Last summer I met with the CEO of a small but solid consumer financial services company. He’s a super salesman and has a team of like individuals. We prepared a modest proposal to replace his website with one that reflected his firm’s huge commitment to customer service and flexibility and to help begin to get business online.
At the presentation, he told me his firm could not get customers from a website. I had already told him there were more than a million searches a day for his exact services. And that his main competitors had clearly invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in their websites and were making changes regularly. In other words, it works for them.
It didn’t matter. He knows what he knows.
While stories of digital demise abound, his firm is unlikely to get Kodaked—that is, bankrupted by an inability or unwillingness to embrace digital technology.
But his industry has been riding countrywide high demand. And the CEO plans to sell the business. Any savvy buyer will at best deduct the cost of catching up in digital marketing from a purchase offer. At worst? They will see a business dependent on a departing owner and pass altogether.
Still, the biggest loss here is opportunity cost. Digital marketing provides new ways to understand, find and serve customers and measure results. You can explore a niche, try a new product, expand into new regions, gain insight into the competition, improve services and find new prospects in your current markets.
You have new tools at your disposal. You can get immediate results. You can build an advantage over slow-footed competitors. You can test on a small scale.
You don’t have to be in a high-tech or consumer industry. Even old-line industrial companies are finding they can make gains. The difference between now and three years ago? Today’s tools are proven and much easier to use.
What should you do? Set aside one hour each month or quarter to consider review trends and consider opportunities. Think about what you’d like to make happen but haven’t yet. You might discover the capability already exists.
The easiest time to get better is when you are already doing well. Make this weekend your first session.
Jerry Pignolet is a partner in Rustbelt.Digital, a digital strategy and marketing firm that works with CEOs and senior executives to identify and implement relevant initiatives. He can be reached at jerry@rustbeltdigital.com or 216.469.4225.
