These are very exciting times for us here at LocalTail.

Why, exactly? We have decided to revamp the company with a brand new focus and a new strategy. Not only did we redesign the website (which pretty much acts as our storefront for the business) but you will notice that we’ve completely rewritten every aspect of the site. We also took the time to carefully analyze where we want to take the business from the remainder of 2010 onwards.

Why are we doing this? Well, as you would know, one of the advantages of being a small-business is being nimble and having the ability to act quickly. The business was bootstrapped from the get-go, and we completely embraced the learn-as-you-go strategy from the beginning.

After spending the first half of the year getting our feet wet in the small business Internet advertising space, we finally figured out the final crucial pieces of our overall strategy, namely: who our ideal clients are, what we can provide to best help them, and how much we should charge for our services. We also figured out which direction we should take our marketing strategy and what activities we should focus on to best grow the business.

Either way, this probably wouldn’t matter much to you if this is your first time meeting us, but we wanted to formalize it by making a post about it on the blog. For more information about the direction LocalTail is going, take a few minutes to read the home page and the About page. We’re definitely excited about the rest of 2010, and are already looking for bigger and better things in 2011 which you can certainly expect us to be working ourselves off to achieve.

If there’s one crucial mistake that most business owners make with their websites and their ads, it’s this:

More often than not, your prospects have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA why they should hand over their hard-earned cash to you.

Most business owners think that all they have to do to turn prospects into clients is to set up a website and mention what services they perform.

Take the computer repair industry, for instance.

Let’s say that I’m looking for someone to get rid of the viruses on my desktop computer. When I do a search on Google for computer repair companies in my area, I see nothing but websites for computer repair businesses talk about the different types of services they do — virus removal, hard drive repairs, operating system installations, etc.

None of them tell me why I should do business with their company.

As someone looking for someone who could fix my computer, what do I end up doing? I’ll call the first few businesses that I see, ask what their prices are for virus removals, and take my computer to whoever has the lowest price.

If you’re not offering the lowest prices on that particular service… Sorry, you lose.

But imagine this situation instead…

What if that website told me about the dangers of going with the low-price companies — mainly, they only fix the symptoms and don’t get to the root of the problem, and that I can almost be sure that additional errors will appear as a result of their band-aid fixes?

What if this website openly admits that they have slightly higher fees than their competitors, but guarantee that my computer will be 100% virus-free — and if any additional viruses appear, they’ll fix those too at no additional charge to me?

Okay, now we’re talking.

That company gave me a damn good reason why I should go with them instead of the average computer repair service they’re competing with. In doing so, they put themselves in a position miles beyond their competitors and made themselves the easy choice to go to if I need my computer fixed.

By telling me the specific benefit I would get by choosing THEM over other companies, they have made it easy for me to make a decision — one that isn’t based on who has the lowest price. I end up realizing that I’ll save more in the long-run by avoiding repeat repairs and getting rid of the problem for good.

We have experienced as much as a 300% improvement in terms of the response by simply adding this one small change in our clients’ websites. We have also performed numerous split-tests on the benefits we highlight to see which one would receive the most responses, and managed to get an improvement every time.

Take a look at your existing marketing materials (your Yellow Pages ad, postings on Craigslist, your website, etc.) and ask yourself if you’re REALLY telling your prospects about the BENEFIT they would get by choosing you. Merely listing the different services you provide is nowhere near enough to make them want to do business with you — you need to dig deep into the minds of your clients and find out exactly what they want to get when they hire you.

Your prospect’s don’t care about anything except what you can do for them. Tell them exactly what they want to hear, and they will thank you by hiring you.