I've been pondering this a lately. A lot of web designers suck at web design. Many suck at marketing. The majority of web designers suck at business. And pretty much all web designers suck at sales, where sales is a virtuous skill defined as the process of figuring out what's important to their clients and then recommending a solution that helps them solve their problems and achieve their goals.

If you run a small business or manage marketing for a mid sized or large business, especially B2B businesses, and you're talking to a website designer... the most important thing to you is usually figuring out how to improve lead generation for your sales team through your website.

Paul Roetzer has published a few questions you should ask any website designer you're planning on hiring:

Q1: What's your Website Grade, Mr Designer?
Q2: How will our Website be optimized for search engines?
Q3: What Website analytics will we have access to?
Q4: Will we have the ability to change our own content?
Q5: How will our website generate leads?

Paul has some good tips in his article. You should read it if you're doing a site redesign. I'd also recommend educating yourself about the website redesign process and developing an internet marketing strategy first. Way too many people relaunch their website and then expect to figure out how to generate business from it. It really needs to be done the other way around, unless you prefer to waste time and money redoing things.

You learned how to drive before you bought your own car, right?

I asked Shari Sultana, an Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant, to write a quick article about why her clients choose to hire her, or someone like her. I have quite a few clients that could generate more leads if they had more time to committ to their content creation, link building, social media activity, etc. Some of them should consider hiring her.

If you're a small business owner you already know that time is a precious commodity. Most, if not all, small business owners wear many hats. They are the CEO, the sales department, the marketing department, the customer service department, the purchasing department and the accounting department. But doing all of these jobs leaves little to no time for building the business and increasing the profits.

Spending all your time working in your business leaves no time left to work on your business. Even if you do have a little extra time to work on your business most small business owners are either too tired or have personal commitments to attend to. Wouldn't it be great if you could just buy yourself more time? But wait, you can!

Ever heard the term "Virtual Assistant"? Virtual Assistants (or VAs) are an industry of small business owners whose business is to provide administrative and/or marketing support to other small business owners, all via the internet. Internet Marketing Virtual Assistants specialize in providing internet marketing support to small business owners who lack the time or skill to do their own internet marketing. Small business owners who hire the services of an internet marketing virtual assistant have the time to work on building their business and increasing their profits. Their VA does everything from helping with on page SEO, link building, press releases, article submissions, blogging, setting up and maintaining their social networking profiles, maintaining their websites, tracking their web analytics, and setting up their PPC campaigns.

VAs are independent contractors which means no employee taxes, benefits or overhead for the small business owners who hire them. VAs also work on an as needed basis which means no long term commitment is necessary. Virtual Assistants can be the answer to many time strapped business owners. In business, time is money. Leveraging the services of a virtual assistant could be the answer to your business success.

Business advice from design build remodeler coach, Mark Paskell:

1. What is your unique selling proposition? The Contractor Coaching Partnership coaches and mentors residential contractors, using litmus tested, proven, best practices specific to the residential construction industry, and combines them with a powerful self improvement program.
2. When & why did you start your current business? When? I started my business in February of 2008. Why? To have my own business and go after my dreams.
3. What was the smartest business decision you've made in your current business? To build my business through referrals and personal introductions.
4. What do you like most about internet marketing? I like the fact that you can reach many economically.
5. If you had one piece of internet marketing advice for another business owner, what would it be? Do not waste your money on unproven website and IT services or people.

Business advice from CPR recertification expert, Darcy Cook:

1. What was the smartest business decision you've made in your current business? We purchased a subscription to salesforce.com and transferred all of our client information into a client and sales management system.
2. What person has had the most impact on the success of your business? My brother, Joe. He is the behind the scenes, "make it all happen", unsung hero of my company. I don't make a decision on growth unless I have his support. I create it and he makes it happen. He allows me to manage the business while he works hard to operate the business.
3. If you had one piece of internet marketing advice for another business owner, what would it be? Do it right the first time. Moving toward the "latest and greatest" technology is inevitable. So, spend the time and research all of the options out there. Learn about how to maximize your website, SEO, Blog, Social Media, Video, webinars, etc..... Find someone who is already doing and using all of the tools, buy them a cup of coffee and listen.

