Often times it’s difficult for business owners to distinguish the difference between these two terms.
Each serves an important role in building your business, but understanding the difference between them, and using each correctly, can result is massive growth potential.
Textbook definitions of each are as follows:
Advertising: The paid, public, non-personal announcement of a persuasive message by an identified sponsor; the non-personal presentation or promotion by a firm of its products to its existing and potential customers.
Marketing: The systematic planning, implementation and control of a mix of business activities intended to bring together buyers and sellers for the mutually advantageous exchange or transfer of products. The American Marketing Association (AMA) states, “Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”
Online Marketing in a Bad Economy
Obviously we are facing one of the most challenging economic periods in our nation’s history, yet it also poses great opportunities for small businesses to become smarter marketers of their products and services.
In our recent past, the booming economy allowed many small to mid-size firms to become complacent with their web presence (assuming they had one) as the phones were ringing and their sales channels were producing.
As these means of revenue constrict, and budgets are scrutinized, leveraging one’s website will become accepted as an economic necessity.
One could argue that now is more important a time than ever to market effectively as successful campaigns may award companies with market share they may otherwise not have been able to pry from their competitors in a flourishing economy.
Buyers are spending more time online than ever before doing research and comparing potential vendors. The content presented on an effectively designed website will serve to provide the information they need to make an educated decision and greatly increase the likelihood of them selecting you over a competitor who provides less information, or presents it poorly.
Another great benefit of online marketing is that the results are far more measurable than ever before thanks to web analytics. Even a basic analytic report will provide greater intelligence than most traditional marketing venues.
Take this opportunity and make the best of it. Odds are your tenacity has allowed you to weather many storms as you have grown your business. Rise to this occasion and carefully consider the wealth of cost effective marketing alternatives available to you.
Don’t invite guests to a party at your home if you have nothing to serve
This initial post will most likely set the tone for this blog as it’s goal is to drive home that when it comes to your online presence you need to prioritize and take care of First Things First!
I am a huge advocate of Search Engine Optimization, and quality organic placement is an extremely important component in your sites success. Email campaigns and marketing initiatives offer great returns when done well. Pay-Per-Click has a place when strategically planned, implemented and properly managed. Advertising in industry specific directories, relevant in-bound links and many other traffic generating opportunities can be utilized successfully to increase traffic to a company’s website.
Often companies attempt some, or all, of the above-mentioned projects and unfortunately often one of two outcomes occur:
1. Quality traffic is not generated to the site and the initiatives are dismissed as ineffective.
2. Traffic (hopefully qualified traffic) is driven to the site and nothing happens!?!
Either way the return on investment is not realized and the entire process is deemed worthless. The marketer is left disappointed, discouraged and usually out a lot of money!
The sad truth is that 9 times out of 10 this is all due the hard fact that the site itself was in no shape to have traffic driven to it in the first place.
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Welcome
Welcome!
It’s 4th Qtr 2008, and though this blog is rather new in comparison to others (I have thought about dedicating time to this venture for several years now), I hope it rapidly becomes a valuable resource for readers. The posts in this site will most likely be focused on developing, managing and marketing your company’s online presence, and using technology to proactively address sales challenges and overcoming them. My companies do a great deal of work in these areas for small to mid-size firms in various market segments internationally and I am looking forward to discussing topics that appeal to the owners / directors of firms that fit this demographic.
My goal is to cover topics in a manner that will allow business owners and managers to get educated and motivated to take action on business objectives that they probably have already thought about, but more often then not, have taken a back seat to other business issues at hand or set aside as it seemed (at the time) too daunting a task.
If post something in this blog that you find helpful as you build and manage your web presence and/or marketing initiatives that’s wonderful. I have been very fortunate in that I have worked with some great people on some great projects and now I look forward to discussing some of the challenges I have seen overcome that (in part or whole) may offer readers some guidance, or at the very least stimulate a thought process that may push them closer to a successful venture.
Please bear in mind that: This is my personal blog.
The views expressed on these pages are mine alone and are meant to serve as a platform for thought or discussion, not as recommendations for your specific project or challenge.
If something is worth doing it’s worth doing right. With that I would say that any marketing or website endeavor should be looked at specifically as it relates to your business, objectives and marketplace.
Enjoy!
