Starting Internet Marketing Business - Determine What You Have To Offer

When you are running a business, internet-based business or offline, it will always about identifying customers’ needs.

It's not just stop there, you will need to figure out exactly what goods or services you’re going to provide to meet those needs.


As explained in the previous post, Identifying Needs, often, you perform this step before or at the same time that you scope out what the business needs are and figure out how you can position yourself to meet those needs.

The basic steps to determine what you have to offer:

1. Make a list of all the items you have to put up for sale, or all the services that you plan to provide to your customers.

2. You need to decide not only what goods or services you can provide online, but also where you’re going to obtain them. Are you going to create sale items yourself? Are you going to purchase them from another supplier? Put all your ideas on paper and keep them close at hand as you develop your internet marketing business plan.

The Internet is a personal, highly interactive medium. Thus, if you have planned to start your own internet marketing business, be as specific as possible with what you plan. Do not try to do everything; the medium favors businesses that do one thing well. The more specific your business, the more personal the level of service you can provide to your customers.

Starting Internet Marketing Business - Identifying Needs

The Internet is a worldwide, interconnected network of computers to which people can connect either from work or from home, and through which people can communicate via e-mail, receive information from the Web, and buy and sell items by using credit cards or other means.
Many people decide to start an internet marketing business with little more than a casual knowledge of the Internet. However, when you decide to get serious about going online with a commercial endeavor, it pays to get to know the environment in which you plan to be working.

One of your first steps should be to find out what it means to do business online and to determine the best ways for you to fit into the exploding field of electronic commerce. For example, you need to realize that the Internet is a personal place; that customers are active, not passive, in the way they absorb information; and that the Net was established within a culture of people sharing information freely and helping one another.

Some of the best places to find out about the culture of the Internet Marketing Business are the newsgroups, chat rooms, and bulletin boards where individuals gather and exchange messages online. Visiting discussion forums devoted to topics that interest you personally can be especially helpful, and you are likely to end up participating. Also, visit commerce Web sites, such as eBay, Amazon.com, or other online marketplaces, and take note of ideas and approaches that you may want to use.
The more information you have about the trends in the online world, the more likely you are to succeed in online business.

If you want to do business online, these are some of the information that you need to know:

Competitors
Familiarize yourself with other online businesses that already do what you want to do. Do not let their presence intimidate you. You are going to find a different and better way to do what they already do.

Customers
Investigate the various kinds of customers who shop online and who might visit your site.

Culture
Explore the special language and style people use when they communicate.

As you look around the Internet, notice the kinds of goods and services that tend to sell in the increasingly crowded, occasionally disorganized, and sometimes-complex online world.

The things that sell best over the internet always include four Cs:

1. Cheap
Online items tend to be sold at a discount — at least, that is what shoppers expect.
2. Customized
Anything that is hard-to-find, personalized, or unique sells well online.
3. Convenient
Shoppers are looking for items that are easier to buy online than at a “real” store, such as a rare book that you can order in minutes from Amazon.com or an electronic greeting card that you can send online in seconds.
4. Content-rich
Consumers go online for latest news or stories that are available by subscription, such as newspapers and magazines, or that exist online only, such as Web logs (blogs) and electronic publications.

Visit one of the tried-and-true indexes to the Internet, such as Yahoo.com, or the preeminent search service Google.com.
Enter a word or phrase in search box that describes the kinds of goods or services you want to provide online.
Find out how many your existing competitors. Better yet, determine what they do not do, and set a goal of meeting that specialized need.

Start your internet marketing business in a better way

After you look at what is already out there, the next step is to find ways to make your business stand out from the crowd. Direct your energies toward making your site unique in some way and providing things that others don’t offer. The things that set your online business apart from the rest can be as tangible as half-price sales, contests, seasonal sales, or freebies. They can also involve making your internet business site higher in quality than the others can.
Maybe you can just provide better or more personalized customer service than anyone else. Don’t be afraid to try something new and outlandish. Go for it!