Читать книгу The Small Business Guide to Online Marketing - Lola Bailey - Страница 9

For you as a business owner, marketing your business online will help you to:

 Grow your sales: gain wider distribution to customers you cannot reach offline, display a wider product range than in-store, and/or offer better prices.

 Add value: give your customers greater benefits and guide new product developments through online dialogue and feedback.

 Get closer to your customers: reach your customers with online tools that can help you discover what your potential customers are searching for. Create a two-way dialogue; ask them questions, conduct online interviews, monitor chatrooms, forums and social media sites to learn more about your customers.

 Save money: provide a virtual customer service, use online transaction administration and track your success at little or no cost.

 Extend your brand online: provide a new position and a new experience for your customers online, whilst retaining your brand’s familiarity.

Increasingly, customers like to hang out and spend their money – and time – on the web. It is a marketplace in its own right. When shopping or buying a product, most consumers will look to the web as a primary influencer and decision tool. Even in the non-digital world, it is quite common to go into a store and find prospective customers surfing the web on their smartphones in search of lower prices at competing stores. In spite of the many advantages of online marketing, it remains true that the failure rate of businesses here is high. So how can you be better placed to succeed? The best wisdom I can give you is that you should not so much expect success, but prepare for it. At the back of this book you will find helpful tools, resources and frameworks to help you succeed in your internet marketing journey. Are you ready? I hope so!