Instead of focusing on our successes, I am actually going to focus on one of our failures as a business. As a business, you should diversify your marketing expenditures to help grow the business and build brand recognition. In order for a business to be successful, you should never "put all your eggs in one basket." At least, that's the conventional wisdom. Unfortunately, this is an area that we have failed at for our own business, now going on 4 years in a row...

In 2015, when Make it Active relocated to New Hampshire, it was our intention to focus on every aspect of both online and traditional marketing. After all, I always speak about the importance of diversifying marketing strategies to my clients, so I couldn’t let our business focus on one area, risking catastrophic failure. We have spent countless hours on search engine optimization, and little else. We have created ads, wonderful graphics that are ready to print, and lots of ideas as to what types of advertisements we were going to invest in. Unfortunately, I have consistently failed to advertise our business, year after year, since relocating to NH. As of the time this was written in late September, 2018, we have not advertised at all. We have relied solely on Search Engine Optimization as a means to grow our business.

Has our business suffered? Unfortunately, it is likely it has. Surely we could have grown faster in the same amount of time by doing some advertising. Has our business been a catastrophic failure? Unless you consider growing at a rate of 1400% a failure, no, our business has not been a catastrophic failure. In fact, we have had great success, and have continued growing each year from our humble new beginnings here in Dover, NH.

Our point with all this is that you should diversify your marketing strategies, and you should not follow our mistakes and ignore certain aspects that will help your company grow. But on that same point, you should also stop ignoring the importance of SEO. Think about this: If our primary means of growth as a small business has simply been growing the traffic on our website through SEO, it should demonstrate the importance of SEO in business growth.

This isn’t just about our story; We have a few case studies on our website, and have worked with many clients over the years, watching them grow at a fast rate due to our experience with SEO.. People rely on the internet to find a business. Don't you? When you want coffee, pizza, or are looking for a restaurant, chances are, you pick up your phone to search. If not, you still have the need to recognize that most consumers find businesses this way. It is time to start utilizing the internet to grow your business, and not simply be a required expense.

Our goal for 2019 is to start focusing more on advertising. Your goal should be to divert more of your marketing budget to SEO and Online Marketing. You won’t regret it.