There’s More To Today's Business Than A Website and Social Media

This blog is for our small to medium sized business clients and those aspiring entrepreneurs who may have been too busy running their operations than dedicating their time to the world of digital marketing these days.  The latter group likely knows much of the clever reading that follows, but for that former group, this can be invaluable insight.

Don’t get us wrong,, even though digital marketing services is one of our more popular offerings, it’s critical for all small, medium and aspiring entrepreneurs to understand, that you need much more than putting a virtual sign on your front lawn and waiting, to be successful.  And that has never been truer than today.

The currently volatile economics of late has got Canadians and Canadian businesses doing a complete rethink of how they will buy, sell and make their products and services.  It’s a prime opportunity for small to medium and entrepreneurially proud Canadian businesses to “make their move”.  But it requires more than a new sign on their front lawn.

Before internet advertising’s arrival in 1990s, newspaper ads, lawn signs, building signs, door flyers and people wearing billboards were the primary marketing tools

of the day.  Visibility was driven by drive-by traffic, what landed in your mailbox, newspapers or very expensive TV broadcast ads.  It worked, largely because we tended to do business locally, brands were known, and we liked the people behind the counter. 

Thirty-five years later, those tools still remain with us, but websites and social media pages rule. The online world can bring tens of thousands of eyes to a business, a global audience, 24x7 traffic and at a progressively cheaper expense than ever. People now do business locally and globally, new brands emerge daily, and we rarely go to a physical retail counter to buy anything, unless we need to see it up close.  For many, business is now a “click” instead of a handshake, and we’ve accepted it as the norm.

The evolution of AI has now taken the marketing and the concept business to a whole new level, however.  Digital Marketing agencies are now promoting full website creation services with remarkably low prices near $2.99 per month, thanks to AI generated content at its core. It’s incredibly inexpensive to get a global, virtual sign on your front lawn now, but the challenge is the 10,000s of other signs that look like yours on that global lawn at the same time. 

To be further clear, and with apologies to the excitement around it, AI is not creative…It’s generative.  It’s the worlds largest boilerplate of information, images and algorithms that can provide you with the same results that everyone else gets…. Like your competitors and aspiring competitors.  AI is a tool.

In fact, because of this AI infused marketing tool, a fascinating new phenomenon has emerged of late…. Advertising for Feasibility. 

A number of entrepreneurs are using digital marketing to “virtually” launch a business onto the internet world, just to see if its worth it to actually create a business behind it.  A website and social media ad campaign full of compelling offerings and clever images is released to the online world as a feasibility test.  Then, based on the number of “hits” their website and/or social media pages receive, these entrepreneurs then decide whether to put a business infrastructure behind it.  It’s clever, speculative and the new evolution of business.  A temporary front lawn to see if it grows.

All said, the critical factor to business success today is what the business does when those “eyes” actually stop at your front lawn, open your front door and enter.

What happens when the customer discovers you?  Do you have a compelling offering or are you just one more barbershop, coffeeshop or pizzeria?  Or are you just one more lawn sign that keeps popping up in an hourly feed.

The competition for those online “eyes” is huge in the market today and can be expensive to attract though online ads, and a true challenge in determining how much to spend, and how frequently to spend.  The frequency decision is an important one as a business can quickly go from showing an interesting offer to becoming an ongoing annoyance in less than two weeks time.  Customers can easily remove your lawn sign with a click on the block option.

Our approach for our clients comes from knowing that Digital Marketing is a tool... not the offering.  In fact, advertising of any kind is only a tool designed to get people to come closer to your front lawn and ideally open your front door.  The critical

features to business success is what a customer sees, hears, feels, (smells), values and is rewarded with, once the come through your front door…. whether that’s a virtual front door or a physical one. 

But for some reason, this knowledge is being lost.  Many customers today are coming through those virtual and physical doors wondering why they did after spending a few moments in there, and are leaving… both virtually and physically.  Often, in a matter of seconds. Customers, especially certain demographics today have very little time to spend on a buying decision.  Recent studies indicate that 83% of internet users expect a website to launch in 3 seconds or less, and 40% of those will abandon that search if it doesn’t. It's an impatient world out there.

Its why TV commercials come in 10 second bites in some cases…. to keep advertising costs down and to recognize the attention span of today’s buyer audiences.  An important context to add to this conversation, is just how effective it is in translating or “converting” that internet advertising effort into an actual sale.  Retailers and marketing experts consider anything over a 3% conversion rate as a good thing.  So, to keep the analogy going, only 3% of those who stop to look at your

lawn sign, are going to buy something from you. 

With odds like that, the question should be "why advertise online at all?" and the answer is, its a necessity for doing business today. Unless your company can rely on the generosity of friends and family for its success, you need an online presence today. You need to be visible and relevant online.

Given those conversion rate averages then, you better have something compelling to offer to those that "click" on your business. And that is why “There’s a lot more to business success, than a website and a social media page” today.  And this is why our clients are working with us for go-to-market advisory and tactical services, before putting that lawn sign up.

Cambiara Group - April 2025