Small Business Warning! Internet marketing critical.
Consider this….. “U.S. online retail sales are expected to reach $148 billion in 2008, up 19 percent from sales in 2007 and comprising about 6.4 percent of total retail sales. That figure will grow to $166 billion in 2009 and $215 billion by 2012, for a compounded annual growth rate of about 11 percent, according to JupiterResearch analyst Patti Freeman Evans.”
Is your business growing by 19 percent? Probably not. More than likely, you are like most small businesses and are struggling to avoid shrinking. So what is going on?
Not a surprise. For those of us who have been working in internet related fields this comes as no surprise. I have been telling friends, family and clients that every small retail business should be preparing to do at least 10 to 20% of their business online by 2010. Furthermore all (including non-retail) businesses should be trying to adjust to the reality that a majority of potential customers will expect to research you and your company online before making any purchase decision. This fact applies just as much to service related companies as it does to retail businesses.
Bottom line: Your website will soon become the primary method for marketing your product and service both online and offline. One restaraunt owner put it this way, “It’s unavoidable… the restaraunt that has great pictures of their signature dishes, good photo’s of their dining areas, an online menu, and a page to learn about the owner and/or chef is just going to get more chances to find new customers. We recently rebuilt our site and shifted all of our print and other marketing to drive customers to it. Our site traffic is way up, our sales are up and I am very happy with the results.”
There is a catch. The current web savvy customer is no longer happy with a poorly designed “do it yourself” website. The web has gone mainstream, and customers expect websites to be designed and laid out in the same attention getting manner as a good magazine advertisement. It used to be impressive if you just had a website, but now customers know what “professional” is supposed to look like. If your site looks sloppy, they actually wonder if your worth doing business with. They also expect to find everything they need on your site. Specs, manuals, menus, contact forms, product videos, appointment scheduling, and payment processing, all at their fingertips.
The owner of a small home remodeling business summed it up this way “You either make it easy for them to do business with you, or you risk them doing business with someone else. I’ve been in business since the seventies. I had to get with the program… things are just different now. The customer has a lot more access to information and can check your competitors website and hear his sales pitch 24 hours a day 7 days a week. You have to have a plan to address that competitive reality.”
author: T.Schaffer
