You have many places to display your brand, which some people refer to as a logo but is far more complex than your corporate emblem.  Your website is one of the most critical locations to market your brand, in addition to displaying your logo.

I had a client ask me a few months ago if it made sense for his company to have a website any more.  He was probably thinking that with all the attention social media is garnering, that a website was a waste.  I insisted a website is still vital for marketing one’s business; it’s just that the technology behind websites and how the spiders search for content is constantly evolving.  In other words, websites still and will always need to be updated to accommodate technology and the content modified to reflect the changes the business … and consumers … go through on a regular basis.

Another client was frustrated because a friend of her daughter told her he could build the business website.  Sound familiar?  After months of sitting on the domain name, the daughter’s friend had yet to activate the website.  There was always an excuse, but the one excuse the friend found hard to swallow was that he lacked the expertise to get the project done at the professional lelve the business needed.  We got involved by generating the content and working with a developer to get the site done.

The client has realized that marketing her business is a bit more complicated than the first blush, and that emotional connections can make business decisions difficult.  It was hard for her to “fire” the friend of her daughter because of the emotional impact, and from the cost she had to incur to fix the problem.

It is a decision that must be made, however.  Emotions aside, your website is one of the main tools for marketing your business.  If you lack the skills or the staff to generate the content that will tell your story and present your business in the most advantageous light with the highest likelihood of generating top returns from the search engines, you need to find and contract with professionals who can get it done.

You can actually save money with professional assistance.  Here’s how, and how you can tell if you are working with a pro:  A professional meets with you to gather the information needed to generate your website’s content.  During that meeting, they should also give you a fairly accurate estimate of how much time is required to craft your copy.

You save money working with your web development company when you can deliver content, images, logos, and color schemes in one fell swoop.  If you are building your first corporate website, start with a basic site, but think through what elements you envision being there when it is what you want it to be, or if money were a non-factor.  If you are tweaking an existing site, and bringing in a new developer, your old developer needs to give the new team access to your files.

While it may seem too complicated, remember the importance of your corporate image, and how it’s reflected in your web presence.  Old images and expired dates, including the copyright, can be damaging to those visiting your site for the first impression.

Here’s an example of how a good team can save you headaches and time.  We started working with a web developer who had constructed a website for a cookie company.  The design was done and the content was in Latin because the developer was waiting for the business owner to provide copy.  Getting involved, as we’ve often found, the owner lacked the time to generate the content because they were focused on running their business.  That’s more common than you might think, and business owners often struggle because they lack marketing skills, especially when it comes to the Internet, in most cases.  They simply don’t have time to devote to that aspect of their business.

The developer hired Brand Irons to generate the content.  We met with the business owner on Monday and E-mailed the website’s content back to them on Tuesday.  We followed up on Wednesday and heard the owner ask if the developer could just post something about the site being “under construction” instead of content in Latin.  We advised them that all they needed to do was make any changes and approve the content and the site could be updated with new content within a couple of hours.

They did, and it was updated later that day.  Visitors are much happier now, and we even translated the landing page copy to Czech, Danish, and German.

So, yes, you do need a professional looking website for your business.  You can engage Brand Irons to design it in such a fashion that reflects your brand the way it should.