Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Developing a Marketing Strategy

In the early days of the Internet, you could build a Web site, get mentioned in the right places, and instantly receive a stream of customers, whether you sold sweaters or homemade apple butter. You didn't have much competition, and a hungry audience would soak up whatever they could find. Now, Web sites and online commerce companies sell everything that's legal (and a few things that aren't), and competition is fierce and ever-present. The days of building a Web site and receiving instant traffic are mostly over. In this section, we show you how to use branding and a targeted advertising strategy to get the word out about your business to the masses.

Hit the right concept at the right time, however, and you might find early success. When people heard of a search engine, Google, that provided relevant results, they started using it more and more. When anyone could create a video file and share that video with other users on the Internet, who could rate and comment on those videos, YouTube jumped to the top of the charts of the social networking trend.

Devising your brand

To get your business noticed, you need to come up with a basic, all-encompassing strategy. This strategy defines and drives your marketing efforts. Always send out the right message from the start so that you don't confuse your customers and waste your money.

The first part of your ...