Internet Marketing: Are Your Customers On-line or On-hold?

On-line business is now mainstream. Over half of every man woman and child in the US used the internet. Two-thirds of U.S. Internet users, or 83 million people, are online shoppers. "It's a milestone in the norming of e-commerce," Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, told The New York Times. Data about online shopping collected by Pew shows growing e-commerce activity even as the number of Internet users also grows. Rainie called that trend important "because it's a bigger slice of a bigger pie."

Statistics on gender and ethnicity of online shoppers mirror those of people who go to retail stores. An interactive marketing executive at Home Depot (HD) said that finding is very important. "Now that the online population is more mainstream," said Shelley Nandkeolyar, "it better reflects our traditional customer base and it gives us more opportunity to bring a lot of our traditional strategies online."

Yes, commerce over the Internet is becoming second nature to the demographic majorities and is here to stay. But where does one begin, and how does one ensure his or her investments are sound and provide for a profitable piece of this powerful way of doing business? There is no one-size-fits-all answer, but here are some guiding principles and food for thought: 1. Internet Marketing is different than "traditional" marketing. The internet levels the playing field; enabling small companies to appear large, and large companies to provide the quick reaction of smaller firms. Size really doesn't matter. Your market can be whole world, for good or for bad and consideration must be given to tailor your efforts to your target market. Orders from far corners of the world can be an unexpected problem if your business is not prepared to support the logistics or legalities of doing international business.

2. Internet Marketing is the same as "traditional" marketing. "What's that?" Many aspects of marketing over the internet are time-tested and just plain common sense. Your company image for example is fragile and requires loving and consistent care. A shoddy representation on the web is worse than no representation at all. It has been reported that over 70% of purchasing professionals will check out a potential supplier's website before placing the first call, or accepting an appointment. Your website often will create that critical first impression both good and bad.

3. It's all about trust and ease of doing business. Those are consistently the top 2 reasons customers come back, and your website plays an important role in ease of doing business. Whether a convenient reference point for customers to learn about your organization, products and/or services; a secure place to communicate, or even to transact, each website has a particular mission fitting into your overall marketing and operational strategies.

4. Choose a professional to assist you with your internet strategy. Many web designers although well intentioned, simply do not have the wherewithal to provide credible advice and experience when it comes to your internet strategy. A beautiful on-line brochure will do you absolutely no good if the right customers can't find it, or if they can find it but can't easily transact with your organization and complete the business process.

5. Real time feedback is critical to keeping pace with changing preferences and trends. On-line polling and surveying can be an invaluable ally when it comes to collecting the data necessary to respond to changes in your market. Your customers expect you to understand what they want will go somewhere else in flash if they don't feel you are responsive to their needs.

Below are highlighted just a couple the many new products recently made available which raise the bar for service, marketing, and operational areas, as well as just plain figuring out how to structure your own internet strategy. These and many other tools could be just the ticket to fill a critical void or bottleneck in your business operations or marketing strategies.

On-line Polling: create simple yet effective polls and place them on your website. Ask your customers or site visitors what they think, and allow them to see the results instantly. Track data, and create reports invaluable to your marketing efforts. Visitor simply marks a selection box with True/False, ABC type response(s) and submits vote. Fun, interactive, and invaluable.

On-line Quizzing and Surveying: For more comprehensive data gathering, add a simple survey system to your site. Ask questions aimed at uncovering ways to improve your services, changing tastes and preferences, or simply get detailed feedback that is so critical to effective marketing today. Although these can be simple and straight forward, you should consider incentives to participate if significant time or effort is requested of your audience. Drawings, discounts, or even thank you notes can be effective as well as making the process fun for your valued participant. According to "Market Position", a whopping five million pages are added to the Internet every single day! Most of them are not effective investments! Make sure your web strategy is giving you a positive return on your investment and giving your customers a reason to come to you rather than someone else.