For some reason people starting or running a business don’t always consider investing in advertising or Internet visibility as a top priority. When you know that boosting online traffic can potentially create life-long customers and connecting to your target market will increase sales, it just doesn’t make sense to starve your business of a decent advertising budget.
While out grocery shopping last week, it occurred to me that we go out of our way to feed our family yet virtually starve our businesses. Even in the face of rapid grocery and fuel price increases, people haven’t cut back much on either. We tend to consider food and fuel as necessities. In many homes, we just expand our grocery/fuel budget to meet our growing needs.
What’s surprising is that many businesses are reluctant to spend $600-$1000 a month to bring in new business. That’s like deciding to save some money by only feeding your family once a week. Everybody knows that young families need adequate nourishment to grow. Still, there are start-ups that expect to see their business grow without even attempting to place themselves in front of their customers.
Website owners who fail to fuel their future growth with a proper website marketing budget are literally starving their businesses. Just as your family needs adequate nourishment to stay healthy and grow…so does your online business. Do you even have an online advertising budget? After all, advertising is a basic necessity of businesses; it is the fuel needed to feed your website’s success.
Would you jump into your car and expect that whatever fuel you had in the tank would just have to be enough to get you anywhere you needed to go? Hardly! However, I often hear people say that they don’t want to spend $600 a month to increase their company’s visibility on the Internet. In today’s market, that’s like expecting to get to where you want to go without providing your business with the fuel it needs to get ahead.
Some business owners choose marketing campaigns based on the lowest bidder. With marketing, choosing the lower price, at the end of the day, is like opting for lower quality. Why trust your business to the lowest bidder? You really do get what you pay for.
When considering a marketing campaign, businesses would do better if they looked beyond the price and focused more on results. Finding the right combination and methods may mean trying different things, but shouldn’t involve going beyond a reasonable budget to get the results you are looking for.
Remember that website advertising is a basic necessity of your online businesses. You have to make it a top priority. Don’t just feed your family…feed your business and in turn, your business will feed your family.
Website marketing means future growth and continued online success … invest in your website business and watch it flourish.
September 10th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
We need more article like this. It’s funny how many people become squiggly when they have to invest in to their own business, especially the ones that get leads and sales from their websites. It’s almost like the last thing they really want to do.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
As a web developer I see a lot of this misplaced ’spoil the ship for a hap’porht of tar’ attitude. A lot of my clients will gladly part with money for a design and development but when it comes to continuous investment in online marketing they baulk. With the obvious consequences that their website then becomes stagnant and they come moaning… What do you say? Told you so?
September 12th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Ahh, dead on. It shocks me that people in the “real world” will spend a hundred thousand for a business that will bring 30k per year. A hundred thousand in an online business? I can only imagine the ROI.
The Internet offers incredible ROI to the extent that not investing is simply mind-boggling.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Great post. Agree with you on this one. Only if people considered their online business as another family member, they won’t be starving it.