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Small Business Internet Marketing Does Not Mean Throwing Successful Babies out With the Bathwater

Guest post by: Julie Weishaar

Article Overview: First small business owners need to take stock of what their current marketing initiatives are and analyze their success rate. Are your current programs attracting qualified leads? If something is working, keep doing it - even if it is not on the Internet.

Small Business Internet Marketing Does Not Mean Throwing Successful Babies out With the Bathwater

What on earth does this mean?

It means that just because the rest of the world is on the Internet promoting their brands, it doesn't mean they aren't or shouldn't be continuing to utilize traditional offline marketing strategies that are working. With all the hoopla about SEO, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and the tons of other social networking sites, small business owners might be led to believe that they have to do a total about-face in their marketing efforts and jump into the Internet with both feet without looking back. Instead, they need to analyze, evaluate and strategize.

First small business owners need to take stock of what their current marketing initiatives are and analyze their success rate. Are your current programs attracting qualified leads? If something is working, keep doing it - even if it is not on the Internet. For instance, if attending or participating in trade show events results in valuable and qualified leads for your company - then trade shows are a viable marketing initiative that you should continue. In addition, you should be analyzing your competition. What are they doing that is working? You want to do what they are doing - only you want to do it better.

Next you need to look at all your current marketing efforts and evaluate how effective they are in terms of return on investment. Evaluate what is working and what is not. Identify areas where you can make improvements or enhancements to current marketing programs you are involved in for maximum benefit. Using the trade show example, attending a trade show is usually far less expensive than exhibiting at the same show (unless the show is out of town and you are bringing many employees. Then of course you have travel and accommodation expenses). But if having a booth attracts enough qualified leads ("enough" can only be determined by the business owner) that convert to sales, then the expense is worth the effort and exhibiting at the successful trade shows should be included as part of your overall integrated marketing strategy. If necessary, you might, because of budgetary constraints, have to limit how many trade shows you will exhibit at each year. Perhaps you will decide to only exhibit at local trade shows and eliminate national ones. You can always use some of the funds you had allocated for another show to improve your booth and/or promotional items at the shows you deem more profitable. In other words, be flexible and creative.

The last step is to strategize or plan. This is not a final step because your marketing strategy should be dynamic in order to remain competitive and keep up with the ever-changing market and latest technologies. Without a clear and concise marketing plan, the small business owner can literally get lost on the Internet scrambling to try to find out where to put the most effort.

Once you have analyzed, evaluated and strategized, you will more than likely find that the best marketing approach will be an integrated one which will utilize both online and offline programs. The challenge for the small business owner is to find the most efficient and most profitable marketing initiatives for his/her specific industry and target market.

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Article Tags: internet marketing, small business marketing



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