Technology is Changing Marketing

Marketing Your Business Online – It’s More Important Than Ever

I just bought a new TV recently and I need to start by saying I love it. It’s a bright, shiny new Sony Bravia LED TV that’s incredibly thin, has a brilliant picture and has become a bit of an eye opener for me. Anyone who knows me will quickly pick up on the fact that I am pretty technically inclined (read this as I a a gadget guy), but this new TV caught me completely off guard and it was only this morning that my mind really started to grasp the significance. Especially when it comes to marketing and business!

You see, the last TV I bought was over four years ago and my how things have changed in four short years. This previous TV was near the end of the cycle for that particular technology, so I was able to get a great deal, but this new TV is cutting edge, far superior and for significantly less. It’s already got my mind wandering as to what will be available in four years, but that’s for another post.

Right now, I need to get you up to speed on my revelation. This particular TV is not only networkable, but it also allows me to go on the internet It even has a direct link to YouTube built into it, which is what started my awakening this morning. I set the TV up on our network last night and was showing my wife this morning and suddenly it hit me, this is just the beginning!

Web Video is Part of Our Life

Much like my kids blankly stare at me when I talk about watching TV shows in black and white (yes I am that old!), their kids will never know a world without internet and without YouTube or whatever the evolution of online video becomes. Youtube and web video have become a part of our lives.

I’m a very visual person and while I can typically grasp things from reading a manual, watching it in a video makes it even clearer. Whether it’s learning how to repair my dishwasher, to replacing a power supply in a PC, to learning how to use a software application in a tutorial video, I can usually find videos to help me online.

Coming full circle back to my shiny new TV, as I was showing my wife a couple of videos from YouTube this morning, my mind started to wander. In my case, this TV is set up in my family room which makes it visible from the kitchen. So my initial thought was there are some fantastic cooking channels on YouTube that I could watch right from my kitchen to help me prepare a kick-ass meal.

Then I thought about other videos. More and more people will have the ability to start surfing YouTube and watching videos about subjects they are interested in, right from the comfort of their own couch, as more TV’s like this enter the market. We’ve already seen traditional advertising methods of the past start to become less effective (think how often you use the Yellow Pages now versus searching on your smartphone or online?), won’t this affect television commercials as well?

Can Small Business Capitalize On Internet Video?

If you are already paying for television advertising, will this eventually lead to your marketing dollars becoming less and less effective? And perhaps more importantly, is there a way to capitalize right now on this transition so rather than playing catch up, you can lead the pack?

As the famous quote goes “Pioneers are the ones who get the arrows in the back”, so while it may not always be advantageous to be the first, with the speed that business and the internet are evolving, waiting too long may be even more dangerous. Besides really we are well past the pioneer stage, we just haven’t slowed down enough to notice.

As technology speeds up local businesses need to start thinking longer term and with a bigger picture than they typically have been. It’s no longer about advertising in the Yellow Pages, or creating a 30 second commercial for thousands of dollars that your target audience may or may not see.

Commercials have always been a shotgun approach to reach the masses, but as less people watch TV, more PVR and skip commercials and consumers have more channels to view, this shotgun is losing even more power. If you want clients to find you, you need to start appearing where they are looking and that place is the internet, which you can coincidentally now watch on your couch!

Branding & Messaging Online

Perhaps this is where the pioneer reference needs to jump back into the picture. Because the internet is different than traditional advertising like TV. People online are not looking for an ad that is selling them a product or a service, they are now looking for answers to questions, solutions to problems and good old information, and they can typically find it in just a few moments online.

This should be where the aha moment should be kicking in now. I’m sure your company provides answers, and solves problems and provides information to clients or potential clients, doesn’t it? If it doesn’t you may want to question why it exists! If however, it does provide any of these items to clients, there is a potential for your company to get your message out there in front of potential clients and brand yourself as an authority at the same time.

With the state of today’s technology, this is something that any small business owner can do relatively fast, if they know where to start.  So should I let the cat out of the bag? These techniques allowed me to

• help one client get 8 out of first 10 results on the first page of Google?
• helped another client get the first 40 listings under the video category
• and could help you create a list of people who you can market to for years to come

I won’t be charging for this information, I’ll just lay it out fairly straight forward so you can get started. So if you would like information like this, leave me a comment, tell me if this would be beneficial to you or your business, I’ld love to hear from you.