I recently reported on our companion news service Direct Mail Secrets two surveys which confirmed that websites and blogs are for many firms the most important source of generating new leads.

I’ve now been talking to some of the firms that we work for on a regular basis and it turns out to be much the same for companies that sell into schools.  Not surprisingly, given that they are literate and intelligent people, teachers read blogs and web sites.

This discussion started because we had a debate with one client in which we told them that their low sales were due to a lack of good web site.  “But we have a web site,” they said, and we said “yes you do, but all it has is a few pictures of the furniture you make; what it needs is lots of articles about school furniture and your developments – so that when teachers search for these topics they will find you.”

Now one problem that can happen is that companies then say, “well we have a problem updating the site at the moment, because we can’t get a reply from our site developer”.   In fact out of 3 conversations I had yesterday about this topic, 2 people said that to me.

Yet there is a way around it.  You can build a second site, which links back to your main site, and have it up and running in a day.   Hamilton House will even offer to set up a web site for you and host it, for £175.  After the first year you pay just £50 a year.  http://www.hamilton-house.com/webdesign.html for details.

As further evidence of the importance of an ever developing web site, in a survey by Demandbase the percentage of respondents to the survey citing that the business web site is their top source of leads is 64% higher than those citing email (which is the second most popular online lead source).

Eden Platform in their survey found that a standard web page can deliver more advertising value than many companies realize.

In August this year Eden Platform measured pages and visitors for a sample of more than 100 small business websites.

They found that each page on a small business website produced 55 unique visitors during the month.

Adding one new page of content to a business website each week can be as effective as having a £50,000 advertising budget, the study concluded.

Of course there are some complexities and technicalities.

Unfortunately some firms spend money on the razzamatazz of making a web site look good, but then don’t add to it with new articles regularly, and don’t give the customers reasons to come back and talk with the company, so the effect is lost.

Hamilton House runs over 100 web sites and blogs including the experiment I set up 3 years ago in setting up a couple of web sites from scratch, totally away from our core business, to see if we could make the theory work, has proven a huge success.  Last month they got just under half a million page impressions between them.

Their design work is very basic – everything is to do with putting up new content all the time.

If you would like to talk about this approach, please do call 01536 399 000.   The programme in which we work with clients to integrate their email marketing, postal campaigns and their web sites and blogs is Velocity (www.velocity.ac)

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