I had one of those ‘slap yourself on the forehead’ experiences earlier this evening. Basically, my wife and I decided to go out tonight, which was pretty nice because this was our first ‘date’ since our daughter was born a little over two months ago. We elected to do the simple ‘dinner date’ so I opened up my laptop in an effort to find a nice place to eat—one that we hadn’t frequented before. It was during this search that the forehead slapping began.
You see, I live in a pretty rural part of Virginia. There ain’t much in these parts and so in order to find a decent selection of restaurants one must be willing to travel at least 30 minutes. But as I ran through my Google searches of local towns and the restaurants found therein, I came to this quick realization regarding literally all of them:
Their websites were an utter joke and embarrassment.
Although I could use many other stronger adjectives to describe what I found, I’ll try to keep this post as clean as possible and just leave it at that.
Shocking Stats
Out of 10 different restaurants I looked at, only 4 had web pages. Yep, that’s right, 4 of them. 3 out of the 10 had Facebook pages. With the rest I was left to depend on Google Places and hope that someone had been kind enough to give me a feel for whether the place was worth the trip or not.
But that’s not all folks. Of these 10 restaurants, none had a single lead-capture form on their home page. None had a single video. None had a single photo of an owner on the homepage. And a blog…well I’m sure you already know the answer to that one.
What’s interesting about this phenomenon is that I personally know many people in the food profession that have been crying the blues for months about the economy. Now granted, the economy does stink. We all know and accept that. But by no means does it give a free pass to businesses that refuse to make simple investments in their online marketing and brand.
It’s Cheap!
You see, online marketing is cheap. Anyone that says it has to cost a lot is full of crapola. A simple WordPress Blog and domain set up with Go Daddy will cost less than $150 a year in most cases.
But despite the low cost, businesses everywhere, especially in the food industry, refuse to do what it takes. Instead of learning what Web 2.0 is all about they just sit there and complain that the economy sucks and the world is coming to an end and everyone is losing their job and blah, blah, blah.
Action, Action, Action
Now don’t get me wrong here. My swimming pool company is in a dog fight every day to scrape by. If anyone gets the economy and how it affects businesses, I certainly do. But instead of complaining about it, let’s do something about it. In fact, here are 8 things you can do right now that I can promise you will be much better than bemoaning the end of the world:
- Start a Facebook Fanpage for you business and invite everyone and their mother to join your group.
- Shoot a video with your phone or flip camera of an existing customer (testimonial) and POST IT on your website.
- Sign Up on Google Places and add photos, coupons, etc.
- Get on some forums in your niche and get involved in ‘the conversation’.
- Start a blog and write your first article….and then never stop writing.
- Slap a photo of yourself on your website and show a little personality for once.
- Have a friend or past customer look at your website and tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly.
- Go to YouTube and type in ‘Seth Godin’…..and watch every video on the first 2 pages of results.
So there are 8 activities that immediately came to my mind. I’m sure you could think of 50 more if you tried. But that’s exactly my point. Complaining about the economy does no good. Only action helps. Only action is worth talking about. Only action will eventually solve your problems.
Make the choice. Look to the future. Start embracing everything about Web 2.0…..and never complain again.
Questions? Comments? Love to hear your thoughts.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
A great example that Marcus,
Of all those restaurants, had one of them had a nice website which gave you what you where looking for, you would have eaten there!
If you multiply that by the number of customers looking for restaurants in you area, on the net, you will see that their little investment in their website would pay off almost immediately, especially since none of the other restaurants were doing it.
Talk about a competitive advantage no one is taking!
.-= Daniel M. Wood´s last blog ..How to Make a Good First Impression =-.
Yep, it’s an utter mystery Daniel. I’m just baffled that so many small biz owners elect to do things ‘the hard way’…..
Marcus, I’ve been hearing a couple of guys talking about moving it all to Facebook and abandoning the traditional website. Aside from the scary nature of building your brand on “rented real estate” what do you think the customer perception is of that approach?
Another great post, btw- I’m always stoked when you pop up on my Bloglines!
.-= Dave Marciniak´s last blog ..10 Myths About Hiring a Landscape Contractor =-.
Dave, ya big stud, great to have you on here my friend! But to answer your question, I think moving it ‘all’ to FB is bonkers. Literally nuts. Facebook is just one of many tools. A heck of a lot of consumers don’t do poo on FB. Plus, FB doesn’t have the same content marketing benefits a blog does. Heck, I could go on and on but FB will likely one day be supplanted by another social media platform, just as MySpace was. Now granted, Facebook has their stuff together much better than MS did, notwithstanding they ain’t going to be around forever. That’s just the way the information age is evolving…..Thanks again for your kind words Dave