Online Marketing: Can you make a buck on the Internet?

Simple question with a complex answer – Yes, but do you really want to?

The Internet offers consumers the ultimate in comparison shopping with healthy margins becoming a little harder to realize. So why should I buy from you when I can get the same item from the other guy and save a buck?

Simple answer: Offer them something the other site doesn’t: Service; education; knowledge; information; how-to videos; big, detailed pictures; pretty much everything your client will need to make an online decision and determine if this is really what they want/need/must have.

The payback for all of this effort is that you’ll start noticing Emails on your desktop from your online store when you open up each morning informing you that you have orders waiting to be filled.

Online commerce is here to stay and how you market yourself to the masses will determine your online success. Some owners I know simply want to educate and deal directly with their clients. For those owners we usually recommend a comprehensive form, very similar to our Web Review form. It’s designed to capture information and establish a starting point to build a lasting relationship on.

Other owners sell widgets. These are mass manufactured goods that can be purchased on numerous websites and discount websites and through online distributors. What makes these sites particularly challenging is that if we proceeded to attempt the sale on price alone, the owner would lose most online opportunities given that they have not been able to make a compelling argument on behalf of their product.

In both cases, our approach is similar. First and foremost, we’re marketers. At Saint George, we approach every project, every website, and every client from a marketer’s perspective. We ask a straight-forward question: What do they offer and how do we effectively communicate their offering to the masses?

Marketing is what we do. The Internet is the vehicle we use to get your message out to the masses.