In the everyday world of cats and bathtubs the average American consumes mundane products and services such as haircuts and toothpaste. In the nebulous world of the Internet the products offered are much closer to those sold by the snake oil salesman of the the 1800's. If you were to google the word toothpaste you would get 3950 results. If, on the other hand, you were to google the very specific phrase "internet marketing" you would receive over 26 million results. Is the Internet just about marketing, marketing? Or is it maybe about selling, selling? What about the local "hair salon," which returns 2.6 million results? Or the local "car repair shop", which returns about 64,000 results? These two everyday services which we use very regularly can't compare with the phrase "web design," 120 million results. The idea of the Internet we were sold was one where finally, in the highly competitive world of commerce the little guy could compete with the behemoth. Finally, The neighborhood pizzeria could now compete with national chains that had million dollar advertising budgets. The little guy bought into this myth and dumped plenty of cold hard cash into the coffers of local web design companies who promised that cool design was the best way to get returning customers. After this didn't work the same design company then told the small business owner he needed a submission service to make sure he was listed in all of the appropriate search engines and directories. When this didn't work the small business owner left the Internet vowing never to return. The few who stayed were told the game had now changed and an adwords campaign would surely bring customers running to their website. This investment was minimal; adwords could be bought for as little as 5 cents each. The web firm could manage the whole thing for a nominal fee, still no visitors. If only we could increase the pay-per-click amount surely then we would see a great return on investment. Targeted customers were surely worth added cost. In spite of assurances by all the Internet gurus of a conversion rate of 5 to 6 percent consistent .5 to 1 percent seemed to be more realistic. What we really need is a professional ad copy writer to make sure our adwords have a compelling feature, then we will see the return we seek. All across the country small business people have spent millions of dollars trying to stay competitive in the new digital age. So far the web designers, graphic artists, Internet marketers, seo specialists, web hosting companies and most of all the search engine companies themselves have gotten fantastically rich. Meanwhile back here the everyday world of dentists and car payments where the small business owner provides the goods and services we use daily, we wait for the true payoff of the Internet. |