If you're in central MA, I recommend you beg Darcy [or Joe] to buy her lunch (not just coffee) and ask her to tell you how they've become Central MA's latest internet marketing success story.

Business advice from internet marketing expert, Kara Brook:

1. When & why did you start your business? I started my business to get through college (I was self supportive from a very young age), on the day that I graduated I figured that not all 12 clients would fire me on the same day. I stuck with it for the last 20 or so years, reinventing it every five years or so out of necessity to keep up with the times.
2. What was the smartest decision you made in your current business? Focusing and specializing purely on the web, rather than trying to do everything (print, broadcast, etc.)
3. If you had one piece of internet marketing advice to give to another business owner, what would it be? Start your web projects with a keyword strategy. Don't go right to design without first considering how people will find you using your most important keywords.

1. When & why did you start your current business? I worked as in-house counsel for a real estate developer in Concord, MA. He did projects in New Mexico, Florida, the United States Virgin Islands and Martha's Vineyard. In addition to doing his legal work I acted as his office manager. In 1992 he told me he planned to retire in 2 years and I should plan for that. I decided to open my own practice with a law school room mate. He did workers comp and personal injury. I did real estate, bankruptcy, and family law.
2. What was the smartest business decision you've made in your current business? Using the Hubspot marketing software. It's already produced 3 new bankruptcy clients and 1 divorce client since May. Much more than the yellow pages EVER did.
3. If you had one piece of internet marketing advice for another business owner, what would it be? Put the time in and follow a plan. Create the content. Then optimize for key words. Then build links. Most importantly blog, blog, blog!
   

1. What is your unique selling proposition? Our business is one of the few practices that specializes in Asian Cosmetic Facial Surgery.
   
2. What was the smartest business decision you've made in your current business? First and foremost was incorporating an effective and targeted internet marketing strategy.
3. What do you like most about internet marketing? What I find most rewarding is the immediate and direct changes you can make on your business plans. If done right, the impact can be significant and immediate.

Business advice from Sanjib Sarkar 

1. What is your company's unique selling proposition? We sell homeopathic medicine products online.  Our company also sells other natural products to consumers such as Poison Ivy Lotion, Poison Ivy Pills, Natural Pet Meds, Sun Block and other products.   
2. When & why did you start your current business/take your current position? Our website started in March 2001.  I basically saw a need to provide homeopathic medicine on the Internet.  We were the first company to offer this type of service.  Now many other companies are started to offer similar services.  I have been president of Hmedicine.com since 2001.
3. What was the smartest business decision you've made in your current business/current position?  Drop shipping products.  We carry quite a bit of products so our company is not a 100% drop ship company.  However, we specialize in selling hard to find homeopathic medicine.  These are great items to drop ship because consumers have a difficult time finding them.  Also, they make poor items to stock because a few select people are looking for these homeopathic medicines.  We were able to create a niche market because of this.
4. What person has had the most impact on the success of your business/career? It has been a host of partners and people helping with the business.  I could not name just one.  It really takes a team effort to be successful.
5. What do you like most about internet marketing?  The challenge of dealing with Google.  Your site can be ranked in the top 10 one day and you may be in the top 100 the next day.  This makes Internet marketing very challenging but at the same time very interesting.
6. If you had one piece of internet marketing advice for another business owner, what would it be?  Patiently create great content.  The website rankings will take care of themselves if you create the great content.  You need to have some patience because it may take search engines and people longer than 6 months to start responding and sending you traffic and sales.

I'm starting a business advice interview series, mostly small and mid sized business owners, who are willing to share some advice with my readers.

Business Advice from Dave Kurlan:

1. When & why did you start your current business? Sales development was a calling - destiny - what I simply must do in this lifetime.
2. What was the smartest business decision you've made in your current business?  A 1992 decision to have PENTA Communications handle marketing and public relations.  By 1994 I was playing to national audiences.
3. What do you like most about internet marketing?  Internet marketing includes writing, blogging, emailing, connecting and reading... activities that I enjoy but don't have any time for during regular business hours when the greatest impact I can have on my business takes the forms of selling, managing, coaching or training. That forces me to perform internet marketing either at night or early in the morning, where it doesn't interfere with the more profitable activities.  I don't have time to conduct traditional marketing activities during the day and they can't be performed outside of regular business hours so the intersection of after hours availability and internet marketing make a nice couple.

