Just a few years ago it wasn’t all that easy for small business to make its mark in the internet marketplace. Everything seemed to be geared to the big boys. Not any more: there is a palace revolution afoot and the beneficiary is small business. Microsoft, Netscape, Google, Yahoo!, Hotmail, BT, AOL, et al are all pulling out the stops to entice small businesses of every description into online marketing. There are new strategies, new products and new software streaming out of each of them which are specifically designed to assist the small entrepreneur (and I do mean small, with a staff of between one and ten) to get a firm foothold on the internet.
Visit the website of any of these major online players, scan the menu of services, and you will see what I’m talking about.Listed below are good reasons why the internet is now tailor-made for small enterprise but they barely scratch the surface of its potential for people like you and me. You know your own business, your product or service, your market, your niche and your customers. Put your thinking cap on and I’ll bet you come up with a few more.
21 Good Reasons To Grow Your Small Enterprise With Online Marketing
1. Low Start-Up CostsJust a few pounds monthly for hosting fees, the purchase of a few pieces of essential software – which you might well pick up for free if you search around hard enough using the sources listed in this book –
and you’re up and running. Compare that with the start-up costs of the average offline marketing programme.
2. Low Maintenance: Cost-Wise And Time-Wise
Just a few hours a week should suffice in most instances and the tools you will need are all available for free. You will spot them and sources for downloading as you read the chapters to follow.
3. Heighten Awareness For Your Small Business
Creating a presence online is fast, and increasing awareness of your small business operation is equally rapid. Can you imagine what it would cost
offline to achieve the same depth of recognition?
4. Improve Your Image
Whatever the nature of your enterprise and whatever the image you present offline, online promotion will add a touch of glitz that marks you out as a 21st Century marketer.
5. Stay Local Or Go Global
You will continue to enjoy all the advantages of an internet presence if you decide to restrict yourself to online marketing for local purposes, but you have the option to go global if you decide to engage in digitally-generated produce – there’s more about this in the next chapter.
6. 24/7 Trading 52 Weeks A Year
The internet never stops, not even for a breather; you will be trading around the clock, all 365 days.
7. Create Incremental Income From Existing Customers
This will be your prime objective if you stay local and an added bonus if you go global.
8. Attract New Customers
Either way you will attract new custom in due course because online marketing is ‘viral’ in nature inasmuch as it replicates itself many times over – as you will discover in later chapters.
9. Grow Your Business Exponentially
How rapidly you do that will depend entirely on how sincerely you commit yourself to mastering the principles contained in this book and how diligently you apply them to your own business and your own particular circumstances.
10. Become An Expert In Your Niche
That is one of the wonders of marketing online; you can actually become and be recognised as an expert in your own niche – and just how you accomplish that is revealed in
Chapter 5.
11. Sell Digitally-Generated Produce
It’s not nearly as difficult as you might think right now and in
Chapter 19 you will discover if you qualify and how to go about it if you do.
12. Use Digital Discount Vouchers For Products And Services
You have already had an example of how this works in practice and it will work for you too, if you exercise imagination and creativity in the construction of your discounted offerings.
13. Expand Your Market
As you become more and more proficient in online marketing techniques not only will your existing market increase in size, but you will also discover opportunities to move into new markets.