Where Do We Go From Here?

November 4th 2008 has been a very historic day for our nation. Yes, change is coming whether you voted for the winning candidates or not. The economy is in a perilous condition known as a recession. People are scared and re-evaluating just about everything that they do as individuals and as business owners.

We are no different in that regards. We have been re-evaluating how we go about the practice and marketing of this business. We started this business with a huge educational component. We wanted to train the business owner to do this stuff themselves and that was the focus of this business.

When we began this journey the small local business owner was and still is our core market. However, many, if not most of these business owners, even those with websites, know very little about the inner workings of a site. They may even know less about how to market their websites.

This posed a huge problem for this business because consumers didn’t understand our services. So after months of evaluation we concluded that seminars would be the best marketing tool available. The seminars would serve dual purposes. They would educate the consumer about our industry and would serve as a wonderful marketing tool.

So we started offering search engine optimization and marketing basics seminars for a small fee last year. These seminars not only were a great marketing tool, but they also provided a valuable small business resource.

Then in March of 2008 we re-evaluated our business approach. At that time we decided to discontinue offering local seminars. We began to redesign our website to take us from a regional player into a national player in the SEO field. Amazingly this approach worked. This site can be readily found on the first page of the Google results for multiple searches that include SEO in the search query, such as small business SEO solutions.

However, while we were focusing on creating a national presence for ourselves we neglected our core market here in Tucson. We also discovered it is much harder to land a client from Hawaii or Florida than one that is located here. The weakening economy has also played a huge role. So we again decided it was time to re-evaluate our business model.

We have concluded that it was time to start offering seminars for small business owners with websites again. However, we decided to expand the seminars to include 7 segments that cover all aspect of having a successful website.

We then took a long look at our pricing structure and the economy and have chosen a path that we have never gone. We will be offering these seminars absolutely free with no string attached. Like we always have said “An educated consumer is our best friend.” The hope is that those who attend our seven part series will learn, prosper, and tell their friends and families.

So for us these seminars offer an opportunity to generate a whole bunch of high quality ‘Word Of Mouth” advertising. We also have long term goals of producing a seminar series that will be sold on our website as a subscription service.

So having said all of this, let me ask you what are you doing differently in these changing times to survive or expand your business?

We invite you to join the conversation and leave a comment. We also invite you to continue the conversation on your blog or perhaps use a trackback, or maybe even social bookmark this article, give it a Digg it, or Stumble it.

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If your business is located in US, Canada, or in the Arizona cities of Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, and beyond and would like to learn how your website can benefit from a blog please call Tucson SEO at 520-777-6479.

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