Tuesday 4 May 2010

So, do you think you need internet marketing?

mmm, interesting question really...

Or is it...

You have a web site... it sells things... you want to sell more things... enter Internet Marketing... but wait...

Can your business really afford to spend monies to get monies?
Example 1; I have a site that sells say 25 T-Shirts a week... it doesn't make much profit but its a hobby and I would love to take it full time...

Opinion 1; Running a small PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign yourself and/or reading online resources regarding improving your SEO'able website content will increase your sales by increasing visitation to you site... but as a full time enterprise... gosh you need more than that...

Whats your USP (Unique Selling Point) and whats your margins(costs'v'profit), if you can squeeze margins you can reduce the per unit price to the consumer, consumers love that - nice things for not much monies, but you will have less in the pot afterwards to market your site.

You have to balance profitability with marketability with saleability... Well if you sell your stock but have to little left to market the product, replace stock and pay the bills then whats the point... also this runs true for the reverse of that equation, if you have the stock and the marketing but the product/service is unsellable (uncompetitive pricing or just simply the product is rubbish) then the same applies, whats the point... Give it up or re-think the approach.

Example 2; We have a product range that we want to push in the gift marketplace, we have £25k marketing budget for this over a 3 months period with more available with proof of sales increase to match our expectations.

Opinion 2; Nice, good expectation and a plan in place... but no... I see issues here... If this is a brand that is E-stablished (E-stablished is my shorthand for a mature and established website with good content and history) then they have problems: what happened or is happening to their current PPC campaign? Is this their first venture into paid search? What are the other forms of internet marking that they have tryed or currently use?
So much more to think about - the more you put into a campaign the more you expect to get out of it... be that monies or development time...

My general answer to all websters (you know what im getting at there) is this... get the product right - get the site right - get the marketing right - and you'll be alright...