I’m going to take a slight detour away from PowerPoint and presenting in this article to veer into Marketing 101 territory. Last week, I was at a business exposition and I shared contact information with someone who I thought was a web designer. The problems began when I tried to research his company.
Exchanging contact information
Everyone’s name tags had a QR code, which you could scan with an app to get their contact information. A man was sitting behind me at one of the workshops (I’ll call him “Matt.”), and his business name seemed to indicate that he could help me to redesign my website. After a brief chat I scanned his name tag so I could follow up later.
Mixed messages
After the event, I received a spreadsheet that contained all of the the contact information I’d gathered. I looked for Matt’s web address so I could do a little research on his work and learn more about his company. But not only did the domain for his email address not match his company name, it was strange: @xyzfuneral.com. Naturally, I visited xyzfuneral.com which brought me to the XYZ Funeral Home website. I learned that Matt is a funeral director descended from a long line of funeral directors. There was no mention of the company he was representing at the business expo.
So I turned to Google to find his company website. All that came up was an entry on Alignable.com that featured an expired special offer and a parked Facebook page with no posts or photos on it.
Thanks but no thanks
The mismatched email/company name and the lack of an online presence were total deal-breakers for me. Sure, it’s possible to be both a funeral director and an awesome web designer. But the message I received is “Web design is not my real job.” His main email doesn’t go to the company he said he represents and I could find no evidence of his skills as a web designer online…the one place I should be able to find it!
The takeaway
There’s nothing wrong with starting a new business while you’re working for someone else. But if you don’t even set up a basic website for your new company, if you have a ghost-town social media presence and your email address references your “real job,” then it’ll be difficult for people to take you and your business seriously.