Why the future of your company lies on the Internet

The old-fashioned way of winning orders

Up to 90% of the classic craft businesses, which are currently having to fight massively with their order situation, do no advertising, or at most advertising.

Maybe you know this: Orders are mostly awarded through recommendations, you take part in tenders or receive orders from a few long-standing regular customers.

As an entrepreneur, you have to write numerous offers and only a fraction of them give you the job. You invest a lot of time in this work without getting paid directly. These costs are then financed by the orders that you have received. So you have work and are fully occupied, but ask yourself if this is what your dream of becoming an entrepreneur looks like.

Advertising budget and company website

Most small and medium-sized businesses advertise only sporadically. Often only advertisements are placed in the daily newspaper or the cheese magazine. The Yellow Pages should of course not be missing. These companies spend an average of €0 to €1,000 a year on advertising.

There are frightening statistics, especially in craft businesses, that a maximum of €250 is invested in advertising per year. For the moment this may be justified with a high order situation, but you are definitely not investing in the future of your own company.

But there are also sobering numbers on the company's own website. Quite a few companies don't even have a website, the rest is mostly represented on the net with such a bad homepage that one should rather do without it.

But maybe you are already open to the Internet, like many other entrepreneurs. But most of them don't know what to do and how to do it all. There are also countless companies that promise you the blue of the sky every day.

How are you supposed to know what you should do and what is best for your company? I can give you a tip at this point, don't give away any money to the countless companies on the Internet that promise you quick success and charge a lot of money for it. You won't be able to measure any noticeable success, I'm speaking from unfortunate experience.

Why advertising in the daily newspaper is of little use

I am sure that this statement also applies to your company, unless you have an advertising budget of several 10,000 €. Then you will get feedback on your ads, but there is a better way to get rid of your money. And at the same time, you can achieve 100x what newspaper advertising can do.

I will use an example to explain why this is so. Suppose you are a contractor and want to improve your order situation. Let's assume that the daily newspaper in your region has a circulation of around 100,000 copies. In order for your ad to be noticed at all, it has to be big enough to catch the eye. For this you have to invest at least 500€, maybe even more.

Of those 100,000 readers of the newspaper, maybe 5,000 will see your ad. Just ask yourself how many of these 5000 want to build something right now? On average three people. But two of them have already found a construction company, and the third still needs some time before he is ready to place an order.

So there are still more prospects to be reached, so you need to run an ad monthly or maybe even weekly. Constant dripping wears away the stone, but at a cost! It will eat up tons of money without you even generating an order. But I can promise you, if you keep reading, you won't want to spend another penny on newspaper advertising.

For the sake of completeness, however, I would like to point out that there are certainly companies for which this type of advertising is worthwhile. But they are the exception, and if, like me, you take the marketing of your company into your own hands, you definitely don't belong.

How the Internet is used today

In my experience, many entrepreneurs have not yet realized what is happening around them at the moment. The world is in upheaval and changing rapidly. People network and exchange ideas with each other. Everything grows together more and more. Countries and even entire continents are just a mouse click away. News travels at the speed of light. We already live in a completely digitized world.

More than 80% of Germans seek advice on the internet before making a decision. You google, you post, you show up on Facebook. We are able to take a close look and assess things in advance. One no longer trusts the statements of an individual, but secures oneself in the social community.

It used to be easy to rip off customers and sell them the worst junk. That is no longer to be thought of today, which is of course to be evaluated as positive. You can now get information day and night and from anywhere in the world.

It should be clear to everyone that we are only at the beginning. What used to be smiled at in films is now reality, and nobody can predict where we will be in 5-10 years. But one thing is certain, progress is increasing exponentially and can no longer be stopped. We have seen that in the past.

Let's take a look at the currently most important platforms on the Internet and their development:

• Facebook now has 25 million users in Germany. Almost 80% of internet users have a Facebook profile.
• Google is the biggest and best search engine in the world with a market share of over 95%. Almost everyone uses and searches for information via google.
• Xing has 6 million users in German-speaking countries. This portal is ideal for making business contacts. But only if you know how to do it.
• YouTube is now the second largest search engine right after google (google bought YouTube for 1.65 billion in 2005). The power of video is unstoppable.
• Twitter, google+ (google's social platform) and many other social sites are growing every day and there is no end in sight.

Not to be forgotten are the large e-commerce portals such as Amazon, ebay, and many more. Amazon alone has an annual growth rate of almost 20% .
Online sales have grown by double digits in recent years. But with the same purchasing power! IE sales are collapsing elsewhere, which is hitting retail stores in particular.

What the development of the Internet means for entrepreneurs

If you look at this rapid development, you quickly come to the conclusion that every company that does not follow this trend is practically committing itself.

You as an entrepreneur have to accept this challenge, otherwise all the competition will rush past you and you can only look behind.

A good example is source. The management simply overslept the trend of online trading and desperately clung to the old catalog system.
The costs for a competitive online shop would have cost the group a fraction of what was invested in pointless attempts to revive it.

There are many prominent examples and if you think that something like this will never happen to you due to the current good order situation, then I can only advise you to rethink as soon as possible.

Entrepreneurs who have positioned themselves in the new market will grow. They have developed a system with which they generate more and more customers. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year round. Those who only rely on recommendation marketing will sooner or later be overwhelmed because they simply don't exist. If you can't be found on the internet, you don't exist.