Data shows that the US Economy is on an up turn and consumer confidence and more importantly business confidence is improving. This is great for the bigger companies with reserves of cash that they have held back ready to spend promoting themselves once demand picked up. For those smaller businesses though it is important to start marketing as well now though and take advantage of positive feelings that will hopefully see demand rise in the new year. Many smaller businesses though have been running on empty and have used up all reserves of cash just to survive and need a effective but affordable option.
Small businesses can’t afford to throw money at advertising that will cost a lot, at least not unless they can guarantee a return. The problem with traditional advertising is that you do take a risk and if it doesn’t work it is too late with media paid for and ads designed.
The great thing with online marketing in general and SEO especially is that companies can track the return they are getting and then invest more in what is working and bringing in a good return.
The economy is recovering but this is no reason to take unnecessary risks and this is what SEO offers. It is also very easy with SEO to target very accurately the right people. Some areas of the economy are recovering faster than others, the public sector in many states is still out of money, consumer confidence is still relatively low but industries such as services are starting a resurgence. With SEO you can have money focused on making sure your business’ website appears for very specific keywords that are more likely to be searched for by certain industries and are therefore more likely to lead to sales and high value sales as well.
Through research though an SEO company will also be able to find for you other keywords that have a good rate of conversion and can put effort into these as well. Some search terms put into Google are more likely to be put in by people looking to spend than others which may be people looking to research or looking for things for free. For you as a small business needing to make every cent of promotion spend count this is vital.
So you might be thinking that if the economy is improving then everyone is going to be using SEO including your larger competitors with bigger budgets who will be able to crowd you out. The fact they have larger budgets though actually means that many larger companies waste an opportunity with SEO and target only the most obvious high traffic volume keywords with staff looking to deliver traffic rather than sales. This is the problem of a stretched out hierarchy; small businesses with the owner often making the decisions tend to be more careful and target what is known as the long tail of keywords: those that have less traffic but are much more numerous with less competition and much better conversion rates of traffic becoming customers.
Though going slowly the US economy looks to be moving the right way and those with the confidence to spend but the sense to spend wisely will be the winners in 2012.
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