What if I asked you this question right now. How would you respond to this: ‘Do you want to keep growing your food business?’

Of course, most people want to keep growing their businesses and ensure customers and profits keep coming in.

But how would you respond to that question?

What do you think would be going on in your mind when thinking for answer to the question I just posed?

Would you think about some apps / giant companies in the food space are scaling their businesses? Would you think about some of the high cost and low-cost strategies they are applying to win customers in the spaces they operate in?

And what if I told you there is an inexpensive way you haven’t thought about yet that could work well for your business – for getting you new customers?

And that all it requires you to do is to invest in getting a domain and hosting and then just spending some time creating content around what you already do – making good food – and sharing that content on the internet?

Starting a blog / website for a food business

I am going to show you why now is a great idea to think about starting a blog / website to promote your food business – with a free content management system like the self-hosted version of WordPress.

With it you only need to register a domain name, pay for web hosting and then install WordPress – which makes it easy to create a website (with a static homepage) and a blog section.

Follow the links above to learn more about how to get a domain and hosting for your site.

Moving along, here are some of the reasons to start a blog / website for your food business.

Start a site for your business so people can order online

When you build a site for your food business, people, with internet access, will be able to visit your site, look at the pages published there and decide, if they like what they see, to order online whatever it is you are selling.

This can be made even better with live chat – where people visit your site and can chat with you, via text, in real-time.

You can even add an online script / plugin to your site and create product pages. This way, people who visit your site can add the items they want to their shopping cart, checkout, pay the total amount for their order and then have you deliver their shopping to them via courier / parcel delivery services or a motorbike rider.

Start your site so people can see your menu / food selection online

Another great reason to start a website for your food business is so that people can, at any time, just go online and check out your food selection. With a brochure, the info you put in there can be limited. Same thing with flyers.

But with your own site, you can provide extra in-depth detail (using text, video and high quality images you take using your camera or smartphone) about each and every item on your menu.

Your customers will appreciate the depth you go to tell them (and show them) more about the items you sell. And when it comes time to buy, they’ll buy with confidence.

So you site will act sort of like a sales person / customer service agent that is available to prospects and existing customers at all times of the day and night.

Start your site so you can get feedback and post testimonials and reviews from some of your customers online on your website for social proof

Another reason having a site built for your food business is so that you can get feedback from actual paying customers. Some of which can be used, with their permission, as reviews and testimonials on your site.

When they submit their feedback to you on the phone (via calls, emails or in person) you just ask them if you can use their feedback on your website perhaps alongside their photograph. Most will say yes.

Such feedback can help new and prospective customers trust you more – for the quality of your selection and for how you render services to your clients.

So, aggregate all the feedback you get and publish some of them (even alongside customer stories if you like) on the website / blog you start for your business.

Start a site so you can use it as a central hub for all your online marketing efforts

You can use your site to get people that interact with you and your business on different platforms (like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Pinterest and other social networking sites / messaging apps) to come back to your own site.

In this case, you’ll ensure that no matter your online promotions on other sites out there, you will do all you can to drive the people in those platforms (that you don’t own) back to your site (which you own).

Why work hard to get them back to your site? Because there, you can entice them (via giveaways, coupon codes, early bird offers and other lead magnets) to become email subscribers that receive regular emails / text messages / push notification updates from you.

Because once they are open to receiving regular correspondence from you, that can result in more sales / profits if you send them well-targeted sales offers from time to time.

I hope these reasons are enough to convince you of the benefits of getting a site for your business. Now it is time for you to plan what you want to include in your new site.

Get a piece of paper and pen and start listing some of the content prospects who end up becoming paying customers usually ask you. Think of ways you could share this content on a blog (and social media accounts connected to your blog) to create more awareness about what you do …to get people to pay attention to your content … and to ultimately pay you for the things you talk about in your content – food.

If you don’t want to flesh out ideas on a piece of paper, use your smartphone instead. Launch any note-taking app you have to start listing ideas that will eventually shape the blog or website you start for your food business.

For more articles like this, check Niabusiness.com category on business.