Dr Jeff Cornwall

My column in this week’s Tennessean is about the changing nature of marketing as a business grows and evolves:

Entrepreneurs face the need to change their approaches to promotion and advertising to keep their businesses moving ahead. A good example of this can be seen in Evans Glass Co., a family-owned business in Nashville.

For years, Bill Evans Sr. relied on three methods of promoting the business. First, those pink trucks helped to make the business stand out as they drove around town. Second, he relied on word of mouth by actively building strong loyalty of employees and customers. And third, like most businesses in years past, he used Yellow Pages ads.

When Bill Evans Jr. took over, he decided that he wanted to expand the business. That required a change in advertising strategy.

So Bill enlisted the help of a marketing class taught by Robert Lambert at Belmont University.

One of the outcomes of the recommendations Bill received from the students was a decision that he needed to invest in TV advertising. Bill made a commitment in 2003 to budget a significant amount to running TV ads.

The investment paid off and Bill has seen significant increases in sales for the past four years as a direct result of his change in strategy. Now Bill is looking to expand his promotion even further by moving into Internet sales.

“My customers, who are primarily baby boomers, are changing where they go for information. More of them are using the Web to get information, so I need to change my advertising,” Bill said about his change in advertising strategies.

Web must be more

Just because you put up a cool Web site does not mean that your intended customers will be able to find it. Entrepreneurs are often shocked at how hard it can be to find their own Web site using common search engines, such as Google and Yahoo.

Without a search engine driving people to your site, you have to rely on them knowing the specific address.

Given the time and money it takes to set up even a simple site, it is important to have a strategy to help potential customers find it.

There are two strategies that can drive people to a Web site:

• Many small-business owners use a targeted means to drive people to a site. It’s a push strategy, where you put the address on your business cards, on brochures, or in other media, for example in newspaper ads, to encourage people to go to your site.

• A more aggressive approach uses a pull strategy, in which you use search engine optimization or other techniques to attract people to your site. This approach uses the Internet more like traditional advertising. The business pays to help drive people to its Web site by pushing it higher up the rankings or making it a sponsored site in search engines like Google.

Bill plans to use both strategies, as he hopes that the Internet will not only help build sales within his current market in Middle Tennessee, but also attract Internet shoppers from other parts of the country. He plans to maintain his TV ads but will probably phase out his Yellow Pages advertising.

Just like the owners of Evans Glass, every entrepreneur must be ready to try new methods to communicate with their current customers and to attract new ones.