Often, at conferences, I run into a skeptic of the Internet. Yes. He comes to me and says, “Internet marketing is a hype. We have a flourishing business and we have nothing more than a basic website.”
Yes and no.
Yes, you have a flourishing business, as a landscape architect, as a lawyer, as a plumber, or as a real estate agent. Yes, your clients are entirely happy with the skeleton website you have.
But no, internet marketing is not a hype. There are certain industries where online presence is absolutely mandatory. For example, if you have buyers or can have buyers from around the world, you need online presence. Or if you deal in digital products.
And no, even if you are not in one of those industries, you still need to take internet marketing seriously. And that’s the more important part.
Why?
You can have a successful offline business without online presence today, but not tomorrow.
With every passing day, the internet is adding to the number of internet users. The growth of internet users is faster than the world population growth. By many times.
To be in front of this growing group, you need an online presence.
Then, there’s a small group of these internet users who have web-exclusive attention. That is, if you are not on the net, you don’t exist for them.
When I explain this, the skeptic often says: “It’s not difficult to have an online presence. We’ll cross the bridge when we get there.”
The skeptic is in no hurry.
Even if we assume that the number of internet users isn’t really growing, there’s still one more reason to build your online brand.
That reason is currency.
You can buy a domain name, and get a functioning website up and running in less than an hour. That’s not the hard part.
Building an online brand is the hard part.
There’s a traditional Indian wisdom: “You can’t start digging a well when you are thirsty.”
This applies to marketing. You can’t start building relationships when you need them. You can’t start building your online presence when you need it.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither will be your online network.
It needs to be built over time. It takes time for people to trust you. It takes time even for Google’s sprawlers to first find you and then trust you.
It takes time for other people to trust you enough to put your link on their website (this is crucial for traffic).
You are racing not just against your competition. Your racing against time too.
With time, you build credibility. With time, you build your online presence.
It takes time to learn what is working and what isn’t. It takes time to build user-friendly interface. It takes time to have customer-focused online strategies.
Also with time, the share of the pie that internet marketing occupies is going to grow. There will be a time when internet marketing will occupy a major part of marketing efforts.
If you wait till then, it will be too late.
Do you remember: just untill few years ago, internet marketing was optional, almost like an after-thought? Only in few years, it has occupied a major chunk of consumers’ attention.
I launched my fist website back in 2004. It took a lot of time and efforts in the initial years to build traction for the website. Today, the website has a Google Page Rank of 6, which means it has a lot of clout in my industry. I continue to reap the benefits of the hard work put in almost six years ago.
If you haven’t taken internet marketing seriously, it is time to do so now.