As a small to medium business owner, you may have had quite a few people trying to sell you a new website. And telling you that you can claim PIC (Productivity, Innovation Credit) for it.
Here’s what they don’t tell you:
– Your spanking new $5k website probably won’t make you any money. From experience, you will need to run ads (among other things) to get an audience. And then, have good copywriting on your site to convert them to sales. Though, of course, your ads themselves will have to have copy that’s good enough to stop viewers in their tracks.
– They may also say that you need content marketing, and that they’ll prepare a year’s forecast of content for your website…
Which, after hearing one such line, led me to ask them “How will people know to come to the website to see all that content?”
The answer I got: “Oh when people Google-search and you appear on the first page.”
This is because Google likes fresh content and sites that’re updated often, can eventually end up on page 1 of search results.
I said “eventually”, because it takes maybe 2-3 months for that to happen. Can your business afford to wait that long for visitors to stumble upon your site for it to sell to them?
Unless of course, you’re running specific stuff like say “Cervelo torque settings”, which I did for the Bikes n Bites website. That little beauty showed up on page 1 within the week.
But chances are, most of the folks pitching to you either won’t tell you that the website they do for you won’t make you money… Or they themselves don’t know about it to tell you.
All they know is “PIC claim”.
And all they want to sell you is a $3-5k website.
Which leaves them with some cash in the bank, and you… A few k’s poorer.
So… If anyone tries to pitch something expensive to you, do ask “What’s the ROI on that?”
Cus, honestly, having a website for the sake of a website is terrible.
A website that doesn’t sell for you is like a signboard that just sits there doing nothing.
On the topic of PIC claim, here’s something extra… And also something I learnt so that I won’t repeat the same mistakes. (Cus yeah, one of the best ways to learn is through other people’s mistakes.)
I once sat through a CRM (Customer Relationship Mismanagement) presentation where the guy went through the software’s back-end on how I can use it… But I was really more interested in knowing how it could make my boss and the company, sales and money.
Because many CRM software (I’m not sure I can call it a “solution” yet) seem to promise to get you sales.
Alas, what killed the sale for him was when he asked me “What does your company sell?”
Do any one of them spend a bit of time to do a little homework anymore?
How can they sell something to someone without knowing what they themselves are selling? How then, would they know if their product is a good fit for you?
But yes, the next time someone tries to sell you something expensive, please ask them “What’s the ROI on that?”
Don’t let yourself get wool pulled over your eyes so easily.
You’ll probably find yourself saving quite a bit of good money!
But, if you’re really keen to spend $3-5k, why not use it on some advertising instead? Like say, on Google ads, or maybe even Facebook ads, if that’s a good fit for your company and the people you’re trying to attract.
If you’re thinking of running print ads, which can be very expensive, I’d advise testing your ad copy in a less expensive medium first.
That’s because, if the copy in the less expensive one doesn’t get you many good leads, that’ll mean you just blew anywhere between $5k to $30k on a print ad.
With zero returns.
Always test on something small before you run it on a big one.
You’ll probably pat yourself on the back later on for saving all that money… And maybe buy me a cuppa coffee for the good advice too. 🙂
