With the recession slowing the economy worldwide and especially in North America, and unemployment reaching record highs many people are turning to the Internet and home based business as a way of creating an extra source of income to help relieve their financial stress. People are turning to Internet marketing not only because of the economy but also because it’s much easier to start and market a home business online than by using traditional methods.
Some of the advantages of Internet marketing versus traditional advertising are, first of all the cost involved. After setting up your website and deciding on a product or service for your home business to promote on the Web you must now design your Internet marketing strategy. When you examine the different Internet marketing strategies available you will soon discover the majority of these marketing techniques can be employed for little or no cost. Whether its article marketing, classified advertising, blogging or email marketing you will find many low cost or no cost alternatives available. On the other hand traditional marketing can be quite costly especially when you’re just starting a business and trying to get noticed.
Secondly, Internet marketing allows you to track your results daily and make any changes you feel are necessary at any time you want. This is a big benefit over traditional marketing because you can adjust your online marketing campaign to reflect your results in an instant. This is very difficult, if not impossible, with offline advertising because you’re more or less committed to your strategy until all the final results are in at the end of the campaign time period.
Next, when marketing online your marketplace is global. Offline marketing can be restricted to a local or national demographic depending on your advertising budget. This again relates to the cost advantage of Internet marketing and demonstrates another benefit of advertising online.
Internet marketing also makes it easier to capture your potential customer’s information and create a targeted list which you can use to promote your home business to over and over again. You can accomplish this by using a squeeze page or a landing page and by offering a free gift to your visitors for entering their name and email address. Traditional marketing doesn’t allow this convenience and you usually have to capture your visitors information by way of a hard copy survey for example, completed at your place of business.
Speaking of your place of business, this raises another plus for the Internet home business owner which is very little cost for overhead. There’s no rent or utilities expense involved, and no cost of storage. Your online storefront usually involves a third party who takes care of the storage and shipping of your product and all you need to worry about is marketing your opportunity to your demographic.
Also your home business on the Web is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. People can place orders at any time of the day or night and the system is automated to do all of the work for you. An offline storefront restricts your customer’s buying power to traditional hours of operation and some days eliminates their ability to shop all together because of holidays or days off.
Finally online marketing makes it easier to establish relationships with your potential customers and your actual clients. Because of your ability to capture their information including their email address this gives you the opportunity to contact them at any time with different offers or freebies and at a moments notice. This also provides the chance to get to know them and when they feel they know you this increases the odds they will become either paying customers or repeat buyers.
As you can see Internet marketing offers many benefits over the more traditional offline marketing techniques which in turn increases the likelihood of your home based business success online.