Buying spots on KFAB is marketing. You’re marketing for 30 or 60 seconds at a time.

Getting commercials produced for your business and airing them on KMTV is marketing. You’re spending big money for an ad that viewers might like and respond to – or they might not.

Your small Omaha business website is marketing. Your website markets for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and, in many ways, can be more effective than radio, television or traditional print advertising.

The difference between traditional marketing through print, radio or television and Internet marketing through the web is that the Internet is far, far more targeted than traditional media.

Think about it. Say you buy an ad on KFAB for your new Omaha pickle jar business. When that ad airs, you get whatever slice of radio audience that’s listening to that station when the ad airs to listen to your message. Who’s listening? KFAB spends a lot of money to find out broad demographics for their listeners, but they really don’t have a concrete idea of who is listening.

Now, say you buy a website for your Omaha pickle jar business. Say you hire someone who knows his way around search engine optimization and have him work with your website designer, so that people who search for your product will actually find, come to and stay on your website.

With the local business website and proper SEO work, you’re not going to be exposing your brand name to 10% of the homes in Omaha. You’re not going to attract the attention of people who just want to watch “Lost” and skip over commercials whenever they can. You’re probably not going to have huge numbers of any kind other than your budget numbers.

However.

You are going to have people come to your website who are searching for pickle jars on Google. People who search for pickle jars on Google are people who know they want pickle jars, people who collect, buy and give pickle jars as gifts.

When you try to duplicate the marketing efforts of big business, you’re dooming yourself – and your business – to failure.

Trying to reach everyone you possibly can, and spending the money to do so, weakens your position.

Yeah, everyone needs pickle jars (or whatever else you’re selling). Everyone can use them, and there are definite benefits for your customers when they buy them from you…but if you think you can take your small Omaha business budget and launch a big marketing campaign that hits as many potential customers as possible, all you’re going to do is make small, feeble splashes in a very big pond.

Small businesses have incredible power, but their power doesn’t come from their budget. It can’t. Small businesses can’t compete with the big boys who have millions to spend on marketing just one aspect of their business.

The power of small business lies in reaching deep into a niche, or deep into a specific demographic, and establishing a solid, firm foothold there. Don’t try to tell the world how great your pickle jars are – sell your best customers on your pickle jars and cement your relationship with them.

When I started focusing on search engine optimization specifically for Omaha businesses, my income from SEO work doubled within the month.

Market wisely.