Doing business on the internet isn’t an option for most business people anymore. It’s a necessity. But what happens when your business niche shrinks?
Do you pull up your internet shingle and focus on your brick and mortar business? Or do you move your online shingle to a more profitable marketplace?
With the large number of online and offline businesses failing B2C businesses are raking in larger than ever sales while B2B businesses are clutching at straws to maintain a reasonable profit margin. If your online marketplace is shrinking, its time to get a second piece of the online pie.
Even B2C businesses are feeling the crunch. But when you multiply the marketplace to meet your businesses needs, you can continue to grow profitably in spite of a lagging economy. Take two examples.
Lynn Korff sells ceramic piggy banks. Her initial internet real estate is http://www.korfforiginals.com which encompasses her piggy banks, dinner ware, candle holders and more. To compensate for a rise in piggy bank offerings online, Korff added a second site, http://www.handpaintedpiggybanks.com. Ms. Korff essentially doubled her chances of being found online by doubling her internet presence. And it didn’t hurt her ever important link popularity either with search engines like Google.com.
By grabbing a second piece of the internet pie, Korff Originals is enlarging its business presence in a much less expensive way than opening a second brick and mortar store.
Pat Monroe is an avid attachment parenting business woman. She offers baby slings and breastfeeding accessories to help women worldwide ease into the transition of “baby and me”. Rather than relying on a single internet holding, she developed several related sites each focusing on keyword and product density to drive targeted traffic. Traffic of women and families who breast feed and/or utilize attachment parenting resources. If you are looking for Monroe and her supplies you might find her at http://www.nursinggear.com. Or you might find her baby slings at http://www.babyslingalong.com. If you are doing a more generic search for baby and mom gift items from layette to keepsakes and breastfeeding cloths you will find Monroe at http://www.thisbabyofmine.com. And if you want baby slings for the water and for breastfeeding, you’ll find her at http://www.magicksling.com.
By duplicating her online marketing efforts, and claiming a larger slice of the internet commerce pie, Pat Monroe is ensuring that a much larger percentage of nursing moms and the people who love and shop for them will find her online.
You can increase the size of your internet pie by leasing online store fronts in malls as well. Any directory site where people would begin a search for products or services is a place that you should advertise. And this can be done much less expensively than you think. Try free in many cases or only for the cost of swapping links on your own website.
Another way to grab your fair share of the internet marketplace is to utilize opt in list email marketing. This is not spam. This is targeted email marketing to lists built of willing subscribers. http://www.successpromotions.com/optinmarketing.html. It’s a very cost effective method of driving a larger piece of the online marketplace into your store.
So don’t yank that internet shingle! Just hang it where people will see it so you, too, can claim an incredible piece of the online pie.
Shannan Hearne is the owner of SuccessPromotions.com and the co-founder of ShoppingInTheSouth.com
shannan@successpromotions.com
