Do I need Internet Marketing?

Image by DavidErickson via Flickr

More and more people are using the Internet to do research and make buying decisions.  Even if you don’t sell online, Internet marketing might be a smart move for your business.

I like to describe the Internet as another referral source for your company.  In the same way that people go to their friends to ask for a good doctor or hairstylist, people go to the Internet to find similar information.  Through Internet marketing, you can position your business as a relevant resource for those people and make it easy for them to choose you.

Internet marketing also allows you to target very specific groups of people with a focused message and measure the results of your efforts.  A word of caution here, Internet marketing is not a replacement for traditional marketing efforts, but just another channel to find prospects and clients.  Many people mistakenly believe that once they start marketing online that they should stop doing all other marketing.  While this works well for certain businesses, in most cases this is a dangerous approach that would be much like having your whole business dependent upon one huge client account.