Many traditional businesses believe they don't need to get online - but they're already there.

Small business owners often believe they don't need a website. This is an especially common sentiment when the company has a local, face to face focus. They don't use e-commerce, so why should they bother with web pages, blogs and the rest?

The answer is simple: If they don't get online, someone will put them on - and they won't have a say in the results. Chances are that if your business has a Yellow Page listing, its name is on the Web. Here's how it got there:

Local Resources: Chatter from locally-focused networks like Kijiji, Craigslist and Facebook may mention an "offline" business in passing. The site might just grab content from local phone directories. These are generally difficult to browse from Google and in some cases (like Facebook); much of the content isn't searchable at all. Blind searches either won't find you, or bury you in an obscure sub-page.

Keyword Harvesting: Black hat techniques often rip long tail keywords from local directories. Surfers are likely to find these during targeted searches, when they know your business exists but don't know anything about its web presence. This creates a high level of expectation - one that's ruined the moment they hit a useless link farm.

Communities: Facebook, blogs, rating sites like restaurantica.com and online forums let just about anybody sound off about your business - and who knows what they'll say? The Social Web is a great way to bring people together, but it's also land of trolls: people who will insult your company, or worse, promote it in an off-putting, abrasive fashion.

The Broadcast Fallacy

Most people on the Web - the ones with money to spend, anyway - were raised on traditional media. They're vulnerable to a phenomenon called the Broadcast Fallacy.

The Broadcast Fallacy is a simple concept: People confuse a message's reach with its authority. On the Web, an individual has a global broadcast reach - what used to be the province of traditional, centralized media like television. Nasty forum posts or one-star ratings from a handful of cranks earn disproportionate authority. Agreement spreads virally, as people affirm their membership in an online community by siding with early opinions. If a business doesn't grab hold of its image on the Internet, someone else will.

Ambush 2.0

There's only one cure for the Broadcast Fallacy: Set up your own "broadcast." Top-notch internet marketing seizes control of a client's image on multiple fronts to combat Social Web trolling, local obscurity and the black hat SEO "ghetto." Functional web design and smart keywords are still necessary, but a comprehensive plan also includes:

Social Web Vectors: Everybody knows how important a blog is, but it's just your Web 2.0 "home base." Experiment with tweets, Facebook groups and forums. Web 2.0 is still evolving, so explore new services, but don't chain yourself to them. Analyze the results and focus your time on proven lead sources. That's why they're "vectors" - the hot spots can change.

Human Conversations: Avoid online "silences" by updating your social network presence consistently. Augment a business' formal presentation with biographical information, pictures of employees and a more casual, day to day communication style. It's easy to criticize a faceless company. If people know a business by its people, that stimulates a sense of empathy.

Prosumer Relationships: Prosumers have an above average interest in the company's products and services. They want to feel involved in business decisions. Don't believe that prosumerism is limited to technical fields; foodies and classic car aficionados are prosumers too. Every business needs to find its prosumer community, their hub sites and leaders. Target them with special offers, exclusive events and interviews. This puts them on the "inside track:" they value, so they're more likely to give favorable feedback. Prosumers usually provide the first and most respected comments about your business, so their opinions have a potent viral effect.

Turning Words into Action

Provided they have a solid website and SEO strategy, any business can take command of its Social Web presence - in theory. Don't assume you have the time, confidence or writing ability to update a blog every month, post on an industry forum or administer a Facebook group.

Internet marketing companies that focus on technical solutions don't provide quality "soft services" like blogging, marketing copy and web PR. If you're looking into partnering with a web marketing company, make sure they can provide these services. Even if you do have the time for social networks and prosumer relations, a good company should be able to improve your performance with research and stylistic advice.