One common attitude among traditional brick and mortar business owners who have joined the internet bandwagon is recruiting a web developer to create their website, make sure it’s aesthetically pleasing to them, publish it, and then wait for great upsurge in their sales. When the money fails to arrive, they blame the developer for creating a poor website.

What these businessmen fail to realize is the vast difference between traditional marketing and internet marketing. First, having a website is not synonymous to an increase in sales figures. Sure there are a lot of advantages that a website can give your business, however, careful planning still needs to done to have these advantages translate to actual dollars pouring in your cash register. Just like any traditional business, you need to have a marketing plan to have your website succeed in helping your business to increase its profits.

Just this March 2008, Internet World Stats reported that there are about 1.4 billion people surfing the internet and this number is projected to increase to 1.8 billion by year 2010 (Surely, this is a big market population to sell your products to). During the end of 2007 there are about 100 Million websites in the World Wide Web and around 100K sites are added each day. Truly, the internet keeps on growing!

The challenge here is that with big number of sites being added to the World Wide Web each day, it gets harder and harder for a website to be found. And what's the use of a website if it cannot be located by its intended market? You guessed it right--NONE!

For a website to be useful, a business owner or a company should realize that an internet marketing plan should be at place. The website is just a tool to be used to implement such a plan. Plainly stated, the "internet marketing plan is more than your website!" So before contracting a web developer and forming high expectations from your website, here's a quick guide in developing internet marketing plan:

• write down a list on how you intend to market your website
• get yourself a top level domain early on
• as much as possible choose a creative and easy to remember domain name which you can brand and apply a trade mark
• Design your site with your customers in mind, remember, they are the ultimate user not you
• Have "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)" techniques implemented early on
• Make use of other internet media (email, podcast, mobile, etc) to complement your site
• Choose the right infrastructure (web hosting, web application softwares, etc)
• and don't forget to let your current loyal customers know that you have a web presence! As for the internet the, "word of mouth" still is the best!

Comments (4)

1 Tuesday, 08 July 2008 17:34

Asuka_Aki

Thanks for commenting on my blog. I appreciate the feedback on buying domains with PayPal. I'm glad I found your blog, it is full of usefull info. Cheers!

2 Tuesday, 08 July 2008 23:41

John Eric Ferrer

Asuka, Welcome to QED Blog! I am happy that you find the post useful!

3 Friday, 18 July 2008 04:40

Unconventional Marketing

I like the fact that you compare a website to a tool. It is a hard most people to understand even the fundamentals of web promotions, you have a good list.

4 Friday, 18 July 2008 13:57

John Eric Ferrer

@UM, Thanks for dropping by. I appreciate it.

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