By the time you read this, it may already be too late.
Monday, December 21st, 2009While many of us were hunkering down to survive the Late Great Recession of the 21st Century and were focused on day-to-day operations, the world of marketing completely changed. Forever.
Yes, the latest economic bust made it official. Digital media has taken the lead in reaching customers, local and afar. According to a new report by research firm Outsell, U.S. companies shifted $60 billion out of traditional advertising venues such as TV and print and spent it on their own website development.
So it makes sense that digital age advertising is the only marketing category that realized growth in 2009. Says an article in BtoB Magazine, that’s 91% growth for small business – a pretty noteworthy figure that shows why this matters here in Merced. Just wait until your future prospects hit the market. They will, no doubt, only respond to emerging media. (Texting, anyone? Yes, it’s officially a verb now, and SMS is a growing marketing technique.)
Websites have been the hottest category of digital marketing for well over a decade. There are now 215,675,903 total websites with domain names and content on them (and still counting), compared to just 18,000 websites in August 1995. If I did the math correctly, that’s a 12,000% increase in just 14 years.
If you don’t have a basic online brochure-style website, you better get one. The web is where most people seek information, compare costs, and read reviews about products and services before making the buying decision. If you already have a website, it’s time to take it to the next level. And I mean marketing level – with serious consideration of the quality of your content – both the message and the image.
There is more to creating a great website than development, and I’ve seen quite a few businesses mistakenly depend upon their web developer for a marketing presence. Most developers promote website “design”, but have no real training in important skills to make your website a great marketing tool. It takes a combination of skills to do it right, including writing, design and strategic thinking.
After you have an effective website that is optimized for search engines, your next digital marketing efforts might include email marketing, social media and mobile applications. This will move you into Web 2.0, where visitors can leave a review, comment or somehow participate in your web presence. But only use these media if you’re actually going to use them.
By the time you get those systems in place, it will be time to change your strategies again. Web 3.0 is already on the horizon with the emerging Semantic Web technologies, which will streamline the way we use the web to find information. And this just in: Mobile web, meaning the little gadget in your pocket, will overtake desktop web access very soon. And it’s going to be big. According to an in-depth study by Morgan Stanley, it will be twice as large and create and destroy even more wealth than previous tech cycles thanks to the convergence of social media, video and 3G network technologies.
So get with it! Get your digital presence going if you haven’t already. Or update it. By the time you read this, it may already be too late.