Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2011. Its “2.0 vs 1.0” framing, LetsBonus and Groupon hiring field sales reps for group-buying deals, monthly fees of 35-50 euros for online promotion, and small agencies billing over 80,000 euros in their first year all reflect that moment.
If you look closely, there are plenty of companies and agencies that take care of giving a business’s website visibility, but very few focus on offering an excellent 2.0 service from the 1.0 world.
With the arrival of the new concept of “online marketing“, perhaps aimed mostly at large companies with big sales volumes, small businesses today either don’t see the idea of being on the internet as necessary or simply think they can’t afford it.
Few “ordinary” people like hiring an online service from an agency that may have a good reputation but whose owner or sales staff they will never meet face to face.
The fact is that every business needs to be on the internet; that’s the reality. So companies have already emerged that offer the best of 2.0 with a face-to-face service and a physical office where clients can ask questions and understand the whole process that will be followed to promote their website.
We’re not just talking about SEO techniques to increase visibility in search engines, but about offering a formula for viral marketing on social networks, the option of “themed distribution” on sites such as YouTube, and even the creation of an audiovisual product that grabs attention and encourages people to visit the client’s website.
In this business, your best calling card will be the results you achieve and the price of the service. Website promotion is fairly complex and requires more knowledge than some people think, so it’s hard to find a company that brings together professionals who understand everything. That’s why the price paid for this kind of promotion is sometimes high: the companies themselves have to subcontract some services, which pushes the price up.
To get started and succeed in this kind of business, you’ll need to bring together professionals who know about:
- Video editing
- Sales and marketing focused on 2.0
- Web design
- SEO techniques
- Field sales
Let’s stop at this last point: sales reps. Companies like LetsBonus or Groupon are hiring sales reps to visit all kinds of clients and get them to advertise their offers as “group buying” deals. They’re giants in this kind of product, but for that very reason, personalized customer service was lost long ago, and that is the strongest card of the business idea we’re proposing today.
We’re not talking about a temporary offer, but about an ongoing service and a future client portfolio.
We’ve visited some of these companies, some more professional than others, but all of them have found their first clients, who have placed their first grain of trust in them. As we said, the rest depends solely on the results they get.
The profitability of this business lies first of all in the most basic service (building the website); for the rest of the online and social media promotion there is usually a fixed monthly fee of between €35 and €50. There are already small businesses that started in 2010 and closed the financial year with revenue of more than €80,000. That won’t make you rich, but it’s an excellent start and a good first stint of legwork.
Every profitable business has to meet a need, and in this case the need is your business’s visibility on the internet, whatever kind of business it is.
Further reading
- How to start a business with no money
- The entrepreneur’s 15 commandments
- Donald Trump and the entrepreneurial mindset
- The 10 Chinese commandments of business
Featured image: WOCinTech Chat, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
