Expert warns businesses to use online activity cautiously Sunday, December 20, 2009 By Post Reporter Online marketing is not suitable for every business, according to Anne Keogh, former managing director of needahotel.com and currently management consultant to the DJ Carey Group.
Speaking at a recent Women’s Executive Network Breakfast aimed at small firms who want to use online channels to grow their business, Keogh said: ‘‘It’s important to be online to promote your business, but you have to be cautious and don’t get carried away.”
Keogh warned that small businesses could too easily get caught up in the concept of online without understanding the detail.
‘‘You have to know your customer - online works well for intangible items, but it is not as successful for tangible items,” she said. ‘‘There are huge buzzwords out there about online, and I’d urge people to understand them before they commit resources to them, just to be sure they are applicable.
‘‘It’s also hugely important that there is a point of sale followthrough, where you can buy the product online. There’s no point in promoting a product if it can’t be bought online.”
Shenda Loughnane, managing director of digital advertising agency ICAN, said that small businesses did not necessarily have to invest huge time and money in online channels, citing one viable business focused on selling ribbon headbands solely on Facebook.
She also advised businesses to control the time they spent online.
‘‘It’s important to be active online, uploading your press releases, uploading videos of events, using Facebook and Twitter to improve your search ranking and drive traffic to your site, but we set time limits - say, perhaps, no more than one hour per day - looking for leads or uploading onto Facebook.
You look for customers wherever you can, and online is one of those places,” she said.
While Loughnane finds Twitter vital for picking up and generating leads, Keogh does not. ‘‘The internet can be a terrible loss to your productivity, both personally and as a company,” she said.
She said she also found in her own personal experience that Twitter had little value for work purposes: ‘‘Only 25 per cent of business in Ireland is done online and so if you are spending a lot of your time on Twitter and Facebook, you are quite possibly wasting your time . . . I do 95 per cent of my business online, but I don’t Tweet or use Facebook.”
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