Preparing for Your Future Online Marketing Success

When pur­su­ing your online mar­ket­ing suc­cess, you devel­op­ing your busi­ness plans, set­ting up your web­sites, blogs and join the social net­works etc. Besides that, do you have a short term view, a long term view or both? What is your “suc­cess strat­egy”? Are you doing what every­one else is doing or antic­i­pat­ing where the inter­net is tak­ing us? Are you prepar­ing for your company’s future online appear­ance? What is the key for your com­pany to achieve online mar­ket­ing success?

When con­sid­er­ing things like:

• Google’s ever chang­ing land­scapes the aver­age SEO bat­tles to stay on top of, the efforts to try and antic­i­pate updates and algo­rithms, mak­ing things more com­plex than they need to be.
• The expan­sion of the inter­net (InternetWorldStats.com)
• The efforts to under­stand PageR­ank (PR) when the PR of today won’t be here tomor­row.
• Debate over how to approach the design of web­sites and every­one argu­ing about which method is the best when they don’t take the whole pic­ture into account (the mar­ket; the future)
• The revving up of RSS as a way to pro­vide more con­tent on your web­site
• The explo­sion and impor­tance of forums. It seems every­one is start­ing a forum.
• And a mil­lion other things chang­ing and influ­enc­ing the way we do things now.

Every­one is scram­bling to try and fig­ure out the right “Suc­cess Strat­egy” and what direc­tion to take with their busi­ness, web­sites and mar­ket­ing. You see not only is the inter­net vast and chang­ing and devel­op­ing rapidly, the busi­ness, the prod­ucts and ser­vices, the way each one’s approach to the mar­ket also different.

Are You Plan­ning for the Future?

Many of us lis­ten to what’s hap­pen­ing now, but what about 5 years from now? Who is going to be still in busi­ness 10 years from now? What works now will be obso­lete. Will you be left behind or be rid­ing the wave as it grows?

Those who are pre­pared to adapt and have built a dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture for their busi­ness that antic­i­pates the future will sur­vive. You can’t be sta­tic. You can’t invest a lot of time and money into some­thing inflex­i­ble that may be replaced by another tech­nol­ogy next year. We must under­stand what’s hap­pen­ing and what to antic­i­pate. You have to under­stand the big pic­ture to make the right choices about your busi­ness mar­ket­ing online.

You can use many of the online mar­ket­ing meth­ods today and do very well short term, but you must have an exit plan. You must move as the inter­net moves. An impor­tant suc­cess strat­egy is hav­ing an exit plan. This plan might be decid­ing that you will pur­sue a strat­egy for 2 years, and then you will change or re-study that busi­ness strat­egy and have another one wait­ing in the wings. It’s an impor­tant key to suc­cess mar­ket­ing on the inter­net if you want a long term presence.

The Internet’s Reflection

The inter­net in the future will be a reflec­tion of the off-line world. It isn’t yet, but its com­ing. Why do I think that? I believe that because the struc­ture of the offline world has been devel­op­ing for thou­sands of years and it works. It’s in a con­tin­u­ous state of change, but the basic struc­ture is in place.

To draw a comparison:

OFFLINE: If you want free infor­ma­tion, where do you go offline? The library.
ONLINE: Even­tu­ally you will find that same infor­ma­tion avail­able online. Some of it is, but it will get bet­ter as you can see by Google’s activities.

OFFLINE: If you want a new book, mag­a­zine or other fresh infor­ma­tion, where do you go? The book­store.
ONLINE: You already have book­stores online.

OFFLINE: If you want infor­ma­tion about fish­ing, where do you go? The library.
ONLINE: Even­tu­ally the online library.

OFFLINE: What if you want to buy a fish­ing rod? You go to a fish­ing store.
ONLINE: You go to a fish­ing store.

How about Music, Elec­tron­ics, or Office Sup­plies? You can find them all online and offline.

I remem­bered there many peo­ple are wor­ried about a move like “Google Print”. A deal involv­ing the libraries of five of the world’s most impor­tant aca­d­e­mic insti­tu­tions includ­ing: The full libraries of Michi­gan and Stan­ford uni­ver­si­ties, as well as archives at Har­vard, Oxford and the New York Pub­lic Library. Why are you wor­ried? You didn’t antic­i­pate this? Never get too used to your envi­ron­ment, espe­cially online. Even offline mar­kets change, prod­ucts develop, and the tech­nol­ogy improves.

I believe the inter­net has sev­eral dimen­sions: Leisure, Edu­ca­tional, Con­sumer, and Busi­ness to name a few. All of these will develop side by side even­tu­ally catch­ing up with the offline world and then push­ing for­ward and get­ting bet­ter into the future. The key to suc­cess online is to under­stand how it’s all come together, build your busi­ness and your online strat­egy to join that movement.

We must all under­stand that we just invented the wheel; so much more is to come. The offline world and the online world will become seam­less in years to come. It will be excit­ing to watch and be a part of. Your suc­cess strat­egy should inte­grate the wheels of change.

So you must stop think­ing in one dimen­sion. You must look beyond the present and under­stand how the changes might affect you. You can’t fight the changes, but you can antic­i­pate them.

What Exactly Do You Need to Worry About?

Some of you won’t have to worry about your prod­ucts. For instance if you sell jew­elry, chances are peo­ple will still want jew­elry in 10, 20 or 30 years. But you do have to be flex­i­ble enough to move with the webs development.

Oth­ers of you will have to pre­pare a con­tin­gency plan. You will have to decide how long your prod­uct will work for you and have another one ready to launch to take its place. This is espe­cially impor­tant for those involved with dig­i­tal prod­ucts. Bet­ter yet, you should have mul­ti­ple prod­ucts and streams of income to roll with the changes. If one drops off it won’t mat­ter. You’ll have oth­ers in place and another one ready to launch.

The Speed of Change and the Impor­tance of Education

There is a dif­fer­ence online as far as the speed that busi­ness changes. Things can change overnight. Google only has to change one lit­tle thing in their algo­rithm to put some­one out of busi­ness or launch some­one else into success.

If you choose to pur­sue mar­ket your prod­ucts or ser­vice online, you must under­stand that your envi­ron­ment is in a con­stant state of change. Just like any­one involved with tech­nol­ogy, you will have to always be edu­cat­ing your­self. Con­tin­u­ous edu­ca­tion will help you be pre­pared and ride out the storms to come.

Edu­ca­tion must become a rou­tine. It is another impor­tant suc­cess strategy.

Con­clu­sion

There is a lot of ways to mar­ket your busi­ness on the inter­net. The key to suc­cess is to under­stand how the game is played. You must have the future in mind. With­out a plan and a focus on the future you will find fail­ure much sooner than later. With a plan for the future and your eye on the future you will antic­i­pate the fail­ures, expect them, adapt and survive.

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