Most small business owners and marketers are familiar with the basic tenets of advertising. There are some hard and fast rules that have been drilled into the heads of most entrepreneurs that have become gospel truth over the years. Know your audience. Keep things local. Offer value. Most of these can be applied to the burgeoning practice of online marketing, but every day a few more become out of date and obsolete.
It can be tricky for companies to know which are still relevant and which no longer apply. Making a mistake with this kind of strategy can be disastrous for small businesses just beginning their lives as online entities, so it is crucial that the right lessons be applied. Here are some of the dinosaurs that are going extinct, as well as the lessons that they provide for the late period marketing style that organizations should be engaged with.
Don’t be concerned with physical boundaries
There was a time when a small business never had to think outside of its own local mindset to come up with a good way to reach out to customer. The jokes were the same. The language provided a common frame of reference that could be used for all marketing materials. Unfortunately, online companies can’t rely on those tools anymore. There is literally no way to know where a consumer is located unless they offer the information freely. Don’t be concerned with whether or not customers are from the East Coast, West Coast, a big city, a small town or somewhere in between.
Do focus on online boundaries
While someone’s location in the United States holds little bearing on online interactions, her internet affiliations will. That is, like marketers of old would trade on the regionalisms that seemed universal to all customers, modern advertisers should understand what sites their target clients frequent. Social media platforms, message boards and other online habits can go a long way toward making marketing materials more appropriate, as well as increasingly successful.
Don’t fret about the impersonal nature of ads
So much of old-fashioned advertising and sales had to do with making broad appeals to large, unidentified masses of people. This isn’t to say that such approaches can’t work on the internet today, but personalized search, cookies, social features and demographic profiles have changed all of that. Consequently, finding information that resonates deeply with people is easier than it ever was before, so you won’t have to worry as much about barking up the wrong tree.
Do worry about finances
If there’s one thing that has supplanted personality as the defining factor in the online consumer, it is finances. The internet has given rise to a class of shoppers and clients who are constantly searching for the best deal. They’ve been raised with sites like Yelp! and Craigslist, both of which were founded to help customers avoid having to pay more than they think they should for certain services. Make appeals based on the value provided rather than anything emotional or stylistic.
Don’t concentrate on the where
There are so many websites online with which businesses must compete for sales, so it’s fair to say that consumers aren’t going to always return to a company because of success in the past, especially since they’re doing more shopping online than in brick-and-mortar stores they’re apt to be more familiar with. Internet customers are fickle and will constantly search for new deals even if they’ve been rewarded in the past. That being said, online location (in terms of search ranking and visibility) is more important than the physical location of your store.
Do zero in on the how
Instead, realize that if someone found a web page, it is because they periodically check it, had it consistently recommended to them or saw it in search results. Establishing a personal relationship with clients is much more difficult online, so always buttress the failure to connect with them with search engine optimization and quality service. This ensures that new customers will always be coming and old ones will consistently find themselves back.
