competition

“The Internet is the Viagra of big business.” – Jack Welch

How true?! I love it! There’s simply no question about it that the arrival of the Internet has changed the way we do business – forever! For many of us it has provided that booster shot in the arm that allows us to play a much bigger and better game! We can now compete and play on a grander scale – accessing markets that at one time, may not have been readily available to us.

Now while the Internet can open doors for us, the flip side is that it also opens doors for others as well – exposing us to ever-increasing levels of competition.

Essentially, with the full-on arrival of the Internet, we have literally migrated, in what seems to be overnight, from a local to a global economy. It wasn’t that long ago where we used to buy all of our goods and services from local businesses within a 15-minute radius of where we lived and worked.

Nowadays, it no longer makes any difference where our vendors are located – unless it’s our preference of course. Loyalty to our local neighborhood businesses is continually being displaced by new-found competitors vying for a piece of our market share – literally wooing our target market with cheaper, faster, and easier ways to purchase alternatives – those alternatives being their products and services instead of ours. In a way it’s sad, it almost marks the end of an era, regardless though, it’s the cold reality and we as 21st century businesses need to leverage it on our behalf as best as possible.

So when we talk about marketing our businesses in this new millennium, it’s eminent that we factor in, in a big way this exploding marketing medium called the Internet.

Web sites, blogs, podcasts – want to boost your credibility, visibility, and reach with you’re your target market? Well these are the in-demand players on the block these days.

This is not to say that traditional offline marketing no longer works – it certainly does and very effectively I might add. My point is simply that you need to consider you online marketing options as well.

So what are some Internet marketing strategies and tactics that you can consider leveraging in your business?

• Well how about publishing a web site to boost your credibility?
• Or, publishing an eZine to communicate regularly to your target market?
• What about creating and virally circulating an eBook?
• How about connecting more personally with your target market by publishing a blog?
• High-speed Internet connections now afford us the ability to publish audio and video on the Web – so how about publishing a podcast?
• It doesn’t get much cheaper than running email marketing campaigns. How can you use them to add value to your target market?
• How about making it easier to buy from you by selling products and services directly from your web site?
• Ever thought about enrolling others to promote your products and services for you on a pay-for-performance basis with an affiliate program?
• How about establishing your credibility by writing articles and publishing them on numerous high-traffic web sites?
• What about networking yourself with your target market via online networking forums?
• Gain attention from the press by submitting press releases to a number of online public relations service web sites.
• And the list can go on and on and on!

So in closing, as you can probably tell, I love the Internet – in my book it’s pretty much the greatest thing since sliced bread! As much as I love the Internet though, it’s essentially holding our feet to the fire and forcing us to play a better game to survive and thrive in today’s global economy.

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