Email address? Website?

A question asking about the need for an email address and website on marketing materials:

Hi Steve

Barb is asking if I want my email address and web site on my business card and stationary. I don't plan on getting a web site at this time but I was just wondering what to do about the email address. Did you have very many people contact you by email? I am thinking it may be better to make them phone me because then I can feel them out better. What are your thoughts on this?

Regards
Dave

My Response:

Hi David:

I would think long term if I were you. In other words, the best image for your company is to not have an email address on your marketing materials like david@aol.com. In my opinion, you need to have an email address that matches up with your domain name which of course needs to be a name that matches up with what your company does like clearviewwindowwashing.com. It looks much better to have david@clearviewwindowwashing.com on your business card/marketing materials then an aol, comcast, hotmail, etc address.

An option to using a junk email address is to simply leave all email addresses off marketing materials and then edit the materials when you have a website so you can use the email address(es) offered through the website.

As a side note, I would start thinking about an online presence soon. I'm not sure whether you are aware of it or not, but not only can your website be a great way to enhance your image, but it can bring you in free traffic through the search engines. So if someone types in "window cleaning in <your city>", your website may display and you'll generate additional calls/jobs. Again…these jobs don't cost you any direct dollars to get.

It is a bit costly and requires some technological background (html editing, ftp, editing dns info., etc) to create your own website, but in leiu of that, The Customer Factor is an option for you to get a solid online presence for little money and no computer/website knowledge at all. Because a free website does come with each membership.

In my opinion, the website alone is worth the cost of the program. Especially considering that you can gain customers for free from the search engines. As an additional note, some prospects will prefer to research you and your business from the comfort of their home. They may not want to call for fear of being "pressured". Only after they feel comfortable with you online (by looking at your website), will they then call you. Not everyone is like this obviously because you will get a number of direct calls (from postcards, flyers, etc), but there are definitely some people who prefer checking out a website first.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Steve