Grow your business online - without the high cost!

If you’ve been in business for a long time, you are probably used to a marketing model that revolves around pushing your sales message to as wide an audience as possible, one-to-many communication. The television commercial, magazine advertisement and billboard are all about a single voice engaged in a one-way communication with a large audience.

Yet if you’ve been in business even longer, you may remember it wasn’t always like that. Before TV, before massive supermarkets and large shopping centres and big budget campaigns targeted to carefully selected demographics and slick brand advertisements in magazines that don’t seem to sell anything and focus groups and surveys – before all of that there were shopkeepers and customers having conversations.

Now we have the internet, the art of conversation marketing is returning. Consumers no longer want the one-way marketing messages from faceless corporations telling us how to behave and what to buy. They want a two-way conversation; to be able to interact with a brand, give feedback and be treated as an equal participant in the marketing relationship. No longer can a brand preach from on high and expect to be unquestioningly followed, demanding respect and consumer loyalty simply because of who they are.
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Twitter is becoming an increasingly important platform for online marketing. It is reported that Twitter has more than 1 million users and approximately 3 million messages are each day. Twitter is fast becoming an important tool for businesses to use as an extra marketing tool to grow their business.

So how can Twitter be used as a marketing tool?
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This part of your marketing planning will help you determine who your customers are, their geographic location, how and why they will buy from you, what makes them unique, and what you have to do to keep them loyal.

The concepts of market segmentation have become known as niche marketing. Instead of trying to compete on a grand scale, businesses choose to compete in smaller areas. These are called niches. Within these niches, businesses must identify certain characteristics to differentiate customers from one another.

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You’ve taken the leap and set up shop on the internet. But as with a bricks and mortar shop, customers won’t come if they don’t know it’s there. Taking your business online opens your door to a global market, but the website can’t bring customers through the door of its own volition. The reality is that a website needs care and attention like any other aspect of your business and buyers won’t find you unless you do something to ensure that you can be found.

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It’s All About Appearances

The beauty of the online marketplace is that small business is playing on a level field with corporate giants. Everyone on the internet is working with the same tools: a website. There is no reason your website can’t be as popular as that of your biggest competitor, if you employ the right web techniques.

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