Esther C Kane

More and more offline businesses, both small and large, are finding out the advantages of internet marketing. When push comes to shove, your business needs to survive right? In this troubling economy business owners HAVE TO take advantage of every opportunity afforded to them in order to keep their doors open. Learn how internet marketing is helping offline businesses survive and even thrive regardless of the economy.

Internet marketing, also referred to as web marketing, online marketing or eMarketing is the marketing of products or services over the internet. There are 3 specific areas that explain why internet marketing is fast becoming a necessary skill to business owners everywhere.

1. Return on Investment – ROI is absolutely necessary for businesses to remain in the black. For instance, when people advertise in traditional media, T.V., radio, newspapers, etc., it is possible to track some of where your business is coming from but it is almost never completely accurate (not to mention expensive.) This is not the case on the internet. There are systems set up to where you can track visitors down to each and every click. You will know exactly when and where (and from whom) the money is coming from. The internet is MUCH more efficient for ROI than the traditional methods and at least 50% less expensive. When the economy is floundering, struggling, business people start to tighten their belts and start to look at ways to advertise for less. That’s where the internet and internet marketing come in.

2. Exposure and Cost – As an example of this, I will take a snippet from a site that I own to illustrate exposure and cost: About 10 years ago, I opened up a small retail cellular phone and pager store. I had two partners and between us we had to come up with about $30,000 just to open the doors. Operating costs (cash flow, advertising, overhead etc.) ran about $2500.00 per month. We each had a full time job and worked our weekends at the store. We were all working 7 days a week between our jobs and the business. Life? we had none. It took us about 2 years just to break even! 2 of the partners got burned out and wanted out. Needless to say, we had to close down and were lucky to sell the store just before pagers became obsolete. We still took a loss overall.

Do you know how much it cost me to start my business online? About $100. Do you know how long it took me to break even on my initial investment? About 2 weeks. Even at the start, my business was exposed to millions of people. That’s right MILLIONS! That is the power of the internet! My pager store cost me thousands monthly just to advertise to the local community! Think about that for a minute. Millions of people who you can expose your product or service to. That’s what I call efficiency!

There truly has been NOTHING like this in the history of commerce.

3. Leveling the Risk – Based on the example above, let’s take a closer look at who you can do business with by learning even basic internet marketing skills and taking your offline business to a whole new level. You will learn to drive traffic to your business from all over the world for next to nothing! I have customers in 50+ countries. When one country’s economy isn’t doing so well, another country is doing great, and so I’m less affected. A unique advantage of doing business on the net. Stay focused on your online or offline business, and remember that you’re in a better position to stay ahead of your competition.

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