The Brave New World

This is the first in a series of articles on Internet Marketing for the Small Business or Local Business Owner. 

Once upon a time, it was a fairly simple task to get the word out about your business. You could reach a huge swath of the population with relatively little complication by crafting a good sign for your storefront, distributing fliers throughout the neighborhood, having a grand opening sale and maybe even taking out a spot on the radio or on television. 

For some businesses, it still is that simple. The first rule of marketing, after all, is to go where your audience is already gathered. If your business primarily services people that don't gather, socialize or search on the Internet, this article isn't for you.

However, for 2017 and after –it's becoming increasingly difficult to find any group of people that doesn't use the Internet. For the vast majority of small brick-and-mortar businesses, it not only makes sense to market on the Internet, it's necessary for the survival of your enterprise. 

Consider this: The Internet marketing ship is quickly leaving the harbor. With every year that goes by, marketing online becomes more ubiquitous, more sophisticated, and continues to diminish the returns you would get from offline advertising. According to Internet World Stats, almost one-half (49.7%) of the world's population is online as of March 31, 2017, and 88.1% of North America is, as well. And according to iJailbreak, there have been more people in the world with cell phones than toothbrushes since 2012. People spend a lot of time Googling answers to their questions, watching videos on YouTube and sharing pictures and stories on Facebook – and that time is taking away from the amount they used to spend on legacy media like television and radio. The online audience continues to grow every year, and Internet marketing only continues to get more and more effective as time goes on. 

It's a brave new world! However, a lot of businesses just keep doing things the way they have been for the last decade (or more) because they don't understand how easy – and profitable – it is to get started with Internet marketing. They don't understand that the Web has completely revolutionized commerce, from trade on a global scale down to the smallest mom-and-pop shop.

What is Internet Marketing? 

Internet Marketing includes indirect marketing elements, direct response marketing, and uses many different processes, procedures and platforms, from search engines to banner advertisements to social media. Simply defined, it's anything a business does online in order to attract new business, retain current customers and develop its brand.

Why Should You Market Online?

         There are many benefits of Internet marketing over traditional marketing:

·       Reach. Because the Internet is global, that means your business can be, as well. It used to be that you had to be a huge, international corporation in order to business all around the world. Now, anyone with a WiFi connection or a smartphone can access potential customers anywhere in the world without breaking the bank on a big marketing budget. If you are not global but local, consider this:  You can potentially reach everyone in your geographic area that has a smartphone, tablet, or personal computer of any flavor.

·       Scope. Because you can reach so many people in so many different ways, you can offer people a wider range of products and services. Internet marketing includes (among other things) information management, customer service, sales and public relations. As new technologies become available, the scope of your potential only grows.

·       Demographics and Targeting. As a group, Internet users have greater buying power, because they tend to skew – demographically speaking – toward the middle class. But it's not all about buying power. Internet users also organize themselves into niches, making it easier to access and target small, focused groups of consumers who have organized around a single interest or industry. 

·       Interactivity. The point of traditional marketing is to get your brand's message in front of people's eyes. However, Internet marketing creates a two-way road between your business and your customers, allowing you to be more responsive and dynamic in your service interactions.

·       Immediacy. Because of the interactive nature of the Web, it's now easier than ever to immediately move a customer through the steps of your marketing funnel. Imagine a customer viewing a commercial on television when they're sitting at home, or reading an advertisement in a magazine when they're at the salon. They have learned about a product, but there are additional steps to acquiring it. With Internet marketing, you can learn about a product or service and, just a few clicks later, have already purchased it – and this can happen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless of whether your store is open.

·       Adaptivity. Marketing requires regular, consistent measurement of metrics in order to determine whether you're even getting a return on your investment. Internet marketing allows continuous tracking of these metrics, and allows you to dynamically change your tactics mid-campaign any time you see the need to adapt to your customer's wants and needs. 

The World Wide Web for Local Businesses

Because the Internet is such a worldwide phenomenon, many local businesses believe that Internet marketing won't benefit them in the same way it does a multinational corporation with a global reach. After all, the local hardware store doesn't advertise during the Superbowl!

We might amend an old bumper sticker saying in order to describe this concept best: Think globally, sell locally. As it turns out, there are many options available online for local geographical targeting that allow a small business to only target folks in their area who are searching for a product related to their own. According to Search Engine Land, nearly 60% of Google searches are location specific. On average, the majority of businesses that use sites like Groupon or other hyper-local daily deals services are satisfied with their experience and would use it again. And many small businesses have greatly expanded their customer base – and customer satisfaction – by employing social media marketing on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

There are many other forms of Internet Marketing – many of which are covered in this book – and more are invented all the time. Promoting your business online not only allows you to reach customers that are gathering online and aren't as susceptible to traditional marketing; it also allows you to generate interest in your business outside your locality, expanding your business's reach. 

In short, in this brave new Internet-enabled world of ours, the rules of business have dramatically changed. Your customers are out there, waiting for you to reach them. All it takes is a willingness to do it.

Next time we will explore The Alternatives. Until then do something positively massive online… 

Tad Stephens