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Mistakes Small Businesses Shouldn’t Make Online

Internet marketing is a young, unregulated industry with a very small number of legitimate educational opportunities which makes it look like a typical market for lemons, and a breeding ground for scammers.

Although complex, Internet marketing is not rocket science. A little education can go a long way in protection from scam and wrong Internet marketing decisions.

On the other hand, running a small business is stressful enough without learning about search engine optimization, PPC, conversion rate optimization and a number of concepts that take time to sink in.

There is an easier way to cut your chances of being scammed.

• That can’t promptly prove their track record
• That guarantee high organic rankings
• That won’t even consider being paid for performance

More than 72% of people in the US are Internet users. For majority of them, Internet is the primary source of information about local businesses.

Granted, those numbers are impressive, but that doesn’t guarantee that even the best, perfectly executed, Internet marketing strategies can make your phone ring of the hook.

Why?

Internet reflects the state of the “brick and mortar” world.

If your market is small (you run a cleaning business that covers only 1-2 towns) online demand for what your business has to offer will reflect that.

If you are selling a luxury product or service in a region that is not very affluent, demand will not be great.

If your business goes through seasonal cycles, there will be periods when you will generate only a fraction of what you normally would in the peak of the season. Holiday season is great for retail businesses, but not for home improvement industry.

It is reasonable to say that Internet offers the level playing field. But sometimes corporations and bigger businesses can have a stronger grip on Internet marketing, thus reducing the chances for a smaller or newer business to fulfill their Internet marketing potential as fast as they would like.

The Internet might be the best marketing tool ever, but it’s not the only one. Every business owner should concentrate on providing remarkable service before anything else. Word of mouth marketing can’t be beaten, and more traditional forms of marketing still offer some value.

Dozens of books have been written about customer service, and most of those emphasized that customers see your employees as the company. As a result, most businesses go through great lengths to keep the level of customer service they provide as high as possible, empowering employees to make the right choices and make every contact with a business an experience worth sharing.

At the same time, those business owners who wouldn’t hire a person who doesn’t smile often, would accept having a website that looks like it had been made 10 years ago, even though it was finished recently.

This attitude can impact the bottom line negatively because websites represent businesses online the same way employees do when they deal with customers face to face.

• Credibility issues
• Low conversion rates
• Problems with search engines
• Usability issues

All these problems can cost a business a lot more than a professionally built site.

Social media related mistakes are typical for SMBs who want to get “on board” with Web 2.0. They engage in social media without thinking about ROI, while spending valuable resources and time creating profiles that nobody cares about and tweeting what no one reads.

To think of social media as anything else but a set of communication platforms can lead to resource drains.

Every social media platform offers a chance to connect with your customer base and the community of people that could care about your services or products. But no social media platform can create those communities.

Connect with people who already care (your customers) and they will do the rest.