More Customers Blog

The internet is an increasingly important part of daily life whether you like it or not. As a local or SME business you risk YOUR income if you ignore this yet, surprisingly, 50% of local businesses do not even have a website. Consider this too… Google recently used automated tools to create literally millions of local “Google Places” websites. More than 95% remain unclaimed by their owners.

To fail to do so risks losing your “place” in the listings and all the business that can flow from it (your competitors will get it instead) – doing so simply involves opening a Gmail account and 20 minutes completing a simple online form. If you are one of the people who have not claimed or created a Google Places account read my post How to Claim Your Google Place

The next thing is given you have a website, how is it optimized to achieve the maximum “buying” visitors? Most website design is by technical geeks who have no understanding of marketing (and the so called SEO experts are even worse). In contrast the success of your site is unlikely to be the result of a flashy web site design rather involving several less obvious but far more powerful factors.

The fact is that getting a good ranking on the search engines requires work. You need to understand what phrases are people are using to search on for your product or service and how commercial are those phrases. You could generate massive internet traffic but find that the phrase you have optimized for never results in sales however well you sell the offer on your site. This is a concept called “commercial intent” – and one that you need to understand before you build your site or even choose your domain name. (Also see my post How to Choose a Domain Name ).

Many business owners tell me “I don’t need the internet; I get all the business I need from referrals”. Now certainly should you have all the money you want and are retiring in a year or two then that is probably a reasonable statement. Otherwise BEWARE…

The way people are communicating is changing dramatically. Much social chit chat is now open to the world. You can view it on Facebook (which now has over 1billion users), Twitter and dozens of other popular social networks. Further people are also more and more accessing these kinds of account on the move using iPhones and other mobility devices with access to the internet. (In some areas more than 50% of local internet traffic is mobile).

This certainly means that you need to make your website easily accessible to mobiles (which can open up a powerful new world of marketing opportunity). Just importantly it means that people will be talking about you in a way that all their friends as well of the rest of the world have ready access.

It just so happens that people are far more likely to criticize than complement though. The spontaneous comments are far more likely to be negative than positive – the complements often need to be teased out of customers who must be reminded to write them down. Google actually searches sites that contain feedback and often lists these comments against the results for your site.

This is an important reason that you need to be proactive in influencing the social content that relates to you. Your reputation is at stake! For this reason many forward looking businesses of all sizes are now using a Social Media Manager to promote their companies and safeguard their reputations. You don’t have to employee one full time but simply hire one for a few hours each week.

In conclusion as a Local or SEM owner the power of the internet is a massive opportunity. The downside of it is that if you do not focus your effort correctly, or you simply fail to take action, you are likely to be out-competed by your competitors far faster than you believe. Facebook and Twitter have recently shown their power to bring down mighty dictatorships.

The brutal truth is not to underestimate the power of the internet to radically affect your business too. There is a short window of opportunity. Take positive action NOW to grow your business and your income before your competitors take the lead. Readers without a website should read my article How to Create a Simple but Effective Website