Project August

How has internet marketing come into play with the success of an E-Commerce site? What impact has this had on the global market and what are examples of successful internet marketing campaigns?

If people are going to buy something online, they first have to find it online. If they have no specific knowledge about where to shop for an item online, they simply go to places they are familiar with… Target, Walmart, iTunes, wherever.

So, the job of your online marketing is to make your site known in order to "redirect" those buyers from their normal shopping pattern to find and go to your site. The biggest mistake people make is to assume they can compete head to head with large retailers. You can’t. I’ve spent many years doing marketing for national companies, from Hewlett Packard to Nestle Foods. You can’t compete against them in the mass market. So…

Find yourself a small niche… a piece of the market so small that Walmart isn’t interested in it, but large enough to make it very attractive to you. There are many such niches. Look at your own shopping and buying behavior as a guide.

The key: nobody will buy from you because you are offering something to sell. That’s your dream, not theirs. You must give them legitimate reasons to buy from you and not the next e-commerce site they find.