subject: A Strange turn of Events for Small Business Marketing [print this page] A few years ago, when the World Wide Web came to the fore, people imagined being able to trade anywhere in the world. It was a world-wide web after all.
This was good news for those business owners who could see the opportunities and took advantage of them.
Not so good for those that didn't either see them or didntact on them.
Fast forward ten years or so and over 50% of businesses still don't have a website.
So were they wise not to leap headlong onto the Web?
Not really because they are still small businesses. They haven't grown. But Google is where the majority of customers go to look for new suppliers.
In addition, many of those local business now suffer from price competition from "foreign" suppliers. (Foreign can be the next city or region for brick and mortar businesses).
They have lost hordes of customers and have had new competitors come into the market.
As a result, business is certainly harder for those local companies that didn't take advantage of the opportunities that the Web provided.
How has history turned against your local business?
But now, in 2010 there is an strange twist in fortunes for savvy business owners and managers.
The huge majority of those businesses that had a website put up ten years ago or even in 2005 have done very little to them since then. Their websites are as fresh as the day they were put up. They are covered in digital dust and let's face it, most of them look it.
They were built with very little understanding of how to make a website successful.
Most have little or no marketing from the site.
There are few sites built so that Google will offer them as a credible answer to customers' problems - no optimisation.
And a tiny proportion of small companies use a broad range of Internet marketing options.
For those companies that do any marketing, most still rely on old marketing methods.
But you know they don't work like they used to do they? In March, the Advertising Association in NZ announced that advertising expenditure had dropped nearly 12% with newspapers droping over 13% of their revenue.
So smart marketers realise that too.
Is there any good news for your company ?
The quick answer is "Yes."
The Internet.
It's under-utlilised by over 90% of companies which means if you decide to grasp the options, you will be miles ahead of other businesses who either can't make a decision or who stick with what they know.
Plus it's easy and very cost-effective.
And there are lots of different ways to market with the Internet. It's not simply putting up a website.
I can think of 27 different marketing tactics that small businesses could use to generate more sales leads.
That strange turn of events ?
Well, those firms which have suffered from those "foreign" and new competitors could,if they are smart and grasp any one of those 27 different marketing techniques, they could sell more than their competitors easily by using the very platform which squeezed their company before.
A Strange turn of Events for Small Business Marketing
By: Andrew Haddleton
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