Local internet marketing for small business is more measurable and less expensive than almost every other type of advertising available, making it a solid return on investment. But, believe it or not, those aren’t the best reasons to do it. Internet marketing for small business owners is also one of the most precise ways to both target and communicate with prospective customers.
Why?
Interactive
The internet is interactive in that a web user can participate in their online experience with the click of a mouse. This is a very important strategy of internet marketing for your small business. The use of online contact forms, surveys, blogs or articles open to comments, coupons, requests for estimates, customer reviews …. are all excellent examples of interacting with your prospects online. One of the main goals of any kind of marketing is to gain the trust of your prospective customers – and the internet offers that opportunity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!
In offline marketing, the main way to do that is through repetition and follow-up. It is very expensive to continually advertise. It is very time-consuming to gain trust and build relationships.
Dynamic
The internet is dynamic in that changes and additions to online information can be made, as often as you like, very quickly, at little to no additional cost.
Need to change your yellow pages ad? You’re stuck with it for up to a year. Sending out a series of direct mailings? Design, printing and postage are very expensive – and once the mailing is sent out, you have to do it, and pay for it, all over again.
Because offline marketing is so costly, communicating with prospects and customers is kept to a minimum with the very specific goal of getting the sale, an immediate return on investment. And if you don’t get it, try try again. Or should we say … pay, pay again!
Online, imagine all the good news you could tell your customers at little to no expense, whenever you want to!
New products or services, a sale or special offer, a change in your return policy or an updated guarantee, new testimonials from recent customers or a referral reward program, press releases about your business, community or charity involvement, information about a hot topic affecting your industry …
Not only are you gaining the trust of your prospects, but you are building loyalty with your existing customers.
Infinite
The internet is infinite. You’ll never run out of space. There are no boundaries or limits on how much content you can put online. Again, at little to no additional cost.
On the internet, you aren’t confined to the space or frequency of a yellow pages ad, classified ad or direct mailer. You aren’t confined to how many different ways you want to reach your target customers, or what you want to say to them.
On the internet, you can attract and build trust with every demographic, geographic and type of customer your business serves, whenever you want to.
You can market your products and services as if you have thousands of dollars in an advertising budget you would use for offline promotion. Little fish can compete with the big boys.
As marketing goes, it doesn’t get much better than this.