Did you ever think about the old days of selling and compare that to selling with your website.   Many of us make the mistake of thinking that you can throw up a website and the people will come running.  That has happened in the early days of the web if you had something that folks couldn't find at a nearby store. With a simple search you could be easily found on Lycos.

But today, it's not quite as simple.  There are enough websites to serve 1.7 billion internet users worldwide and still growing.  Marketing and selling on the internet has become similar to marketing and selling in general. One way to be effective on the web is to just revert back to basic, tried and true traditional selling methods from the past. We're referring to simple methods that have worked and supported families for many generations and made others enormously rich.

Lets go back to the old (non internet) days and think about how you would start your business in a small town in a tough market of competitors. Also, pre-internet how you would expand your business geographically?  Then let's explore  how we could apply those methods  today on the internet with a website.

This little exercise is to organize my own thoughts too.  Like I said, my industry (on the internet) is very crowded, our desired keywords run about $45 per click.  We compete with "off shore” programmers in India and Russia (with US based sales offices), "laid off" US programmers who are freelancing or starting their own companies, and other web development and design firms.

Traditionally, in a crowded market you would do a few things to make your business stand out.

1. Find a niche or particular market to server.

2. Be better than your competition

3. Build relationships - join clubs, voluteer, etc.

4. Take great care of your customers and build word of mouth

5. Advertise

The owner would be an expert at what he does so would talke to everyone he sees and meets, showing how his "product" can solve their problems.  He would be outgoing, building relationships with everyone.  He'd ask for referrals, he's go to the n'th degree to take care of his customer.  My dad was like this, starting a business late in his career and going home each night to a family of eight kids.  He was always an optimist, happy with the growth in business he created each day.

We are going to use Social Media and Networking to do this same thing online and build and think of the “website” as a business in and of itself.

Our step by step plan includes:

Setting up Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.  Finding many "fans" and friends, delivering great content.  We've set these up but our content needs work.

Setting up Linkedin, completing the profile in detail and ask for referrals.

Post to our blog

Create Press Releases

Write and publish Whitepapers

Look for niche keywords for PPC campaign

Optimize our SEO

We’re hoping this online effort will help us generate leads for what we do from sources we wouldn’t typically have.

After the Holidays we’ll delve into the list and apply it in more detail.

In the meantime, enjoy the holidays and be ready to get to work on this in 2010!

 Diane