I was writing the other day about the business directories not really delivering for many small businesses. One of the reason for that is that our customer and clients tend to look elsewhere for their services. Compared with even five years ago, so many more people search on-line for the stuff they want, whether it is for a chimney sweep (yes, we employ one) or for an EBay offering or for a courier service or an accountant. There is always the possibility that even the on-line searchers will go with a recommendation but we have to be alive to the need to be found on-line when someone looks.
We were talking about this at a breakfast meeting, when our resident SEO expert commented how the search engines change their game all the time and he has to be on top of it as far as possible. This then brought us on to the changes even with Twitter and two of us who subscribe to Jim Connolly’s Marketing Blog remembered Jim’s comment concerning the person who wrote a paperback about Twitter which was bound to be instantly out-of-date. Incidentally I recommend you subscribe to Jim’s blog which is excellent. He is a top marketer.
It is most important to keep up with what is going on now. Traditional sales and marketing in print was indeed traditional for two hundred years or more, but now we all need to think on our feet and indeed listen to the buzz of the internet. Otherwise the business world will leave us trailing behind, and that means all of us including the dress shop and the hardware store.