Understanding Internet Marketing and Selling

Internet Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing

The overall objective both internet and traditional marketing is the same. Sell a product or service to a customer at a profit because "after it is all said and done if you don't make a profit you won't stay in business." Think about it, why would you start a business to lose money. In a traditional market your business would depend on foot traffic or voice contact usually followed up by some sort of personal contact. The exception to this would be mail order but even here there is usually voice contact when ordering. Traditional marketing approach got you to come into your store or the customer called to order your product.

What about the sale? Let's suppose a customer comes into the store and were rude an obnoxious or running a telemarketing company you treated the customer like they were an annoyance or wasting his time. Would you customer buy from you? Probably not.

Finding Each Other

Now let's take the internet marketing example. Here most customers would do an online search for the product or service they were in the market for. The search turns up many web sites. They include the manufacturers, distributors, affiliates, etc. There are tens if not hundreds of pages and most of them contain irrelevant information. All the customer wanted to do was buy the product and the seller wanted to sell it to him but they can't find each other quickly if at all. On the internet there is only one way to have the equivalent result of foot traffic in a store and that is laser like targeting of the key words the customer is using in their search. Successful online business entrepreneurs know how to target potential customers through the use of keywords and you can learn that same skill.

Your Online Store

Ok, let's say we have solved the problem of traffic to our online Store. Our store is pretty neat but our sales are minimal compared to the number of people visiting our site. The site has cool graphics pop-ups, and the pages are colorful with a black background. We have multiple products from vitamins to CD's to electronics all on the first page.  

Let's go back to our mall store. As you walk in the store lighting is poor and instead of finding that you are looking for you are spending your time searching through a cluttered store with a lot of things your are not interested in.

How long would stay? Probably not long and that will be the case with a poorly designed store front. There is a good chance the customers would look at for as long as it would take to click the mouse and they will never return.

The best designed store fronts are simple in design, easy to read and navigate and gives the customers what they want whether it is a way to purchase, get information,  or contact customer service.

Where the Big Bucks Are

Finally, we have solved our traffic problem, redesigned our online store front. Business has been good but in the last few months it has begun to drop off. Our two products have sold well up until now. Our problem is we are not getting many new customers.

This is another big mistake online businesses make. They don't plan on reselling their customers over and over again whether it's selling the same product or something new which may interest them. The big bucks in internet business is marketing and selling to existing customers over and over again and you do it with their approval. The key is you have to set up a process in your business where you can keep in touch with your customers and tell them what else you have that they might want. A good back-end email or marketing system can make your online business explode if you have your customers trust and you give them an easy way to buy.

Understanding the techniques of marketing and selling on the internet is key to generating customer traffic to you site or store front. Click on Internet Traffic Development to find out more.