Online Marketing and Why It Is Essential for Modern Entrepreneurs

by Startacus Admin

In the wake of this change in the broader market, it is now no longer the case that the internet is an ‘option’, ‘gimmick’, or ‘extra’ for the modern entrepreneur. If you are starting a business in 2019, you need to have an understanding of online marketing or seek out the services of those who do. The following four factors are among the biggest reasons why.

Trusted and Tested

The ability to possess, maintain, and regularly update a website is a mark of significant and important competence in the modern world. Because the internet having been around as long as it has now, there are a truly vast plethora of platforms, tools, and other methods of establishing an online presence. Rightly or wrongly, the marketplace is now of the opinion that someone with a business that lacks any form of digital presence is someone who lacks the effort, understanding, or technical ability to truly accomplishing anything in the modern world. If you want your business to be seen to be active, engaging, and useful, your first step is the establishment of a website, so that anyone and everyone can see you for who you are.

An Audience Amassed

In 2017 the International Telecoms Union, a United Nations body, estimated that 48% of the world’s population had access to the internet. That percentage rises to 81% when it’s talking only about the “developed” world nations, and even in the “developing” nations it only falls to 41%. That represents approximately 3.55 billion people.

The economics of scale involved in this are undeniable. If you can reach even a thousandth of a single percentage of the market available in this space, that is still equivalent to a quarter of Blackpoolers, half the population of Newcastle, or the entire population of West Somerset. Once numbers of this size become involved, beneficial turns into essential, and that is before you start seriously thinking about the implications of the numbers here... 

A Natural Nation of Niches

When dealing with an audience as uncompromisingly vast as ‘The Internet’ while general trends and broad sweeping sectors of interest are to a certain extent inevitable, what is even more likely is that 3.55 billion people will not fit comfortably into a few dozen boxes. Or even a few hundred.

Niches within niches abound online. Whether a subculture specifically wants to focus on the nuanced intricacies of late 1990s Scandinavian Dubstep, Silver Birch woodcraft technique, the artwork of Tunisian front doors, or comparative consociational democracy, there will be a variety of online communities, forums, or other such spaces dedicated to this. Within this seemingly fractal explosion of subcultures within subcultures, there will doubtless somewhere, somehow, be a community that will be interested and receptive to the kind of product/service you want to be providing.

With 3.55 billion people out there, and so many niches you could potentially exploit, there is no reason to ignore the online marketplace, and given the speed it moves now there is every reason to potentially exploit that too. 

Interest in the Instant

For better or worse, the internet has created a culture that embraces and enjoys the truly instant. Social media has fractured attention spans. Clickbait news grabs people focus for barely a minute at a time. Photos and messages take fractions of seconds to move from your phone to the entire world. With the right online marketing plan, it can take less than ten minutes between someone discovering your company and your product, and them deciding to place their first order.

The speed the internet allows for people to make commercial transactions is unparalleled, and because of the way social media and broader culture has been shifted, it may be the most attractive way to conduct business in the minds of hundreds of thousands to millions of potential consumers and customers. These are the kinds of people that can no longer be ignored.

With the world moving in the direction it now is, ignoring the internet is no longer an option, and if you want to make the most out of it, you’ll either need to grapple with online marketing yourself, or find someone who has already wrestled with that particular unruly beast, and won.

Written by Michael Trimmer of i3MEDIA.

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Published on: 8th April 2019