When I first fell for a cowboy, a friend teasingly sent me a link to a Garth Brooks song about whatcha going to do with a cowboy. And it’s has been stuck in my mind the past few days but with “website” instead of cowboy. Here’s why…

Sunday night at a wedding reception, I fell into a conversation with the owner of a medical billing company. Although she and her partner have a successful and growing small business, they do not have a website. Usually I avoid talking about work at social events, but small business marketing is a subject near and dear to my heart so I couldn’t help myself. I talked shop…

Because they’ve grown without one, they haven’t felt a website was necessary, and I explained that maybe they don’t need one but suggested reasons why they might.

For example, all their business comes from referrals and word of mouth. A website can be a great first introduction. I know people looking for a Seattle copywriter almost always look at the We Know Words website before they contact me for copywriting. And that works well for both me as copywriter and them as prospect: My website is a pre-qualifier. If you don’t like the attitude all over it, you probably won’t like my customer-centric approach to copywriting (as opposed to generic, me too copywriting and web writing).

with a website, this company could give a sales pitch to potential customers by having a website these prospects could go to after getting a referral.

And that can save time. Instead of prospects calling the small business to ask questions about their services and rates, they could get the answers themselves by going to the website.

In talking to the small business owner further about the idea of a site, it turns out there’s a lot of information they need to update clients with on a regular basis, and she realized the website could work for that. Plus I pointed out they could use an RSS feed to push the updates out or at least to let clients know there’s new information.

Small business marketing doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. But it doesn’t have to be copycat either. Maybe the smart approach is to first figure out what you want to do, then look at how a website could help you do it. A website just for the sake of a website is silly. But a website that helps you sell and saves you time and lets you do a better job of serving clients makes a lot of sense.

Is it time to revisit your small business website and make sure it’s pulling its weight? Is there some function you could have your website do to save you or staff the time of doing it?

Whatcha gonna do with that website?

And I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do with that cowboy!