Matching competition through a distinct digital identity
Tips for PCOs to spruce their online presence
Most Indian PCOs use a Gmail or other similar free email ID and do not have their website. When I recently studied PCOs of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, I found that most of them follow a similar practice of using free email services and not having company websites.
Our industry's practices depend on the country as, more advanced the country, the more developed is the pest control market. For example, if you look up PCOs of Hong Kong, you will find that most of them have websites and their company's email addresses.
In 2021 with the world still grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic, PCOs are still struggling to keep their businesses afloat. With governments still restricting movement for infection control in most countries, PCOs can reach customers only online.
And without an online presence through a website, customers will not consider such a business worthy of their order. In short, if you do not have a website, your company does NOT exist for your customers as they will not find out about you when they search online.
Smarter and larger PCOs globally have a clear online presence to attract customers and retain them. A digital presence and identity are no longer the prerogative of bigger PCOs as any small or medium enterprise can easily and cheaply upgrade its online status.
This article discusses the simple steps to make your company establish itself online if you have still not done so far.
Domain name: Your company's name in the universal resource locator (URL) is your domain name. Think of the domain as your name tag when you go to a conference.
Like your name tag, people can look up for you using your domain name.
You must register your domain name by using registrars such as Bluehost, Big Baddy, Namecheap, Google, etc. The registrars let you choose your domain name and the suffix .com, .net, or something else. You may not find a domain of your choice if you are looking for a term used by other brands and companies. In such cases, you can use variants of your name as your domain.
We share five tips below to help you with your domain name choice.
Keep your domain short as people may make mistakes keying in long domain names.
Avoid using special characters, which makes it difficult to remember and can also be confusing.
For example, if you use a dash (-), people may think it is an underscore (_) and use that instead, leading to confusion.
You do not need to use a legal company name having Private (Pvt) or Limited (Ltd) in your domain name.
Choose the .com option as that is the most common and universal suffix which people remember.
Website: With a domain name, you are set to make your company website. There are many free website makers: Wix, Weebly, Site123, Strikingly, and others if you have the time and skills to make your website. Alternately, you can use Indian design agencies to create a website for you at INR 5000 – 10000 (US$70 to 150).
Your website needs only the basic information through the Home Page, About, Products and Services, and Contact sections.
Each section of your website or one webpage will have a standard structure with some or all the following five parts.
Header: At the top of the screen, this section has the company's name and logo and banners that carry company updates of offers to customers.
Navigation Bar: Many websites have this section below the header to lead website visitors to other parts of the website.
Sidebar: This is an optional part of the website and can have links to sharing on social media
Content: This is the most important part of your website in which you can display text, images, and videos about the information you want to share with your audience.
Footer: You can use this section to provide your contact details, a link for website users to reach you, a map of the website, and your website policies.
Business Email: You need an email hosting company to enable email with your domain name in the address such as you@yourcompany.com.
Many companies provide email hosting services, with the Indian service provider Zoho gaining popularity for their economical prices and user-friendly service features.
They also have phone-in customer services which most service providers lack.
Google also provides a company email solution and is also a good option as it integrates with G-suite work tools.
All email service providers charge for their facility, which can cost about INR 60 - 200 (US$ 0.9 to 3.0) per month on Zoho. Using your company email address portrays professionalism, and as a Pest Management Professional (PMP), you must incur that cost.
Think of your customer's response on seeing you@yourcompany.com as your email ID. Your customer will consider your company better than those with free email IDs.
Is the above information overwhelming with the thought that you have a lot to do to embellish your company's digital image? Worry not.
Let me share the time estimate for each of the above activities to show you how to accomplish all three in just one week.
You need only TEN minutes to search for your domain name and register it.
You need only THIRTY minutes to set up your company email addresses.
Your company website will take you the longest but not take more than FIVE days.
For your company website, first draft website content including photos and videos for the four sections: Home Page, About, Products and Services, and Contact. Please share it with the creative agency and ask them to share their design (which they call wireframe) with you. After you approve it, the agency will work and put together your website in five days with few rounds of review and editing to improve the content.
In one week, you can go back to the market with your new website and email address.
After that, you can be sure that customers will find you more easily when they search for a PCO.
And they will regard you as a better PMP because of your digital presence, which they can reach anytime.
We welcome our new readers from Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Hong Kong with today's issue.
PCO Mentor has been an international newsletter and is happy to assist PMPs worldwide with simple and useful business information.
Very good point. We can help PCOs to setup email, domain, website