Why Aren’t We Getting New Clients?

Last week, I met with someone who’s helping a local preschool in my town grapple with the question, “Why aren’t we getting new clients?”. The owners of this preschool are longtime area residents, their backgrounds are in education, and in fact their preschool looks terrific when you go for a visit. So why are the owners having difficulty getting new clients?

The answer is simple: their lack of Internet presence is keeping people who are searching for a preschool from finding them, and turning-off anyone else who might be “checking them out” from visiting the school in person.

How do we know this?

We know this by conducting an Internet Presence Assessment. An Internet Presence Assessment evaluates an organization’s appearance and placement on the search engines, compares the organization with its competitors, and gathers quantitative search results directly from Google to help illustrate why the organization isn’t getting new customers and clients at the rate it should.

An assessment of the preschool’s Internet presence revealed:

1. There are tens of thousands of searches being conducted each month for preschools and words related to “preschool,” “nursery school,” etc.;
2. This preschool was not appearing in any of the search engine results (but local, competitive preschools in the area were);
3. The preschool’s outdated website was failing to project a positive image and was unimpressive when compared to other preschools in the area.

In the article “The Reasons Why Your Small Business Needs an Online Presence” appearing in the online edition of the Houston Chronicle, author Jane Williams notes:

Giving your small business an online presence means more than simply putting up a little website with your company’s address and phone number. It means setting up a virtual version of your business, with a welcoming, informative website, a Facebook page and Twitter account. In this electronic era, more people search online for the products and services they need as opposed to searching through a phone book. Ignoring this important potential marketing platform is akin to saying, “I don’t need any new business.”