Internet Business Success – Critical Skill #2
By Anna Johnson on August 9th, 2008On Tuesday I discussed what I believe to be one of the most critical – yet often overlooked – skills needed to build a successful Internet business: business management.
Kind of obvious, isn’t it? Yet, not necessarily easy to implement when you realize what effective management involves.
Well the 2nd critical skill is also fairly obvious… yet, still quite challenging to do well.
It is… marketing!
Yes, the ability to plan, and most importantly, IMPLEMENT, a comprehensive, multi-pronged Internet marketing effort.
Marketing really is the lifeblood of your business. However, here at Kikabink we define “marketing” a little differently to some of the definitions you’ve probably come across.
By our definition, marketing involves:
- Generating leads (“traffic” in Internet parlance);
- Converting those leads into customers;
- Satisfying those customers;
- Keeping those customers – which implies getting them to buy more, and more often, from you.
Although a lot of attention is often given to generating and converting traffic (elements 1 and 2)… the ongoing growth and prosperity of your business really depends on doing 3 and 4 exceptionally well.
In any case, when you think of YOUR marketing efforts… are you doing everything you can in each of these areas of marketing?
This doesn’t mean you should be doing everything yourself – as a provider of Internet marketing services we definitely believe you should hire experts to do what they do best.
However, you still need to plan and manage your overall marketing strategy and be aware of what is – and what should be – going on. Next time we’ll talk about the 3rd critical skill you need for a thriving Internet business. And this really is unique to the online world.
