subject: Don't look, Your Competition is Racing Ahead! [print this page] Don't look, Your Competition is Racing Ahead!
Facebook is free. So is Twitter. "Build your own websites" are being offered for $10 per month and the next door neighbor's kid's girlfriend can create your website for $500, all of which is profit for her cause she's only 18 and her time's worth squat.
Business owners seem to think that website development and website marketing are non-essential, still! Even in this day and age of the Internet being so dominant, I find companies who don't have a website (doctors are especially notorious for thinking they don't need one) and companies who have websites that were created nine or ten years ago and never been updated. So many business owners tell me "my business is primarily referral driven" or "my primary clients are the auto industry so I don't need a website".
90% of the business owners I come across are looking for the cheapest deal to get their website fixed, redone, or marketed. And there appears to be a misconception among business owners that "new media" means hiring college-age kids who HAVE to be good at managing Facebook and Twitter because "they get it".
Uh, hello????
* Is your company lawyer a third-year student in law school?
* Is your company accountant a kid who just graduated with an accounting degree?
* Is your PR person (if you have one) a teenager who "kinda sorta knows how to write"?
Why then is your website developer also either your computer troubleshooter, your engineer who kinda sorta knows how to fiddle with the computer, or teenage kid who took a couple of web design classes?
It's BEYOND time that business owners understand the real purpose and value of a website and web marketing.
A website is no longer a static, three to five page brochure that is just put up there cause you need to have a website. A website is a tool to create efficiency in the office. It is a marketing haven for showcasing expertise, satisfied customers, and more. It is also a 24X7sales & marketing person that collects leads for you and tells everyone what you do while you are sleeping or vacationing or doing whatever.
I can go on and on and on and on
But I'm not going to go on and on. I'm going to give you some pretty solid insight into the case for websites and web marketing.
* Web marketing IS the MAIN way to market yourself. No, that doesn't mean you get rid of other traditional marketing methods. But your traditional marketing methods MUST BE MARRIED to this new way of marketing, regardless of whether you believe in it or not.
* Hiring teenagers or college going youths to do your website and or your web marketing is foolish. Not only will it cost you precious time and money, it can potentially damage your company's reputation and brand positioning.
* You've invested hundreds of thousands in your business, if not millions. Then why are you so hesitant to invest a fraction of that in your website and your web marketing? Especially when the return is so much greater?
So business owners, it's time to get with the program! Cause if you still don't and your competition does, guess what? Yep, you're going to be SOL (So Outta luck)!
