The end of the industrial age didn’t come with a sharp transition. It’s still taking many businesses too long to get and/or maintain a website effectively. Most still believe a ‘brochure site’ is all that’s really needed.
As a result they are consistently missing out on 75%-80% of their potential sales.
Web designers love the ‘brochure site’ mentality and help perpetuate it. That’s because so few of them focus on the things that turn a visitor into a lead or customer for a business. So it’s actually very inappropriate to depend on those who don’t know where the focus should be for guidance on the things that make all the difference between success and failure.
How do you get a business back on track while so many elements, issues and mindsets seem to force it down the wrong path?
After websites came social media which was promptly mis-used by most businesses in the hope of desperately making more sales. Sold as a source of low-hanging fruit, social continues to frustrate those businesses that won’t stop long enough to notice and then think about how marketing has changed.
The web gives consumers the control. They can see, hear and interact as they wish. They no longer desperately run to find a phone book when they need something. And now, more quickly than in the time between websites and social, mobile has moved into an ever-increasing and dominating position.
More people access the web through their mobile devices than via a desktop computer.
And just as it took a number of years for businesses in general to adapt to using websites, most businesses are also not up to speed with having a mobile-friendly site either.
What compounds this problem even more is that most businesses are also not marketing as effectively as they could be online. Many are still stuck in an offline mentality. Some have embraced online marketing – almost to the point of ignoring offline altogether, but the real advantage goes to those who keep what still works offline and integrate it with what works online.
Could your business do better?
To the above question, most businesses would honestly answer, “Yes!” But after talking with company after company we continue to hear that most of those are also struggling in figuring out their next steps.
With the increase in uncontrolled communication comes an increase in confusion and uncertainty. When a business tries to confront the information needed to make a new, rational marketing decision, one info Tsunami after another rolls in. Just processing the options and choices is challenging enough, but knowing that a mistake could waste money and leave opportunities for competitors is even more troublesome.
What to do and where to turn?
Enter Integrated Search Marketing…
We believe the solution is found in the mentality and approach. You can’t think of marketing as something where there’s a secret answer. If there’s a secret at all, it’s in creating the processes and systems that run somewhat automatically and allow you to fine tune them to perfection.
The mentality needed is one where you might stumble onto a fast and easy solution, but you shouldn’t think of your marketing like a miner did of gold during the gold rush or a gambling addict does when jonesing for the next big score.
The marketing tools available online and the ability to connect them to offline marketing are nothing short of amazing. Things are possible now that weren’t even imagined a decade ago – and that’s still more than 15 years AFTER the Internet/web was created.
The solution for your business, the mentality and approach is called Integrated Search Marketing. This methodology brings the most powerful online and offline marketing tools together, effectively connects them, and then systematically turns them on to not just do what they need to do individually, but also allows those marketing activities to reinforce and increase the results of the other connected activities.
This produce more from their combined efforts than from their efforts individually. And in the end delivers an advantage that few of your competitors can match or surpass.
With all the new competition coming online every day, it’s no longer just about you and those other businesses doing the same thing. It now includes younger and hungrier. It includes new blood that hasn’t yet felt the repeated sting of being slapped over and over by bad marketing decisions and frustrating learning curves.
Integrated Search Marketing is the high road that, while not a simple marketing band-aid, places you above the others with a steady, progressive program customized to solve your marketing problems once and for all.