Online business
Vive La Difference...
What's the difference between selling online and selling from a shop or office? Perhaps not as much as you might think.
The internet gives you access to a vast population of connected computer users. You need to attract their attention by marketing your product, build a relationship to establish yourself as trustworthy and deliver as promised at a value-for-money price.
In a bricks and mortar business the principles are the same. Attract your customers, establish yourself as genuine then close the sale with a win-win deal.
Actively Seeking...
The difference is that on the internet you can position your message in front of people who are actively seeking what you're selling. Every day people are going online, typing their needs into search engines, blogs, forums and article directories and looking for solutions to their problems. And if you can tap into that stream of customer need you will have a successful online business. The essence of any business is to fulfil a customer need, and those businesses that satisfy that need most effectively will win out against the competition.
Impressions Count...
In a bricks and mortar business trust can be established eye to eye. You can meet the salesperson face to face and form an impression about whether he or she is someone you want to do business with... but how do you do that online? How do you get in front of your potential customers without spending a fortune to rank no.1 in the popular search engines?
You go where your customers are! Blogs, forums, RSS feeds, you-tube videos, laser-targeted niche websites and article marketing. How about your own Facebook page with links to your blog?
Filling that Need...
Establishing your expertise in all these online places will help you build credibility and drive traffic to your site. And at your site you must capture your visitor's details and turn them into valuable subscribers. Then build the relationship and discover exactly what your customers need. Fulfil that need... and you're in business!
Anyone can do it...
It's certainly not Rocket Science and the skills and techniques you need to be able to do this are well within the grasp of anyone able to string a coherent sentence together. The investment required to set up a website, a blog and an autoresponder is a small sum, maybe less than a hundred dollars, but you will have to invest time and effort to make your online business work.
And that's the most significant difference between being in business online and setting up a conventional business. The investment costs to set up on the internet are tiny compared to those required for a bricks and mortar enterprise.
So what's stopping you?
Your customers are waiting! |
