Website Promotion vs. Mainstream Media

January 2nd, 2007 by Will Scott

Website promotion offers the only direct, un-fragmented advertising channel available.

I am a member of BNI where I go, as a small business owner, to promote my business and extend my network. BNI is responsible for a lot of good referrals for Search Influence and I advise it to anyone in a service or sales related business.

One of the great things about BNI is that it forces you to get up every week and give a 60 second “elevator pitch” style presentation about your business. If you’re not one who speaks comfortably in front of others its great practice – I’ve often heard the same about Toast Masters though never experienced it.

In any case, I have some experience with public speaking and presentation so I often (don’t tell my chapter members) wing it. I’m pretty good with extemporaneous (and shameless) self-promotion so all too often I decide what my 60 second commercial will be as I’m rising from my chair (and sometimes while I’m introducing myself).

On a recent occasion I found myself talking about advertising…

It used to be that you had 3 choices for television advertising with which you could own the market: ABC, CBS, NBC. Obviously this is no more. With hundreds of channels on cable and satellite and Tivo and other DVR systems your likelihood of hitting your target market with traditional media gets lower and lower every day.

So where’s the good news? Well, there are only 4 major search engines, one of which has the lion’s share of search traffic. Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask (in that order) command 95+% of the search market.

Here’s what that means to you – if you can figure out what people are searching for when your business or service would be a logical conclusion, all you have to do is be near the top of the major search engines when they’re doing their search and chances are you’ll get the call.

It’s interesting, and sometimes ironic, that the new media are re-focusing the potential to target your market. Website promotion, which is what Search Influence does, is what enables you to get to the top. First, you build a site; then, you make sure it’s saying what people are searching for; finally, you promote the heck out of it and soon enough you’ll be near the top where people are looking and instead of 1000 channels, you only have to worry about 4.