Even though the Internet has been around quite a while, it’s only been in recent years that many businesses begin to realize its full potential. Greatly contributing to this wake-up call have been the explosive growth of Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest..etc.), Mobile Devices (Smart Phones, Smart Pads and Laptops) and Search Engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing).
Years ago websites often simply served as digital versions of flyers for businesses; but today, websites are often an organization’s primary marketing tool. It is no longer true that companies with the biggest budgets are destined to win the marketing race. Today the company with the highest quality online connection network (from social media, affiliate websites, etc.) can win the race to be in front of today’s highly web-connected consumers on search engines; as well as gain the most online or offline referrals through word-of-social-share (WOSS) or word-of-mouth (WOM).
Today, clever businesses are those who invest in online marketing to leverage the power of the Internet while viewing online marketing as an opportunity (instead of an obstacle) to gain an edge over their reluctant-to-adapt-competitors.
To build anything great, and stable, takes times, careful research, and execution. It is the same with online marketing. If you want to establish a strong and stable web presence against your competition in this new era of marketing, you need to begin investing in an online marketing campaign for your business. Don’t wait until your competition is light-years ahead of you. Avoid playing catch-up; if you wait too long it will be difficult and costly (if not impossible) to capture (or regain) the leading position in the race.
Investing in Internet marketing campaign(s) for your business does not always mean spending a lot more money. What I suggest is that you review your current marketing campaigns to see what their return on investments (ROI) are. If their ROI decreases month after month or year after year, you might want to re-locate your investment to adapt to current marketing trends; trends which lean more and more heavily toward the web every day.
Today consumers expect every business to have a professional website. Therefore, if your business doesn’t have a website yet or if your website is out-of-date, you should get one built (or re-build your existing site) soon. Because often your website is the first thing customers will learn about you; you don’t want to leave a bad impression when new customers first visit your site.
I hope you find this article helpful. If you don’t know where to start with your online marketing campaign, contact our Minnesota Web Design firm today at (507) 581-9451. We are a full service web design company providing reasonable custom web design and Internet marketing services to businesses and organizations.