Think about the partnerships you’ve got in your life right now. You may have thought about your romantic partner, your workout buddy, your ‘partner-in-crime’ best friend or your business partner. We form these relationships because they give us something we don’t have alone. They provide us with something that makes us more committed, effective, powerful or successful because of it. Through the partnerships we create, our lives become more enriched.

Before you commit to any kind of partnership whether in your personal or professional life, you want to know what the other party has to offer and how this will benefit you or your business. Creating a partnership with the internet is really no different in this sense. Let’s explore how creating a partnership with the internet could enrich your business’ life.

They say that it takes 7 points of contact with a new vendor before a person will do business with them. This is particularly true if you are providing a service. Unless you’re prepared to meet with a potential customer 7 separate times before they give you their business, you need to think about other ways of reaching them. Through marketing, we hope to reach out to the right people to tell them that we exist and what we can offer them. You may have a fantastic service or product, but unless people know about it, your business won’t be in business for very long. Therefore, it’s essential to the life of your business to try and reach your customers through as many channels as possible. 

Using the internet to market your business has become a key element to the marketing plan. Due to the timeliness, reach, availability and cost-effectiveness of the internet, an online marketing strategy can truly compliment your traditional marketing methods and in some cases, be more effective. There are many online marketing activities including websites, social media, social networking, youtube, e-newsletters and blogs. Which activities you use will depend on your marketing objectives. 

By using multiple online activities to market your business, you are not only increasing the amount of people you reach with your message, you are also reaching them in places where they are already going anyway. Rather than making your customers come to you, why not go to them?

Marketing is all about creating rapport. While it may seem more obvious how to do this through face-to-face or even telephone contact, there are many ways to achieve this through online activities as well. Many businesses have an About Us page on their website which gives customers an idea of who the people are behind the business and what the business stands for. A blog is a great way to supplement your website and offer a more personal approach to communicating with your customers. Find a method that works for you. The key being to create and maintain a relationship with your customers so they get to know who you are and what you stand for as a business owner so that they are more likely to do business with you.

After you’ve determined which online marketing activities will be useful to your current business objectives, start planning how you will use these elements most effectively to build rapport virtually. Perhaps you are just starting out and want to create some awareness around your product or service. You might start out by getting your website up to establish your online presence. Then, you might set up a fan page on Facebook and encourage people to join. Once you gain enough interest from your fan page, you might then create a free, monthly e-newsletter where people can sign up on your website or fan page with some added incentive of a free demo or discounted offering.

Once your online marketing activities are up and running and you start to see some interest and maybe even see some sales as a result, it’s time to determine how often you should update the content across your activities. Now that you’ve got a good following, how active are you about keeping in touch with your existing and potential customers? Remember, it takes 7 points of contact before a customer will do business with someone new. How often are you reminding your customer base that you exist?

The key ingredient to a successful partnership? Trust. Using the internet to support your business will only be successful if you put in the time and effort required to get the trust you need from it. It’s a one–way relationship in some respects so you need to be clear about what you expect to achieve from the partnership. How will you know your online marketing efforts are paying off? What do you hope to achieve through online marketing activity?

Depending on how you feel about the internet (hate it, love, it or somewhere in-between), you will need to create your relationship from where you are. Think about what will help you feel more confident and secure about using the internet for your online marketing activities. Once you’ve got an answer, commit to doing the work to get more of what you need so that you can begin an effective partnership that will help enrich your business’ life. It doesn’t matter where you start, as long as you do.

If you want to improve your relationship with the internet, please contact [email protected] to help you get started.