It seems odd that these same businesses and decision makers would never compromise on their business cards, business suit or other marketing items.  Really, what do you do first after you meet someone, exchange business cards and are looking to do business together?  Do you open a phone book to check out their yellow pages ad, drive by their office…  maybe, but most likely you take a look at their company’s website.  To be clear, I am not suggesting or condoning flashy websites for businesses.  What I am suggesting is the necessity of a clear marketing message that is consistent across all mediums; your personal appearance, print materials and online media such as websites.

This is not a new or revolutionary topic, but I continue to encounter significantly lacking websites and Internet marketing from what appear to otherwise be solid businesses.  The most common reason I hear for these deficiencies is related to budget.  Once a company puts up their website there is no more money allocated to it, ever.  They think it is “good enough.”  I wonder if potential customers think it is good enough?

Linkedin

Twitter

Facebook

Oddly, the recession has driven some new restrictions and also offered more incentive to follow those policies on social networking sites.  Law firms are increasingly competing for fewer resources from clients and cannot afford a public relations flap to hinder their prospects.  Additionally, attorneys and other legal professionals find it is not a good time to test their firm’s policy on social media posts and profiles.

We’ve seen a large number of businesses without any such policy or restrictions on social media sites, but more and more Indianapolis businesses are finding it necessary to address the issue before an incident arises.

What is your company’s stance on social media sites?

With Google already dominating the search engine traffic at or over 60% of global search, this new Google search may be more bad news for Microsoft and their latest foray into search and online advertising, Bing.  Google is touting significantly faster indexing, increased database size and better search results.  As I mentioned in a previous post, Bing has secured a search partnership with Yahoo search and Yahoo marketing to run the background search technology for the popular web portal.  It seems Google is not resting on its laurels as the number 1 search provider and online marketing advertiser.  I don’t think anyone would expect to see Google lagging in technology competition and it appears they are not.  Not only is Google pushing the envelope on search and search marketing but they have also been busy working on online collaboration, document sharing and next generation social networking with Google Wave (we’ve previously tweeted about Google Wave).

Google Wave - Google enters social media, document sharing and collaboration.

So Google is still the leader in search and pushing hard to continue their dominate market share.  Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine to replace Microsoft Live, appears to be struggling a little although it still is technically in beta.  Bing is still having a significant number of posts in their online forum about issues with home pages or index.html (index.htm) not being indexed by the search engine spiders or bots.  Along with sites not being indexed, some sites that were ranked successfully, many for years, are being dropped from the index while still maintaining their high page ranks and search results on Yahoo and Google search.  Another issue facing Bing and their assault on Google is many pages that are indexed by Bing have meta robots entries for noindex and nofollow.  I’m sure these basic issues will be resolved as the Bing search engine evolves and emerges from Beta, but Google was, is and for the foreseeable future will remain the top search engine for users.  And with their new search engine, Google Caffeine, it appears everyone will be chasing them for a long time to come.  ;)

One thing all successful small businesses do is focus on their core and find other companies to take care of everything else.  It really does make sense when you think about it.  Instead of hiring a person to cut the grass, develop marketing materials, maybe even do your accounting or handle your business computers, servers and other technology why not get an expert to take care of all these other items.  It seems the initial realization of the cost of the venture often puts small business owners off to the idea.  Why would I pay a market branding expert to come in and do something I certainly could do myself (if only I could find the time…?).  Well, maybe you could learn all the necessary knowledge that goes into the art of understanding how to get people to remember your logo, services, etc, but you could also spend that time learning more about your own business, refining processes or better yet spend time away from work.  If you think of it as the time taken away from helping your core business then it usually does not make sense to perform the tasks yourself or in-house.  In the case above even if you spent a good deal of time researching marketing and branding it would not even be a drop in the bucket compared to a branding expert.  So yes you could most certainly create a brand and send it to market, but it most likely would not be nearly as effective as the expert.

So, why then do many small business owners, (CEOs, CFOs, presidents) and small business executives want to try to manage and administer their small business servers, computers, mobile devices, printers, networks, routers, firewalls, etc…?  Is it more secure to do it yourself?  Probably not.  Is it faster to do it yourself?  Probably not.  Is it more fun to do it yourself?  Probably not. Is it less expensive (cheaper) to do it yourself.  Probably not.

That’s right; it’s probably not less expensive for you to manage your own business computers. What else can you being doing while you are trying to fix, update and manage your small business computer?  Talking with customers, calling on new leads and potential customers, focusing on your vision and future growth for the business…  With the switch of some specialized computer support service companies to managed services, a fixed monthly fee for all your computer support, you could focus on driving your business and growing revenue.  The monthly fixed cost allows you to easily manage technology costs and plan your budget.  So not only can you spend your time running your business but you can reduce the costs associated with your computer system and network being down (employee wages, missed email and other communications, lost data, etc) because the manage service provider is incentified to keep your systems up and running.

So now you’re focused on growing your business, defining vision, planning for the next 6 months, year, 5 years, etc…  You can also get some great help from an outsourced CTO or CIO – Chief Information Officer or Chief Technology Officer.  Some specialist IT advisors do offer these services to help you plan and budget for future technology/software upgrades/purchases, technology utilization and optimization, and business trends within technology to get you on top and keep you there.  There are things we all do and then there are things we do well.  Let’s all focus on the things we do well and see how your business revenue grows from the expertise.

You can find out more about our CIO advisors as well as computer IT support services.

So, to most “normal” people who likely missed the news story entirely or saw it and said to themselves who cares, why does this matter. It matters if you are a small business owner because it may help you target new customers using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on search engines. Online marketing is easily the most effective way to reach new customers, build your brand and generate leads for your business. Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo search together, though, only have about 30% of the search engine market. Google search has around 60% and everyone else combined makes up the last 10%. Google is quickly running away with ppc search engine advertising market on the Internet. As with any competition in the tech industry, the new push by Bing and Yahoo search should help bring new advances to Internet marketing and search advertising. In this case the benefits should come most significantly to the small business consumers who get the most from online advertising. If nothing else it should keep Google focused on providing the best tools, value and prices for it adwords search results PPC advertising.

There really is a better way to attract new customers to your business: online advertising and search engine listing placements. The great thing about the Internet, such as reading today’s news today, rather than waiting for the newspaper tomorrow to read today’s news. Just like the newspaper, your ad may be out of date before anyone sees it (if anyone does actually see it) in the phone book. What if you add a new service or product, or want to let people know about a new promotion? You can wait until next year to add it to your new yellow pages ad in the phone book. Or if you have an effective website using search engine optimization (seo) and online marketing campaign you can make changes which potential customers will see immediately.

It really is pretty amazing how easy it is to attract new business for your company by using the Internet rather than relying on traditional marketing channels such as the yellow page ads in your local phone book.

We look forward to providing continued helpful information and recommendations for small businesses around Indianapolis.

The focus of our blog is to educate and provide relevant information regarding small business marketing on the Internet and computer technology benefits to grow revenue.

Thank you,

Kirk Miller

Senior Engineer at L5 Solutions – Indianapolis IT support provider and online marketing specialist.