I started my first small business online marketing program back around ‘95. Options were pretty limited, my main goal was to get listed on Prodigy 
. Times have definitely changed and there are a wide variety of options for business owners looking to revamp their small business online marketing.
- Owners and marketers will get over their stigma of pay per click advertising. Plenty of businesses have been doing this for years, but too many “marketing/SEO consultants” have told their small business customers that organic is the only way to fly. “Why pay Google PPC fees when you can pay me for years to improve your organic results?” A hybrid model works wonderfully.
- More and more social networks will pop up, but the core sites will continue to dominate. Facebook is now up to 150 million users. Twitter has been far more stable. People gravitate to other people, which means a continued growth on key sites. Although I like FriendFeed, I think Facebook’s integration with the most popular sites (Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, etc) may make it difficult for FriendFeed to prove its niche status.
- Blogging and email marketing will increase. Some will be terrible, some will be decent and even fewer will even track their successes. People are seeing the value, they’ve gone mainstream enough to not need to fear them and barriers to entry are incredibly low.
- Even more unqualified people will be placed in charge of small business online marketing. Company marketing people or IT people will now be tasked with creating a small business online marketing plan and implementing it. Small business owners too frequently fear making it really big and a global advertising medium might force them to accept the reality that they’re actually a small fish in a big pond.
- Businesses that do not integrate a mixed-media approach to marketing and advertising will hurt during these economic times. Companies that understand where print, TV, email, social network, web and blogging presences can coexist to create a complete marketing presence will do well and will continue to survive into the future.
Like usual, if you need help figuring out your integrated marketing plan, please let me know.
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