What Are Your Biggest Challenges in Online Marketing?

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A few weeks ago Louise and I both participated at a local Business Link event on marketing, called ‘Make Marketing Work’. We were ‘experts’ on our tables which was facilitated by a Business Link representative and were there to help discuss and answer questions on the topic of our table. Louise’s table discussed social media and my table discussed online marketing, but focused more on search engines (although social media did come up quite a lot!).

It was useful to talk to local business owners and find out what their challenges are in promoting their businesses online. The main issues that came out for me were that as professional online marketers, we tend to overestimate how much people know as we use the internet day in day out. Most business owners don’t use the internet as much as us as they’re busy doing what they specialise in.

Many people struggle with the jargon as it’s an industry full of jargon! Some people don’t know the difference between organic search results and paid search results. Many owners are more interested in getting their business found locally rather than nationally, many businesses aren’t doing email marketing and the overwhelming issue was having the time to do everything!

We had people attending from a range of organisations such as small e-commerce sites, holiday cottages, driving schools, cleaning products, accountants and financial advisers and even a lady from Chichester Cathedral. All of these organizations will have different needs when planning their online marketing, are targeting a wide range of audiences and probably use the internet in a range of different ways.

Louise and I write our posts weekly to assist small businesses in making the most of online marketing and best practice techniques. However, what we think you need help with may not be the same as what you really want help with, so we’d love to hear what challenges you’re facing. I’ve put together a short poll below (only one answer each) and if you can spare a minute or two, please complete it and we’ll do our best to help you with these issues!