I attended a local business meeting the other day, given this was not a technical discussion I resorted to my off pat what I do lecture but before launching into a twenty minute presentation on why I am not a spammer. I did a quick straw poll on some very basic questions to get a lay of the land so to speak the results, well probably what you expected.
What is SEO?
A simple question if ever there was one, so a multiple choice of 4 questions that's a 25% average chance.
Results
Update: small edit on the graphic to reflect correct actual answer oops
ok so just over 60% got the first question right! of course it could have been my name tag that did it 
What is PPC
Another multiple choice, again 25% this time no name tags to help.
Results
You know they would have been better of guessing the most popular answer was priority position count.
Who are these guys?
A few pictures of well known (maybe) web personalities; Tim Berners Lee 90% which you would expect he is after all the guy of the tele, Matt Cutts well without sounding mean simply didn't rank with no one getting close unless works with computers count! and when given the choice that these 2 likely lads were either Google founders, Yahoo Founders, Ask Jeeves Founder or the guys who created linux...
results
A multi billion pound empire does not guarantee instant recognition.
How much of your business leads are currently from your web site?
A pretty simple question but it actually caused a fascinating discussion on how you determine if the website is generating the lead indeed nearly all of the evening was devoted to how we could measure this simple metric.
Results
It was interesting that only 2 companies claimed to be completely online in term of leads (both online ecommerce stores) but most people claimed to have some sort of lead from their sites (I removed the 2 companies that didn't have a web site, though one mentioned leads via email)
Will you be budgeting for online marketing this year?
Remember here in the UK April is start of our financial year, the last question of the poll was if they planned to spend any money this year on their site or other online marketing.
result
Ultimately most did claim they would spend some money on online advertising and or there web sites. However when pushed for budgets, most were looking to spend less then last year and nothing on web design or indeed search engine optimisation. Instead focusing on building on existing traffic sources and revenues.
So there you have it, business is not rosy in north Nottinghamshire or is it? Ultimately for many service industries it's going to be a hard year but the good news the final question asked at the end of the evening...
Is internet going to be the future for your business?
Definitely made for interesting reading, just goes back something that stuck in my mind from your SEO Nottinghamshire post where you mentioned about education being a great sales tool, couldn’t be more true after reading that.
Education, education, education
Ultimately when you work in an industry that is either misunderstood or simply not known you start at the very bottom of the hill. Its hard to convince people to part with their cash when they didn’t even know they had a problem or a solution.
Would have liked to be in attendance Tim. Coming from an industry that used to spend millions in YP advertising, I find these questions (and the answers) very important.
I find myself asking others “Will you be budgeting for online marketing this year?” Which is followed by the reminder when we fail to plan we plan to fail.
Love it Tim! Great findings … I especially love that so few could identify with Page and Brin, and so many think the internet is the future of their business. Keep going with these … they’re really grounding!
I think the lack of recognition of the Google boys is a perfect example of herd mentality, some one when he saw the photo announced they were the Yahoo founders, and sure enough the vast majority went for that option.
Love the illustrations, I want to do them for myself
Reminds me of a conversation I had with an “educator” who was teaching an intro to computers class to senior citizens. When he started telling me about his first lecture and that he was going to discuss RAM, CPU’s, CDs, CDRs, etc, I asked him “But, when did you tell them how to turn the darn things on?”
To which I received one of those priceless, idiotic looks that was followed with “why everyone knows that!”
So to continue the game, I replied “so, were you born knowing where the on/off switch was or did someone have to show you too?”
All too often those of us in the computing field seem to forget that we were not born with the knowledge we now possess and perhaps more importantly our customers do not have to themselves become experts to hire us and value our services. Many of my writing clients don’t know SEO from Eee-I-Oh but all understand that they want more traffic to their sites and better content to turn those visitors into paying customers.
I love your approach and admit I might borrow it should I ever take the plunge and lead a seminar. (I might leave out the photo of the Google boys as I suspect every one of my customers could show me a similar photo from their own industry that I would not recognize.) It is a good reminder that all too often computing professionals do not pay attention to their audience and fail to modify their presentations accordingly - something I learned very quickly to do back during my days of working in technical support.
Of all the questions you asked, the last two hold the most promise of future business for those of us assisting folks in learning how the Internet can be used to grow their businesses.
Yet another great post, Tim.
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