Grow your business online - without the high cost!

If you’ve been in business for a long time, you are probably used to a marketing model that revolves around pushing your sales message to as wide an audience as possible, one-to-many communication. The television commercial, magazine advertisement and billboard are all about a single voice engaged in a one-way communication with a large audience.

Yet if you’ve been in business even longer, you may remember it wasn’t always like that. Before TV, before massive supermarkets and large shopping centres and big budget campaigns targeted to carefully selected demographics and slick brand advertisements in magazines that don’t seem to sell anything and focus groups and surveys – before all of that there were shopkeepers and customers having conversations.

Now we have the internet, the art of conversation marketing is returning. Consumers no longer want the one-way marketing messages from faceless corporations telling us how to behave and what to buy. They want a two-way conversation; to be able to interact with a brand, give feedback and be treated as an equal participant in the marketing relationship. No longer can a brand preach from on high and expect to be unquestioningly followed, demanding respect and consumer loyalty simply because of who they are.
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While these are undoubtedly uncertain times, the fear mongering of attention seeking headlines would have you believe we are in the depths of another great depression. While it certainly pays to stay abreast of the marketplace, there is little evidence to suggest that it pays to shut up shop and weather the tide.

On the contrary, history has shown that with the right strategy, decisive action and a dose of courage economic uncertainty can provide opportunities not seen under normal conditions.

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