Millions of people go online each day, willingly seeking products and businesses that can help them. They want condos. They want wedding planners. They want shoes. They want hostels for vacations. They want advice on raising kids, the best zit-zapping product, restaurant reviews and more. Name a product or service, someone is looking for it at this moment.  Search engines like Yahoo!, Microsoft’s Bing and the largest of them all, Google, are now the go-to places to find the product or service that people are looking for.

In today’s digital world, customers turn to online search engines first. Businesses should realize that acquiring customers from search engines should be a core business strategy and not ‘just one of those online things’ as one of my previous clients used to say. Search has changed Marketing forever. While the core elements of marketing remain the same (such as identifying, acquiring and satisfying customer requirements profitably) consumer behavior is changing inevitably. We now turn to online sources for product information, and more importantly, reviews and opinions about products and services. Being online for any business isn’t just about having a website – it is about getting found. Continue Reading…