An Executives Guide To Marketing On The Internet...

By: Thom Reece

THE NEW INTERNET...

You would have to be a cave dwelling hermit living in outer Mongolia not to have been inundated by hype and hoopla about the internet. Hardly a day goes by without major coverage of the net as it has come to be known.

In the last six months alone, Business Week, Advertising Age, Business Marketing, Time, Newsweek, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and dozens of other lesser known publications have touted the internet as the major marketing event of the new millennium. Even venerable PBS has launched a multi-part series based on the internet.

Internet millionaires... billionaires... zillionaires...where does it all end? The Internet is capable of creating more wealth for more people than ever before in the history of mankind. Today's potential is phenominal, but look at what the next few years will bring...

"The number of people with Internet access worldwide will grow to over a BILLION in the next three years, ..."
--Computer Industry Almanac--

Ten years ago, a person could scrape, borrow and mortgage themselves to death to raise $150,000 to open a small retail store which stood an 80-90% chance of failing. Franchises ranging from $50,000 to $1,000,000 fail at an alarming rate.

Today, the Internet lets people start virtual businesses, often for less than 3-10% of the price of a conventional business. And the advantages of the online business are tremendous:

* Potential customer base of almost One BILLION people, as opposed to just 10,000 to 50,000 who may be in the area of a physical business.

* Extremely low start up costs compared to other methods.

* Ability to market nationally and globally without opening satellite locations

* Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including holidays, without paying any overtime

* Businesses can be operated from anywhere.

* A built-in growth factor that staggers the imagination.

No doubt you have asked yourself the question...."Can my company benefit from having our own on-line marketing presence?" The answer is an emphatic "YES"

No GET-RICH-QUICK Here...

Before I show you how you can indeed benefit from marketing on-line, let's clearly establish that (in spite of much hype to the contrary) marketing on the internet is not a get-rich-quick proposition. You can make money...perhaps lots of it. But you should not look at your venture into marketing in cyberspace as an easy road to mega-bucks.

As with any new marketing channel, there is a learning curve to contend with. You should look upon your involvement in on-line marketing as an investment in future profits. The mere act of putting up a web site will get you no more than the self satisfaction of looking at your logo in color on a computer screen.

One of the biggest mistakes made by business people dipping their toe into the internet revenue stream for the first time, is to think... "If We Build It, They Will Come.". They won't! The number of new sites on the World Wide Web is growing exponentially. It is estimated that there are BILLIONS of pages on-line today.

100% of the Fortune 500 companies have launched marketing programs on the World Wide Web. More are rushing to meet the competition every day. Some have estimated that the growth rate of internet use is 20% to 40% per month!

The user base in the U.S. alone, is over 200 million and growing. No savvy marketing executive in his or her right mind can afford to ignore an affluent market of this size.

PRETTY PICTURES...OR PROFIT?...

How, faced with the competition of so many sites, can you expect to be seen? The answer lies in how you structure the content of your site, and how you market, promote, and publicize it. Sound familiar? Not too different from any other new distribution channel you have ever attempted to capitalize on, is it?

In spite of what some high-tech gurus would like you to believe...marketing on the internet is not rocket science...but it is marketing.

And it's marketing with some new twists, some minefields, and a new mind-set required. Stodgy thinking simply won't do in this exciting new arena.

In the rush to ""get something on the web", too many companies have forgotten to pay attention to developing sound underlying marketing strategy. In many ways it has been far too easy to get on the web. Almost any high school computer geek can write passable HTML code (the language for creating web pages), but unless you have structured the sites content to attain specific marketing goals, and used skilled top-flight professional marketing strategists, copywriters, and designers, you are doomed to end up lost-in-cyberspace.

Putting up a web site without including the marketing, promotion, and publicity of the site in the initial planning and budgeting, is a lot like designing the finest print ad ever produced and then taking it out into the middle of a remote forest and tacking it to a tree. It's still a great ad but if nobody sees it, it's not going to do you much good.

WORTH THE INVESTMENT?...

Here's what I call Thom's Benefit Short List for Marketing On The Web":
Increase your sales & profits.

# Enhance your companies image.

# Save money.

# Improve customer service

# Open new markets.

# Add distribution channels.

# Lower sales costs.

# Compress selling cycles

# Generate publicity.

# Compete internationally on a level playing field.

# Low start-up costs.

# No barriers to entry.

# Powerful integration with other marketing methods.

# Rapidly growing user base (estimate to grow to a Billion + by 2005).

# Reach prospects with your promotional message, 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-per-year, with color, sound, and motion....for less then the cost of one full-page ad in a local newspaper for one day!

You'll have to decide for yourself whether it is worth the investment.

NEW CONSUMER DYNAMICS...

The consumer has begun to understand and appreciate the dynamics of shopping on the internet. No long drive to the shopping mall...it's as close as your computer screen. No more worries about credit card security...new encryption technology has made using your credit card, on a secure shopping site, safer than handing your card to the local restaurant waiter or service station attendant. Wider selection of products and services. etc. etc. In fact, many of the benefits that drove catalogue marketing to such heights of consumer acceptance, are also at work with internet marketing.

Todays consumer is a much more savvy buyer than their parents or grandparents. They are used to getting important buying information on the net...facts, specifications, colors, data, sizes, guarantees, etc.

Even those skeptics who still doubt the security of on-line shopping use the net as an information gathering tool...and then use the phone or go to the store to purchase. An internet presence is a powerful selling tool for every conceivable size and type of business today.

Copyright 2005: Thom Reece is an author, speaker, trainer, CEO of Online Marketing Group, and founder of the Online Marketing Resource Center [ www.E-ComProfits.com ] For a FREE subscription to "Thom Reece's Web Marketing Strategies & Techniques Newsletter" go to: [ WMSTDirect.com ]

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