Leveraging the internet to help entrepreneurship

As a follow-up to last time’s blog, today, I would like to speak about how the internet has changed the nature of marketing forever. My example to prove my point is a study on how small startup firms can leverage the internet to help their marketing campaign to reach a larger target market.

Before the internet, new startup firms had difficulty with marketing because information about the competitive market and customer market was difficult to reach. One would have to spend a lot of time and energy going around doing due diligence. Depending on what type of market they were looking to penetrate, they may have to go do to door or perhaps look up information from government agencies. Furthermore, advertising was a risky and expensive investment and was limited to ads in local newspapers, bill boards and TV commercials.

Now, the internet has completed evened out the playing field. One way I would like to suggest new startup firms to do their marketing simply by going through forums with information about the relevant market. There are virtually mountains of information on internet forums that an entrepreneur can tap into when coming up with a strategy for market penetration.

For example, if an entrepreneur wanted to start a business buying and selling African Art, he could simply look on art forums to see what the art communities want and also where to buy the latest and more sought after pieces of art work. This is just one of the examples about how someone can look towards user generated content online for a business idea.

After the market research, the advertising campaign can also be enhanced by the internet. A company website is a great tool to present a face to your business. A website is a quick and fast way for potential clients to learn about your business and perhaps purchase your products through E-commerce.

A website will facilitate a new firms advertising strategy. In almost every single major websites advertisement space is rented out to companies wishing to advertise a website. For example, in popular websites such as google and facebook, a bar on the side of the machine will showcase links that are based on the content of the current page. This type of advertisement can be purchased quick conveniently and is much cheaper than traditional methods of advertising. I also know that on Chinese search engines, you can also pay to have your website moved up in the search list.

The point that I’m trying to make is that the nature of human interaction has been changed forever through the advent of the internet. Now an entrepreneur can learn and reach customers in the market that were previously out of his reach.