Back during the first Internet industry bubble, I wrote a series of articles called “The Internet Reality Check.”
My milion dollar piece of advice back then (and my talk was taped at Wharton) was “If you really, really want to buy Internet shares, wait and you’ll be able to get all you want for pennies on the dollar.” No one called it better.
Now, at the height of the second Internet industry bubble (oh, yes we are), here’s a short “Internet reality check.”
The Pew Internet & American Life Project just came out with an important reality check. (The Pew Trust is an old oil family that likes to keep track of what Americans are thinking just in case we ever get tired of the internal combustion engine and the fact that 95% of our tax money for transportation goes to private cars and not mass transit.)
Anyway, the reality check:
31% of Americans say they use the Internet a lot and find it improves the quality of their lives.
20% use the Internet, mainly because they “have to” but aren’t fans.
49% don’t use the Internet at all, or use it sparingly because they get overloaded by it or their gear doesn’t work the way they need it to.
The reality check is that when you’re using the Internet to market, you’re really only potentially reaching about 1/3 of your market.
The good news is this is an affluent, intelligent, consumerist slice of the country and the Internet, when used intelligently (ala “The System”) is still a very effective way to reach and engage with them.)
Fifteen years ago, when I was considering the wisdom of jumping with both feet into the Internet marketing pool, I calculated that if just 10% of the market used the Internet, it would be worth getting into.
What I said back then and I’m still saying now (and the recent Pew study confirms it), you better not throw away the other media and channels like print and direct mail and cable because there are still huge percentages of the world that don’t use this thing, don’t want to use it and will NEVER use it.
That’s a piece of advice that only the wise among the corporate media and the world of boostrap entrepreneurs is heeding.
– Ken McCarthy
P.S. For over 25 years I’ve been sharing the simple but powerful things that matter in business with my clients.
If you’d like direction for your business that will work today, tomorrow and twenty years from now, visit us at the System Club.
I agree. A professional association I belong to, which used to mail out monthly newsletters that informed the members of meetings, was getting 50 to 70 people out per evening. When we stopped the mail outs and went to an email list exclusively our meeting numbers tanked to less than 20. We are now trying a combination of things. This is an association of professionals so I would venture to say that even this demographic needs multiple channels to get the message.