Internet Marketing - 101
Second – Know what you have and how to communicate this to your audience.
Taking the shoe store example again, on the surface it seems rather obvious what the product is, right? Wrong. As a business owner looking to make a buck, understanding what you offer and who your customers are is essential to winning the battle for consumers.
1. What type of person will buy your shoes, men, women or both?
2. Do you offer children’s shoes and from what age?
3. Do you sell athletic shoes, dress shoes, work boots or all of the above?
4. Is your product high-end couture, basement discount bargains or a mixture?
5. Where is your physical location or are you strictly on-line?
As you can see by just these few questions, the nature of what and how you sell your product or service are critical elements for determining the best methods to market your business. Although your website can reach around the globe, are you prepared to sell and ship your products great distances or do you just want people to come to you, or is there something in the middle? Also many times where your store is physically located could be seen as a positive or negative and if it’s on the downside then you can use your website to counteract this.
One big miss-step made by even the most intelligent entrepreneurs is their lack of appreciation for what a website can do for their business. Many owners don’t realize how easy it is for their website to become a passive revenue stream. Even if you don’t offer a hard product, your website can still be utilized for income generation with a little imagination and know how.
Third – Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing is best left to the professionals. Let’s be clear – if you wouldn’t let an amateur fix your car or diagnose and treat your illness, why would you allow someone with limited experience and knowledge develop highly technical, protocol driven marketing strategies that can effect the very life blood of your business and livelihood?
Consider the words of web marketing authorities’ iMajestic;
“Your website is the most important part of your organization’s Internet marketing strategy. Your website is the heart of your business communication instrument both, to search engines as well as your future and existing customers.”
Additionally your website marketing should be integrated into your traditional business promotions. By interweaving web marketing with your traditional advertising you will enhance exposure, crossover traffic and be able to exponentially expand market share and awareness which can equate to reduced costs and higher profits. Don’t consider your website as a separate part of your business model. If anything the best part of Internet marketing solutions are the multitude of data that can be accumulated and utilized to further improve your market programs. Unlike advertising and marketing in traditional media - i.e. TV, Radio and Print, web based marketing provides an exhausting amount of significant demographic information such as:
• How many people are visiting your website?
• Where are these visitors coming from?
> Local, Regional, National and International
• How deep are they going into your site?
• Which pages of your website are getting the most response?
• How many “hits” are becoming extended stays or sessions?
• How many “sessions” are converting into SALES?
And the best part about getting this information is that all these programs from which these are derived from can be cost accounted down to the penny!
