What Is Your Business – Do You Really Know?

Many online marketers and their business fail because they do not know what their business is.  Those who create or market software think their business is software while those who write ebooks and short reports believe they are in the ebook information business.  Neither one is even close.

People trying to run a business whilst not having a clear idea what their business actually is will be unable to produce succesful business plans, write compelling sales copy or build a loyal following.  This will bring about the failure of their business.

Regardless of what your product is, your only business is MARKETING.  It doesn't matter if your business is online or offline - your business is MARKETING. Successful marketers are the ones that develop a marketing mindset; no one was born with it.  They have learned how to think like a marketer and to make decisions marketers need to make.

Your first step in this process is to develop and build a marketer's mindset, rather than for example an ebook seller's mindset.  If you've been selling products on eBay or on your own website, you've probably been consumed by finding interested niches, driving traffic, testing ads for conversion rates and building a list.  As necessary as those tasks are, they are the product of a seller's mindset and, while you might make some sales with that mindset, your business will not soar to new heights.

To be able to develop a powerful marketing mindset, you will have to learn to focus on the one question that will govern every step you take online.  All of your business decisions have to be looked at though this question:  "How will this action provide true benefits and create loyalty amongst my customers?"  If you cannot provide an answer to that question, you might want to rethink your plan of action.

No matter how much planning, designing, researching and testing that goes into a successful marketing campaign, the customer is actually in charge of your business.  All your success depends on a sale of your products or services and that is 100% dependent on your customer and THEIR needs.

Once you have developed a successful marketer's mindset, you will understand the motivations that make your customers buy from you.  You have to establish what they need and what they want before you start offering products to them.  Become a member of several forums, read the questions that are asked in any category and focus on providing solutions to them.  That's a ready-made, customer-driven market for your specific answers, provided as a short report, longer ebook or services.

In the past, marketing was all about selling products to a constantly changing market made up of anonymous customers who made a purchase and disappeared.  Giant sales promotions based on holidays or current events were designed to bring that anonymous customer back to the store or service to make another purchase.  The customers were still anonymous.

In today's marketplace, the worldwide Internet, the demand has shifted from anonymous marketing to building personal, nurturing relationships with customers.  This change now demands exceptional, over-the-top customer service to build trust from an early stage of product promotion.  Your customers need to develop a personal, trusting relationship with you or they won't even open your emails and, eventually, will just unsubscribe. Click...Gone!

Also gone are the days of an Internet of quickly-built, simple web pages promoting products and services to an anonymous audience.  In are the new marketing principles based on a social Web, with people interacting directly with each other and mega businesses.  Open communication and honest answers have become the driving force behind any online relationship.

Those relationships are dynamic, vital and dependent on the customer's behaviour, attitudes and interests.  Now, a single customer in a very small isolated town can reach out and grab the attention of a mega company on the other side of the globe and have an effect on their customer service or the products they provide.

Now that's worth thinking about!