Is the online world is made for any kind of business?

Online Business

We are all users of the machine to make money online. Few are lucky enough to get to make money, and most are hooked to it. Social networks appeared to hook us even more, and now, most cannot live without them. Among all this tangle of actions we take in social networks, it would be logical to think that we involuntarily and purchase impulses are conditioned by our needs.

Many say that all the actions we take in social networks help improve brand awareness, engagement and attract customers. But what really is that?

Online Business
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Many companies have marketing specialists, to conduct market research, or they know very well target ads on social networks to get a good conversion. On the other hand, a large number of studies are focused on high-technology markets, with a number of leading companies and the prevailing high percentage of large companies.

Now let’s get down to the real world, in markets such as America the pattern is reversed. In the distribution of firms by size in America, SMEs, especially small enterprises account for a large share of the market. Therefore, many of them cannot afford to pay a team or agency to be responsible for the work of attracting customers through the Internet. In companies designed exclusively to offer their online services, you should be given that situation, but if you have a physical business where you have to satisfy your customers’ offline, and over, cater to the online world, you have to generate significant benefits to keep structural costs and to hire people for this purpose specialist.

This connotation produces 2 negative effects on the firm commitment with some companies of this size to generate market in the online world:

The investment made customers do not return the expected gain

Many companies hire a Community Manager to manage its investment in the online world. The problem with these companies is that, being small creative business, also have a specialist in HR and anyone can be considered Community Manager. It’s as simple as go to LinkedIn, put in the search “Community Manager” and you will get a list too large. There are many people who are considered to have a Community Manager Community Manager Master, and that is the main problem. A specialist in SEO, SEM, or in any area related to marketing, not forged in a Master. The Master gives you knowledge, unfortunately, consumption pattern, the type of people who buy your products, or impulse buying leads them to buy your company, not the competitor, is not a university career, called experience in the sector. The typical phrase “We need an investment in online advertising X money” should not be the general pattern for generating online traction. The first thing you have to analyze a community manager should be, where the company is and where it wants to go. Whatever they tell you, do wonders in marketing with a budget of 1 million dollars, it is not very difficult. The hard part is getting online customers without money, that’s difficult. SEO specialists are not usually the most invest in Adwords, and many of them do not even work in the best companies. Namely a market research, understand patterns of consumption and other factors are more important aspects to be effective, know how to use Facebook Ads, Adwords or any tool to publish is not a heroism.

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The opening to a larger public through Internet, can make or break a business

I will expose an example to be better understood: We are the company “IRGs” we decided it’s time to delve to capture online customers, we have achieved a good Community Manager, has experience in SEO, and over in developed web, thus He has done you a great website where you can add table reservations. On the other hand, you start investing in online advertising; you generate traction, and have achieved good results start coming more and more customers. Now the problems begin, without assessing the impact offline, we will simulate situations online customers:

Customer 1: “I saw a hair in the soup.” Comment on social networks. Facebook friends: 500. How many negative impacts you got?

Client 2: “I booked on the website and I have removed the table.” Criticizes you in your own social networks, social networks, and sites recommending restaurants and even in forums if necessary. How many negative impacts you got?

Now the difficult, you start losing the loyalty of your previous clients, remember that it cost you to get 10 years, decrease your income and you start to wonder, How to reverse that situation ?. The answer is no one, no one can guarantee that you will be able to reverse the situation, and if they get it, it will cost much more money you have invested in attracting these new customers. This situation occurs not only in small businesses with physical stores, e-commerce small they have to handle logistics, back orders and other issues, also they suffer.

What is due this situation? What many small businesses do wrong?

The answer is simple, the online world has not only implicit costs of attracting new customers, your customers are now not only those with a specific behavior (usually go eat at new restaurants regularly, living near or other patterns), you just get to play with new customers, who had not visited your local before, and that can have a pattern different from the rest. Therefore, in order to satisfy those customers, you should invest in scalability all the senses: Increased overhead costs, lay off workers with acceptable performance but now do not serve, etc.

The conclusion is that the expandability of your business to the online world must be conducted by a rehabilitation of other aspects, assuming the costs involved in such rehabilitation. Therefore, small businesses that do not need the Internet to attract customers should not rush your approach to the world online. Go outside to look, at times, have fewer negative effects. The phrase “If it works do not touch” should not lead to an end but neither should forget. Adapt your business first and try to raise it. Create a good organizational structure, business philosophy, quality of service, commitment to customers, and when ready, throw yourself.