It seems most small business owners know in today’s business world that they need to have an online presence for their business. They have also become aware that traditional advertising methods such as the local newspaper, radio and yellow pages are not as effective as they once were.
They are aware that their customers or potential customers spend a lot of time online. Statistics show that 70% of consumers will go online to research products and services before they make a purchase and if a business does not stand out they have zero chance to ring their cash register.
With all of this information available, it is a mystery why a large percentage of small business owners have taken the same philosophy as the Kevin Costner character in the movie Field of Dreams had:
“Build it and they will come”
Many of these business owners don’t realize that having a website is the equivalent of having a telephone, having a website is only 10% of the equation, the other 90% is updating content, marketing and knowing how to optimize their site.
As a small business owner, you will need to educate yourself and learn what it takes to drive traffic to your site. You need to know how the search engines can make or break you. Search engine optimization can be very expensive if you hire an outside firm, but you can educate yourself as to what it takes to make your site attractive to the search engines.
Web usage is growing at a phenomenal rate and will continue into the future, to remain competitive and retain and grow market share, businesses will have to become more aggressive in their marketing strategies.
To keep your online marketing in the forefront, you will need to keep fresh content on your site and your site optimized so you can:
- Achieve higher search engine positions
- Reach new customers
- Improve website visitor quality
- Generate new business inquiries
- Maximize your return on investment
The businesses that fail to keep up with these new techniques will lose valuable customers to their competition but the business owners who take the time to find the information and system that will teach you how to take advantage of the internet will be repaid many times over for their effort.
