HUH?

If you're new to business and trying to learn how to market on Internet, your first reaction will be complete bewilderment. Come to think of it, why am I suggesting this happens only to people who are new to business? I'm betting you'd find Fortune 500 CEO's who don't know their PPC from their CPA.

Egads! And they say government employees talk in acronyms and jargon. They never came up with anything close to what you'll find on Internet marketing forums and bulletin boards.

Daunting as it is, you'll need to know this stuff eventually. So, pour yourself a strong cup of something and plow through these definitions:

ROI (Return on Investment) If your $1000 advertisement results in $1500 in sales, your ROI is $500.

Impression The number of times a banner or advertisement is served (displayed) on a web site. If 10 people visited web page containing banner, you would have 10 impressions. If one person viewed it 10 times, you would still have 10 impressions.

Hit This is a (poor) method of measuring web site traffic. A hit is registered each time a browser request is made from a web server. If you have a web page containing four graphics, each page display will count as five hits.

Page View This is a more effective way to measure web traffic. A Page View refers to each time a page is displayed. So, if you have a web page with four graphics, each time page is displayed counts as one page view but five hits.

Unique Visitors This is number of individuals who visit your site in a defined time. If 200 people visit your site this week, that is 200 unique visitors. If one person visits your site 200 times, that is one unique visitor.

Stickiness This refers to length of time that a visitor spends at your site over a given period of time, or sometimes to number of web pages that your visitors typically download.

Reality has hit his small business. Business is off in most sectors. People are staying home, seeking comfort and familiarity. I hear same cry everywhere I go—"We need more customers!"

Small businesses don't have advertising budgets of large companies to lure customers back with special deals. And government's messages to "go spend more" have right intent, but do not direct customers to doorsteps. How can small businesses reach these customers?

STRETCH YOUR TENTACLES!

With some imagination, will power and a technique I call "Octopus Marketing," small business owners can create new opportunities to increase sales.

Octopus Marketing is ability to make one marketing effort produce multiple effects, increasing returns without increasing effort. By tapping an Octopus on head, its tentacles stretch out and reach in different directions. Business owners can do same thing. By leveraging their own value and partnering with other businesses or organizations, a single marketing event can pay off again and again.

The head of octopus is any organization or group of business owners that partners together to reach more customers. Each member of organization or business is one of tentacles. It works like this:

First break rules. View other small businesses as partners, not competition. In these uncertain times, small business owners need to band together and develop a unique marketing program that will pull customers to neighborhood, into stores or onto web pages.