Eli the Computer Guy

Many people make the mistake of creating a web business and then trying to advertise to the entire Internet.  The thought is the more people who see your ads, or web site the more customers you will get.  The problem is that when you advertise to the entire Internet you will get a lot of people who see your ad once, or visits you site once and then promptly forget that you exist.  You may get a huge amount of traffic to your site, but you won’t get a following or customer base.

This is fine for free and easy advertising.  By performing SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Social Networking and the like you can attract random people to your site and possibly gain customers through happenstance. But for the advertising that you pay for, or must spend a lot of time to implement this shotgun approach is not your best bet. 

I would advise that you target the geographic area where your business is located.  By targeting a smaller area for advertising it is easier to create a critical mass within the smaller number of people you are dealing with.

In the beginning it is much easier to make customers out of people you already have relationships with.  Also customers are more comfortable dealing with “a local”.  By focusing on these people you can gain initial customers more easily then simply targeting random strangers 1000 miles away.  You also have the ability to know and speak with your new customers to see what can be done better.

At the end of the day if your business is actually worthwhile these local customers will then spread the word to their mothers, brothers, sisters around the world.  When they talk about your business they will say, “You remember… he started this cool web site you should check out!”, or “ I ran into this guy the other day who specializes in… I think he might have what you are looking for.” This process works much more easily to spread the word. 

You target people you already have a relationship with.  They spread the word to people they know and so on.  This is a “trust” based way of advertising.  In a time when everyone is being bombarded with random, anonymous branding I would argue that even an Internet business should try to make the most of local advertising.