Small business Internet Marketing is different. I don’t think anyone really gets it, yet. Well, I mean there are surely strategies that work today, but frankly I think we’re missing some major components for all of this to come together.
Take for example a customer review. Sure, we have YELP for restaurant reviews. We have Google Places that brings certain reviews into their platform. We have social media and followers, friends and fans talking about it. We have old school ‘word of mouth’. Why aren’t their any software solutions that help a business manage their online reviews, encourage one easy interface to communicate with these audiences. Business are set up to fail with dozens of destination sites. How can a business fail when they are now required to listen to dozens of channels, rather than two for a hundred years, the telephone and belly-to-bell.
All of a sudden there are dozens of channels. If you don’t have reviews, citations and a healthy online presence, 40% of Americans all of a sudden can’t find you if they happen to choose to look for you on their smartphone.
Sure, Google provides education webinars for their small business audience on their Small Business Blog. They’ve sent places kits to 10′s of thousands of businesses. They’re providing photo walk through. They recognize the small business marketplace needs education. It’s difficult for American small businesses to get online when they operate in the most dangerous knowledge quadrant, ignorance.
The problem, Google’s core – SEARCH and they core profit driver, PAID.
Of course they need to get paid. Of course small businesses will benefit from paid channels. It’s a good business model. But let’s not forget what’s at the center of this engine, organic search. I feel like Google’s middle management has lost touch with the essence and foundation of what made Google Google. If Larry and Sergey we’re heading the helm of local, I think Google Places would look different. Maybe with Larry at the helm now, this is changing.
You see I’m in this ugly world of SEO. I’m not an SEO-er. I don’t like SEO and I think SEO is all wrong. I’m not here to manipulate what this wonderful company Google has created. I believe Google wants to rank businesses based on the greatest metric and report card any business can be measured on. It’s customers. Period.
A business delivering a great product or service, for a fair price and has happy, returning customers…Google should feel honored that I used them to recommend such a fine establishment. Isn’t this how it should work? I should trust Google to recommend the best business for my needs, right? Social metric in search make so much sense. Hence why I’m not an SEO, I can’t influence the algorithm.
But I can influence people. I’m a marketer. I influence buying decisions. This means increasing new customer count, increasing customer spend and increasing spending frequency. It’s not all about getting a client, it’s also about keeping them and bringing them back.
This is marketing, isn’t it?
So why is Google not helping me help it’s customers?
Why is Baidu spending half a billion to do this?
Google is trying to create an industry themselves. They are trying to provide education to business that they need to get online. Free websites. Tracking. Analytics. Paid. Free.
Google’s education sucks, it’s so dry and provided by egineers focussing the products features, not business benefits. They are egotistical towards their paid channels. They care about PPC Express and Google Deals. Try and talk to a Deals expert about Places. I feel like they said “that’s free, if you can’t afford this, that’s free and good luck”.
Point is, the more consumers using Places, engaging with reviews and leaving references, trails and citations, the more engaged businesses becomes with these channels, the more tools are developed to help business manage these solutions and in essence, it’s natural that a good portion of these businesses will add paid channels to their marketing mix. This means revenue for Google.
It’s like drug dealing. Google is chasing all the end dealers. Stop. Go get their suppliers. Train all these corrupt SEOs.
We are the ones with our street on the feet. We are the ones tirelessly creating 100+ hours of online training for our audience, like at my Local Internet Marketing Training agency.
My clients don’t have fancy automated software creating 100′s of links, or submitting to 100′s of directories. We market to a specific audience. Engage that audience. Build review acuisition systems, not soliciting reviews. Establish local PR campaigns. Identify service improvements and capitalize from the change. Survey audiences and implement improvements to further satisfy the needs of their customers. Free wifi make customers happy. Free wifi gets you citations. Google likes citations.
Our clients need tools. We need to know our online exposure without hours of research. We need to know who is talking about us, where and when….without hours of learning solution A and failing at solution #2. Our industry needs standardization towards regulations and best practices towards this new age of marketing. Businesses need to learn how to properly engage with customers and continually figure out to improve this customer experience.
My job as an online marketer is to help my clients understand how this task is applied to their business. In turn, my clients naturally move towards paid channels. Google should help people like me to further grow their initial initiative.
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