subject: Internet Selling - A Maze In A Haze? [print this page] Internet Selling - A Maze In A Haze? Internet Selling - A Maze In A Haze?
Internet selling, website marketing, call it what you may, will be a bit sort of a maze. You charge off down one route......dead end. Someone sends you off down another route with a huge smile on their face.......another dead end. Another route appearance promising.......till it fizzles out and you reach another dead end. You can't cheat by trying over the hedge, it's concerning twenty feet high! A huge ladder therefore you can get a good read? No, they've all been hidden. None left on the planet! Except those in the vaults of the web gurus, you suspect.
Thus, you retain going around this maze, and at each flip there's advertising, all about the maze itself, telling you about which manner to go. Plans of the maze which, if you follow, could get you 0.5 means round, only to search out you wish to shop for another set up to get the remainder of the way. Thus what do you do? Persevere around this maze unaided? Or buy another set up? You buy another plan of this maze, and lo and behold, you end up at an area somewhere near the exit into real open daylight (you think that), but how does one get the proper final few turns? Anyway, maybe you're not close to the exit after all? You may be on the way aspect of the maze from the exit. Sound familiar?
If you've got been researching the net from a business purpose of view for any length of your time, you've got in all probability found that a lot of of the advertising, the marketing, is concerning ................. net marketing. This is often partly why it can seem like a maze. If you are not positive what is going to figure to promote your website, or the product in it, how do you know that recommendation to listen too, which "offers" to require up?
Why is Internet Promoting Such a Maze?
Selling may be a subject I've been curious about for many years, long before I used to be partner in an advertising related business in the first 90's. Then, selling was a quite stable world. The foremost recent "change" of any significance had been TV, and TV advertising had evolved steadily over several decades. It absolutely was glossy, glamorous, and...........terribly expensive. That was smart for the large advertising agencies, and that they chased the big advertisers with large budgets for TV advertising. They'd their inventive departments to return up with memorable TV ads, usually designed to be memorable instead of to sell, and their media consumers to buy time on the commercial TV stations.
The glamour was in TV, but every company and each agency would work on a promoting combine: radio advertising, commercials, glossy magazine advertising, newspaper advertising, trade ads, direct mail.....all played their part. These all had one thing in common, though: that they had been around for a very long time. Selling was a stable industry, not in economic terms, however within the "tricks of the trade". There were a few minor variations here and there, but essentially, the promoting business had its accepted, well documented, ways of doing things. Skill levels varied after all, and that's where competition came in between the agencies and between companies in the identical industries. The point is, though, it absolutely was all primarily stable. Sensible or dangerous, it was stable.
Then along came the internet. Being involved in advertising in the mid 90's, it had been obvious to me that the potential was fully enormous. Mind boggling. It had been difficult to demonstrate, though, as speeds were painfully slow. You'd try to point out someone over a cup of coffee or tea, and you'd end the drink while the second page was loading. Strive coming back in five years. Well, they did. With a vengeance.
The web itself came on in leaps and bounds when that. Technically it developed rapidly. Firms started to realise they "had" to possess an internet presence. Why? Well, often as a result of their competitor did, or as a result of they thought they should before their competitor did. They were diving in, just about blind; they did not understand what they were obtaining into. The stock markets cottoned on that something big was within the offing, therefore .com shares were being touted to ever higher levels. Shares of corporations with no substance in most cases.
I used to trade shares every day in those days, and I never touched one net related company. I cringed every time I saw the monetary figures of a listed .com. Prices of shares were typically in the stratosphere while turnover was meagre and profits non existent, then and into the future. The traders within the London Stock Exchange and Wall Street didn't understand. The net was new, there was no history to go on. They simply did not understand. They were excited, and were exciting others too. The buying was frantic. The crash inevitable.
Companies everywhere the world were realising, though, that they have to have a web presence. Firms had selling departments and/or advertising agencies. Thus they too had to go together with the the tidal wave of net anticipation. What did they are doing? They followed the accepted patterns for selling in those days. TV advertising. Radio advertising. Big newspaper ads. The massive prices of those methods bore no relationship then to the potential for extra income, for sales. They were throwing cash down the drain in most cases. Why? They simply did not understand!
The net was, and is, a revolution in communications. But the selling industry had not had a revolution, it was too caught up in the rest of the promoting mix to realise what was very occurring here. The printing press was a revolution in communications, however it took several years to unfold its influence. Radio was a revolution in communications; likewise. TV? Likewise.
The internet has been a lot of like an explosion, and after an explosion it takes time for the dirt to settle. That is one amongst the reasons for the maze of net marketing. The mud continues to be settling. You can't see through the mud yet. Additional of a haze than a maze I suppose! No, a maze in a haze!