A seasoned hotel manager decided to open his own restaurant. The dream of every entrepreneur—owning his or her own business. With help from his family, he selected a location near a large auto factory and proceeded to establish a place for fine dining. He had sufficient capital to provide the needed renovations and up-scale furnishings. He even borrowed money to build a wine cellar. His thinking was that there would be lots of executives and managers from the factory who would pay big bucks for a fine meal. However that was not the case and the place closed in six months. He lost his life savings and ended up in debt. Not exactly a successful Internet Marketing Strategy.



How come two-thirds of businesses fail within the first few years? Some of the most common ones cited are: lack of experience, bad management (whatever that means), lack of start-up capital, poor marketing, shoddy cash management, not focusing on a specific market segment, poor or non-existent market research, not collecting debts owed, failure to control costs, failure to adapt the product or service to meet customer needs, not finding new markets and an incompetent management team. Many are marketing related—a whopping 50% of the reasons companies fail.

Many people who start their own business are educated and have an impressive expertise in some area. They may have been successful working for someone else or even themselves but want to start a new venture. They want to succeed. So why so many failures?

They start out with what they think is a great idea and may even work out a business model of how the business should work and make money. They run the idea “up the flag pole”. They talk to a few friends over a beer. They consult their parents, at a weekend barbeque. Everyone says it's a great idea.

They take the plunge and off they go to start a business. They quit their day job with great satisfaction. But in a few months or short years, the new business is gone. How come?

While there is no 100% guarantee that every business will succeed, our entrepreneur would have had a much better shot at it if he or she had done some basic homework—market research, a vital component of an Internet marketing strategy.

Doing a survey on your friends or parents is a bad idea as they are not likely to give you unbiased advice and may not even be the target audience for your product or service. Would you ask a dentist what kind of guitar to buy?

Firstly figure out who is your public (target audience) that will buy your product or service.

Better to have talked to people on the street or at a business mixer or researched your competition on the Internet. Something like “Would you be interested in buying a new product (or service) that does ….?” If there were an interest then you would know you are on the right track. If not, it is back to the drawing board or abandon the idea.

Do not survey a group—that will give you wrong answers as people do not make buying decisions as a “group” (except government and look what they end up with). If you get a positive response from potential customers, then do some homework on the competition. What products do they have, what are their prices, where are they located, what do they do successfully and so on? Know before you go.

Fast forward to the Internet age where there may be daunting competition—all those millions and millions of web pages to compete against. On the upside there are lots of ways to get good market research done online. One of the best tools is key word research.

Key word research is determining exactly what key words your prospects are searching on and which ones that you want to concentrate on. This is a surveyor's dream—you can find out exactly what the public are looking for and what key words they are using to find the goods and services that they want to buy. Then of course the web site has to be written and programmed around your key words.

Armed with solid market research and your key word research you can now prepare an Internet marketing strategy. Then check it out with your business advisor as to the funding needed, personnel requirements and so on. Your planning is now based on facts not opinions.

The best way to avoid a business failure is to prevent it in the first place by doing your homework and becoming knowledgeable about the business—all before you spend your start up money.

Make your dreams come true—do your marketing studies, key word research and develop your Internet Marketing Strategy—all before you start the business.