SOPA Serves as Wake Up Call to Entrepreneurs

On January 19, thousands of protestors celebrated the tentative victory over SOPA helping to ease the concerns that, if SOPA passed, thousands of innocent and legitimate websites could be taken down, with no recourse, no chance for appeal and with a “guilty until proven innocent” mentality due to any foolhardy accusation of a copyright violation. Marketing expert, Charles Gaudet, believes this was a much needed lesson for entrepreneurs that rely too heavily on the Internet for their livelihood.

“Countless entrepreneurs feared that if the SOPA legislation passed, they’d be out of business,” says Gaudet. “What people don’t realize is that the Internet, by itself, for most people, isn’t a business – it’s simply a source for distributing information. It’s a media. And, anytime you rely on only one media (such as the Internet) as your sole source of generating income, you’re opening yourself and your business to becoming vulnerable.”

Gaudet says that a common threat among small business owners is the dependency on one or two sources of income rather than taking advantage of additional sources either because of a lack of strategic thinking or from getting too comfortable with their current cash-flow. But it’s threats like SOPA and other economic, societal, political, environmental and personal changes that can also effect a business’s cash flow.

Some additional sources of income Gaudet suggests entrepreneurs may want to incorporate inside of their business include (but are not limited to):

- Testing various lead generating marketing systems,
- Having a system for stimulating word-of-mouth referrals,
- Using Direct mail,
- Advertising through multiple sources (not just one),
- Marketing to past customers who stopped doing business with you (but who would easily buy from you again if given the chance),
- Leveraging partnerships and joint venture relationships,
- Using special promotions / events,
- Offering incentives for increasing purchase frequency and size

“When things are going well, it’s easy for entrepreneurs to slip into the trap of being comfortable instead of thinking strategically,” Gaudet says, “and events like SOPA should remind entrepreneurs that depend on the internet for income that they need to begin looking at how many other ways they can grow their business without the dependency on one media or one source of income.”