Firstly what is Internet Marketing? – It is an all-inclusive term for marketing products and/or services online.

In simple terms it refers to the ways a product or service is marketed online.

Before you can start marketing your web site it is important to understand a number of things, marketing is a formal activity – something that many “internet marketers” forget and most don’t understand.

Being a formal activity allows you to measure results. Would you spend $100 every week on a newspaper advert that did not produce any results? Of course you would not. You would expect to “earn” more than $100 from each advert. Otherwise you are wasting money. That is a measurable result.

Remember this, all true marketing is measurable.   If it cannot be measured that it’s not marketing.

So how do you start your internet marketing?

So how do you start your internet marketing?

In order to start and achieve your objectives you need to have a strategy. Sorry if that sounds a bit formal, but that is exactly what proper marketing is about – formality. Anyhow, your strategy should include different basic elements – they are called the marketing mix.

Calling it a mix helps remind you to try and get the balance right between its different elements. It is easy to assume that one part of the mix is wrong, when in fact it is another.

Traditionally the marketing mix was based round 4P’s – price, place, product, and promotion.

To help you let me explain what the 4P’s mean:

You develop a product, price it to make a profit. You promote the product and people buy the product from a place.

Good internet marketing is customer focused and based round a model developed by Robert Lauterborn in a paper published in 1990 – “New marketing litany: four Ps passe: C-words take over.”

This approach creates 4 C’s:

1. Convenience,
2. Cost to the user,
3. Communication and
4. Customer needs and wants.

These 4C’s are a modern equivalent to the traditional 4P’s marketing mix.

1. Place becomes Convenience
2. Price becomes Cost to the user
3. Promotion becomes Communication
4. Product becomes Customer needs and wants

What Robert Lauterborn highlighted was that the traditional 4P’s way of looking at marketing was out of date.

Today you cannot just make a product and sell it.

As technology has made the world smaller it has also increased the number of products/services that we can buy.

Think of your local supermarket.

20 years ago it would have been a great surprise to see fresh strawberries from Israel on the shelf, or Chillean wine. Now it is common place. Technology has allowed/created ways to transport goods worldwide.

Today we have to pay attention to our customers’ wants and needs.

This is the cornerstone of good internet marketing. You cannot expect a large number of visitors to your site unless you are providing them with what they want and what they need.

There is no point in having the “build it and they will come” mentality.

Just because you have a website does not mean people will visit it. They have to have a reason to do so.

As a result of the internet and e-commerce sites we don’t have to leave our house now to buy things. It can all be done with a few clicks of a mouse. That is one reason why convenience replaces place.

From what I read on the internet most internet marketers only consider convenience by concentrating on search engine placement they forget the other areas of marketing. Without paying attention to wants and needs, communication and cost to the user the marketing mix is all wrong.

There is another problem here, we too often forget about convenience and make it hard for visitors to our web site to find what we are selling. And yes I do mean selling, every web site is selling something even if it is information and the price is free.

Communication is about how we communicate our message to our customers and this is usually a real problem area.

We get too wrapped up on intricate design and our experience of how we want our website to work. What you need to do is consider the two C’s mentioned above. Think about it, what are your customers’ wants and needs? and with a different context think about convenience, this time think convenience of use. They are almost certainly different from yours.

A classic example is http://www.globalaigs.org/ the web site for The Global Glaucoma Network whose ‘tag line’ is VISION FOR GLAUCOMA. If you don’t know Glaucoma is a disease in which the optic nerve is damaged, leading to progressive, irreversible loss of vision. It is often, but not always, associated with increased pressure of the fluid in the eye.

Considering the sites subject (Glaucoma) why does it use colours which make it hard to read, images behind text that make it even harder to read and I could go on…?

The point here is the person who designed the site (and the person at the The Global Glaucoma Network responsible for the site’s upkeep and they may well be different people) have totally forgotten to consider customers wants and needs and how to properly communicate their message.

The next time you have web site designed – or when you update your current one – don’t head straight for your favorite web designer ask your customers first. Ask them what they want, how they want to use your site then you have a real chance.

Today communication is dictated by the buyer – the visitors to your web site.

After all who is most important:

• You?
• Your web designer?
• or your customers?

We all think that cost is important, it’s not. Despite the recent global economic crisis, and even more important because of it price/cost does not matter.

OK that may sound strange, but think about it properly. The Cost to the user is really about value not the actual cost. It is about how you can add value to the product / service you offer.

With so much competition on the internet, price has become irrelevant. If a user wants a product / service they will buy it – remember we are in an era of supplying customers’ wants and needs not an era where we can just supply.

Adding value is not just about “the added value”. Adding value is about making enhancements (changes) that add to the product you are selling before you pass it on.

It may be as simple as “free delivery” but it isn’t “we offer great customer service”. The value added is something tangible, something your customers can see, measure and appreciate. Sadly “we offer great customer service” is not tangible nor is “we design the best… ”.

Who says you offer great customer service or you design the best…? How can your customers measure it?

I hope you enjoyed this post and found its content useful. It should give you a good starting point when you create an internet marketing strategy. Let me give you something “short” to really take home.

• If marketing is costing you ‘real’ money it’s not marketing.
• Always remember the basics Convenience, Cost to the user, Communication and Customer needs and wants.
• And know how to measure any marketing strategy you want to use.

If you need help with a proper marketing strategy one that does not cost you “real” money and gives you quantifiable results – contact us – a consultation is totally free.

However before you do here is my health warning –

• I am busy,
• I only work with serious Clients
• If you want me to work for you I will charge you.

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