eBusiness, News, Articles and Reviews

Creativity is one virtue a site must possess to lead with an Internet based business. With so much competition every method of marketing must be considered and implemented.

It doesn’t matter if you have a killer product or a great website, if people don’t know that you exist, then potentially your online business could and most likely will fail.

There are many ways to promote e-commerce sites today, One of these is called Viral Marketing.

While the term Viral often has negative connotations all it is not what it seems.

Viral Marketing also known as Viral Advertising is a marketing technique used to build the public awareness of one’s product or company.

You can set up your own viral campaign often in the form of a free report or ebook that contains links to a program or service you want to promote.
You must ensure that the giveaway contains good solid information and it is important to encourage people to forward a copy to others as the more copies you can get into circulation then a good result can be expected.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because of it’s relatively low cost.

Many companies offer incentives such as discounts and rebates to help spread their marketing material.

Using Viral Marketing to your advantage.

The prime advantage of viral marketing is that you can get a lot of publicity and raise awareness about your site and your company. You can generate traffic to your website knowing that they are potential customers.

With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can benefit very quickly from this type of marketing.

Try it for yourself, Viral Marketing done well can be the difference between success and failure online.

There are plenty of people offering their “secrets” to help you make more money online. The only problem is that as you trawl around the web searching out these secrets you soon discover they aren’t secrets after all.

What you will learn is good, old-fashioned business common sense. These “secrets” will teach that some kind of a promotion is necessary to attract people to your web site. Once attracted, you need to entice people further with more offerings in exchange for their contact information (email address). As the saying goes, the money is in the list. You cannot run any kind of business online, or offline unless you have a list of potential customers.

So, the “secrets” that you are searching for online have been there ever since business began. Find something people want, entice them to connect with you, get their details and sell, sell, sell to them over a period of time to convert them from interested parties to confirmed customers.

But the one secret that is often missing from much of the information online has been around offline for centuries as well - be different. Don’t try to be the same as your competitors. Stand out from the crowd. Do something different that gets you remembered.

For example, take the cab driver who gets the name and address of every passenger. Each Christmas they get a card from him. And guess what, people remember him and recommend him. He gets most of his fares from referral business, rather than having to wait around. Have you ever met a cab driver who sends all his passengers cards at Christmas?

Yet online, everyone seems to be the same. New online businesses follow the “rules” set by the experts and gurus. The result is that almost all web sites trying to sell something are starting to look the same. They all do the same thing - have a great offer and a box to fill in your details. Many of them even use the same templates. If you follow the “rules” that are part of the “secrets” you will end up following the pack and you won’t be noticed. If you truly want to make it online, you have to be different.

So stand out from the crowd by being different - not just visually, but in the way you approach your readers. Do whacky things perhaps. You will be noticed and remembered - and online that’s nine tenths of the battle.

Any business be it online or off cannot function and or prosper if you do not first identify your prospective customers.

When it comes time to identify your prospective customers, you will need to develop a “customer profile” that describes specifically the nature of the people in your target market.
The overall market is like a target. Your target market is the bull’s-eye.

Remember, no business can be all things to all the people. You should concentrate your attention on being the best to the people in your target market.

If you cannot provide a customer profile of your target market in terms of who they are, where they live, whether they are white collar versus blue collar, what they do with their time and money, as well as their preferences for products, services, and brands, then you will not be able to tailor your marketing mix to their specific needs, interests, wants, desires, and behavioral patterns.

Big businesses and a number of small businesses try the “shotgun” approach to creating customers. They try to be or do too many different things for too many different people.
They are not very successful because their marketing mixes are compromises.

They try to have something for everyone rather than offer the best for a few.
When a business treats the market in general terms as if everyone is alike, few people get exactly what they want. The rest of the people remain customers in search of a business.
This is also true when a business tries to serve a combination of segments with a single marketing mix.

You need to use the “rifle” approach where you select a specific market segment (bull’s-eye) and offer customers exactly what they are looking for. This is the formula for creating and maintaining customers for a profit.
Effective marketing boils down to using the rifle approach to create and maintain customers who are part of a specific market segment.
This process is similar to how hunters go after big game.

Businesses try to appeal to a group of people by offering a marketing mix that is tailored to that group’s unique interests.
Successful hunters identify a certain type of animal to go after, study its unique behavioral patterns, and develop an approach to shoot it.

The distinction should be made between businesses and hunters. Businesses don’t want to kill their customers.

They want them to come back time and time again.

They also want customers to encourage their own friends and associates to try the businesses.

Online stores have experienced phenomenal growth in recent years but in my mind the real potential of this market is untapped.

Why?

Well the Internet is littered with stories and quotes relating to bad online experiences and in particular the lack of security when it comes to sharing your personal information, mostly credit card details.

Security of the information provided online by consumers is uppermost in their mind and whilst this line of thought exists those that market their goods and services online are not going to be able to capture sales to the levels they perhaps anticipated.

Other forms of payment outside of using a credit card have been tried but some of these have been frought with danger and fraudulent transactions have been recorded through these channels as well.

I should point out that there are issues on both sides of the fence, there are some operators online that do not prescribe to good honest dealings and conversely there are consumers as well that also set out to do deals with no intention of paying.

This has compounded the problem simply because it takes very few to destroy the credibility of many…

So what is one to do?

As with anything one should do due diligence first, ask around, do a quick search online for reviews or comments in regards to the individual or company you are considering dealing with, contact the supplier via email or phone and ask more questions, do they offer other forms of payment, etc, etc…

Remember that most businesses are genuine and legitimate but unfortunately they have been categorized as possibly being untrustworthy because of the actions of a few.

Moving forward it is clear that the market needs to develop a payment system that is more secure and reliable than anything currently available for the real potential of online marketing to be reached.

In the interim the old adage applies, Let the buyer beware!

Tags: online security, credit cards, personal information, security issues, marketing online