A unique path to profitable market saturation in online marketing

Guest Post By: Tom Dugas

In your early days of starting a business, things are tough.

Your first customers are always the most expensive. In fact, it’s not uncommon for many entrepreneurs to spend $5 in marketing for every $1 sale. This is just part of the growing process.

When this happens, you respond by over-delivering value for the customer in hopes of generating referrals, testimonials and repeat business. Eventually, word will get out and you’ll reach a “critical mass” where all of your niche prospects are familiar with your brand and refer business to you.

The problem with internet business is that it’s a low-friction media. It’s fairly quick and inexpensive for anyone to quickly slap together a new company and start competing with you. This means that you have to work much harder to rise above the noise than you would with a traditional bricks-and-mortar business.

Another thing that makes online marketing harder is the “trust factor”. Customers are often more reluctant to do business with people they haven’t met face to face, or to buy products they can’t physically touch.

Having said that, online marketing is still the most powerful and cost-effective means of business communications available. It just needs to be strategically applied.

One trick that you can use when creating an online business is to focus on a geographically local niche. Being “geo-local” allows you to more easily rise above the noise of fly-by-night competitors. Instead of spreading your resources all over the internet, you’re focusing your efforts like laser beam. This has the effect if drowning out all of the generalists that may want to compete with you.

Another great aspect of competing on a geographically local scale is that you have a unique opportunity to host local events where your prospects can meet you in person. This really helps to overcome many of the trust barriers that may hurt sales in a purely digital world.

One of the great things about this approach is that you reach a “critical mass” stage much more quickly. Typically, local markets are built of communities where everyone knows each other on a personal level. All you need is a few referenceable testimonials in this arena in order to establish credibility, and pretty soon you’ll be a major player.

I personally know of one cleaning company that, in only 3 short years, built themselves up to a 100-employee organization using online marketing almost exclusively.

If locally-focused online marketing can work in a competitive market like commercial cleaning, it can certainly work for your innovative and cutting edge business ideas.

About The Author

Tom operates a Houston Cleaners company and a Detroit Cleaning company, using locally-focused online marketing combined with 1-on-1 relationship-building.

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