Adopting technology early isn’t for everyone. If technology is your business, you might be an early adopter. But for many businesses and organizations, when it comes to internet marketing tools your goal should be smart adoption, not simply early adoption.
Internet marketing is still marketing. The tools offer us different ways to communicate with our community. Some of these tools will having staying power and prove to be useful. Some are just the flavor of the month and won’t be worth your time and money.
How can you tell the difference? Ask yourself these six questions.
1.Is my audience there?
This is the most important question to ask yourself before using any internet marketing tool, old or new. Always start by knowing your audience. Who are they? Where do they spend their time online? What tools do they use to communicate? If they don’t use Foursquare, it doesn’t matter how many articles you read, your time spent developing a Foursquare promotion will be wasted.
2. Do I understand it?
Can you explain what it is in plain English? Maybe you can’t explain all of the technical underpinnings, but you should be able to explain what it is, how it works, and why people use it. Having it explained to you is not enough. If you can’t explain it to someone else, you probably don’t understand it enough to invest your time, your money or both.
3. Do I have a plan for measuring it?
When it comes to new internet marketing tools, particularly social media tools, too often organizations adopt because “everyone else is doing it”. We jump in without a plan for how we’re going to use it, who we’re going to reach with it and how we’re going to measure it. When you start that way, how do you know if it’s working?
Experimenting with new tools is fine. But do it based on a plan. Know who you are trying to reach, what messages you will use and how you will measure your effectiveness. Then change the plan as you go if you need to. If you start with the idea that nothing can be measured because it’s so new, you can be assured of never knowing if what you’re doing is working or not.
4. What happens if I wait?
Google+ recently released business pages. How widely used will Google+ be as a social network? The jury is still out, though with the increasing impact that social has on search, I wouldn’t ignore it. Businesses and organizations have to decide how much time to devote to developing their G+ presence based on audience and resources. But what happens if you don’t create at least create a profile? Will having a profile help with search rankings (especially for local search, giving you another opportunity to tell Google your business name, address and phone number)?
Suppose you aren’t sure that Twitter is for you. Is it worth it to create your profile so that you have your business name secured as an ID? I say yes. Secure your name on the major social networks even if you’re not sure you’ll use them. Beyond that, evaluate what happens if you wait. If your customers are technology users, and your competitors are likely to jump in with both feet, time may not be on your side. If that isn’t the case, you may have some time to think things through and let others do some experimenting first.
5. What resources are required to try it out?
Internet marketing is not free. Social media is not free. Is it free to join some of the services? Yes. But organizations that use these tools effectively are investing time and money. Resources are required to develop internet marketing plans, to create content to distribute via these networks, to manage the tools themselves and to measure and analyze the results. It’s shortsighted to think that because there is no fee for a Facebook page itself, there is no cost to an organization to engage in marketing via Facebook.
The investment to use new tools should be weighed against the benefit of using those resources elsewhere. Just because there is a shiny new social media service that all the jazzy people online are talking about doesn’t mean it’s going to yield better results for you than something tried and true already does.
6. What’s my exit plan?
How easy would it be to stop if you gave this new thing a try and decided it wasn’t for you? Do you have to purchase new equipment to try it? Do you need to hire someone with a particular skill set to execute? Would you be leaving a big group of customers or constituents behind if you decided not to stick with it?
Before you start, think about how hard it would be for you to stop. If the exit plan will be costly, generate bad press or both, make sure you’ve thought it through before jumping in.
Have I forgotten anything? What else should organizations consider before adopting new internet marketing tools? The comments are open.
Image credit: Flavio Takemoto
I'm an internet marketing consultant and a 16 year veteran of the internet marketing industry. My roles have spanned digital strategy, website management, search engine optimization, social media marketing and business process management. I'm fascinated by the way internet technologies change how we learn, vote, shop and give. 
