For the first time small businesses have direct access and control of their marketing without the aid of a middle man or a staff that guides them in the right direction. However, this new found control means that you now have to learn how to use it.
There are a whole host of technical and marketing issues to learn all at once, which completely overwhelms the average business owner and many times buries them before they can even get off the ground. For all of the successes online, the graveyard of dead business websites that have fallen by the wayside number in the millions. But why do so many businesses find it so hard to have any success online? I’ve been observing this for the last 6 years and have watched the same issues repeat themselves on almost a daily basis.
THE TOP REASONS WHY SMALL BUSINESSES FAIL ONLINE
#5. Lack of knowledge Reason #5 that Small Businesses Fail online is lack of Knowledge.
True enough, business owners come to
people like me because they expect me
to know for them. And I do. However,
most times businesses only hire a web
designer or consultant for a short
period of time. To get a website done,
or to solve one specific problem and
that’s it. When that consultant’s
contract is up or the project done, the
owners are right back to not knowing
what to do with it next month or next
year. On top of that many businesses
put all their eggs in one basket, and
when that doesn’t work magic, they are
clueless of what to do next.
On the one hand they may not have the
budget to keep a full or part time
consultant, but on the other they don’t
have the time to learn it for
themselves. Too many think that the
web and marketing on it is something
that they are going to pick up as they
go, like learning Quickbooks or MS
Office.
Additionally, business owners get
discouraged when results aren’t
immediate, they don’t know enough to
adjust and think on the fly, and don’t
have the drive to continue forward
when they make a mistake or spend
money that doesn’t result in an
immediate ROI. So they give up, or put
it on the back burner indefinitely.
Worse than having no knowledge, is
having only some knowledge but are
unaware that you only have some
knowledge. Nothing ruins web success
faster than a client who hasn’t learned
anything new since 2005 and is
insistent that you develop according to
those standards that they have locked
in their head.
#4. Underfunded / Low
Budgets
Reason #4 that Small Businesses Fail
online is lack of money.
Just like all other marketing, success
online costs money. There are no 2
ways about it. You can do quite a bit
with free resources, open source
programs and trolling forums and blogs
for free information, but that should be
enough to just get you up to speed. If
you want to have a successful web
program like the big kids do…one that
converts into an increase in
sales….you’re going to have to invest
some money into it.
The trick is to spend your money
wisely, not risk everything on promises
and magic beans, and to not get
discouraged if every dollar you spend
doesn’t yield you immediate results. It
takes time. You will need to tweak and
adjust things along the way. You may
even waste a dollar or two on the
wrong thing. It happens.
Professional web design, Search Engine
Optimization, Social Media profiles and
management, graphics, logos, images,
copy writing, advertising…all of that
stuff costs time and or money. You can
learn how to do quite a bit of it on your
own, but many businesses try to do
everything on their own because they
don’t want to spend any money. There
are some things online, and in your
business in general that you just cannot
do on the cheap and expect any
success .
Add to that, that many Small Business
Owners see the completion of their
website as the end. An
accomplishment. When in reality, it’s
just the beginning. A website on its
own is not a life form. It doesn’t go out
and bring people to it anymore than
your business cards jump out of your
wallet and into people’s hands when
they walk by.
So they rarely budget to spend any
money on marketing the site after it is
built. So it just sits there. Idle.
Like the old saying goes, if you want to
run with the big dogs, sooner or later
you’re going to have to pee in the high
grass.
#3. Lack of Focus/
Targeting
Reason #3 that Small Businesses Fail
online is lack of focus.
With so much information out there
shouting at you, it’s easy to get
misdirected by every new product,
website, or article that comes out
almost every day that promises that
this is the one you need to be
successful on the web.
You can waste a lot of time and money
jumping from one new program and
throwing everything you can at the wall
to see what sticks, while never fully
developing any of them enough to
have fighting chance of success.
Also, most small business websites
and Ecommerce businesses target
broad demographics , general search
terms, and keywords that have high
bounce rates. They don’t target their
market properly, and get swamped by
massive competition that they don’t
have the budget or resources to
compete against.
