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Internet Marketing

© Bert Markgraf

For small businesses, the Internet can be a great leveler of the playing field. Before, small businesses either had to get massive financing to be able to compete in traditional advertising with the big guys or stay small with marginal growth rates. Now, for comparatively little money, a small business can reach millions of potential customers through the Internet.

Of course, it's not all that easy and clear cut. Conventional wisdom has it that web sites have to constantly offer new material to encourage people to return. They have to be high tech, interactive and "eye-popping". They have to be portals and communities and offer lots of different but related products. They have to be so much fun that the visitor just can't help coming back.

This kind of site is very expensive to operate and that kind of defeats the whole purpose as far as small businesses are concerned. While the amazon.com's of this world are losing money and increasing the value of their stock, the average small business can't afford to lose any money and its stock is in its warehouse.

Instead, why not simply create a site that is really good at selling one or a few products. It never changes because the products don't. It isn't interested in a lot of visitors, just buyers. And the buyers don't come to be entertained, they come because they want to buy a product, quickly, efficiently and they like it when the site is the same as it was during their last visit.

There are lots of sites like this out there and they are mostly profitable and mostly run, without much fanfare, by small businesses. But, should you want to grow into a big dot-com site and issue stock, here are some case studies. They are interesting because they detail what can be done, at what cost and for what result. It's tempting to wonder what campaigns like those described could do for one of these little small business commercial sites.

The copyright of the article Internet Marketing in Small Business is owned by Bert Markgraf. Permission to republish Internet Marketing in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.