Remember back in the mid-1980s, when fax machines became affordable, how everyone would ask, “Oh, do you have a fax?” Then, within just a few short years, the question simply became, “What’s your fax number?” People just assumed that if you were a serious businessperson, you had a fax machine. Well, that’s how it’s getting to be now with Web sites.
Only a year or two ago, many folks I talked to on the floor of the Pumper & Cleaner Environmental Expo International weren’t even thinking about getting on the Web. This year, I’d guess about half of them have either launched a Web site or are in some phase of making that happen. By the end of the decade (which is really only a year away), those who haven’t migrated the majority of their company information onto the Internet will be in the minority.
A 2005 study estimated that 76 percent of American households had at least one Internet-connected computer. That was four years ago.
There has been an irreversible change in the way people seek information. As more young people from the “wireless generation” enter the workforce and use Web-enabled mobile devices, online search will only grow in popularity and importance. Service businesses ignoring this reality are in serious danger of being left in the dust of the last century. Here’s a look at how two PROs are handling the issue for their companies.
Columbia Sanitary Services serves Colorado’s Front Range with portable restrooms and septic pumping. Sheila Nessler is the majority owner with her husband, Denny Nessler. They take advantage of the edge gained in snagging government contracts with a woman-owned business designation. Both realized that to exploit that edge, they’d need to take their business where the majority of vendor-seeking eyes were looking.
“We wanted more exposure as a minority-owned business to federal projects and other contracts where that matters,” says Denny Nessler. “We’ve seen in meetings and negotiations Sheila has had that we’re taken more seriously since we have a Web site.”
He says the Columbia staff did an in-house survey that tracked new business calls for a year, and were surprised by what was learned. “We tracked our leads and found we were getting more referrals by word-of-mouth than we were from the Yellow Pages. We knew the word-of-mouth from neighbors was a large part of (how we got) new business, but we had no idea how few people really look at our phone book ads. And the ads are not cheap.”
Nessler says that based on these surprising results, Columbia immediately decided to reallocate its marketing dollars. The Nesslers took a critical look at the large budget they had designated for print and decided to pull out of several of the phone directories they’d been in since buying the business a decade ago. They used that money to fund a Web site launch.
They approached COLE Publishing’s Web site design division to help plan and implement their company’s first Internet presence, www. copotties.com. The plan is to continue sending more marketing dollars to the Web site. Columbia will see about a 25 percent growth in that spending over the next 3-5 years.
“We started thinking about getting a Web site about seven years ago,” recalls Leslie Fisher, who co-owns Eagle Services, a septic pumping and portable restroom company, with her husband, Jeff Fisher. “I was a computer programmer in a previous life, so I thought I could do it myself. I probably could, but I just don’t have the time.’’
The Fishers finally hired a company to produce a Web site. The site, www.eagle-services.net, had only been live for a short time, so the company hasn’t seen any changes from it. But the site will change the way promotional budgets are divided between print and online marketing, with more dollars being allocated to keeping the Web site up to date.
Fisher says the impetus for launching the site was the realization that how people shop for services has changed drastically over the past several years. “People just go out and Google something when they want to find it. I do,” she says. And now she’s in the process of making sure that all the company’s printed materials — letterhead, business cards, brochures — and all the fleet vehicles carry their Web address to drive traffic.
Fisher understands the need to keep the content fresh and current. “The way the world finds its information has changed,” she says. She believes Eagle’s Web site will ensure her company remains relevant to how people search for services.
