The Internet continues to redefine marketing.

How powerful is the internet?

Consider these facts:

• It took 38 years for the telephone to reach 50 million users
  
• It took 13 years for television to reach 50 million users
  
• It took the internet 4 years to reach 50 million users

• Currently 68% of Books are purchased on the internet
  
• Currently 67% of Travel is booked on the internet
  
• Currently 23% of Prescription Drugs are purchased on the internet

• All ages are embracing technology as:
  
• 55% of Americans ages 60-69 are on line
  
• 26% of Americans ages 70-75 are on line

 
Video is exploding on the Web as Americans watched streamed video on line 3.7 billion times in 2006.

But possibly more staggering is the fact that word of mouth advertising is becoming more and more influential because of the internet.

For years Engrave-A-Crete has taught that referrals and word-of-mouth are the most efficient and influential sources of new business.

Now, because of:

• Speed of E-mail
  
• Volume of E-mail
  
• Growth of Blogging
  
• Growth of Internet Communities

the internet allows your customers to share their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your service faster, easier, and farther than ever before. This has changed marketing and should influence how concrete engravers interact with customers.

THE LIST OF DOs and DON’Ts

THE DOs

• Set reasonable and proper expectations with your customer before each job in terms of time, quality, and price.
  
• Continuously communicate with your customer throughout the project insuring their understanding and satisfaction.
  
• Continuously encourage your customers to communicate with their friends and associations via e-mail about your work with digital photos. Provide them with digital images of your projects before and after so that they may easily share with new prospects via e-mail.
  
• Ask for testimonials from your customer so that you can publish their comments on the internet.
  
• Provide your customer with an after-job experience that exceeds their expectations, with maintenance tips and a post-job debriefing.
  
• Continuously communicate with your prior customers via e-mail every 3 months with photos of your latest work. Help them forward your information to others!

THE DON’T

• Do not allow any reasonable customer concern to fester. Solve the problem fast before your customer reaches the computer keyboard.

With the internet, the new rules are:
A happy customer may place a posting on the internet which will be seen by thousands!

And

An unhappy customer may place a posting on the internet which will be seen by hundreds of thousands!