“Showing Up is 80% of life.”

- Woody Allen

When it comes to marketing on the web, the core strategy is quite simple. Be there. Show up. Be there at the right time with the right message and the right product. It’s truly not rocket surgery, it’s a matter of realizing that consumers have taken the reigns of the web. They drive the ship, they call the shots. The most important thing a business needs to do is pay attention to those shots that are being called and show up. Showing up in the search engine results, showing up in a conversation on Twitter, showing up in a video presentation on YouTube, showing up as an expert on blogs / forums, etc..

One of the biggest ways that businesses fail online is that they stall, they get ready to get ready. They wait, they want their message perfect, they want their web site to be 110%, they wait for the perfect words to put on their home page. Simply put, they never show up. While they are busy not showing up, their competition is testing new beta releases of their web site, learning what their prospects are hungry for, optimizing their content to deliver the right message, then trying again when the whole Internet world changes.

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People shop and learn in a whole new way compared to just a few years ago, so marketers need to adapt or risk extinction.

- Brian Halligan, Hubspot, CEO

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I took an inbound lead call yesterday from our web site, the gentleman on the other end of the phone line was frustrated. He had had his web site built and serviced by a large domain name registration company, the site had been live for 164 days he told me, he then asked me to guess just how many leads he had generated as a result of this web site. I guessed ’4?’ he informed me, 0. Zero. Goose Egg. Zippy The Donut. His expensive web site was no where to be found in Google, I couldn’t find it in Bing, and I heard more crickets then usual while doing a search on Yahoo for his business.

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“Would it surprise you to know that a full 70% of Americans now say that they look at product reviews before making a purchase?”
- Google, Zero Moment Of Truth.

This is a staggering statistic. 70% is quite a chunk of the population, they are reading about your restaurant, they are reading about your tax preparation services, they are reading about a recent real estate transaction that your business handled. The good, the bad and the ugly. It’s all out there online enticing your prospects to read them and make an ‘informed’ decision about whether to buy from you or not. Rack up some amazing reviews and your business can grow beyond your imagination, but, rack up enough ugly reviews and you’ll never even be able to fathom how much business you may have lost as a result.

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You’re Invited!

Join our own Tom Jelneck as he shares Marketing tips with other Local Business leaders on Tuesday October 25th, 2011.

This is the 1st annual Symposium Series presented by Summit Wealth Management, Inc. They are connecting Business leaders so they can share their principles for success.

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“Engagement with the customer today isn’t just pouring a message down on their head and hoping they get wet.

It really is understanding that you must be present in a conversation when they want to have it, not when you want to.

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I speak to all sorts of frustrated business owners.  They’ve spent a lot of money paying someone to develop the front end of their online presence, they’ve toiled over copy, they’ve shuffled through tons of photos to find the perfect one, they’ve launched the web site and then….. Nothing happens.  No business growth, no inquiries, no increase in call volume, etc.. The bottom line, no return on investment.

The problem with the Internet is this:  There are millions of new web sites being published at any given time.  There is information flying out of people at the speed of light, there are competitors who have hired a company like mine who eat, sleep and breathe online to further their online presence.  What is your business doing after you launch the web site? If the answer is simply nothing, you need to read the following tips:

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Your prospects are seeking experts. With so many snake oil salesmen online today, it’s mission critical to rise above the rif-raf and start leading your prospects with sound good ole’ fashioned true expertise. 9 times out of 10, a google search (which happens 31,000 times every second) is seeking an answer to a problem, your mission, should you chose to succeed online, is have the answer to that problem and be found amongst one of those 31,000 searches.

Here are a few quick tips to help you and your business achieve expert status online.

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Facebook announced a major renovation to their recently controversial social media platform: Facebook Timeline promises to be a scrapbook on steroids for users, and will let them integrate their own music, exercise plugins as well as many other ‘apps’ which will be available through an Apple like store. I was asked to speak to Fox news in Orlando about the latest drastic changes to Facebook. You can see the new interface here: http://www.facebook.com/timeline