Today I spoke with a diverse group of new entrepreneurs as part of my ongoing Online Strategy Roundtables . Together, this group illustrates how a business depends on how sharply the target market is defined. One entrepreneur is well on her way and another needs to focus more on his strongest market segment. Like many entrepreneurs, the other two are clearly accomplished people, but don't come from a business background. For such entrepreneurs it is often worth looking for a cofounder who can fill in with expertise in areas where gaps exist. Sponsor Guest author Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She has founded three companies and writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra on Strategy . She has a masters degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her three books, Entrepreneur Journeys , Bootstrapping, Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction , and Positioning: How To Test, Validate, and Bring Your Idea To Market are all available from Amazon. Her new book Vision India 2020 was recently released. Mitra is also a columnist for Forbes and runs the 1M/1M initiative. Julie Goldman did a nice presentation of her company The Original Runners . In 2003, she was the first to offer non-slip, high-quality fabric aisle runners for weddings and special events. Through her website she offers gorgeous hand-painted runners wholesale, and business has been growing to a revenue of $700,000 last year. I really like how tightly focused this business is. Niched wholesale businesses are great! Her main concern is that two dozen lower-quality copy-cat competitors have popped up over the years. To stay ahead of her competition, whom she describes as mom & pop at-home operations, I suggested she work with bloggers who are influencers with wedding planners (her main customers) to help specifically articulate why her product is superior. She has already relocated the business from New York City to New Jersey to reduce costs. To further counter the pricing pressure she is feeling from her competitors I suggested she look at relocating somewhere where it will be even less expensive for her to operate, like Vermont perhaps. She plans to launch a new brand as an accessory line and we discussed how it is only when she markets this new brand to her list of existing runner customers will mentioning "from The Original Runners company" hold any weight. New customers will not recognize the name and its association with quality products. We also spoke about SEO and search engine marketing, on tightly focusing pay-per-click campaigns on higher-end markets rather than going broad with a worldwide campaign. So far Julie's is a great case study of a growing niche business. Next up was Sonali Roychoudhury presenting for Pursue Natural . Sonali is a scientist who is working with a team that is conducting research to find and bring natural medicinal plants to market that are not in the mainstream. Like many entrepreneurs who do not have a business background, Sonali is risk averse, unwilling to make assumptions, and uncertain as to what the next steps should be. We discussed the natural breath freshener that they have produced. It seems like the cost of entry into this small niche market is too high for this to make sense. She then explained how a small but loyal customer base has grown for this product through their process of testing the marketplace. By just setting up a direct Web sales business targeting their existing fans and the extremely high end natural product boutiques, I believe she could build a very nice small business selling small quantities month-to-month. As long as it is profitable, a small business is more than worth building. Lorenz Lannens and his company Online Design Bureau started as a consulting business that grew into to a Web solution for small and medium sized companies that helps them to develop their Web marketing strategies. His product and service enables clients to set up their Web marketing system, and he has metrics from early customers showing the system works. As we discussed his current customers, it became clear that his service is not really for startups, but more for businesses that are not Web savvy. I believe if he goes after companies that are not doing Web marketing as his segment and targets the verticals that his current clients fall in (like architecture firms), his list of customers will grow. I liked this presentation and clearly there is a need for this service. Many entrepreneurs who have pitched at these roundtables could probably use Lorenz's help. In fact I suggested that both Sonali and Felice tap into his expertise. Lastly, Felice Gerwitz presented Scholar Square , a beta site targeting the homeschool community. She is an educator and author who specializes in homeschooling and hopes to sell a wide range of presentations and seminar classes through this site. As Felice explained her ideas, it became apparent that she is trying to do too many things for too many people, the classic "spray and pray." I may have been a bit hard on Felice when she told me she did not go through the Clarify Your Story questionnaire as she was asked to on the roundtable registration page, but I think it needed to be said. There are no shortcuts when you are an entrepreneur. You need to do your homework. Felice needs to focus on the segment of the home school market that she tackles the best and is passionate about, and let the other ideas go. This should help her site find its center of gravity and its customers. These roundtables are the cornerstone programming of a global initiative that I have started called One Million by One Million ( 1M/1M ). Its mission is to help a million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond, build $1 trillion in sustainable global GDP, and create 10 million jobs. In 1M/1M, I teach the EJ Methodology which is based on my Entrepreneur Journeys research, and emphasize bootstrapping, idea validation, and crisp positioning as some of the core principles of building strong fundamentals in early stage ventures. If you are an entrepreneur working on an idea or an early stage business, I am also very interested in hearing what you are looking for from 1M/1M. Please weigh in here . We are crowdsourcing the design of 1M/1M, and requests that have come up include Receivables Financing as a way to bridge to a validated business without giving up precious equity, I would love to hear your thoughts. You can find the recording of this roundtable session here . Recordings of previous roundtables are all available here . You can register for the next roundtable here . Photo by Nick Cowie . Discuss
Coming up with a good idea and a good product is only the beginning of having a successful online business. Not only do you have to come up with something that your target audience is likely to need and purchase, you also have to come up with a way to make sure they see it and realize that they need to buy it. That’s why website advertising is so important to the success of your business.
Many people are excited by the opportunities that are provided by the open design of the internet. Literally anyone with a little startup capital and a lot of determination can turn their ideas into a money making business. But without a quality website advertising campaign, all of this hard work will be for nothing.
Just because you are running a small or brand new business with a tiny website advertising budget doesn’t mean that you can’t make use of some time-tested techniques for drawing in viewers to your site and turning them into customers very quickly.
One of the keys to successful website advertising is targeting your message to the people that are likely to be most receptive to it. This means that before you can advertise to them, you must fully know your audience and research the ways that they like to communicate.