On top of that many website owners
waste time targeting their market at
the wrong stage of buying or decision
making. Remember this , information
seekers are not buyers. At least not
that day. You will need to find the right
balance between providing enough
information to make the sale, yet not
so much that it only attracts window
shoppers looking for free stuff. Better
to have 10 people a day coming to your
site who are ready to buy, than 100 a
day who are just looking for information
under the premise that maybe they’ll
come back one day and purchase or
hire you. When people are ready to
purchase, they use different search
terms. Target those.
#2. No Patience
Reason #2 that Small Businesses Fail
online is lack of Patience.
It goes without saying that in this drive
through, instant gratification world that
many people have trouble waiting for
anything. They equate every action with
immediate gratification. When that
doesn’t happen they make excuses that
it doesn’t work and they move on.
However, when it comes to marketing
on the web, it’s a process that takes
time, knowledge, tweaking, adjustments,
rinse and repeat before you strike the
formula that nets you the best ROI. A
lot of business owners can’t deal with
that. They want to know that if they
spend a certain amount of money, that
it will definitely result in a certain
amount of sales. Well, it takes practice
to get that formula. You aren’t going to
hit it out of the park on the first pitch.
So they bail and start making all kinds
of excuses about how it doesn’t work.
Also, many can’t deal with the
realization that there are no
guarantees. Nothing online is
promised. That you could feasibly
spend a ton of money and never realize
the results that you envisioned. In
some ways Internet Marketing is a shot
in the dark. However, the more you
learn, the better the professionals you
will hire to help , which gives you a
better chance at success.
Lack of patience and understanding will
cost you more time and money than
anything else you do for your business.
#1. Unrealistic
Expectations
The #1 reason that Small Businesses
Fail online is unrealistic expectations.
Believe it or not, there are still a lot of
grown people that think the web is the
gateway to instant riches. That all you
need is a good idea, and the rest will
magically take care of itself. People all
over the world are just standing by with
their credit cards in their hands waiting
patiently for your business to come
online and then the flood gates will
open.
Right now someone, somewhere is
writing a business plan that lists online
sales as a significant portion of
revenue. They are even going as far as
to pull completely arbitrary numbers out
of their butts and adding them to their
sales projections. However, rarely do
they ever detail how they plan to
acheive such numbers. It’s as if it is
somehow just promised by the internet
Gods that Google charitably directs
targeted traffic to all new websites.
Many people still believe that
today’s internet billionaires all
started on a shoe string
budget in a garage and “Yada,
yada, yada” they made it big.
They fail to realize that the
“yada, yada” is the most
important part. You can’t
“yada, yada” the web.
“Yada Yada” is from the 153rd
episode of the NBC sitcom
Seinfeld.
This extreme ignorance of how the web
works, is compounded by their belief
that everything online is built and runs
the same way. That Facebook cost
about $2k to build and they run it on
Zuckerberg’s personal computer on a
$12 a month, shared hosting account.
Plenty of business start ups literally
believe that they are just going to find
some starving college student (because
apparently all college students know
web design and development) to build
their website for cheap, and in the
process get all kinds of free web
advice and knowledge via osmosis.
Consequently, many business fail to
plan and budget properly to have things
done professionally or build the web
program that they see working for other
businesses. They bounce from cheap
solution to cheap solution under the
guise of saving money. However,
inevitably what they are doing is losing
money and hindering their own
success. They actually end up spending
more money and time constantly fixing ,
updating, and redoing mistakes that are
the result of using the cheapest
possible solution on everything.
If I had a nickel for every person that
told me “ I just want to see if it makes
any money first, before I really invest in
it“, I could retire. Those types of people
NEVER see any success and they never
make any money. Why? Because you
can’t half ass business. Web or not.
Either you are committed to it and in it
to win it, or you are just dreaming and
hoping to get lucky, and in that case
what you are doing is really just a
hobby.
The name of the game on the web is
“get in where you fit in”. Once you find
the areas that you want to concentrate
on, learn as much as you can about
them, and their strategies while still
using your own creativity, and don’t
expect to take any shortcuts and still
be successful.
Online marketing is not much different
than offline marketing. It takes
Creativity. Commitment. Money.
Professionalism. Patience.
But most of all, it takes a plan
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