They just had a great small business marketing conference down in Houston. The focus was on online marketing and it looks like they covered a lot of good information. Here’s the link to the site: Small Business Marketing Unleashed

This further confirms my thoughts that small businesses are just beginning to wake up to the fact that marketing has changed and the old ways just don’t work as well anymore. Businesses that understand how web marketing fits into their marketing mix will dominate their markets for years before their competition realizes what is happening.

We will see more and more conferences like this and the local marketing companies will learn that if they don’t understand how to provide a multichannel solution for their clients that they will lose them.

The days of wasting money on branding style ads for local businesses are over. Advertising costs too much and it doesn’t work as well as it once did. Less and less time is spent reading the paper, watching local TV or using the phonebook. In today’s market you have to be there when your client is looking for you and more and more they are looking online.