Many years ago, prior to the advent of search engines, startups and small scale businesses scamper for the leftovers of the market share, thanks to the dominance of the “big players”. The big players like Guinness, Procter & Gamble, PZ Cussons spent billions of naira in product awareness, brand promotion and publicity using outbound marketing, looking out for the geographical concentration of their target market and using the traditional means of marketing to reach them. The startups and SME’s were in no way, positioned for those kind of spending sprees, they never had the financial muscles to introduce new products, worst still, create new markets. Everyone know the rest of the story, the big players dominated the markets and grew by geometric progression while the small businesses were the vocal minority that grew in arithmetical progression.

When Google invented their search engine, it was meant to index, sort and rank results to meet the desire of the searcher. Today, more than 600,000 searches are made every second. Search engines has turned out to becoming the biggest marketing tool of the 21st century.

Today, consumers are more enlightened, people know that most products are the same, they know that the difference lies in branding and product differentiation. Right now, consumers are smarter, more powerful and adventurous. Brands no longer tell them what they need, they now search for what they think they need. Since they can’t ask God, they can ask Google and other search engines. These search engines educate them on the products, who sells the product or service and their contact information. Now, this is inbound marketing. Driving sales by optimizing your online visibility.

In the last few years, smart small and medium scale businesses have been able to gain huge market shares by optimizing their online visibility. Google is the world’s most trusted credibility index and having your growing business on the first page of the Google search engine result page when a product or service you offer is searched is a privilege people can kill for. For example, an event company in asaba will gain the biggest market share if they rank on the first page of the google search on the “event companies in Asaba” keyword. They will get more calls and close more deals than any other event company not ranking on search engine result pages in Asaba.

Now, market leadership is no longer a financial challenge but an internet challenge. How well is your business positioned to fight for the greater market share this year? Justerberg Nigeria, www.justerberg.com is a digital agency that provides e-marketing solutions that work.

Source: www.justerberg.com/blog