Thursday, July 26, 2012

Common Hurdles for Small Businesses Online

All Rights Reserved*Small businesses can easily move online and make an effort to get themselves a greater level of exposure, but there are many hurdles in the way. Social media may be free and web design may be affordable, but there is still a huge difference between the marketing capabilities of the two. Large businesses have access to highly qualified teams of internal marketers, and small businesses invariably do not. This article considers some of the hurdles that this can cause and how to sneak your way around them.

Lack of Understanding

The biggest problem with small businesses and their ability to engage successfully in online marketing is a lack of understanding. If you specialise in reselling, then you may be able to manage your taxes by yourself, but there is no real reason why you are likely to be able to manage everything from social media to web design too. The world of online business is a tricky web to navigate through, and a lack of understanding can leave you stuck. Before attempting to take on online engagement, it is essential to gain an understanding of what you actually need to do.

Online business coaching is an opportunity that can really help you to gain a better understanding of the medium. Determining how to use social media to benefit sales without annoying customers is essential, and such training will help you to determine a strategy to achieve this. The biggest hurdle is one of understanding, and the biggest mistake is to try and tackle it without learning how to jump the hurdle first. Using online promotion incorrectly can severely damage the reputation of your company, so this must be avoided.

Lack of Resources

The second most significant hurdle stopping small businesses from finding success online is that of resources. Once you have learned about what online marketing requires, then you will understand how great the resources often need to be to make the most of online promotions. In most cases, small businesses will simply not have the resources to constantly update and manage an online system, so any that start will quickly fail when the paperwork builds up.

Having dedicated managers for online marketing is important, but it usually cannot be achieved in a small business. Utilising external Internet marketing opportunities is a way that many small businesses can avoid this hurdle. Utilising professional online marketers to help promote your business will enable you to benefit from the same experience as the larger companies, for a fraction of the price.

Lack of Services

Big companies like Amazon are able to massively dominate the online market, because they are large enough to sell literally everything. For smaller businesses, however, this is impossible. As a small business, attempting to specialise in everything from MP3s to lawnmowers is obviously ludicrous, so attracting customers is more difficult. Instead of coming to you instinctively, customers will need to be drawn to you.

To help expand your exposure, it is possible to create partnerships with other smaller businesses. A company that provides designer coffee cups, for example, could create an advertisingarrangement with a company that sells coffee machines for the home. This arrangement could be established as a mutual support mechanism, whereby both companies advertise equally on behalf of one another. This can greatly increase exposure and provide you with an alternative method of promotion to help combat the dominance of larger organisations.

Source: http://www.picafight.com/common-hurdles-small-businesses-online/

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