Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

A post by Jackie Huba at Church of the Customer about Invisible Companies in Austin poked one of my pet peeves…

If I can’t find you on the Web:

I wonder how long you’ve been in business. Are you capable of doing business in today’s super-connected, always-on world in which I work?

I wonder if you’re going to be in business long enough to help me.

and…I’ll call someone else - who does show up in my search results (complete with phone number and location.)

Of course, some businesses do “just fine” without a Web presence. However, I recall one local shop owner who very confidently told me he wasn’t at all worried about competition from web sites and that’s why he didn’t need one. “Nobody else offers what we do.” He sells beads and jewelry-making supplies. Um, ever done a Google search?

What’s really bizarre is when self-anointed marketing experts and web design firms are invisible…or if you do manage to find them (on the second, third, or fourth page of search results) - have really terrible, broken sites, with badly written content, outdated info, empty pages, etc. etc.

(Tip to my small biz readers: You can quickly have a good starter web site using off-the-shelf free software such as Wordpress. You can set up just about all of it on your own without having to get all techie. Don’t be put off by it being “blog” software. This site is done in WP. )

P.S. Don’t put your Web address on your biz card or packaging until you have a site, with content. I wanted to order a lot of cookies this past holiday season from a local entrepreneur….oops, the site isn’t up.