About CK Wilde

I’m dedicated to helping businesses put together the perfect combination of online, mobile and offline marketing to grow their customer base, increase revenue and avoid wasting money on ineffective techniques.

Have you had any of these challenges?

• Internet marketing seems overly complicated and confusing. You don’t have time to become an Internet expert.
• You want to keep your business packed with eager customers every day, not just when you run an ad.
• You built a website but have no idea if it brings in any business.
• Your last campaign lost money. How do you keep that from happening again?
• Your staff says you need to write a blog or get on Facebook but you wonder if it is a waste of time.
• You aren’t getting the same response from ads like you used to but you don’t know what to do.
• You’ve heard that consumers are buying right from their smartphones. How do you get your customers to do that?

Well, I have been there, too. In 1997, I set up my very first website for my award-winning consumer direct mail catalog. After many long days of extra effort, we launched our e-commerce website on the World Wide Web … but we didn’t make a single sale!

The World Wide Web was the supposed to be huge. Why was our experience different?

Every time I talked to a customer on the phone, I asked them if they would buy our products from an online store. Everyone said yes.

So where were the customers when we announced the website?

This is where I learned one of the most important lessons in my marketing career. Your target market determines EVERYTHING. I had asked the wrong question for my market. I should have asked if they currently shop online.

You see, most of my customers were women.  At that time, the Internet was still the playground for techies and older male executives. The research firms were predicting that online shopping would skyrocket. These predictions eventually became reality, but it took three more years for online shopping to become popular with women.

So I went back to school–literally.  A local university had just begun a program in E-commerce Management to teach people like me how to run a business online.  After completing the program, I went to work promoting and eventually becoming an owner of  a software development company.  We began experimenting with what I had learned and implementing the best strategies and techniques.

We used a variety of online techniques to re-position the company into a leading edge mobile application developer bringing in thousands of dollars of revenue.  Along the way, I developed a Marketing Framework that was essential for our business and could help any business gain the customers and revenue it needs to dominate the competition.

I thought most savvy business owners understood about real online and offine marketing.

But, as I talked with other owners at various networking events, it began to dawn on me that most businesses still believed certain myths that hold them back from being hugely successful.

Do any of these sound familiar?

Myth 1: A website levels the playing field so small businesses can compete with big business anywhere in the world.

False. There was a time when this was true, but today it takes more than just having a website to compete with the Fortune 1000. It takes strategic marketing to broadcast your unique selling proposition to the right audience–your target market.

Myth 2: Ads bring visitors to my business website.

False.  A recent study by Forrester Research showed that natural search (Google, Bing and others) brings 61% of visitors to a website. Your business website needs to be visible on the first search page because people rarely look beyond the first page for results.

Myth 3: Social Media is a fad. Why waste the time?

False. The Forrester Research study also showed that Social Media is growing in influence, particularly with younger consumers. Your business needs a social media strategy to stay top of mind.

Myth 4: Online marketing costs the same as traditional marketing using ads, sales staff, events and trade shows and direct mail.

False. The latest survey of small businesses by Hubspot indicated that it costs, on the average, $334 to acquire a single customer using traditional methods but only $132 to acquire a customer with online marketing methods. Judicious use of online marketing can reduce your costs AND increase sales.

Myth 5: I can just have my regular sales staff do this stuff.

False. Traditional selling is dead! Your prospective customer doesn’t even want to talk to your sales staff until he or she has already gotten information from your website and reference sites around the web. Sales staff who push demos or webinars before the prospect wants to attend one just drives that customer away. You need to re-work your sales process to match your prospect’s changed buying process.

It really bothered me that too few small businesses were taking advantage of online and offline marketing together  to catapult their businesses to success. In May of 2010, I decided to launch Customer Rush Marketing to bust these myths and help business owners leap ahead of competitors.