Top Ten Reason To Market Your Business Online

The Internet. The great leveling medium that makes a small business nearly as accessible as TheBigCorporation.com. But many businesses throw up a site without much thought about the potential impact it can have their business.

Why should you have a web site? Why should your business be online?

These 10 reason will give you something to think …

1. Greater Marketplace Expansion
Boundaries are nonexistent and less restrictive. Making it easier to reach new customer markets both globally and locally.

2. The Internet Is A Great Market Research Tool
Analyze competitors’ web sites. Find data and analysis material for new markets. Receive customer feedback. Possibilities are endless.

3. Release Time Sensitive Materials Faster
You can make information available anytime you want. Make changes on your web site instantly. Something you can’t do with printed materials. You can send last minute sales announcements to your customers.

4. Make Information More Easily Available To Customers And Visitors.
You can post your hours of availability. Put your brochures, catalogs etc. online. You can include a Frequently Asked Questions section. The Internet gives you the ability to add sound and/or video to your site.

5. Ability To Conduct Business 24 Hours
Your web site works 24 hours a day, seven days a week advertising your business.

6. Test New Services And Products
Since you can reach markets faster and quicker, you can test new idea, try a marketing campaign before rolling it out. You can know where to position your product or service in the marketplace.

7. Extremely Cost Effective
It costs practically nothing to put a web site online. Putting brochures, newsletters, and catalogs online saves a fortune in printing and mailing cost. News Releases and media can be distributed over the Internet quicker and cheaper. You decrease administrative cost through online automation. Lower telecommunication cost.

8. Make Connections
It’s not what you know but who you know that opens business doors. Networking online is more time effective than meeting face-to-face. Online you can meet prospects and business colleagues anytime of the day or night. You can quickly build your reputation and credibility all from the comfort of your home .

9. Your Customers Are Online
Consumers are getting online in record numbers and it increases every year. Online retail sales will grow by almost 25% this year, according to Forrester Research. Keep this in mind… people use the Internet to research their buying decisions.

10. Your Competitors Is Online
The best reason of all to market online! Forget the «I’m a local business» mentality. I guarantee no matter what your business, one of your competitors is successfully using the Internet to market their business. Over 40 million people used the Internet last year looking for local information.

The effects of a Gated Internet on small business and the web hosting industry

Imagine this: You have a killer idea for a new online business. You spend months developing your web site, you make it SEO (Search engine optimization) friendly, you sign up for web hosting, and you start about the rigorous task of promoting your new small business venture, but no one in your target market comes. You soon discover that many internet service providers are forbidding their customers from viewing your site), so your new internet venture and months of hard work, is now effectively “dead in the water”.

The above scenario is not a reality yet, but could become many business owners, and small web hosting company’s worst nightmare. The stage was set last year when various phone and cable companies successfully reversed the FCC regulation requiring network owner’s to provide nondiscriminatory communications services, and rates.

How does this affect the web hosting industry? If internet service providers (ISP’s) are not required by law to be neutral, in the content they provide the American public, it would allow them to block sites they don’t have a partnership with, or impose a surcharge for viewing a competing company’s web site. For the hosting industry, this would mean a drastic slow down in the creation of new entrepreneurial, and personal web sites, which would in-turn mean a smaller customer base, and lost profits.

The reality of a corporation controlled internet has hit home for many Skype voice over IP (VOIP) users. Prodigy Communications LP has closed the consumer internet ports that Skype and other VOIP services use in an effort to curve bandwidth usage. The blocking of VOIP services is small scale example of the FCC’s internet deregulation. If the Net Neutrality law is not passed the general public, small business owners, and hosting providers could see a radical change in the content they send and receive to internet users.

In the 21st century internet web hosting, has exploded and has sparked a new wave of entrepreneurial success for many small business owners. Net Neutrality prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast from deciding which websites will work, based on who they are affiliated with. If something is not done, web hosting providers, and developers, will have a harder time getting their content online and making their mark on their targeted audience.

Article Copyright 2006
Jonathan McAllister
Dimension Servers LLC
http://www.dimensionservers.com