1st Click Consulting turned 18 years old today, April 1, 2020. It seems like a real coming-of-age. One of the things of which I am most proud is our continued focus on helping small business.
There are many ways to define “small business.” Generally, I define a small business as one with 1-100 employees. In today’s knowledge-based economy, I find that a better definition than one involving annual revenue or size of marketplace.
From the day I started 1st Click Consulting, I recognized that small business was going to be challenged by digital marketing. It was going to be a medium in flux, and that was going to make it hard for small business to stay current. Plus, digital marketing is the polar opposite of the familiar mass media advertising. On the other hand, the Internet was an amazing opportunity for small business as well.
I wanted in on the ground floor of what I knew would be revolutionary for small business marketing.
Let me give you a quick look back at 2002 when 1st Click Consulting opened its doors. The company was located in San Antonio at the time—a real haven for small business. But many of those businesses still didn’t have Internet access in their offices. They were computerized, but had no connection to the World Wide Web. And they really didn’t know what they were missing.
As far as search engines go, the “big dogs” were AltaVista, AskJeeves, and one you may never have heard of called Inktomi, which was the search engine used by MSN. When I did my SEO training, the teacher talked about how he had been at a national conference the year before and a weird guy that was one of the founders of a company called Google came out on stage on a skateboard. The teacher said Google might be a search engine to watch, but the skateboard was obviously designed to help the company make an impression.
The Internet was far less crowded with websites, but there was also far less traffic. Nevertheless, there was anecdotal evidence that the Web offered amazing opportunities for small business. That is what I wanted to tap into.
For example, there was a story about a family that had a small manufacturing operation out of their garage. One day they got a call from a multi-national corporation’s executive saying that he had found them on the Web and wanted to come by for a visit! They were flabbergasted—but thrilled with the opportunity this presented.
And, honestly, that has not been an unusual story for many business owners over the past couple of decades.
As the Internet became more popular and Google solidified its position of dominance in search, it became harder and harder for the little guys to succeed online. I was determined that 1st Click Consulting would offer sophisticated SEO guidance that smaller businesses could benefit from—and afford.
As time has gone on and the value of digital marketing has become more apparent, professionals specializing in SEO have become more expensive. Don’t get me wrong. SEO expertise is valuable and these experts should be well paid. But, there needs to be a profitability factor in this equation, too. For some businesses its not possible to increase sales enough to pay an SEO specialist thousands of dollars monthly for their expertise. How many more doughnuts could a small bakery sell and still be profitable if that kind of money needed to come out of profits? Probably not enough.
And yet, many SEO specialists insist that a small local bakery needs to do the same thing to achieve SEO success as a large retailer with hundreds of locations across the country.
Obviously, that is not true—or practical.
Small local businesses and companies that operate within a relatively narrow niche can be successful online if the SEO strategy is customized to their business, the competitive environment, and their geographic marketplace. Many SEO experts don’t want to bother with that. 1st Click Consulting does.
1st Click Consulting has a heart for small business. We know that it is hard for small business to find a qualified SEO that they can afford.
Our clients generally don’t face competition from much larger companies. Usually they are competing with other companies of a similar size that could be expected to have similar marketing budgets. If they have many competitors, those companies are usually other small businesses that don’t have sophisticated SEO behind their websites.
Our SEO strategies are customized to the number of competitors a client faces, and the strength and sophistication of SEO techniques used by companies that outrank them in the search engines. That allows us to charge fees that make it possible for clients to benefit from digital marketing and remain profitable. We have many clients that have been with us for 10 years or more! In that time, some of them have been able to drive almost all their competitors out of business!
Our tagline is “Sophisticated Internet Marketing for Small Business.” That is our promise. Our goal is reflected in another line you will see on our home page “Affordable Internet Marketing Services for Small Companies with Big Plans.” We partner with clients to make even big dreams come true.
For 18 years we have built a reputation for reliability and results. I can’t wait to see what future years will bring!