You should use internet marketing strategies for a variety of reasons. If you can figure it out, it gives you the ability to spend your time, not your money, advertising your business.
It gives you access to a much broader market than any brick-and-mortar business. It allows you to kick the crap out of big companies that just throw money at Internet marketing, a tactic often used to crush smaller businesses in the brick-and-mortar world.
When you get down to brass knuckles, internet marketing strategies not only give you a level playing field with the big or bigger boys, it gives you an advantage. I like to call this the leverage and arrogance advantage.
Assume you write one piece of great software and try to start a small company in the brick-and-mortar world. If you are deemed to be a threat by the big software companies, what is going to happen?
If you don’t get bought out, they are going to wipe you out. Since you have limited resources and little leverage with retailers, you are screwed, blue, and tattooed. Not on the web.
Online marketing is beautiful because it flattens the playing field for all players, big and small. The key is search engine optimization. Regardless of how much money a dominant company in an industry throws at search engine rankings, they will never have an inherent advantage over you.
They have no leverage because there is nobody to buy off. The best they can do is buy advertisements, which most people don’t click on.
If you get the top ranking on Google, Yahoo, and MSN for your keywords, nobody can knock you off unless they do a better optimization job than you do. In no way, shape, or form would this ever be possible in the brick-and-mortar world unless you have a monstrous amount of cash?
The second reason you should use internet marketing strategies is arrogance. Dominant brick-and-mortar companies use marketing firms to push their brands on television, billboards, magazines, and so on.
When companies open a site, they often have these marketing firms handle their internet efforts. Crushing them on search engines is like taking candy from a baby.
They haven’t a clue what they are doing, but their arrogance will never let them acknowledge they are paying triple the going rate for advertisements on high-traffic sites. They throw money at the problem, a strategy that fails every time on the web.
You, however, aren’t going to waste money by purchasing banner ads and other crap that will waste your money. Nope, you will pursue search engine optimization on your own or through a credible group.
While the dominant company is spending $20 a click for their ads, you are going to be laughing your way to the bank as customers pour in from your top rankings on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Why use internet marketing? That is the wrong question. The correct question is why aren’t you already?
