Are you taking advantage of this ironic turn of events?

In the olden days, when the World Wide Web first reared its head, people envisioned being able to do business anywhere in the world.  It was a world-wide web after all.

This was good news for those entrepreneurs who could see the opportunities and took advantage of them.

Not so good for those that didn’t either see them or especially not act on them.

Fast forward ten years or so and over 50% of businesses still don’t have a website.

So were they wise not to leap headlong onto the Web?

Not really because they are still small businesses.  They haven’t grown. Because that’s where prospects go to look for new suppliers.

Plus, many of those local business now suffer from price pressure from “foreign” suppliers.  (Foreign can be the next town or state for traditional businesses).

They have lost hordes of customers and have seen new suppliers come into the market.

All-in-all, life is certainly tougher for those local companies that didn’t grasp the opportunities that the Internet provided.

How has history turned against your local business?
But now, in 2010 there is an ironic twist in fortunes for smart business owners and managers.

The vast majority of those companies that had a website put up in 2000 or even 2005 have done very little to them since then.  Their websites area as fresh as the day they were put up.  They’ve gathered digital dust and let’s face it, most of them look it.

•    They were built with very little understanding of what makes a website successful.

•    Most have little or no marketing and selling from the site.

•    There are few sites built so that Google will offer them as a credible answer to prospects’ problems.

•    And less than half of one percent of local companies uses the full range of Internet marketing capabilities.

For those companies that do any marketing, most still rely on newspapers, Yellow Pages and other traditional marketing tools.

But you know they don’t work like they used to do they? In March, the Advertising Association in NZ announced that ad spend had dropped 11.9%with newspapers losing over 13% of its revenue.  The numbers are worse in other countries.
So smart marketers realise that too.

Is there any hope for your business?
There quick answer is “Yes.”

The Internet.

It’s under-used by over 90% of businesses which means if you decide to grasp the opportunities, you will be miles ahead of your competitors how either can’t make a decision or who stick with what they know.

Plus it’s easy and very cost-effective.

And there are so many different ways to use the Internet.  It’s not just putting up a website.
I can think of 27 different marketing techniques that local companies could use.

That ironic twist?
Well, those business that have suffered from those “foreign” and new suppliers could, if they were smart and grasp any one of those 27 marketing techniques, they could out perform their competitors with ease by using the very platform that squeezed their business in the past.

Technorati Tags: local marketing, Marketing, Search engine optimization, Small business marketing