Million Signatures

Posts Tagged ‘Cyberspace’

It doesn’t take a lot of research to find out that in this day and age, virtually every business of any real size has developed some form of internet presence. Now, for many businesses, that may mean little more than an online business card that can be used to get the phone number and store location of the business into the mind of the prospective customer. But in this new century, the idea of having a business without a corresponding web page to support it is pretty much out of the question.

But if you look at the two business worlds, the internet business environment and that outside of cyberspace, there are some pretty big differences. While many companies like bookstores or concert ticket promoters have learned to build what might be viewed as parallel universes in which their business operations are just as sophisticated online as outside of cyberspace, other businesses have just not found that balance.

But as the legitimacy of the internet as a valid marketplace and business tool becomes more understood, more and more businesses are learning that cyberspace can become another valuable part of an overall marketing plan that drives business to the store shelves directly from their internet web presence.

So just as that billboard or newspaper coupon program are just as much part of the businesses corporate plan, that online effort out there in on the corporate web site can become a vital part of the stores operation so much so that the store manager will come to depend on the sales driven by the internet. To that store manager they will look for cyberspace on aisle five as a vital part of their plan for business success.

There is a systematic process that businesses go through to use the internet as a way of capturing web traffic and turning it into store traffic. Make no mistake, there is one principle that should seem evident but is the key to turning cyber visitors to in store shoppers and that is that ? Internet Shoppers are People Too!

When a businessperson looks at those strange internet traffic reports that show that they web site has X number of “hits” and that Z number of web browsers went to Y number of web pages, all of that cyberspace mumbo jumbo just means that X number of PEOPLE were on your web site and looked at Y number of products or web page advertisements or services. And those PEOPLE are the same living and breathing humans who will walk in the front door of your store and buy products and services from you.

All we need to do is devise methods to drive those internet shoppers off of their computers and into the businesses retail operations. And more and more you are seeing a businesses trend of internet promotions that are geared to put the customers feet down in the retail space. Some great methods for doing that are?

* Online coupons that can be redeemed only in the retail store.
* Online sales that can be picked up in the store. Many online shoppers might prefer to have the product shipped to them. So you will have to “sweeten the pot” by making shipping charges out of the question or by adding a promotion if the customer picks up his or her purchase in person.
* Contests. Need we say more?
* By promoting special events that will occur in the store. You can stage a major cyberspace promotional campaign for a book signing of an author or celebrity that will occur live at the store itself. The costs of the promotion and having the in store event will be offset by the increased sales.

If your web site routinely uses promotions that result in positive incentives to the customer to come to the store, before long a customer base of loyal consumers will get used to first going online to see what this week’s big deal is and then going to the store to cash in. That kind of ongoing momentum is what makes such a synergy such a success and what makes even customers come to your retail outlet and look for “cyberspace on aisle five.”

It is a well known axiom of doing business in any industry that those who do not stay in step with the times will be those companies that eventually die out. There is no place where that truism is more evident than in the way that companies in virtually every business sector are finding to integrate an internet marketing strategy with their traditional communications and to provide the public with an internet “presence” to supplement their public profiles in other venues.

Of course, the value of the internet for sales and promotions has been well known in the industries that service the youth markets and for the companies dealing with entertainment and the arts. Because the internet is in virtually every home and even now on hand held devices of every description, the access it gives to reach a target market are phenomenal.

This explosion of an entirely new marketing model has introduced the world of business to entirely new paradigms of marketing and new ways to achieve greater market penetration and sales. And so any business who has had to get out on cyberspace to keep up with the competition has already had to learn a whole new vocabulary that has grown up around the internet marketing phenomenon. Now terms like “Search Engine Optimization”, “Auto responders” and “Viral Marketing” become important and powerful tools to any business that wants to tap the power of the internet to increase sales.

The second wave of businesses that, perhaps reluctantly, ventured out into cyberspace were traditional retail business that you would not associate with cyberspace at all. This includes sport teams, restaurants and even retail giants such as Wal-Mart and Border’s Book Stores. In fact, the wave of change in how products and services are sold has been so rapid that entire market niches have been virtually revolutionalized by internet sales techniques. Book and music outlets have been virtually hard hit as a large percentage of their customers have abandoned the “brick and mortar” sales outlets entirely to use the more convenient tools of internet shopping.

This has made it tough on some retailers to keep up. For the “mom and pop” business, the change has been particularly devastating. Already small, home grown businesses were struggling to compete with the giant mega-stores like Wal-Mart to keep their loyal clientele coming back. Add to that the migration of customers to the internet and the need for change just to stay in business became even more urgent.

But even businesses who do not depend on marketing at all have seen the need to build and maintain a well functioning business web site so they will have a “face” in cyberspace. In the modern marketplace, the consumer will go to the internet first to find out about a company and it’s goods and services. This has turned traditional ways of connecting with existing and new customers upside down entirely.

The good news is that these rapid changes in how modern markets work have made the business world more diverse, more able to adjust to changing business dynamics and more open to the creative and innovative minds that have always been the real life blood of the business world. And, ironically, it is often the small business that is most capable of making rapid changes to its online presence and ways to doing things.

In that the internet is a phenomenally dynamic place, new ways of reaching our customers change almost annually. Where one year a simple web page may have been sufficient, soon we had to have chat rooms, MySpace pages and YouTube compatibility. Any business that sees these changes as chances to do something new and exciting with their business will be the companies that thrive in this modern world. And, as always, those who do not thrive with change will be destined to be made obsolete by it.