It’s not difficult to understand how the Internet is making an impact on local and small businesses both on and off the Internet. Whether you’re selling gift baskets or running a house cleaning service business the potential now exists to find more clients and grow your small business then ever before.
One of the downfalls of course is that not everyone will be jumping on the band wagon to embrace this new technology. In fact from some small businesses I’ve talked to there’s the chance that they’re going to ignore it all together. This of course brings up some serious concerns because these businesses are putting them selves at a huge disadvantage and giving their competitors the edge they need to take over the market.
Let’s look at a simple example.
If you’re a bass guitar instructor who gives bass guitar lessons five days a week and makes a living at it there are a lot of opportunities to find new students. You could build a website, advertise on classified websites and even run ads on the biggest social networking website in the world, that’s right FaceBook.
Now beyond this the teacher could also create an online course where they record videos and take on students from other parts of the world and not just their immediate are. It’s endless the amount of things that the bass teacher could do.
Let’s contrast that to a guitar teacher who has been giving lessons the same way for the past twenty years. Primarily they receive their students from recommendations (a great way to market of course) however they aren’t interested in all this new technology. They don’t want anything to do with the Internet and quite honestly feel they shouldn’t have to.
While this same instructor may continue to receive students the “old fashion way” what’s slowly going to happen is more and more students will be exploring the best online guitar lessons which cost less, are more up to date and available twenty four hours a day and seven days a week.
Also as students become more and more Internet savvy they’ll be searching websites like Craig’s List and Kijiji for their guitar instructors if they choose not to use a private instructor.
By ignoring the power of the Internet as a small business marketing engine you could be doing you and your business an injustice.
Ok so I know this probably seems a little far fetched, that someone could actually learn to play the guitar using only 15 minutes a day. Truthfully it would be cutting it close but I believe that you can get started with that little amount of time, and in this article I’m going to outline exactly what it is that I would do if I were you and wanting to try this out.