These days everyone is using email because it is faster, more convenient and doesn’t require that you recycle a bunch of wasted paper when you’re done reading the message. This is why many companies have switched over to website advertising that utilizes electronic communication instead of paper.
Another website advertising tactic that has proven to be successful time and time again is the placement of banner advertisements on sites that members of your audience are likely to visit on a regular basis. This means if you’re selling sports drink, you might advertise on team uniform sites, or if you’re selling pet care items, you might advertise on dog training sites.
In case you’re rather new to the world of website advertising and aren’t sure that you can pull of a campaign successfully on your own, know that there are many qualified internet marketing firms out there that can explain the different tactics that are available, and construct a package that will spread your message in a comprehensive way on the internet.
Don’t fall for website advertising tricks that will turn off your customers and get you slapped by the search engines. Click here for tactics that work.
So, you’ve come up with a great idea for an online business, and everyone that you’ve told about your idea thinks it will really be popular with internet audiences. Before you rush out to tell the world about what you’ve come up with, you’ve got to consider how you’ll use web site advertising to build a network of traffic for your business.
The internet is a great medium for entrepreneurs because it is almost a level playing field. Anyone can create their website, come up with a business plan, and start making money if they know how to use smart web site advertising to get them noticed on the web.
Unlike the real world of brick and mortar businesses, where if you have more money, you can build a fancier store front and set your prices lower, the internet doesn’t show favorites to those that have more money to throw at web site advertising. However, it will reward you handsomely for using those tactics in an intelligent way.
The key to using web site advertising in the most efficient way is to build links with other websites that will help to direct traffic to your pages. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, because usually other sites are loath to give up real estate to help someone else out.
This is why it can be helpful to work with an experience internet marketing firm that will be able to plug you into their already existing network of commerce and information websites. This is a smart type of web site advertising because not only will you get valuable links, you’ll be able to target your exposure to the audience members that are most likely to make a purchase.
If you are aware of your need for web site advertising but still unclear about how having additional links to your business on other websites is going to help you to be more successful, you’ve got to think of the web like a highway and your site like one of millions of exits.
Every time you have a link to your site placed on another website, it’s like adding the number of exits that will take people to your pages. The more people that travel through your pages every day, the more chance you have to make as sale and hit the goals that will make you successful.
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Posted in Web Marketing by BlogPostman
March 5, 2010
So, you’ve been in business for a few months now, and you’ve seen your customer base grow from just a few friends and family members to enough local action to keep you busy on a daily basis. You’re probably thinking that you’re doing alright without any web marketing campaigns, but that’s where you’re wrong.
Too many people think that because they’ve managed to generate interest about their products or services through word of mouth tactics, or simply print and television advertising in their particular region, they are doing all they can to build a brand awareness about their company. However, without web marketing, you are leaving out a very important piece of the puzzle.
If you’re just now starting your web based business, you have to understand that web marketing is even more important for you than it is for traditional brick and mortar businesses. This is because the internet is your lifeline to your customer base. If you’re not making use of it, you can be sure that your competition is.
If you’re trying to decide whether or not you really need to invest in web marketing, you have to ask yourself how big you eventually want to grow. If you want a big tomato bush, with lots of fruit on it, you can’t keep it in a tiny container on your kitchen counter forever. Internet marketing gives you access to the biggest audience of all: the millions of people who are searching the internet right now.
Neglecting the need for web marketing just puts your business at risk for complete obscurity, meaning that you might have a great product or service that many people would be interested in, but because you don’t show up in the relevant search results, they have no idea you exist.
If you’re interested in utilizing web marketing to help grow your business, but aren’t really sure the best way to get started, you should know that there are many qualified internet marketing firms that can provide you with comprehensive packages that will work for you.
When choosing a web marketing firm for the first time, make sure that they offer a wide variety of services for you to pick from. This means that you should have your choice of website linking, email advertising, and social bookmarking, as well as banner ads.
If you’re scared that you might not be doing enough to connect with your online audiences, web marketing could be the tool that you’ve been looking for. Click here for more information on services that could propel you to success.
Owning or managing your own business can be very stressful, and many people have so many things to think about on a daily basis that they don’t even realize they are ignoring one of the most important business processes: internet marketing. Research has shown that millions of people turn to the internet first when they want to find a product or service, and you’ve got to figure out a way to take advantage of this ready-made audience.
Traditional marketing usually consists of creating promotional materials that can be distributed and disseminated in a number of different ways, usually through print, radio, or television advertising. While these methods have been proven successful to a certain extent, they won’t be enough to keep you fresh in the minds of web surfers.
Internet marketing is an amazing tool for entrepreneurs, because it never closes, it can’t be torn down or covered with another advertisement, and it isn’t so permanent that you can’t make changes if your product or service suddenly becomes different.
Something that you have to understand about internet marketing is that it is always most successful when it happens in a wide variety of ways, all at once. This means that you have to find a way to combine search engine optimization techniques, with email advertising, website linking and other tactics in order to build quality brand awareness.
When you talk to most new internet business owners about internet marketing, you are likely to see their face become a little frustrated and very confused. Because there are so many different ways to go about it, choosing the right methods can be difficult.
If you want to take advantage of all the different ways that internet marketing can help to propel your business to the top of its industry, but you don’t want to waste time making silly novice mistakes, you might want to consider using an established online marketing firm to design and execute your campaigns.
The best internet marketing companies are the ones that have been around for a long time, and that have proven over and over again that they can increase visibility and sales for their client companies. Don’t be sucked in by fly by night companies that tell you they can double your traffic overnight, because these claims are often much too good to be true.
Don’t waste your time on marketing techniques that won’t get you noticed in the audiences you’re targeting. Click here to learn more about internet marketing.
