Most Companies Just Don’t Get It
Having worked for multiple companies over the past few years and advised private clients occassionally, I am still shocked to see how many just don’t get the internet.
A bit of a bold and brash statement I know, but let me explain…
One of the companies I used to work for tied themselves into a £2,000 a month contract (for 6 months) with a local radio station (before I started) without doing any research, taking advice or shopping around. The result – nothing. Not one sale came from £12,000 expenditure. Long story short I marketed them online, had them on page 1 for multiple geo terms then left because they wouldn’t give me a single penny for a budget despite their site getting 1 new lead per day and over 500 unique visitors a month.
The same company had multiple private listings in national directories and paying a small fortune for it too. I actually had an arguement on the phone with one of them when I cancelled it because the advisor thought the ad was amazing. My question “where is your my ad when I type in keyword in City because that’s what I’m listed under in your directory”? He couldn’t answer it because his ad was no where to be seen, and in fact didn’t rank for much. Yet, because the directory was a national company the owner thought it was worth paying for.
Sure, you can’t measure success by a search engine ranking but I dived a little deeper into previous sales feedback forms and not one person had written that they had found us from said directory.
The internet is so powerful yet so underrated by companies and I begin to wonder when they will listen. Five years ago I said to myself; “give it five years and everyone will realise the potential”. Five years has passed and I’m still twiddling my thumbs. Different generations mean old habits die hard and quite frankly I think it’ll take a lot longer than another five stretch before everyone gets online.
It amazes me how many business owners don’t even have an active website or e-mail address. In this day and age they are addicted to their fax machines and passing trade it makes entrepreneurs like me scratch my head and wonder if they’ll last much longer.
Take my hairdresser for example. Recently I setup their website and it is already getting 150 uniques a month. That’s 150 potential customers and 150 people they are saying “hello” too every 31 days that they didn’t have before. How crazy is that?
So let’s say we forget the little fish in the pond and focus on retailers or manufacturers. Well, I’ve found there isn’t much difference. After setting up Trout.co.uk I contacted many retailers, suppliers, distributors, manufacutrers, holiday providers, tutors and more to see if they’d come on board and push angling in a new light to the influential youth of today.
Guess how many were willing to help? Zero. None. Nada
Why? Well you could say it was because the site was a startup but to not even discuss it was a sad sight in my eyes, especially as I hadn’t even mentioned costs. I didn’t want their money for myself, I wanted to put equal amounts in to push the sport through competitions and guerilla marketing.
And I’m not alone. I have a friend who owns two wine websites and he’s had the same response. I’ve also got another friend who owns a music website and I would have thought companies would be jumping down his throat to get on there.
Fact of the matter is web advertising/branding is 24/7/365 to anyone, anywhere in the world, so why go for traditional media that is outdated and will be thrown away the next day? We’re cheaper, more flexible, effective and appeal nationwide rather than locally.
The high volume of visitors and the influence players in the web/domain industry has is quite frankly scary. I’m just stunned companies don’t stop for a second and try to work more with them rather than against.
Google is tweeking search results constantly and making things harder for us, affiliate merchants are tightening their commission belts and companies are dragging their heels in getting online/advertising on sites rather than Adsense.
Never mind the little fish, where will that leave us in five years?
Good luck with your persuits,
Khalid.
Spot on. People are so narrow minded some times.
Very true Khalid. I think people are lazy. Many things have changed over the last 10 years – paper directories are dead. Our generation (yours and mine Khalid
) are totally web savvy – even more so with the youngsters.
Good post Khalid, my father-in-law falls for the old “hey we are a [insert radio, newspaper, directory] brand and you will look shiny and cool when you advertise with us, tens of thousands of people will look (past) your ad as they go about their business”.
Yeah ok so thousands will maybe see the advert, fine if your selling booze or some mass consumer item but when you sell some services you need to spend wise and get targeted and what better way then on sites and services that are in same industry as you, except most don’t get it.
Gerard – couldn’t agree with you more.
Johnny – haha I like the “youngsters” part
Clarke – Spending wisely is definately something these companies are not doing. Targetted is what they need and it just ain’t happening.
So true khalid some people just dont get it at all. focus on products and services, local areas from town, city, region, country, focus and targeting your market works.
Totally agree with you! And the google changes to ‘personalised searches’ do worry me somewhat given the presence amazon etc already have in the search engines. Even the best SEO may not be near enough in coming years.
And I do fear the internet will mature in to just being purely dominated by a main top tier of websites. For me the whole point of the internet is that there is such a vast amount of websites and different opinions and information out there on so many topics. Funnelling everyone constantly into wikipedia and yahoo answers for information is one of my frustrations about Google atm. When sending searchers to sites such as your Trout.co.uk one would be far more beneficial to the searcher then the wikipedia page which is #1 in my opinion.
And on the topic of getting suppliers, manufacturers etc I also agree with you. Ive been working with a PR guy for one of the top comedians and he said the other PR firms for comedians aren’t interested in small comedy websites like one I own, they just want to get a write up on MSN, The Sun and get the comedian on a few tv programs, job done. They have no interest in communicating with online communities where the traffic may be comparably small but is incredibly targetted and can increase their web presence.
Certainly interesting times and it looks like running a small online business is going to get tougher. But this is business, so all we can do is adapt ourselves and push on. The strong survive and all that cliché stuff! Maybe one day they will ‘get it’, I sure hope so.
Apologies for this marathon of a comment btw
Chris.
Hello Khalid –
I’m doing a research paper on problems in the changing business world and my topic is “Companies that fail to take their business online.” I have been doing lots of research and came across a few interesting things, but I must say, I appreciate having found your blog. I do have a question for you, though.
I came across a blog that explained, of course it’s an opinion, the top 10 reasons why some businesses are hesitant to go online. And even here, it is mentioned that a factor could be pride of “the old ways”. But all these reasons seem a little weak. So far I have not found one good reason why a company would refuse to go online… and so my question to you is, What do you think the reason really is?
You have a chance to be known by millions of people all over the world… To sell your products at any hour… To make a substantial profit on low cost items because you’re selling these items without the cost of shipping to you, the cost of building expenses, etc.; and you’re going to say that you don’t want to because the website might be difficult to maintain? It makes no sense to me… and Judge Judy says “If it doesn’t make sense, it’s probably not true.”
Renee, thanks for your comment. To be honest I don’t think there is one specific answer to your question. It would be like asking why x amount of the UK population don’t drive.
There’s a bunch of reasons, but I would say a top few include…
1. Lack of education – Many people don’t understand the power of the web yet. For example a few business owner’s I’ve worked with will pay hundreds, if not thousands of pounds to advertise in their local paper yet never thought about spend perhaps less than £100 on an internet ad campaign.
2. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks – Again this relates to education but I think many owners are set in their ways and if they think it is working why change / risk it? Their arguement is “I’ve always done it that way” and so that’s good enough for them, even if they could yield better results elsewhere.
3. Traditional media – The media love to jump on the bangwagon whenever things go wrong and are quick to write up interesting stories like how poor Mrs. Smith got robbed of £50 when bidding on a fake eBay item. There’s a few reasons behind this, but one is that traditional media is a dieing market and newspapers + magazines are no longer making as much money, especially as you can get the latest info on your mobile phone. So they often use tactics like this to ensure their offline business stays alive.
I hope this helps, keep reading the blog and good luck with your article.
Khalid.