Posted by Kathleen S on Wed, Oct 21, 2009 @ 03:02 PM
The market today is ever changing and as a small business owner, you need to be able to embrace those changes to effectively compete. Whether it is in the way you communicate with your customers or the process by which you deliver services, an innovative approach is necessary to remain on top.
With the economic roller coaster of the past year, it is likely you made specific changes in the way you do business in order to remain viable and profitable. Technologies available today make it possible for you to compete on a major level, as well as maintain effective communications regardless of location.
Your industry is most likely national, if not global, which can present certain challenges when you are hit hard in a recession. With web conferencing solutions, you no longer need to worry what necessary travel will do to your overall budget. The advanced solutions today ensure this is not the conference call of yesterday, but the innovation of real-time, high quality, unified communications of today.
According to the T3 Group, a Telecom Intelligence Firm, web conferencing is seen as one of the top five unified communications applications viewed by enterprise managers as offering the clearest or fastest return on investment. In fact, 52 percent of respondents described web conferencing as delivering a fast return.
According to a recent Frost & Sullivan report, 83 percent of executives view communications and collaboration tools as useful when providing cost reduction benefits and 81 percent report they also allow for faster decision-making. If any of your staff, customers or partners is located outside of your geographical area, web conferencing can deliver measurable benefits.
If your primary supplier is in Hong Kong and you are based in Chicago, you need to be able to effectively communicate and collaborate with your supplier to be sure you are driving your key strategic initiatives. With web conferencing capabilities, you can access and share specific reporting tools, collaborating as often as necessary without wasting valuable time on an airplane.
The options available with web conferencing include both on-premise and on-demand options that can provide remote access and firewall penetration that are designed to be easy to access and use.
All you really need for effective web conferencing is a computer, a Webcam, Voice over IP (VoIP) for real-time audio, appropriate software and enough space on a server and/or bandwidth to support the meeting.
Your budget, plans for growth and current conferencing needs will determine the right fit for you. Either way, once you make the implementation, you will be much better positioned to drive collaboration, reduce costs and enjoy the benefits of web conferencing.
Posted by Kathleen S on Sat, Oct 10, 2009 @ 07:20 PM
Small businesses are flocking to audio and Web conferencing for many reasons and they are all about money. Choosing audio and Web conferencing over traditional methods helps small businesses by helping them save money and more of it. Here’s how:
Travel
Audio and Web conferencing services let small businesspeople cut out travel expenses. In some cases, they can do away with travel altogether. There is no reason to spend hundred on air fare and hotel rooms when the same tasks can be accomplished right from your office computer.
Time
The old adage, “time is money,” has never been more true. Technology has saved us time in so many ways. Audio and Web conferencing is just another example of how technology allows us to do more. Time spent traveling is unfruitful and wasteful. That time can be better used to develop closer client relationships, provide better customer service to existing customers and develop more leads.
Printed Marketing Materials
There is no longer a need to create expensive marketing pamphlets and proposals. PowerPoint presentations are much cheaper to produce and can be presented via Web conferencing. Marketing this way saves trees and saves your budget.
Shorter Sales Cycles
Audio and Web conferencing shortens the sales cycle dramatically. Deals that once took several phone calls, letters and visits to accomplish can now be completed in one fell swoop through Web conferencing. Salespeople can instantly show prospects a product demonstration, invite decision makers into the conference and close the deal on the spot. All the extra time can be used to general more leads, contact more prospects and close more sales.
Webinars
Some small businesses are actually using Web conferencing itself to make money. They hold educational webinars for paying participants. Webinars can also be used to create leads by attracting the type of customer a salesperson is seeking. The relationships developed from these events can create more leads and develop more sales.
Posted by Kathleen S on Tue, Oct 06, 2009 @ 07:56 AM
Web Conferencing is a diverse tool that allows professionals an affordable way to create webinars for marketing purposes. The only real difference between web conferencing and a webinars is the number of attendees and the level of interaction between the moderator and participants. You can create webinars for up to 500 people with your web conferencing provider.
In a webinar, you arrange the meeting through an email campaign to prospects in your email list. You can use the promotion of your webinar to attract more visitors to your email list through a combination of PPC, article marketing and social media.
To connect users with the webinar, you send an email with a registration link and then send a second email with a link to the conference just before you begin. Webinars that provide free information of interest to your market segment are the most effective way to creating a solid bond of trust between you and your email list. This trust will make it easier to market your products to those individuals later.
It is a good idea to include a question and answer session or instant messaging service with your webinar so you can get feedback from your audience. It will also help you solidify your social connection with the webinar attendees. By recording the webinar, you create a presentation that you can leave on your website to attract even more visitors.
After a webinar, follow-through is vital. Be sure to send “thank you” notes to attendees and “sorry we missed you” notes to registrants who did not make it. You can use this opportunity to communicate with the registrants and build relationships. Be sure to offer a link for those who missed the webinar to watch it later.
Posted by Kathleen S on Fri, Oct 02, 2009 @ 08:38 AM
Web conferencing is a growing alternative for business people looking to save expenses and time. It allows users to communicate interactively via shared desktops, document sharing, instant messaging and voice. These features let you collaborate with others easily rather than working on many back and forth emails and phone calls. It is far more efficient to get everyone together in one room through web conferencing.
Web conferencing is as easy to use as any web site. The intuitive interface means you only need to point and click to invite attendees, interact on a project and save the meeting for later reference. 24/7 customer support ensures your meetings always go smoothly.
Before you invest in a web conference service provider, make sure you will actually get a reasonable return on your investment. The best way to do this is to use a provider that charges per use instead of by the month. This way you have a solid return on your investment and you can even allocate the expense to each project.
Make sure you choose a web conferencing provider that can meet all your needs. Many have more than one popular name-brand platform for you to host your meeting. If you get a service with excellent customer support, you will get a free tutorial or even a live walk through with a customer service agent. This is very important to minimizing the learning curve and ensuring you are up and running as soon as possible.
Posted by Kathleen S on Thu, Oct 01, 2009 @ 07:30 AM
Small businesses cannot afford unhappy customers. Growing and turning a profit requires that you continue to maintain satisfied existing customers while acquiring new ones. To accomplish this, you need an efficient, affordable and fast customer support system in place that benefits both your customer service support personnel and your customers. You are probably already using audio and Web conferencing for business contacts around the world, but have you considered what these services can do for your customer support operations?
Most companies maintain customer service agents through a call centers, instant messaging and email. While these are useful avenues, you can save a lot by switching to audio and Web conferencing for the majority of your customer service support questions. Audio conferencing is much more affordable than call centers and Web conferencing offers the benefits of sharing documents and applications with clients while providing instant messaging or voice communications at the same time.
By switching to Internet-based conferencing solutions for customer support, you are no longer limited geographically for your customer service hiring needs. Many companies outsourced customer service to foreign countries, only to learn that their customers detested speaking with individuals with poor English skills. By instead using a combination of audio and Web conferencing, combined with native English speakers where the prevailing wage is lower, you can accomplish the same savings without sacrificing customer service.
Another problem with telephone support and instant messaging is the inability to show customers visually how to fix a problem. When you use an audio conferencing service that also offers Web conferencing, you can easily turn the phone call into a Web conference and show customers how to resolve their product questions. This leads to quicker problem resolutions and few onsite customer support calls. Together these conferencing tools will save your business time and money allowing you to service more customers in less time and a lower cost.
