When marketing your business, it's important to ensure you stand out from the crowd.

Now that most businesses have decided they have to be on the worldwide web, the big question is how do you get noticed?

While the medium on which businesses might market is changing as traditional advertising has to share the dollars and the eyes with their online rivals, the lessons from Marketing 101 still apply.

To me there are two key lessons of all marketing. The first is that you have to know your customers or potential customers. This can be achieved by research — either professional or amateur.

Jack Singleton co-founder of ad firm Jack Currie Watts and the brains behind Phonenames, says you might have to spend 10 to 15 per cent of your marketing budget on really getting to understand your customers.

It sounds a lot and professional research is not cheap but Singleton says he had cases where he had big double-digit response rates to direct mail campaigns because the research was so spot on.
This is unheard of generally in the direct mail space, he pointed out, where one per cent can be seen as pretty good.

The next marketing lesson you have to remember comes from the U.S. marketing guru Seth Godin who wrote the book 'Purple Cow'. This argues that we all compete in a maze of marketing messages and it is easy to get lost and be unnoticed. To me there is an adjoining lesson that many businesses ignore or simply don't know.

Business speaker and customer service expert, Martin Grunstein always argues that your marketing messages have to lead with one very important answer to the crucial consumer question.

That question is: "Why should I buy from you?"

What you need is a unique selling proposition or USP, which tells the market what you do and what you stand for.

This newspaper runs with "The heart of the nation" for its USP. Google created a great business model with: "The search engine of the world."

Is there anyone reading this article who doesn't know what business 'owns' — "The Fresh Food People"?

So all of these basic lessons have to be taken to the Internet and new age business owners have to work out how these stand out characteristics and propositions can be run past the maximum number of eyeballs as possible.

Getting to know the web is important too. Open your eyes to what the experts in the web or digital space know. You might have to challenge your greatest enemies to really net the most out of the Net.

I believe too many of us hold ourselves back because they refuse to access expertise — either through books or actual experts. This is partly due to procrastination and the fact that many can't understand the value of investing in success.

There are great books on Internet marketing. Ask yourself: "Have I read them?" If the answer is no then you are the greatest threat to your business's success.

If you don't have time to read a book, you should think about paying an expert to help you. If success is important to you then you have to have become competitive in this online marketing space. The experts know the ins and outs of Google words, the value of blogs and the importance of creating communities.

The New South Wales Business Chamber recently had a community issue it was championing and created some content for YouTube and was overwhelmed at the reaction and hits it got.

Creating a community of supporters on the Internet who want to relate to the product or the business has powered businesses such as Boost Juice.

I can recall the first time I saw that website and still haven't forgot it. And that's the point of marketing, isn't it?

Tips

• Research your customers and potential customers. Try and find out what they want and provide that to them.

• Get a USP or unique selling proposition that tells customers why they should buy from you.

• Surround yourself with experts or expert knowledge. If you don't understand the online space, read as much as you can to make yourself an expert in the area.

By Peter Switzer

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