Marketing for Online Businesses

Marketing Fundamentals for the Online Businesses
When going online, few people give much thought to all the aspects of
running an online business. But in order to be among the 5% of the
businesses that still run after their first year, you need to keep a few things
in mind.

Know your Target Market

In order to create something that people would love to buy and use, you
need to know your target market. To do this, you can:

• Be an expert in your industry
• Read websites in the industry, such as blogs, forums, social sites, etc
• Ask your friends about your product idea, what they think, what they would suggest, etc
• Ask various Internet marketing experts (there are plenty of blogs and forums out there) about your idea: they usually see a winner and can advise you how to improve your idea and approach
• Ask your industry expert friends

If your idea is hard to duplicate, you can share it with other people,

especially, if you have everything necessary for the start available. If not,

it may be not a good idea to share it with the experts.

But one of the signs that the idea is worth implementing is if you hear

people saying 'I want this, but I can't find it anywhere' or "Wouldn't it be

cool, if..". If you see plenty of such mentions related to your idea on the forums,

blogs, then you are on the right track.Ultimately, it boils down

knowing the needs and values that run the people and what they need at some point of tim

span style="color:#996633;">Provide Value to the People

Knowing the needs and values of the people is absolutely necessary to provide value

to them. As people only do or use what is useful for them, you need to provide absolute,

astounding and astonishing value for them to pick up your product and share it among their friends.

Offer an Easy to use Product

One of the most precious things on the planet, besides life, is time. You can't control how fast your time runs: you can only control what you do with it. That's why people also enjoy things they can use easily and that work fast.

• If you are creating a web application, ensure that it is easy to use and that it runs super fast
• If you create a piece of software, make sure a user has to click the least amount of times to do a task
• If you have a website, make sure it is usable and that you have optimized its speed significantly
• If you have an e-book, apart from providing the PDF format, provide other formats, reading applications for which load faster than Adobe reader (such as .doc, .rtf, .html, custom e-book software, etc)
• If it is a tangible product, only keep the most necessary functions with the least amount of controls (iPod is a perfect example of this)