Now whatever type of advertising you do to catch the attention of new customers, there is by far one strategy that is just the worst. That's advertising that never gets seen.
Computer systems became a significant productivity tool in the 1980's long before the "Internet" or "World Wide Web" manifested itself in the late 1990's. The web opened up with a flourish that ultimately blew up as the dot com bubble. Now not everything was negative about that experience. But essentially the most common results for a large number of small businesses was a flock of websites that virtually no one ever saw. (Apart from maybe your mother and you when you took the time to look for it.)
I've referred to these types of small business internet sites as electronic brochures as useful as a "billboard in a pasture that only the cows look at." As of 2010, approximately one half of all small businesses in the United States had websites for their businesses, and the other 50% steadfastly refused to take the plunge. It's sad for me personally to say so, but in many aspects the guys who choose not to play the internet game may well have won on their bet.
Whether they paid big bucks to an expensive web designer, or got by on the cheap by employing the son or nephew the issue was the same. It was one thing to have a website and another one altogether to have one that was actually worth beans from an advertising perspective.
Now there were many things wrong about most of these internet sites that goes well beyond the purposes of this particular article. I detailed many of them in an eBook I wrote some time ago called, "Why Most Small Business Web Sites Stink!" But the particular salient point for our conversation today is that these websites generally were hard to find by prospective customers looking for a company to meet their particular needs. As such, they were mainly useless, from a purely marketing point of view.
Now if your prospective customer already knew your company name, or the URL of your internet site, they could find you. They could probably check your hours, phone number or address, which was not all bad. But if they were looking to buy a left handed pipe wrench that you actually sold, the odds were not so great. The net result is that almost all businesses did not attract a lot of new customers because of their internet site. They had to drive traffic to their internet sites by other forms of advertising before they could possibly provide any real advantage.
I mention all of this because, Times Have Changed. Unfortunately, many local businesses having been once burned and/or disappointed about the benefit of the internet are now slow to pick up on the new reality. The new reality is that small business people need to learn how to get on Google maps.
When people try to find a company to meet their requirements today they do it online or on their cellphones. Google shows a map with up to seven local companies they think can fill that need. If you want those customers you should know how to get on Google maps to be seen when people search.
The best part about it is that it's free. The best way to learn how to get on Google maps is to search on Google for just that term.
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