First, I am very glad to hear that more and more small businesses have gotten the "Google Bug" and are starting to incorporate Google advertising into their marketing mix. To all businesses have started down this path, congratulations, this will pay big dividends over your competition if they still have not got involved in online marketing.
However, don’t pat yourself on the back to hard. You are still missing at least 1/2 of the potential online leads/sales that you could be getting. Letme explain:
Google has increased their market penetration in the US to 43.1% up from 36.5% in April 2005. This is amazing, however, notice, they are only up 43.1% – it does not say 100%, according to ComScore. You can read more about the latest US numbers here.
What this means to you as a business owner is that you cannot limit your internet advertising to Google, you must include Yahoo and MSN. If you are in Canada, you need to also include YellowPages.ca as part of that marketing mix. In Canada these are the top 4 online properties in terms of how individual Canadians will connect with businesses. The reason why you need to incorporate YellowPages.ca in your mix for Canada, is that unlike the US, the Yellow Pages market is not fragmented, meaning you have only 1 national player that reached over 30% of online Canadians every month. At over 30% penetration, you simply cannot ignore those numbers. I will try and post shortly the exact make up of the online space in Canada.
When discussing strategies with your Internet marketing expert, if they get all one-tracked on Google, remember, if you place all your budget with Google you are losing sales, period.
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