Online Manual - Marketing 101
Back | Table of Contents | Forward

Marketing 101
Marketing on the Web is not different than marketing on any other medium. There are a few basics you should follow that are key to any type of marketing. You can find more detailed information by reading any good marketing book at your local library. Following is a very brief overview of some important aspects of marketing, and how it applies to the Internet.

Knowledge | Persistence, Patience, and Hard Work | Setting a Budget
Setting Goals | Defining Your Product | Defining Your Target Audience | Evaluation | Diversity

Knowledge
As with any media, especially a new one, you must fully understand it before attempting to market in it. The Internet is a complex world where things can change drastically overnight. You must have good knowledge of the WWW.

Before starting any site, you should have spent quite a bit of time on the Internet browsing as many sites as possible. Make notes on what you like and dislike about home pages. Look at various styles, and keep current on new trends and technologies that make web sites stand out from the rest.

You should also be searching for competitors and making notes on their sites. What are they offering and how are you going to be better. Do you like their style. If you find a site that you particularly feel is going to be a top competitor to your site, then jot down the address. Later, you will use that address to help in creating links to your site (See the section titled "Links").

The more you know about the Internet, the better your home page will be and the more successful your marketing will be.


Persistence , Patience, and Hard Work
As with most advertising and marketing in general, you must have these three characteristics. You must have persistence in marketing your site. You can not place your site on the Internet one month, and take it off after only two months because you were not getting results. One major key to any advertising is repetition. You would be wasting your money to place an ad for your business in your local paper, and take it out after only one week. People might see it day after day and never call. Then one day they want to buy your product or need your service, and they go to the place where they know they have seen your ad to find information on contacting or locating you. Likewise, you would be wasting your money to take your pages off the Internet after only a few months.

Along with persistence, you must have patience. You can not abandon everything when you do not get the results you expected. You must evaluate what went wrong. What is not working, and make appropriate changes. Then, wait again. Many times, people will just give up too quickly. The Internet is a special case. Your site is out there on the Internet, but it is a passive site. It is just waiting for people to visit it. You must use various techniques to actively bring people to your site. Some will work, and others won't. Once you determine what did not work, and make the necessary changes, it could take weeks or months to see any effects of the change. So patience will be key to success.

If you do not have lots of patience, then you will surely get frustrated and fail. Marketing success does not happen overnight, even on the Internet. You've got lots of hard work ahead, and this takes time. Don't get frustrated when things don't work. Evaluate what went wrong and fix it.

Don't think that after some time, you will be able to sit back and relax as the sales come in. You will never stop marketing your site. Keep in mind that the more you market your site, the more traffic you will bring in, and the more your sales will grow. The Internet is constantly changing, and if you remain static, so to will your sales.


Setting a Budget
Here is where you will define what amount you can spend. As mentioned above, it may take longer than you thought to see results. You need patience, but you also need a budget to help determine when you've waited long enough. Set an amount that you are willing to spend on your site and for its promotion. Remember, it takes money to make money. Initially, you probably thought your only cost would be the cost of publishing your page on the web. However, marketing your pages effectively does not require a large investment of cash. It does however, require a large investment of time and energy. If you have more money than time, you can have someone else do all the work for you. But, if you are like most small business owners, and you have time but little money, you will still be able to market your site effectively.

Either way, you will still have to spend some money, and a budget is essential for gauging your progress and for limiting your risk. You may have a budget of time or money, or a combination. Obviously, the more time and money you can invest in promotion of your site, the better your results will be.


Setting Goals
After setting a budget, you need to set the goals you wish to accomplish with your set budget. It is not a good idea to set a time frame when dealing with the Internet. However, upon reaching the maximum allowed in your budget, you should have a good idea of what you want to be accomplished. As you can see, you can not effectively set budgets or goals until you fully understand the Internet. And even after that, your budget and goals should be dynamic. Many people insist on setting a goal and budget and sticking by them totally. Where upon, if you exceed your budget, then you should stop. Also, by the same token, if you have not reached your goals by a given time, it is a failure and you should quit.

I do not subscribe to this logic. The Internet changes too quickly to be held by static goals and budgets. Once you have begun delving into promotion of your site, you will gain knowledge that will enable you to set a more realistic budget and to set goals that are attainable. On the other hand, you should not keep increasing your budget or lowering your goals for the sake of moving forward. Always re-evaluate your financial situation, as well as your marketing situation.


Defining Your Product
Your first job should be to fully understand your product. You should understand it from all angles and know as much about it as possible. Think about what specifically want to market.

This sounds easy, and you should already know all there is to know about the product that you are selling or the service you are offering, but believe it or not, many people are not prepared. This is especially true if you are just starting your business. Once you understand your product fully, you can better explain it to the public.

If you are selling a service, be sure you understand exactly what services you will be offering and what your rates will be for these services.

Lack of concise product definition will result in inconsistencies in your marketing of the product or service.

A good Internet business is one that is specialized. If you are going to try to sell automobiles on the Internet, you are going to face stiff competition. Even by narrowing this down to say Exotic Autos, you still will have some competition. However, if you can narrow this down even farther, to say 1950's Chevrolets, then you have a niche and will attract probably everyone on the Internet who is interested in 1950's Chevrolets. Specialization on the Internet leads to a greater chance of success for your business.


Defining Your Target Audience
Who are you going to specifically target for your product or service? Where do they reside. By that I mean, which sites do they visit? For example, if you are an engineering consultant, you will want to market your service at sites that deal with engineering. This will be "target marketing".

Lack of definition of who your audience is will just waste your time and lessen your marketing effectiveness. However, on the Internet, the nature of browsing leads itself to blind marketing where you simply advertise in any location whether it is relative or not. Some products will not have a specific target audience, but will include the entire Internet population.

Sometimes, you have to look at the entire audience of the Internet and decide if it is even worth your putting a home page up. Remember that your prospective audience resides all across the planet. Will your product or service be attractive to people statewide, nationwide, or worldwide? The truth is that if your product is localized, then Internet advertising may be a waste of your money. For example, I've seen a small town pizza shop invest a sizable amount of money to get a home page on the Internet. I can't imagine what they were thinking at the time, but they were lead to believe that they would see results from their investment in the home page. Of course, very few people in their small town are actually on the Internet, and those that are will probably never see their page anyway. It just makes no sense to promote your business on the Internet just for the sake of being On-Line. A small town pizza restaurant can not offer anything to the Internet populace. It really depends upon the percentage of the population in your town that are on the Internet, and if there are any local sites set up by a business or the Chamber of Commerce that will help advertise your site.


Evaluation
Finally, after you have your marketing and promotion techniques in place, you must begin evaluation of each technique in order to determine which is effective and which is not. Some forms of promoting your site will be a success and others will need modification in order to bring in the largest audience. In evaluating your different forms of promotion, it is important to determine why one works and the other does not. It is always a good idea to question your clients as to what main factors contributed to their choosing your product or service. This is instrumental in providing you clues as to what works and what does not.

If your provider allows access to your log files, you can learn much about how many people are visiting your site, which pages they are seeing most, and even which countries they are from. However, be aware of the log file limitations as I talked about earlier.


Diversity
As with marketing any product or service, the more diversity the better. Not diversity in the number of products or services you offer, but in your marketing techniques. This usually requires a larger budget, but not always when it comes to Internet Marketing. For Internet marketing, it usually means more work and time spent discovering new sites in order to promote your business from. The more different marketing techniques you use, the greater your success will be in attracting visitors to your site.


Back | Table of Contents | Forward

Design and hosting by Liquid Imaging. Last updated August 14, 1996.