December 11, 2009
By Khalid
Posted In
Advertising, Affiliates, Business, Domain Names, Monetization, My Life
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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.
