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Entrepreneurial Laboratory - Market Testing Prior To Investing

by Riki Trafford

 

"Entrepreneur's Laboratory" - that's what the Internet has become over the last 10 years. Yes, it's was 1993 when Marc Andreasen launched the first ever point & click Internet Browser (Mosaic, 1993) on an unsuspecting world, and the Internet for everyone was born! No longer did you need to learn weird programming languages to use a computer. As long as you could wag a finger, and recognise little pictures on a screen, you could get your computer to do things for you, and start communicating with other people.

From the Internet's inception, a galaxy of material covering a wide array of topics has made up the Internet. In almost no time at all, the Internet has overtaken VCR, audio systems, telephone, and even television in some ways.

However, from the standpoint of an entrepreneur, the Internet's most compelling - and possibly life changing - role is a medium that's not only instantaneously prosperous but has low overhead expenses for direct mail advertising.

I'm not talking about corporate-style TV advertising that seeks to win design awards and shape brand image. I'm talking about advertising that calls you to action, as opposed to TV ads that leave you half smiling and wondering "What's that all about?" This action might entail phoning a customer center, downloading an e-book, signing up for further information, or even supplying your credit card data so as to order online goods & services!

Magazine advertisements commonly cost hundreds or up to thousands of dollars to set up. Then, the business has to wait weeks or months before getting back responses. In contrast, the Internet Entrepreneur can set up a small ad for a little more than tens of dollars or up to a couple hundred dollars and have the first visitor to his website within minutes! Measuring the performance of an ad in this manner is remarkable considering it takes only a few hours. You will automatically know which campaign is profitable and you're leaving behind risky ways of advertising that can cost a fortune.

Does this seem like an opportunity for your business? Could you add new on-line revenue streams to your existing businesses? Or launch an entirely new business venture on- line?

If you take into consideration how much of the payment, ordering and fulfillment processes can be automated - along with many aspects of the sales process too - then this incredible technological medium contains tremendous commercial power.

Even though stepping across this frontier requires a range of skills - such as direct marketing, copy writing, and computer literacy - only two fundamental actions are called for:

1. Getting the right visitors to come to your web site

2. Persuading them to take the action you want

Simple? Yes, in principle. But in practice there are many questions you need to answer on the way: - who would be the "right visitors"? - where can I find them? - how can I get them to my website? - are there enough of them? - and once they get there, what should I be asking visitors to do anyway? - how many will do what I want them to? - how can I improve on this?

To help clients increase their business's growth, the Direct MO Marketing website ( http://www.1dmom.com ) applies effective, simple solutions for determined online entrepreneurs who want to attract the right visitors to their business online.

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Riki Trafford is the owner and operator of RC Marketing which offers low cost keyword-targetted web traffic. For more information visit his archive of articles: http://www.1dmom.com/archive/ __________________________________________________________________________