Why Do YOU
Need A Website?
By Stephen H. Watkins, Sr. |
 |
Exposure. If there is one word that sums up the primary reason to have a website, it has to be exposure. The Internet community is growing at a phenomenal rate. The number or users increases by thousands every day. Everywhere you look, you see www.something.com. Every commercial, every printed advertisement, every new movie that comes out has a website. Every major sporting event from Boxing to the Superbowl has a website. There’s even a www.christmas.com.
Almost every major company you can imagine has, or is planning, a website. Information about cars, cats, clothing, collectors items, computer support, concert dates… it’s all out there on the Internet. People are almost as likely to log on to the Internet and search for information as they are to pick up the yellow pages. Actually, there is even a yellow pages on the internet…and if you are not in it, you may be losing business.
Face it, the very fact that you are reading this article on the Internet proves that people are turning to the electronic media for news and information. It’s that simple. As the world shifts into an online mode of operation, you have to change your marketing strategy. If your name isn’t where the consumers look, you won’t get any calls.
More and more Jazz artists are releasing samples of their newly released music VIA the internet. It’s simple for a consumer to log on to an artists’ website, read the promotional materials on the home page, look at the pictures and video clips then download and listen to the sample(s). If they like the music, they go to the store and buy it. This is called direct marketing.
When the consumer logged in to that website, an entire promotional package was delivered directly to their home. A package complete with audio, video, pictures, printed material and digital music samples. Even better…the materials are somewhere that the consumer can always find them.
The Internet provides you a means to get your message across to millions of people, at a cost that is unmatched by any other advertising media, electronic or printed. And there are millions more people coming online yearly. Making an investment in an attractive, informative website is as important as having business cards ready for prospective clients or customers.
Then there’s Electronic mail, or E-mail. E-mail allows you to transfer messages and attached files across the country, or the world. Your E-mail address will soon be more important, and more used, than your mailing address. I regularly collaborate on written and musical projects with my friend in Chicago. I transmit the working files from my office in Portland, OR using E-mail. When he gets the files, he works on them and sends them back for me to work on some more, and so forth… One Sunday afternoon, we wrote six iterations of a musical interlude by sending it back and forth using E-mail. That same task would have taken weeks even if we had used express mail.
In fact, the articles in JazzUSA ‘ZINE come from writers in places as far flung as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Atlanta and Seattle, but all the material is submitted using E-mail.
In this world where there is electronic money, online shopping and everything is listed somewhere on a computer, cyberspace is becoming less of a concept and more of a reality. Soon it will be closer than your corner store. The Internet allows people from all over the world to carry on commerce, and if those millions of people don’t find you while they’re looking for the same thing that you could give them, you won’t get the business. Exposure. That’s the name of the game…exposure. That’s why you need a website. |
