Not too long ago – perhaps 6-8 years ago (ages ago in Internet time) – having a website for a small business meant either hiring a web development company or, assigning the task to an individual in your organization to design and develop it. With that complete – you arrived on the information highway and were cruising along down the road.
Marketing your business remained very traditional – with one additional ‘cool’ feature – a web address, which you listed on every brochure, business card, and magazine advertisement you placed. And it was powerful. So much product information, industry knowledge and articulate value propositions could be displayed – graphically. Provisions for updates including internal procedures, job assignments, and sincere dedication to this new media assured its contribution to your small business success.
Celebrations were held all around and with baited breath – results were expected. Often, these results were good, sometime phenomenal, too often however – very much lacking. Even more review and internal discussions to change some of the content bore little fruit.
In the end, a decision – perhaps not a conscience one, but a decision all the same was made: ‘This site is not going to produce the results we expect. Let’s just leave it up there and get back to the business we know best. What the heck, maybe someone will find it and give us call.”
I find it curious that a small business that specializes in a particular market segment – and advocates to their customers all the good reasons for leveraging their unique abilities – dosn’t apply the same thinking to the growth of their own business.
Just having a site is not enough – certainly not today. It requires constant attention to understand the ever changing conditions in the Internet as-well-as the practices of those who use it to find relevant information, i.e., your target customer!
Are you an expert in your industry? I expect so. Are you an expert in Internet marketing? … Perhaps – but is that the business you are in? Probably not.
