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Is The Internet a Fad? Or Will It Take Off?

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Rumour has it the Internet may take off one of these days. They say it could even replace things like Yellow Pages, newspapers and possibly even TV some day!

If you are a small business this might be rather important information for your companies future success. On a little more serious note, the Internet has already had a significant impact on all three of the areas I mentioned in the first paragraph.

Think about the last time you used the Yellow Pages? We actually threw ours into the recycle bin when we received them. (Confession time, I actually retrieved the Yellow Pages from the recycle when I realized everyone advertising in there needed my services!) When I need to look up anything from vehicle repair to carpet cleaning, I just go online like just about everyone else and just like your customers.

This is turning those high priced Yellow Page ads into expensive propositions with steadily diminishing returns.Just when people need to stretch their marketing dollars the most!

As for newspapers, wow. You can get most of the information from the paper in their online versions or sometimes faster via services like Twitter. Remember the crash of the plane into the Hudson River in New York last year? It was on Twitter almost a day before it made it to the newspapers.

I even found out about Michael Jackson’s death on Twitter! It was almost two hours later before I found any info on some of the news sites and again not until the next day until it hit the newspaper. Often times it is old news by then.

No wonder readership of the papers is down, no wonder advertising there is also less effective. Less eyeballs looking at the ads translates into fewer clients, less business and again potentially wasted marketing funds.

Finally TV, between PVR’s streaming online video and boxed DVD sets of TV series arriving in stores in what seems like hours after the season ends, bring sup the question, who is actually watching TV commercials these days?

The Internet is taking off all around us, it’s not the future it’s now. Its on our desktop at work, it’s on our smartphone we carry with us and it’s bringing an entire revolution to how businesses need to market to succeed. Companies today that don’t recognize this will be following the footsteps of the businesses who thought the automobile was a fad.

Do you know which companies those are? Exactly, because they didn’t make the transition and were left behind, so no one is talking about them. Obviously you don’t want this to happen to you, really what business would? So what can you do?

First off, you should probably become more informed of what is currently taking place out there. For this I have created a special report which you can grab over on the sidebar to the right.

Second, you can contact me for a no obligation consultation. I can give you a quick explanation of what we have done to help other businesses, what is currently working in helping these other businesses get more leads, more prospects and ultimately more business and discuss whether it would work for you as well.

Or you can simply sit back and wait to see if the Internet really is the next big fad? The question is, are you willing to risk the future success of your business by sitting on the sideline?

Web Video – How to Market Your Business with Web video

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Ironically, I create web video promotions for other local businesses, but when it comes time for my site, I’m the last person in line. Well, hopefully I can change that over the next week.

I’ve scheduled some time to do some quick videos, so watch for them to appear shortly, along with some other changes for the site as well. In the meantime, I’ll use some of the videos I have recently put together to help explain web video marketing for local businesses a bit better.

If you aren’t aware of some of the recent headlines, more and more people are moving away from regular TV and watching all their shows and movies online. Companies like Apple with iTunes and Netflix with their service are making it easier and easier to accomplish this.

This is all leading to an entire marketing shift, at least for those paying attention. Effectiveness of Yellow Pages ads has dropped drastically (yet prices continue to go up) as people search online rather than leafing through big phone books, commercials on regular television have become costlier, yet less effective and with PVR’s saturating the market the majority get fast forwarded through anyway. Even local radio ads are losing effectiveness as more people switch to satellite radio services.

So how can companies get their products and services in front of consumer’s eyes? One huge area of potential is Facebook. If you are on Facebook, who hasn’t seen a video marketing a product on their wall or an ad down the side of their profile page? Combine this with the explosion of Facebook Fanpages (which ironically even show up at the end of TV commercials that are fast forwarded anyway) and you can understand why  Facebook is poised to become a major player for companies advertising online.

As an example, just last week our Realtor took my wife and I out for lunch to a fabulous little Greek restaurant here in Calgary, Plaka Greek Taverna. We had such a great time there we are looking forward to going back. Now while I was there, I managed to take some pictures, capture a little video and then when I had some time, I put the following video together, and then I added it to my Facebook stream to show to people and help promote Yianni’s business

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After seeing the video, wouldn’t you like to go for lunch there? If you do, tell them you came after seeing the video Bill did!!! This is a simple example of how you can market your business online by using web video.

The important aspects of the video, which are often missed by people creating their own promotional videos, are the following;

  1. The name of the business is listed several times
  2. The phone number and address are included for people to write down
  3. Music adds to the experience
  4. It’s short, but effective

If you are interested in creating some web videos to help promote your business online, be sure to include the above information in them. Alternatively if you would be interested in having me come in and talk about creating some promotional videos for you, I can be reached via email at bill(at)bill.biko.com, just replace the (at) with @, or you can reach me via phone at 403-870-4663.