People are spending less and paying less attention to monotonous advertising.  They don’t like to read a lot of text and they sure as hell don’t like random phone calls.  Consumers are stressed about their home, their job and pay attention only to offers that they ‘need’ and bring value to them.  And if a business is doing the same thing they were doing ten years ago, chances are that you aren’t creating much marketing momentum or growth.

So how does a company move from the old to the new?

First, you need to talk to someone (agency or consultant) that knows what the heck they are doing.  Brace yourselves clients, as some of these people may actually help you grow your business.  Alien concept.  Yes, we know this comes as a shock to you that there are some marketing quacks that can actually help.  I think it was a VP of apple who once said that the only thing worse than having marketing people to deal with - is ‘not’ having marketing people to deal with.  Love us or hate us based on your past experiences with your web guy, there are some out there that rock.

But as much as we’d like to help the client put together a ‘big picture’ plan to tie their overall marketing efforts together...in a linear or non-linear fashion, I think that we can first get them to place their website at the center of their communication ‘engine’.  There are exceptions to this depending on the company, but for many small businesses a well-thought-out website can work wonders.  Consider these comments by Seth Godin, Marketing Guru:

How to create a great website

We love #1.  So true.  But this is just the start. The online landscape is certainly different and has provided many arms & branches that allow us to go beyond a static website; social networking platforms, applications, tools..etc.  Still, clients still need to hire the right company (or person) in order to make everything work.  Complex websites are out, simple is in.  A good message, product and/or service can easily be placed at the center of your business - not a dead-end as most websites are.