Online Marketing Basics

This must be one of the hottest issues at the moment in the online industry. Everyone has something to say about how online marketing should be done. The real issue here is to understand what is important to the online community and what not. What do the online community require from a website and what makes it simply a pain to deal with

Planning your shop and layout

The first very important step when starting an online business is to understand your market. This will prepare you to do thorough planning for your online marketing strategy. Ask yourself the following questions,

Where is my prime market located? – this is important as this will assist you in targeting the correct visitors for your website.

What do they require from my product? – Do they need to build trust in your company or products or perhaps they need more graphic detail or specifics on how it works.

Why do they require your product? – This is a very important part of your online marketing strategy as it will guide the way you sell your product or service online and guide the layout of your website.

How will you find targeted visitors? - Targeted visitors are the secret of successful online marketing. This will ensure better ROI (Return on Investment) due to the cost involved in obtaining visitors.

Who will fall into my target market? – Your target market will determine the look and feel of your site. For example if your target market is kids under the age of 18 it might be better to have a playful color and design layout.



These 5 factors of online marketing resemble the theory of general marketing but online is very different from land-based marketing. There are a few points that need to be addressed for you to understand the imponderable differences between the two.

Land-based marketing compared to Online Marketing

Speed and Effort

Having a land-based business can be convenient for customers. They want something now they can get it now! They just need to find the appropriate shop, walk in get the product, pay cash and go home. They have it immediately!

However in reality it is not that easy. Sometimes it takes allot of time and patience to find the right shop to get the product that you are looking for. This entails driving through frustrating traffic, going from shop to shop, waiting in queues and then struggling back home through traffic again.

The Internet offers allot of benefits when it comes to speed and effort but it has different rules. For the user it should sound more like this. Walk to your computer, open the browser go to a search engine and type in the name of the product you wish to obtain and buy. Go to a website find your product easy and buy it. Now... that makes a world of difference and all this happens in a question of minutes.

However the customer do not have the product immediately. This means that your website must make use of it's benefits as far as possible.

What are those benefits?

Speed – Your website design must be fast loading containing very little file size, BUT still look attractive.

Comfort – Offer lightning fast navigation and search facilities for the user to find what they are looking for in a blink of an eye.

Lower Prices – This benefit can become an argument between online marketers, but the reality is that the Internet offers the largest audience in the world at lower cost (many free) and overheads than a land-based business. This enables you to compete unfairly with any land-based business.

How will you find targeted visitors? - Targeted visitors are the secret of successful online marketing. This will ensure better ROI (Return on Investment) due to the cost involved in obtaining visitors.

Non-Personal contact – Many people see the fact that the Internet is impersonal as a disadvantage. On the contrary this is one of the biggest advantages that the Internet has. You no longer have to risk a sale because of an unreliable salesman, because you are the salesman. You will learn from your mistakes once and thereafter improve and in time become the master in online sales.



The moment you grasp the fact that the internet can offer you allot of value as an entrepreneur at a much lower cost and with less risk than a land-based business, you have cracked the golden egg. The secret to a successful online business is to understand the basic art of converting traffic.