Do you market your company? Congratulations, you spend thousands of dollars buying air, and paper. When you think about it, advertising is simply a business of persuasion and influence, but even in print or promotional advertising, the ad, the flyer, the logo stress ball, theses are not your product, they are a means to an end. That’s the beauty of this multi-billion dollar industry; advertising is the pinnacle of intangible goods.
Online marketing is no different; we have the web, an internet which is not actually a place. It’s a sort of parallel universe a person can never physically reach. I mean, for a reasonable facsimile of what that might look like, Dave Chappelle did a pretty hilarious job a few years back.
But millions of people are turning to the internet for every possible need. From finding a new family doctor to settling a good natured dispute over Rasputen’s first name (It’s Grigori btw). So it doesn’t matter what business you are in. You have a market online.
Even if you have accepted this reality, your next challenge is probably figuring out exactly how to mount a full scale internet marketing campaign. Which, to even the most internet savvy marketers is a daunting and intimidating task. I mean, go ahead and Google your product or service:
See those 232, 000, 000 results? Yeah that’s your online competition. It’s hard to figure out how to stand out from that sea of choices. First, don’t panic. Second, don’t let the difficulty of the task lull you into a sense that you are better off without pursuing it.
Everyone needs to have some sort of online presence. Without one you are missing out on every chance you have of being found by potential new customers, or even helping your current customers.
Here is an example: A new pizza place moved in around the corner from me. I didn’t get the chance to write down their number driving by, so my next inclination was to head to the Net for the digits. But, there was nothing there, so I ordered Pizza Hut. That small, burgeoning pizza place lost out on a new and interested customer by not being online.
Even a less drastic situation: Have you ever searched for a particular restaurant or store online only to get “directories”, rather than the store itself? Sure, you can get the address and phone number, but no pictures, menus or product information, the kind of details that would help persuade you to go there.
Don’t be that store!
Take control of your online marketing destiny. It’s never too late to take your business to the next level. In this case that “new level” is an existential plane that is just waiting to be conquered. Go boldly where millions are going every day, do it the right way from the beginning and you’ll never regret it.
