Recently, I presented at a Software Association of Oregon meeting for our local Columbia Gorge Chapter and Gorge Tech Allliance on the topic, “Growing Your Online Marketing Channel”. It was a great group of local businesses with a focus on tech companies, but retail, non profit and content sites were represented as well.

When broaching a topic this wide, it’s easy to get caught up in over simplifying or over whelming. Summit Projects Executive Account Manager Rob McCreedy presented great information and case studies from their Nike sites and gave some helpful guidelines for understanding Website Usability.

My focus was creating framework for good Search Engine Optimization and how Natural Search can help grow your business. The hardest part about these short meetings is providing value. We could spend a week on Keyword Research alone (1 of 15 slides in a 20 minute presentation). It’s always the hope that these educational meeting lay the groundwork for understanding that Web Marketing and Search Marketing are complex disciplines and that investing in your success as a business owner is worth your time. This takes a great deal of insight and responsibility from the business owner.

The two biggest issues I see with business owners struggling to make the decision to grow their online marketing channel (especially small to mid-size business) are:

ISSUE
1) The desire to spend precious little time or budget on online marketing, then having unrealistic expectations regarding results.

SOLUTION
As a business owner, create an expectation for your marketing agency for ROI. Research the potential for growth for your company online, determine your ability to garner more of the market place, define parameters for potential growth and make decisions about investing in search marketing, web development and other online marketing strategies.

ISSUE
2) The expectation that you can pay an agency for a project, walk away and return to great results.

Get involved with your agency and collaborate through the entire project. As a write this, I think about a project we’re working on now. The business owner (I’ll share more about the project upon completion;) has been involved, not just with creating project parameters, but with design, content development and user experience. It’s not an easy process to say the least, but the potential for success of the project increases dramatically with your involvement as a business owner. No one knows your business better than you.

Kudos to those who attended this (or any) meeting exploring Growing Your Online Marketing Channel, and dare to take the next step and create an actionable strategy for growing your business online. If you think you need more education, attend SEMPDX meetings, attend local Community Education courses, read articles on the topic (ClickZ or SearchEngineLand) or reach out to an agency who has provided results for their clients.