| This is a rough time to be in the advertising business. Internet marketing is pushing it out of the way, people are way too overstimulated, nobody is spending and, of course, there?s that pesky recession to think about.
You may not have noticed, but this Google thing has become kind of a big deal. The company itself is worth somewhere around 200 billion dollars, and it?s continuing to grow. You may also notice that the company offers almost all of its services for free. That?s because most of those things aren?t really its business.
No, Google is in the advertising business, internet marketing style. What Google realized early on and profited immensely from is the fact that people are looking for stuff. Yes, I know this seems obvious, but give me a minute and I?ll explain.
There was a time when advertising was dominated by a few big companies, spending millions of dollars on ad campaigns to reach millions of people in the hopes that some percentage of those people, hopefully a large one but probably a small one, would actually buy their products. Google wasn?t really interested in those people.
Google realized that there were millions of businesses, and if they could offer lots of businesses lots of way to reach customers for pennies, they could make a lot of money. Billions. And since they knew that there were lots of people searching for lots of things, they were in a position to dominate the advertising business. Internet marketing wasn?t born with them, but it did grow with them.
This method of connecting hungry customers with ready businesses really is a revolution in the advertising business. Internet marketing means that you don?t have to fight with other advertisers trying to sift the great hordes of people who don?t want to listen to you to begin with, trying to find that one person who actually wants what you have.
There are two sides of internet marketing; finding that hungry customer, and building relationships. The hungry customer part is the obvious one. If someone is searching for a way to stop feline incontinence and you have a way to stop feline incontinence, then it should be obvious that rather than shouting to the masses about what you have, you should be talking with the person who already wants what you have. The internet allows you do this, usually for pennies.
The other aspect is not as obvious, although you almost certainly have seen it done. That?s the conversation side of it. If you use Amazon, you?ve seen one of the masters of this at work. Amazon doesn?t just sell to you; they make an effort to get to know you, to offer things they think you might like, to listen to what you?re saying. They don?t use an advertising business, internet marketing is what they use to get to the top.
You can do this, too. And you should do this too. You need to put a fence around your customers to stop them from wandering off, and to make sure you?re giving them what they want and need.
If you?re running an advertising business and want to survive all the problems you?re going to face, you need to be in the business of offering these new ways to clients, to show them how to find that hungry customer and keep them. You know what going to save your advertising business? Internet marketing. |