Online Marketing and Brand Strategy Advice by Ashley Hart

I went to an interesting meeting last night that was held for entrepreneurs for women in NYC. The group is sponsored by former students of Columbia University’s Business school and is held each month. It was my first time there and I must say it was interesting to be surrounded by other women, all of which were very intelligent and each being fortunate to have started successful entrepreneurial ventures. What I most found interesting was the range of businesses and the lack of knowledge of understanding online marketing, even today.

The theme for the meeting was ‘Marketing’ and the group invited a few people to speak about their different marketing paths. The majority of the questions that were posed by the group to the panel, was on understanding the buzz words of online marketing, such as Search, Paid, SEO, Natural and so on. By the end of the meeting, it was clear to me that these smart, knowledgeable women cannot be alone in understanding online marketing. If a group of such successful entrepreneurs couldn’t understand the basics of online marketing, have we taken it for granted as online marketers, that not everyone understands what it is or how to utilize it?

Not everyone understands how television commercials are made or where to find the best placements for their print ads, but everyone does know what these medias are and how it can serve them. I think as marketers, if we want to have real online marketing penetration, we have to stop taking it for granted that not everyone understands what is online marketing? I mean how could we, do we actually understand how Google ranks us in Organic Search?