Having an on-line business is great but it only has value if you have site visitors who turn into customers.
I was looking back over my posts from the past few weeks and realised that I jumped straight into ‘The Steps to On-line Marketing’ without providing the required context to ‘On-line Business’.
The reality is that there are millions of internet/on-line businesses out there and I am certain the owners of each of these businesses think what they have is the best, and it may very well be. It is however absolutely useless is no one knows about it.
I was going to use the local shop down the street as the opposite to an on-line business as it doesn’t require marketing but I will stop short as the shop down the street has a bigger problem as an on-line business. The marketing of the shop down the street is the shop front. You drive past it. You ride past it. You walk past it. You shop next door. You know it is there and you have an idea of the type of products they sell just because of its presence, which is a form of marketing. Limited but it is marketing.
Imagine if the shop down the street didn’t have a sign and the windows were blacked out. You would think it was closed and wouldn’t go in, nor would you know what it was and what it sold even if the world’s greatest product was just inside the door.
In addition, the shop down the street can only serve those that are in that area.
An on-line business is [uniquely] identified by an internet address known as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), made up of any unique combination of letters, numbers and characters.
An on-line business doesn’t have a physical location so no one can drive past. Potential customers can’t ride past. They can’t walk past. They could be shopping right next door and not even have an idea you were doing so.
Unlike the physical constraints of location, the local shop has an on-line business can serve anyone on the internet regardless of where they are. Next door, around the corner, in the next suburb, in the next state, in the country next door or completely on the other side of the planet. In fact, you could serve an astronaut who is on his way to Mars if he can access the internet. I know that the last point is a bit of a stretch but you get the point.
None of this possibly though if they don’t know you and/or your product exist.
How do they get to know you exist: Marketing.