I am asked many questions about business and, now that I have my own weekly business focussed radio program, one of the questions that I am constantly asked is that of where the internet fits into ones overall business strategy. Before answering the question here, one of the main mistakes I see being made by the business owner is :-
- Throwing up a website
- Placing multiple Ads in Yellow Pages
- Placing Ads in the classifieds
Not that there is anything wrong with using any and/or all of the items above but what I often see is that this is normally done without the use of a coherent Business Marketing Strategy. Unfortunately, most do not see the reason for taking time up front in order to put time [and money] into :-
- Defining the message of your product/service
- Working on your brand
- Looking at Marketing Channels
- Going through the Marketing Segmentation exercise
- Pricing
… and, of course – the list could go on and on. The point is that large companies have qualified people in marketing departments working on these components all day long so, how important should this be for the small business owner. Of course this is business people such as myself come into play with being able to site down and to spend time with the business owner who is not skilled in marketing and to be able to help them to develop their core business marketing plans.
This is where we come to talk about the internet and how it should be viewed in the overall context of the business – I have run out of time, so will continue this in another post shortly.
What do you think ? any comments ? do let me know.
Best,
-Stephen C Campbell
