Congratulations on starting your Energy Broker business! The field of deregulated energy is booming, and smart brokers are looking to properly promote themselves.
At Broker Online Exchange, we fully understand the importance of the client acquisition process. We even included tools in our EnergyEngine software to help the client setup process along. But first, you need to get the clients, and a website can be a great tool to do so. Here’s why:
1. Legitimacy
Having a professional website that highlights your experience, training, and past client successes gives you a level of legitimacy in the field. Prospective clients can—and will—check you out online before contacting you or moving forward in the process. Without a website, you’ll leave them wondering, “who is this person,” and the inevitable “Why don’t they have a website if they’re an established professional?” Having a website creates a sense of legitimacy in the eyes of potential clients.
2. A Simple Addition
If you’re running another business that you’ll be adding energy management consultant services to, like an engineering firm, then you likely already have the website infrastructure in place. Adding a page or two to highlight your knowledge and experience is a small price to pay for the exposure it can bring.
3. Marketing
Finding clients is the first part of the battle. The second part is having the infrastructure and processes in place to turn that prospect into a client (check out our EnergyEngine software for more information on this). Without a website, how will prospects find you? If you have an existing roster of clients from another aspect of your business that can fuel all the business you’ll need, then perhaps you won’t need marketing. For the rest of us, a website is vital. For example, if you want to leverage Google’s Pay Per Click advertising or Facebook’s advertising, you need a website for that ad traffic to land on.
4. Leads
Having a website is only part of the client-acquisition process. Once you have a website and traffic visiting it, you’ll need lead-generating software to turn that traffic into energy-management leads. But again, no website, no traffic—and no traffic, no leads. As an example, take a look at our energy broker oriented site—which has helped us successfully market our software to a wide range of professionals.
Reasons Not to Get a Website
Of course, no argument for an energy broker website would be complete without presenting the other side. In other words, there may be reasons that you don’t want to get a website:
1. Cost
If you’re just starting out in the business and don’t have a large marketing budget initially, then a website might be an expense you simply can’t afford. To those with smaller marketing budgets however, there are ample month-to-month website solutions, affordable freelance web designers (like those found on the freelancer platform Upwork.com) and DIY website builders you can use to affordably build a website. Still, make sure it looks professional, and has great content (including professional-grade energy management tips)—because having an unprofessional website can be worse than having no website at all.
2. Social Profile Substitution
Many businesses opt to let social media profiles pages, like LinkedIn and Facebook, represent their business in lieu of a website. While this can be a temporary stopgap measure, many people use social profiles to explore more about a business—and a small “about” section isn’t enough.
So—Website?
Having a website in today’s digital age, in our opinion, is a must-have. The amount of legitimacy and marketing opportunities it brings is worth the initial output cost (although as shown above you needn’t have a $10K+ budget to have a website).
A website of course is the initial phase of client acquisition. Once your website is live, and bringing in new clients, you’ll need the infrastructure in place to convert them into a client. Check out our EnergyEngine software’s contract sourcing, compliance and point-of-sale tools you’ll need to turn prospects into profit.
