With the announcement of this year’s winner of the TV reality show The Apprentice, it seems that internet marketing has become somewhat more mainstream than it used to be. I received no fewer than 4 text messages from people asking me if Mark Wright, the newly-crowned winner, was planning to setup a business that operated in the same field as me. And yes, it seems that Lord Alan Sugar’s new business partner is going to be trying to develop a business that offers internet marketing assistance to small and medium sized companies.

{Photo Credit: BBC web page about The Apprentice}

So is it possible to develop a truly scaleable internet marketing business in the manner Mark Wright wishes to? I’d have to say “possibly” is the only answer I can provide here. My own experience suggests that the personal touch is a key element in any relationship between business owners and their internet marketing consultants. Sub contractors have their place and can be useful, but the main point of contact needs to be up to speed with all the latest developments in SEO (to help get sites “up the pecking order” as Lord Sugar calls it) and other digital marketing elements.

I certainly wish Mark well and hope he can justify the investment he’s secured, but I just wonder if the model is going to have to change somewhat in order to be successful. In the same way that I have to invest a lot of my own time in ensuring my clients are well-served by my efforts, I feel that Mark may have to surround himself with a team of equally experienced experts that could ultimately prove too expensive to evolve into anything other than a boutique digital agency targeting higher value clients, rather than the small business end of the market he wants to pitch himself into from the outset. (Small and medium sized businesses comprising the market I’m extremely familiar and successful with myself).

Seeing Search Engine Optimisation being talked about on one of the country’s favourite TV shows did make me think that we’ve come a long way from the days of 1998, when I first started in the industry and had to spend most of my time evangelically promoting search engines as a business tool, as back then people were far from convinced that the internet was here to stay!

So congratulations to Mark Wright, this year’s Apprentice – and a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to one and all.