We are now living in the internet age and the customer has power!

As we continue living in the internet age and technology is growing faster then ever, companies have to be focused on taking care of their customers. If you are not, then you will be joining the 80% of small businesses who fail.

Your customers now have information and reviews on every competitor in your space by searching the internet. Lets just assume your competitors aren’t better then you, because if they are, you will be missing out on a lot of money!

Consumers are now picking the companies they want to give their business to from behind their computers. Your success will depend on high quality services/products and in your visibility to your market place.

With the internet giving people access to reviews and information from Google, Facebook, Yelp, etc; customers are now seeing who the good and bad companies are before they choose who they will spend their money with. Consumers trust these reviews and online information just as much as they do their best friend.

The internet has made it so that crap and invisible companies in the market place will never get that “I wanna give you my business” phone call, while the credible and visible businesses will be taking all of the cash flow.

Now if the above sentence is hard to understand, then just know this: if your online reputation is bad or your product/service is not good, then you will soon join the 80% of small businesses who rightfully go out of business!

So, if you’re one of the small businesses who provide a great product/service and don’t want to go out of business, ask yourself one question. What should I do?

The first thing you need to do is get your potential customer’s attention!

I always tell business owners, “You can have the best product/service in the world, but if nobody knows you exist, then who cares?”

This statement continues to be true, so make sure you are getting attention in your market place!

To get your customers attention in the internet age, you continuously have to be marketing and you need to have an up-to-date website. Your website needs to provide enough information to where a customer will feel safe buying from you.

One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make is that they make it too hard for their customers to contact them. You want to make sure that when your customer is ready to buy, it is easy for them to contact you, or for them to leave you their contact information. You can accomplish this by having a lot of call-to-actions on your website while having many ways your customers can contact you.

On top of having an optimized website you will also need to be all over the internet!

What I mean by this is, you need to be posting on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and every other channel that your customer is on. Honestly, if you’re not using these FREE marketing tools then you’re more then wrong!

By providing excellent content to your customers on every channel possible they will start to see you as the expert in your field. Once your customers see you as the expert in your field they will start to contact you when they’re in need of your product/service. They may even refer you to their friends when they’re in need of your product/service.

With good content across the internet and your website to capture your customers information, you will be getting a lot of FREE attention to your business and more potential customers to follow up with.

Once you’ve used your website to gain your customers trust and contact information, the next step is to have your sales team reach out and close the deal.

Assuming your sales team knows what to do and has closed the deal with your new customers, you now have to provide them with such an incredible product/service that it will MAKE THEM want to write an online review about their experience with your product/service.

This review is the most important thing because consumers will trust an online review just as much as they will their best friend, and these reviews will get your business a boat load of ATTENTION!

Side note: If you get any bad reviews you should publicly address the issue and make sure that your customers are seeing how you have improved from your mistakes. Customers will be more scared of a company that has bad reviews and ignores them then they will be of a company who addresses their mistakes and fixes them!

If you want to stay in business in the internet era, follow this simple formula for success and make sure to repeat it with every customer!