Does
Internet have you feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Do you have a great product or service that's being lost within information overload of World Wide Web?If so, don't forget your often most-fertile marketing territory--your own backyard!
* REALITY CHECK
The promise of Internet is that it can literally bring your product or service to a global marketplace, quickly and economically. Just think of all potential customers you might reach in "cyber" mode versus a traditional "bricks and mortar" approach. The numbers can be staggering.
We must ask ourselves, however, if lure and promise of greater reach via Internet is "real" or if it's simply "wishful thinking"? Does Internet represent reality for our business or just possibility?
In my opinion, for most of us, it's latter. The Internet makes it "possible" for us to reach a wider audience, but it does not guarantee we will. After all, person on other end of cyber pipeline needs to first know about your product or service. He or she then needs to discover your Web site, take initiative to visit your Web site, and then once at your site, actually buy your product or service.
And just as Internet might open up whole world to YOUR product or service, so too does it open up world for products and services of hundreds (if not thousands) of competitors--many of whom are likely to have deeper pockets that can get them noticed more quickly and more effectively than you.
Simply put, when you introduce Internet into mix, pond in which you swim is suddenly a whole lot bigger!
* THE LOCAL APPROACH
To market my recently published novel, "CURRENTS-Every Life Leaves an Imprint," I took a different approach--an approach that is starting to pay some small, yet encouraging dividends.
Sure, I built a Web site (the credibility of any business without a Web site these days is questionable), got my book on Amazon.com, and entered into several affiliations designed to bring my book to a wider audience. Granted, some business has resulted from this more "global" approach, but my marketing really began to take off when I shifted from a "small fish/big pond" mentality to a "big fish/small pond" mindset.
