Hi, Marshall and Gary here

Welcome to our new blog called Small Business Internet Marketing. The blog has been a labour of love to get up and running but it is an area of business we feel extremely passionate about.

We both run our own businesses that concentrate on providing practical advice and assistance to small business. We are both Associates of the Institute for Independent Business (IIB), which is a not-for-profit research, training and accreditation organisation. Since 1984 the IIB has been providing invaluable information and access to assistance to meet the needs of independent businesses. If you want to know more about the IIB, go to http://www.iib.ws/.

In the course of helping the Managing Director/Owner (or MDO as we call them in the IIB) with their business, we noted more often than not the business had no presence on the internet - no website, no blog, no advertising, no nothing. In fact, the only way you would ever find them electronically is through advertising aggregators like Hotfrog, TrueLocal, AussieWeb. Whilst these directories are good websites, they do not give a strong presence to just one small business out of the thousands of businesses listed.

We also frequently deal with clients who do have websites. Whilst most of them look great, seldom do any of them have a marketing strategy to support them. Therefore, the time and effort and money that has gone into developing these sites has gone to waste and the owners of the business became disappointed and despondent as the website did not work in attracting sales.

When you think about it, this scenario isn’t surprising as it is like putting your company brochure on the counter of a local takeaway shop and expecting it to generate sales.

This made us think…. there must be some way to help small business address these problems with an internet marketing strategy.

So, the Small Business Internet Marketing blog was conceived.

Next post – Why a blog?

Your business buddies

Marshall and Gary