Just imagine opening up your business to the world and be exposed to more than a thousand new opportunities. A business not given the big break it needs is doomed to die.
I decided to set-up a website for I created a rent a car website to take advantage of the surge of tourists in the Philippines and the number of growing internet users. I marketed it like it was no tomorrow and quickly achieved success. It turned out that setting up and marketing our website was the best thing that happened to us. The business has never been this successful. So why did our business flourish when we took advantage of the internet?
“How can a website help me?, Why should we have a website?”. Most small business owners would doubt what the internet can do to help augment business growth. They are often misguided by the notion that the internet is only suitable for those multi-national businesses. There’s nothing farther from the truth.
With the emergence of globalization, international trade has never been this open. However lots of small businesses are still not taking of the advantage the internet is offering them. Most are still using the traditional marketing tools like television, magazines and the newspaper. Maybe it’s because they are afraid and overwhelmed by the terms and computer jargon or maybe - just maybe they think that internet promotion is much more expensive.
As I have experienced, the internet promotion is so much more efficient than the traditional ways. Here are some reasons why:
- Efficient Transactions - With the debut of the online transactions and internet shopping, the internet has been a big marketplace wherein transactions can be easily made through blogs and portals via Paypal or credit card gateway websites. People then can purchased just punching in their credit card numbers. You can virtually have a 24/7 store open to buyers.
- Market Penetration - A local business can easily have clients in foreign countries just by joining business to business portals which opens up communications between buyers and suppliers.
- New and Effective Marketing Strategies - The internet has also brought new marketing methods for driving traffic to your websites.
- Search Engine Optimization - SEO is the practice of designing and improving a website’s search engine rankings for particular keywords.
- Pay-per-click - Google Adwords is the biggest pay-per-click(PPC) service on the internet. Advertisers pay an amount whenever someone clicks on their ads. It’s quite useful especially if you’re a company selling products. With PPC you’ll have access to statistics, analytics and metrics. If you know how much your goal is worth, you’ll know how much budget you should have.
- Business to Business Portals - Business to Business portals have been appearing everywhere. These portals allow communications between would-be business partners.
- Online Directories - Directories are also a great place to publish your ads. Some people still use online directories to seek products to buy or services to use.
Don’t take it from me, I suggest you try to dip your fingers as well. The internet can be a goldmine to those that know how to use it.