When I start talking about marketing strategies with my customers I border on hyperventilation. I get about as excited as a monkey in a banana store, but I guess that’s what marketing geeks are supposed to do. This happened again yesterday.
I was conversing with a customer in his beautiful new practice. The discussion topic surrounded web sites and their ability to be a working part of a business (the key term being working). The folly of many small business owners, veterinarians included, is the “if you build it, they will come” philosophy. This applies to the physical practice itself and their websites.
The general purpose of this blog and our business is to get veterinary practices noticed. Many of the marketing strategies we develop include, or center around, a strong online presence. This is vastly different than just building a pretty web site because just having a website is about as functional to growing your business as just having walls and bathroom. The simple existence of a building does not make a business; subsequently the existence of a website doesn’t mean a business has a working online presence.
For 99% of businesses the goal of a website is simple, to increase customers. The problem is this whole world wide web thing – it’s just not that big of a secret anymore. Most businesses, many individuals, and even some kids have their own presence on the internet. The Big Fish household has 7, and that’s just mommy and daddy fish, the minnows can’t use the computer yet.
So this presents the dilemma of getting found. The terms SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) describe the strategies and tactics used to get you found on the internet. And most discussion of getting found on the internet start and end with Google as greater than 70% of searches are done there.
I have two articles that are good introductions to this topic. The links are listed below . If you have further question leave them in the discussion section and we will answer them quickly.
