Getting your professional services business online is about connecting with potential clients and partners. But gone are the days of having a website merely to publish your office address and phone number, and expecting new clients will find you! These days most firms treat their website effectively as another sales and service channel, undertaking business development and client support 24 hours a day. For professional services firms, such as management consultants, health care professionals, and legal or financial service providers, a professional web site can provide significant benefits in helping you market your business and service your clients.

Basic ways your web site can support your marketing activities

Today you can use your web site as the center of your overall marketing activity. Your web site can help you expand your messages to potential clients, especially if the services you offer are complex and not easily explained in a short advertisement. There is a limited amount of information that can be included a radio, TV or print advertisement and these mediums can be very expensive. However, if you include your company's domain name in a small advertisement you can direct your customers to your web site and guide them through the services you offer in detail.  But there are many more ways your website can help you manage and grow your business.

More advanced marketing techniques

With a little imagination, your web site can be a lot more than simply an expanded brochure about your services. If you already offer a printed newsletter, you can offer this online instead, reducing the costs of printing and mailing, while helping the environment too! You can send the newsletter out via e-mail, and then archive previous editions online. By adding a sign-up box on your web site, you can potentially reach out to prospective customers and showcase your expertise by regularly sending them your newsletter. If you offer a service that can be best explained using audio, video or photographs, you can include links from your e-mail newsletter to multi-media files housed on your site.

Adding images that explain your services graphically can be a very strong marketing tool. For example, dentists can showcase their work by displaying "before" and "after" photographs of their patients, and even letting potential patients submit questions online about specific procedures.

Another way to share your expertise with potential clients is to start a blog about a topic you understand intimately. You can blog about a variety of things, not just related to your firm; for example you can write posts about new trends in your industry, new services you are offering, case studies about your existing clients, and post reminders about seasonal events such as quarterly tax deadlines or upcoming legislative changes. Search engines like to index blogs because their content is often updated frequently, and other bloggers will often link to a post that they find valuable, which can bring your site lots of inbound links. A well-written blog can give you great credibility in your field.

Creating 24 hour Client Service

A lot of your staff's time is probably spent answering the same questions over and over again, such as directions to your office, or the services you provide. These are the questions potential clients will ask before they engage your services. Displaying the answers on your Web site and will free up a lot of time for your office staff, and ensure that there are no miscommunications with potential customers. 

Forms, forms, forms - many ways to enhance your clients' experience!

By putting a contact/ inquiry form on your site you enable clients to contact you on their own schedule, rather than during regular office hours. This can be very convenient if your clients have a busy schedule, or are even in a different time zone or country.

If your office sets appointments for you to meet with your clients, you can streamline this activity and make things easier for your customers by setting up an online appointment service. Many clients would rather schedule their appointments online because it gives them the option to look at their calendar rather than potentially juggling with a cell phone and calendar while driving in their car, or having to make appointments while in the office where other people can overhear them. An added benefit is that your web site is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week so, again, clients with busy work schedules don't have to worry about remembering to call during office hours.

If you integrate your online calendar with an automatic e-mail service, you can even e-mail a reminder to your clients a couple of days ahead of their appointment. This is more convenient for many clients and saves you the expense of having someone call to confirm your appointments.

For healthcare and veterinary services providers, you can also make it easier for clients to call in prescription requests or refills, by providing an online form that they can complete and submit ahead of time. This form can generate an e-mail to your front desk or technicians to enable them to prepare the prescription ahead of time, rather than when the client arrives at the office at the busiest time of the day!

Another use of online forms could be to provide price quotations to a potential customers, or qualify them for a financial service. These types of forms can be very useful for services such as insurance policies and loans. While you may not be able to provide a quotation automatically online, you can easily create a form that can be sent via e-mail to someone in your firm who can generate the quote and call the potential client back.

Additionally, forms can be a great way to gather feedback from your clients. You can post forms or online surveys and ask for feedback from your customers. The advantage to this is that you can obtain opinions almost instantaneously, especially if you e-mail your existing clients to ask them to complete the survey. By describing a new or existing service and asking for their ideas, you can gain valuable insight into how to position your service in a fast, economical way. Involving your clients in the development of new services not only makes these services less risky, but also gives your clients a sense of engagement with your firm.

Improve employee effectiveness

A web site is also the fastest, most economical way to disseminate information within your organization. Instead of relying on the haphazard distribution of memos and e-mails, employees can visit their company's Web site at their convenience. You can password protect an employee-only Web site, or intranet, so that sensitive information remains within the company.

Your web site can also function as the online repository of all of your service and client information, reducing paper work and filing of customer records. It is fairly easy to create an online content management system to store important documents. Some systems will even allow your staff to collaborate on documents, such as legal contracts or financial filings. If you decide to go this route, be sure to secure your website in a way that prevents hackers and other unauthorized users from accessing sensitive information.

A further step is to create what is known as an "extranet" whereby selected clients can access part of your intranet created specifically for them. They can then post materials that they wish you to work on directly to your site, or review documents you have been working on for them. Questions about work status and version control are instantly resolved when clients can see the progress of their projects online.

In summary, you should think of your web site as more than just your address on the internet. Your web site can be a valuable tool to increase your firm's productivity and radically improve client satisfaction.