Growing Your Market: Get Real

by Daniel Janal

• Want to double traffic overnight? Join the club. Maybe it's time to get real.
• Unrealistic expectations: Even if you're doing well, if you're not realistic you can be unhappy.
• Uninspired execution:Even good ideas can get you nowhere if they aren't well executed.
• Lessons to learn: Important lessons to learn when it comes to marketing.

Let's look at both.

Unrealistic expectations

First, he might have had unrealistic expectations. He wanted to grow his subscriber list from 150,000 to 500,000 overnight. That task simply can't be done so quickly. Nor can you expect to sell a million dollars of products from your Web store in a week. Yet, so many newcomers to the 'Net think their stores will be overnight sensations. Those cases are very rare indeed.

However, we both failed to appreciate the value of incrementally growing the list over a period of several months so he could reach that lofty number. We both were guilty of trying to win the lottery, or picking the next Internet stock that goes through the roof. Instead, we should have realized that steady and deliberate marketing steps would have won the race. That's how compound interest works. That's how the tortoise beat the hare. And that's how you should treat your Web site.

Don't be disappointed if you can't retire next week. If you work hard, you might be able to build a respectable business and retire faster than if you worked in a cubicle instead.

Instead of looking for the next big thing, he should have kept on doing what had been working. If he had followed through on the marketing programs that worked in the past, he might have picked up 100 subscribers here and 50 subscribers there. Then he would have reached his goal—but it wouldn't have happened overnight.

While he was looking for the "quick fix," he was losing sight of what had worked all along.

Uninspired execution

Let's look at the second possibility for failure. The execution of the new marketing programs might have been awful. He might have had bad slogans on his banner ads or rotten copywriting on his offers. After all, you can't force someone to subscribe if you don't write copy that hits a nerve. So the tactics might have worked, if he had better marketing materials.

Mind you, I'm not saying he had bad execution. But it might have been a reason. I remember him saying, "Every slogan I thought of for an ad didn't work. And believe me, I tried them all."

That's commendable, but the fire can't get any hotter than the candle. Just because you have the talent to cherry pick the easiest 150,000 subscribers doesn't mean you have the ability to take it to the next level. Most entrepreneurs can build a business to a certain level, but no higher. That's when they bring in professional managers who know how to grow a business.

You could look at that model as well. You can always get help on the 'Net, usually by trading services. With 150,000 readers, I'm sure he could have exchanged an ad or two for some consulting time with a top-notch copywriter.

Important lessons

We'll never know what the fault was. But we can learn important lessons from this exchange.

1. Set clear, definable, and obtainable goals. Be realistic. How big is your market? Are they on the Internet? Can you reach them easily or cost-efficiently?
2. How much time will it take to achieve the goal? My friend wanted to double his subscriber base overnight. No one can do that. You need to figure out a time line to make it happen.
3. How much money or energy will it take? On the 'Net, you can barter and trade to great success with other entrepreneurs. If you have a great deal of energy, you can do a great deal of marketing on-line for no cost at all. You can trade links with other noncompetitive vendors, list your site on search engines, write press releases, or become an active member in an on-line community that reaches your target audience. If you have money to invest, you can buy advertisements that reach your audience. For example, you can buy a keyword on a search engine, so every time someone types "N scale railroad" your hobby store pops up. How much money you can budget will determine how many people you can reach.
4. Don't set yourself up for failure. If you have your sights set on 1 million readers and you get 500,000, you shouldn't consider yourself a failure! My friend pocketed more than $100,000 a year from his on-line venture—and that goes a long way in Ohio!
5. Use the 80/20 rule to analyze your marketing efforts and see what is working—and continue doing it. This rule says that 80 percent of your income will come from 20 percent of your clients, or 20 percent of your activities. This means you don't have to use every strategy in the book—just the ones that work for your company, product, or service. Since each business is just a little bit different, what works for me might not necessarily work for you, or vice versa. Find the ones that work—and keep on doing them.
6. Test your marketing materials and improve them. Then test again to see if you can do it better. One of the greatest advantages of the Internet over print advertising is that you can test your marketing programs quickly, effectively, and inexpensively. This process is called "benchmarking." When you benchmark your slogans, headlines, and prices, you'll find that each change will yield different results. After weeks of testing, you might find the perfect combination that will help your sales soar.

If you follow these steps, you'll be well on your way to reaching the goals that will truly take you where you want to go.

About the author

Daniel Janal is president of Janal Communications, a 15-year-old on-line marketing agency. He is the author of the best-selling classic Online Marketing Handbook, and Risky Business: Protect Your Business from Being Stalked, Conned or Blackmailed on the Web , which was named one of the 30 best business books of 1998 by Soundview Executive Book Summaries. He can be reached at dan@janal.com or www.janal.com. Dan was on the PR team that launched America Online more than 15 years ago and is one of the true veteran marketers in the on-line world. His client list includes IBM, Readers Digest, American Express, Catalog City, City Search, and many other large and small businesses.

Illustration: Ingo Fast's Technology at www.artville.com