will include a link to your company's website on all of the articles and short courses your firm has presented. Also, special discounts will be offered to AFMS members who would also like to include a graphical link on the articles they have submitted. Create a "What's New Section" Once you have created your business's Internet Presence, you want to make certain that you can capture your client's attention over an extended period of time. To do this, we need to offer your site's visitors a reason to return to your web site again and again. The most effective way to accomplish this goal is to create a "what's new" section where your clients can stay informed of recent events and developments in your company. Using your corporate internet presence to improve efficiency.Improve Customer Service Clients need information. Clients always have questions about your products and services. As such, you must have staff to answer these questions. One of the best reasons to develop your own Corporate Internet Presence is that it allows you to offer your clients detailed customer service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Sit down with your service staff and put together a list of the questions that your customer service department frequently has to answer when clients call. Create a list of "Frequently Asked Questions" or "FAQ's", that your clients can search through. Encourage them to read this portion of the site before they call customer service, as they are likely to get a much quicker response. Ideally, if a business has developed this portion of their site well, a client can get all of her questions answered, without having to waste time explaining her information needs to someone over the phone. Even if each of your service staff and management only wind up saving 15 minutes of every day through the information you provide through your web site, those savings add up quickly. Considering what you spend for the average hourly wage of your sales staff, your site should completely pay for itself in it's first year alone! Provide Service listings and product catalogs Another unique benefit of developing your own corporate internet presence is that it allows you a dynamic and interactive medium to showcase your firm's products or services. The technologies of the Internet allow you to include pictures, audio descriptions, animations, technical specifications, and even movies of your product in use, to help answer some of the questions your client may want resolved before they make their purchase. By including your entire catalog of products and services on your website, you can make it easier for your clients to decide what they want to purchase. The bottom line is that you will make more sales. However, integrating your product and service catalogs can also result in added efficiency gains for your company also. You can reduce the overhead associated with revisions to your product and service catalogs. It is relatively easy to update a single page with a new product listing. Compare this with designing, publishing, and shipping your new catalog to your existing or future client base, and you can see what we mean. Given the low cost of adding new product and service descriptions to your website, you can also use your Corporate Internet Presence to test new additions to your line. You can promote a product on your site for a temporary period, and measure your client's responses to the line on your website. The interactive nature of the web allows you to easily monitor the reaction of your client base to new products, and decide if your firm would like to integrate a test product into its standard line. Enhance Sales Response time The most effective way to increase the efficiency of your
daily operations is to allow your clients to order products and services
on-line. You can easily create on-line order forms and service contracts
where your clients can enter information about themselves and the products
they are interested in purchasing. These forms can be sent to you a number
of ways : The last idea offers a host of additional benefits : You can also include an automated response function into your order forms. After submitting the order on-line, you can have a standard email response sent instantaneously to your client. This makes your client feel like they are in constant communication with you, which fosters that personal relationship with your company that will boost your sales. Implementing On Line Information Network After the first two steps are taken, complete the process
of integrating your existing information network with your Internet Presence.
By information network, we mean the entire process by which your clients
learn about your products : Provide email addresses for staff in conjunction with technical information about products, so clients can instantly send an electronic message to a staff member that is familiar with that particular product or service. This helps to create a personal relationship between your clients and your staff, making your clients feel more comfortable doing business with your team. It also boosts staff productivity and morale. This process integrates your staff into a direct line of communication with your clients. Not only does it make your staff more productive, by allowing them to handle questions and comments in a more efficient manner, but it also will make your staff feel directly involved in developing the personal relationship between your clients and your company. This will help your staff to become willing to invest more personal effort in ensuring the success of your company Incorporate form feedback into the website As important as it is to your company to elicit feedback and response from your clients, the truth of the matter is that traditional methods of doing this are horribly ineffective. Most clients do not take the time to fill out lengthy questionnaire on paper. Even if they do fill out the surveys, they have to take an extra step bad get them back to you. The only way to elicit more response from your clients is to create an incentive for them to do it, while making it easier for them to submit this information to you.
If you collect contact and mailing list information about your clients to fax or mail info to them, why not collect email addresses from your on-line survey forms also. You can offer your visitors an option to have monthly updates sent to them automatically via email. This allows you to create a comprehensive email database of current and prospective clients (helping you overall marking efforts), and also help to strengthen the relationship building process we discussed earlier. Generating Revenue through your Internet PresenceMost people assume that in order to generate revenue through the Internet they have to sell their product or service on line. Nothing could be further from the truth. Once you have mastered the first two steps we have outlined above, and you are generating a substantial amount of visitors to your site, the simplest way to generate revenue is to sell ad space on your site. Our research has indicated that you can generate literally thousands of dollars each month by simply letting another firm put a graphic ad somewhere on your site with a link that takes your visitors to their site. A few important things to remember: Profit margin: the only cost associated with hosting ad space is the cost of updating your site with the ad. In fact, the firm that designed your site can do this in a matter of hours. All you have to do is offer the ad space. Little overhead: the only overhead associated with the sale of ad space is the time it takes your billing department to process the forms and send the invoices. There is no inventory to maintain or products to resell. Don't be afraid! It may seem a bit daunting at first to add this department to your company's existing business practices. And it isn't cost-free. But the bottom line is that the revenue you can generate through the sale of ad space far exceeds the costs associated with such a venture. Plus, the experience and familiarity you gain through the simple process of selling ad space on your site prepares you for the transition to the next phase of the development of your Internet Presence: Electronic Commerce. Direct Sales of Information Services More than likely, if your firm sells products or services to companies in the oil and gas industry, you have accompanying training and educational seminars you offer in conjunction with your traditional product package. These can include : - video and audio seminars Selling these information services is a snap on the Internet. You can process orders for individuals who work with your products over the internet, accepting credit cards or checks for these products, and even have them shipped automatically to your client. Integrating the sale of these items into your website is a great way to take the first step in developing an electronic storefront. Your clients are probably already comfortable buying these small-ticket goods over the Internet, mostly because of their low prices. So you shouldn't have to wait long to develop a good idea of your potential profits associated with this venture. If your company doesn't currently offer these services to your clients, you might want to consider doing so. Direct Sales of your company's products We placed this topic at the end of this lecture to help emphasize the point that you can't do this effectively without mastering the steps we have outline previously. You wouldn't jump into any business without planning and a bit of experience to help you along the way, and doing business on the Internet should not be any different. Although we mentioned the idea of allowing your clients to place orders for products and goods, this topic takes this process to its final stage, linking your company's internal database and networks with your Internet Presence. By doing so, you forge what we call a Corporate Extranet. There are 2 basic commercial functions to integrate at this point :
These final steps require a substantial investment of both time and money on the part of your company. But that's not surprising, considering you are basically revolutionizing your business practices. As such, they require particular attention to security concerns. But addressing them properly, and completing this integration of your Corporate Internet Presence, will offer your firm unprecedented economic opportunities. Keep this in mind, and you will make the most of our your company's next step, The Net Step.
1999,98 Net-Step Media, LLC. All rights
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